Sunday, October 15, 2000 (11:40 PM)

"Don't move, young man, you must lay very still for me," a soft voice said over and over again to Frank as he struggled back to consciousness, struggled to pull himself free of the darkness that held him captive. "Please, lay still."

Frank laid still because any movement caused his whole body to throb in pain and he felt as if he had been beaten up by a million baseball bats all at once. He tried to remember what happened, why he hurt so bad, why ever part of his body felt run over and bashed into a million pieces but nothing came. He laid very still and tried to remember. He couldn't see. Why couldn't he see anything? Were his eyes closed? Or was it because something else happened? He tried to touch his eyes but something pushed his arm back down. He tried again and again his arm was pushed gently back down to the top of the hard bed on which he lay.

"Where...?" he tried to ask but nothing came out. The word stuck in the back of his inflamed throat and he grimaced once again in pain.

"Don't try to talk," the gentle voice said to him. "I shall tell you more momentarily but I need you to remain very still and to allow me to finish my examination."

Frank was not at all happy with that answer and he continued to try to remember on his own. His name was Frank Hardy. He was twenty years old and would be twenty-one in just three weeks. He went to college at Bayport University with his brother Joe and his sister Mandy. His roommate was Connor MacKenzie, his girlfriend was Samantha Ellington.

He remembered why he couldn't see; he had been blinded over a month ago by Doctor Rich or, at least, by one of Doctor Rich's henchmen. He had been nearly killed again by Doctor Rich's son and daughter, Jason and Anna. He frowned at that point. What had happened since then? The accident at the mall? But he and Sam hadn't been hit by the car. The arrows at the church? No, that hadn't...

He'd been at the hospital though, because... because of Vanessa! She had been hit by a car. A blue-green Audi.

"JOE!"

The cry tore from his lips a moment later when he remembered. An explosion. At his house! He screamed Joe's name again and the doctor fought to keep him still on the bed as he struggled with the doctor. He didn't care how badly he was hurt; he had to go find his brother.

"I'm going to have to sedate him, he's going to hurt himself," the doctor said to someone to the side. "Just a light sedative to calm him. He'll cause himself more injury if I don't."

"No," Frank whispered. "No, please. My brother. He was in the house. I have to go find him!"

"I'm very sorry, young man," the doctor said to him. "But you are in no shape to go anywhere. When you wake up you will feel better and more able to cope."

Something sharp poked into Frank's arm and he struggled for several more moments until the fast acting sedative took hold of him and he finally began to relax. Against his will, only a minute or so later, he fell back into the dark pit.

Monday, October 16, 2000 (4 am)

"...Parents are on their way back home," a soft voice drifted its way back into Frank's consciousness but he was too drowsy to do more than listen to the words. "This is... there's not a word to describe what this is. You did the right thing, Detective Riley. Thank you for calling me."

"I knew you could get here the fastest, Miss Hardy," another voice said. "And I had heard from the kids that their parents were on a cruise. I'm glad you were able to get here so quickly. Both Frank and Mandy had to be sedated by the doctor because they got hysterical when they began to remember what happened."

There was a bit of something that sounded like a sniffle next.

"I'm sorry, Gertrude," Con Riley said. "You have no idea how bad this makes me feel. I can't imagine how you, any of you feel."

"These are my own children, Detective Riley," Aunt Gertrude said to the policeman. "My sister-in-law may have borne them but they are as my own. I can't... I can't imagine Joseph being... I always feared something might happen to them but this... they could all have been killed."

Something brushed Frank's left arm, the touch of skin against his own and someone squeezed his good left hand. His right throbbed rhythmically to some sort of internal clock and he winced when he tried to move it. Big mistake.

"Frank?" Aunt Gertrude said to him. "Can you hear me? Frank?"

"Yes," Frank tried to say but it came out more as 'ssss'.

"Oh, lad," Aunt Gertrude sounded close to tears and she picked up his hand to touch it to her cheek. "My nephew, my boy, I am so sorry... so sorry..."

Frank was still too drowsy to know just what, exactly, she was sorry about. A few minutes later, to the sounds of Aunt Gertrude trying to tell him what had happened, he fell back to sleep again.

Monday, October 16, 2000 (10 am)

"He's here," Aunt Gertrude's voice sounded right into Frank's dream and he frowned. "Right in here, Laura and Fenton. He's not as bad as he looks, really. Laura..."

Frank rubbed at his eyes and yawned sleepily and opened his eyes to look at his mother only he saw, instead, the darkness. You can't see, idiot, he reminded himself. So stop trying. Concentrate on the dream instead. It had been so real! The house blew up. He really was losing it if he was dreaming about his house exploding. He would have to watch his stress level. Perhaps vivid dreams of explosions meant something. Too bad none of his friends majored in psychology.

"Frank?" his mother's voice shook with emotion, with weariness and she held tightly to Frank's non-throbbing hand. "Oh, Frank..."

"Mom," Frank said in a husky voice. "I had a bad dream about our house blowing up. And Joe... I had a dream I couldn't get to him and that it blew up again. It was so real!"

His mother gasped and made a choking sound.

"Frank," she gasped out. "Frank, sweetie... I... Frank..."

Frank wondered if maybe she thought him batty for telling her what he dreamed. He just didn't remember why he was really in the hospital. It couldn't be for something like the house blowing up. Those things just didn't happen, did they? No, he was pretty sure they didn't. So he had dreamt it and so it hadn't really happened. But why was he in the hospital? A car wreck of some kind? That was much more plausible of course. People had car wrecks all the time.

"Go back to sleep, Frank," his mother encouraged him. "We'll... we'll talk to you later, when you are stronger. You need to get your strength back so go back to sleep."

That seemed a very good idea to Frank so he did just that."

Sunday, October 15, 2000 (5 PM) (Repeat!)

The backwash of the largest explosion 20-year-old Frank Hardy ever experienced in his life fell over him and he struggled, for a moment, to keep his feet in the face of catastrophe. The shockwave caused by the explosion sent him spiraling head-over-heels a moment later and he fell awkwardly back to the ground, just behind a car parked across the street from his house. As Frank looked toward the house, he saw a billow of flame and smoke rise up from the house that he had called home for all but five of his twenty years and his mouth fell open in shock. He wanted to deny what he saw, what his eyes told him to be true. His house was a burning mass of rubble, depleted to the core of foundation and rock in just a few short seconds.

Frank struggled to his feet and winced as his arm throbbed. He felt completely dead inside, his senses refused to register everything he saw and he began to shut down, to go into a shock as profound and real as the explosion had been. Frank winced when he moved his arm the wrong way and took a staggered step toward the house. He took another, then another, stopped only when a large hand grabbed him and pulled him back.

"You can't go in there, Frank," a harsh voice whispered into his ear. "Stay back!"

Frank stammered for a minute, protesting that he had to go put the fire out before they lost everything. The voice told him that if he took a single step toward the house, Frank would be tied to a car to keep him out. He couldn't go any closer.

Frank struggled against his roommate's arms, struggled to make it those crucial fifteen yards to his house. He already felt the heat, so intense he felt sunburned already. He stopped finally, stopped when he was unable, even remotely, to break the stance and hold of Connor MacKenzie.

"Frank? Where's Joe?" Frank turned to his younger sister who stood beside them, her face an ash-gray color as she looked at the burning house before them. "His car is there, where is Joe?"

Frank turned back to the house as he felt whatever color remained his face drain away. He began to struggle in earnest then as tears began to stream down his cheeks and he kicked at Connor, trying to break the grip that Connor had on his arm. Just as he would have broke free, Mandy stepped forward and screamed, in a voice that made Frank chill inside.

"JOE!"

Monday, October 16, 2000 (12 PM) (Repeat!)

Frank Richard Hardy sat bolt upright in bed and winced when his arm began to throb with an earnestness that made him lay back again much more gingerly. The darkness that was so familiar to him was back, fled when he woke from the dream and he used his good left arm to touch his right arm gingerly. There was a cast on it. Frank's head throbbed almost in the same rhythm of his arm and he tried very hard, for a moment, not to move.

The dream. What had that dream been? It had seemed so real, so real to him that he thought maybe it might be true. He struggled with his memory, struggled to make sense of everything that flew around inside of his head.

And then he remembered.

It had been no dream. The only thing different in his dream is he had been able to see the events that happen. But it had been no dream. His vivid imagination was not a hint that he was losing his mind; the explosion, the rain of fire, the destruction of his home, those had all been real.

And Joe...

Frank Hardy began to cry in sincerity once again.

(New)

Frank didn't know how long he cried, how long he lay in a stupor of emotion that swept over him and caused him to relive the terrible, horrifying memories over and over again until he wanted to be sedated again just so he could fall into the oblivion that awaited him in the darkness. He realized, though, that even there he was unable to escape. He had been as much a prisoner of the memories in sleep as he was when he was awake and sleep would not change the reality.

His house had blown up and Joe was gone.

Frank cried again, unable to stop himself once the memories washed over him again, once he remembered the futility of trying to race toward the heat to rescue his brother from them. Connor had been right to hold him, to keep him from running into the fire but it didn't make the reality any better. He had failed to save his baby brother, he had failed to keep the bad guys from destroying his house, had failed to stop whomever was after Joe... from killing him.

Frank curled up into a ball on his bed, as best as his injuries and the shoulder to fingertip cast on his right arm allowed. He pulled his pillow in close and held onto it, as he had done often when he was in the worst stages of chemo during his battle with leukemia. He rested his head on the edge of his pillow and continued to cry as he felt an empty, jagged hole within himself that was Joe.

"Frank?" he heard a gentle voice say his name but he was too wrapped up in his grief to look up. He didn't have the energy to respond to them, nor the desire. He wanted to fall back into the darkness that left him without sound or feeling or caring or anything but peace and stay there forever and forget, forget that his brother was gone. He wasn't up to talking to anyone else. He didn't think he would ever want to talk to anyone else again.

"Frank Richard Hardy," the voice said again. All three names this time. That usually happened when he was in trouble. Was he in trouble for what happened to Joe? For killing Joe? "Look at me, Frank."

Frank shook his head and buried his face more into his pillow. He grimaced when he pinched a very sore rib and he straightened a little. How could he face anyone right now with what he did? He couldn't. He wanted to curl up and forget about the whole world right now.

A hand caressed his cheek and he felt someone kneel on the bed and sit beside him. He finally looked up then remembered that he wouldn't be able to see who it was anyway. What did it matter? He winced in pain when he put too much weight on his right knee as he shifted away from whomever touched him.

"Frank, I need you to listen to me," his mother said again and Frank jerked to attention, uncurled on the bed and reached for her. She hugged him and then sat back, holding only to his hand to assure Frank that she was still there.

"You don't have to tell me," Frank's voice almost caught again but he tried again. "I know... he's... Joe's dead."

His mother hugged him again and Frank felt her tears on his face. He held her with his good hand and pushed back his own remorse and guilt to comfort her. She cried on his shoulder and he held her awkwardly and tried to pat her back.

"I'm sorry," Frank said. "I'm sorry, Mom. I should have... I should have done something. I..."

"They blew up the house, Frank!" his mother exclaimed. "I'm just grateful... I'm grateful I didn't lose all of you. You and Mandy and your friends. Frank, I can barely handle having lost Joe, I can't handle losing you too."

"Mandy!" Frank said suddenly. "Where is she? Is she...?"

"She and Samantha are sharing a room on the fifth floor," Laura said. "Both of them are badly scraped up and Samantha banged her head but the doctor said they'll be fine; they can leave tomorrow. Connor is down the hall, he broke several ribs when he landed and had some internal bleeding that he had surgically repaired this morning. You have a broken arm, a couple of broken ribs and you strained your right knee and... they had to sedate you last night."

Frank felt his mother push his hair out of his face and she held him again for a minute.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"For what?" Frank asked, confused.

"That I wasn't here," she said. "To protect you both."

Frank raised an eyebrow and smiled, a smile that faded only a moment after it appeared.

"Did they... did they find... him?" Frank asked, shakily. "Did they find Joe?"

Laura shuddered and Frank heard her inhale sharply and exhale a moment later. He felt as she sat back and touched his shoulder and sighed.

"They said," she said. "They said that the chances are slim they will find... him. Con said that they would find... he called it debris. Human debris. And that as soon as they found some they could have it cross matched to DNA. He said that would be the only way... the only way we know for sure. Mandy's convinced he's still alive, I don't think even that will be enough to convince her otherwise."

Frank frowned and drummed the fingers of his good hand on the top of his bed. Mandy still thought Joe was alive and her instincts about their brother were usually very good. Frank almost agreed with her but maybe because he wanted her to be right, he wanted Joe to be alive and to walk into his room any minute.

"If he's alive he'd have been found already," Frank tried to convince himself, one way or another. "He'd be here, with us. Did anyone check Vanessa's room? He didn't sneak back in here after all, did he?"

"No," his mother sounded definite. "I saw Andrea early this morning, she had heard about the house on the news and she felt very badly that she had been the one to make Joe go home. She said that Vanessa was still in a coma."

Frank rubbed at the back of his head and winced when he touched a tender spot. Connor wasn't the only one who bumped his head; Frank remembered a very violent collision with something with the back of his head. Or perhaps it hadn't been something hard but something soft - Connor's leg? A lawn? It had been something of that nature. Frank was fairly certain about that.

Frank closed his eyes again and sighed, the ache welling up within him again. He wouldn't cry again, not when he didn't know, for sure, that his little brother was gone. It was better to be strong, to wait for evidence, one way or another. He tried to convince himself that Mandy would know, if nobody else did, that Joe was still alive. Wouldn't she have some... feeling? Some sense? That Joe was dead if he really was?

"Where's dad?" he asked as he opened his eyes again out of habit. "Mom?"

"I'm still here," his mother sounded weary and Frank realized that they must have flown all night to get back so quickly. She must be completely washed out. "I'm still here, I'm sorry, Frank. I'm a little tired. Your father is back at the house, talking to the investigators. He wants to be there in case... in case they find something. He's also taking care... taking care of arrangements."

"Do you have somewhere to stay?" Frank asked.

"The Shaws have offered us a room," Laura said. "We're going to take them up on it until we can make other arrangements. Your Aunt Gertrude is going to go stay with a friend of hers. You don't have to worry about any of us, Frank; we aren't displaced at all. We'll probably rent a house until we can have ours rebuilt."

Frank nodded. It was easier to think about the things that could be replaced, to think about things like where to sleep than it was to think about the brother that wasn't coming home. He pushed that thought back again. He had to believe that he would see Joe again. He had to! Nothing else was acceptable!

A few minutes later a doctor arrived and checked him over, then shot something into his good arm and told him that he should sleep some more. Frank found himself drifting away almost immediately on the edges of the painkiller given to him by the doctor and finally, sleep came again.

Monday, October 16, 2000 (1 PM)

Mandy sat up on her bed in the hospital room she shared with her older brother's girlfriend and curled her legs up under her as she stared out of the window and down to the park area just behind the hospital. She said nothing to Samantha nor to anyone else who came into her room; she had said nothing at all since her mother told her that Joe was dead except that her mother was wrong. Joe wasn't dead. She had kept the rest of her thoughts to herself as she tried to sleep the night before and while tears fell from her eyes they were more from loss than they were from grief.

I feel you, she thought to her twin. I feel you still inside of me and if you were dead, I wouldn't. We can't talk like this, Joe, but I know you can feel what I feel when you need to. You need to now, Joe, please. Please, Joe. You're alive. I know you're alive. You have to tell me where you are so we can help you.

She felt nothing, though, just that same, gentle, link. She didn't know why she thought he would feel her, why she thought he would be able to answer her but she needed it almost as badly as he obviously did. She felt tears well up in her eyes again and squeezed her eyes shut.

"I am not going to cry!" she whispered to herself. "I am not going to cry. He isn't dead!"

Mandy bounced out of bed and winced when she pulled a bandage that ran along her upper thigh from her hipbone to her knee. The doctor told Mandy she had pulled a long piece of glass out of Mandy's upper leg and that Mandy had fifteen stitches in her leg now. It hurt like blazes but the hurt reminded her that she was a fighter. If it took all of her energy to convince her family of the truth she knew - that Joe was alive, then she would do it. It was that simple. She wasn't going to let him down. She didn't know where he'd been when the explosion happened, she didn't know where he was now or why he didn't come back to them, but he was alive and that meant he had to be found.

"Mandy?" Mandy looked over at Samantha as she sat up in bed and rubbed at a bandage over her right cheek. Samantha rubbed at her eyes and stretched before she drew the thin hospital blanket back over her bare legs again. Neither girl much liked the standard issue open back gowns that the hospital regularly handed out for wear. "Are you all right?"

"My leg hurts," Mandy admitted. "And the rest of me hurts but other than that, I'm fine. What about you?"

"I'm worried about Frank," Samantha admitted as she flicked back a lock of her red hair and rested an elbow on one knee. "Your mom said they had to sedate him last night."

"He'll be all right," Mandy slowly walked over to her friend's bed and sat back down. She drew Samantha into a hug. "He'll be all right, Samantha. He was just in shock last night from the explosions and everything; they had to sedate him because he was going to hurt himself if they didn't. He'll be all right today."

Samantha shook her head and tossed her hair back out of her face again.

"He was upset about Joe," she said. "I know that and you know that. That's why they had to sedate him. He knows... he knows Joe's not... that Joe... he was in the explosion."

Mandy exploded away from her friend in a fit of anger. "He isn't dead!" she said to Samantha. "Joe's not dead! I'd know it if he was and he's not dead!"

Samantha looked confused and hurt. "But, Mandy. He... there's no way he could have survived that explosion. And if he's alive where is he? He would be here if he was alive."

"Maybe he can't come here," Mandy said. "Maybe there's a reason why our house was blown up! I don't think it was to kill Joe at all."

Samantha looked more confused and Mandy willed her, willed her to use the brain that got her straight As in all of her pre-law classes. Samantha passed classes like she was passing butter around the table and Mandy knew she could put this all together, if she tried.

"I think you really did hurt your head," Mandy sighed as she sat back down and explained it to her. "Someone tried to kill Frank. You were there too, I know, but you weren't meant to be the target. They were just willing to kill you to get to Frank. You got him out of that, though. A car hit and nearly killed Vanessa, the same car that nearly hit you and Frank. Yesterday at church someone fired off arrows at me. And last night someone blew up our house. Not because they wanted to kill Joe but because they wanted... they wanted to destroy... destroy the symbol of our family."

Samantha shook her head again. "That doesn't make sense at all, Mandy. Isn't it more likely that whomever went after you and Frank and missed was going after you again? Only you managed to not be in the house when it blew up?"

There was that brain at last, Mandy thought.

"But Joe," Mandy said. "Joe wasn't meant to be there either. It was only chance he was there at all. They couldn't have planned on him being there when he was. We don't go home every weekend and the whole neighborhood knew my parents were going on that cruise and Aunt Gertrude was going to visit some friends. They picked a weekend that nobody was supposed to be home."

Samantha looked up at Mandy and fixed Mandy with a stare. "Put in that light maybe you're right. But why destroy your house? Why take pot shots and then nearly kill Vanessa?"

Mandy shrugged and looked back out the window again. "I think they don't want to just take out things like our house but... but people whom we are close to. So maybe you were a target the other day after all."

"This is all so confusing," Samantha sighed. "Maybe if my head didn't hurt I'd understand all of this. But what does it have to do with Joe being alive?"

Mandy sighed and wished she had a solid answer for that question. Frank was going to ask her too and she wanted a good answer for him, other than her usual mumbo-jumbo.

"It's a feeling," she said. "Not just the feeling I usually have with Joe, the one that I don't really notice most of the time. It's a feeling that... that this was done for a reason, that Joe is gone for a reason. Not gone as in dead but gone as in missing. I don't know the words for it, Sam, but the only other thing I can say is this. I would know if he was dead. He would not be... in me, for lack of a better word. I wouldn't be able to feel him and to know that he's alive.

"And one thing's for sure," Mandy continued a moment later as she stood again and went to lean on the windowsill to look down at the park below. "I'm not going to rest until I prove that I'm right."

The Loss PG