jamie and eric-17 2/3-cliff hanger concluded

“I knew that Jamie and Eric had stationed in Harnet and were studying at Link. So I went to administration office there and talked to some people and they redirected me to some other people. Basically I spent the entire day trying to figure out where Jamie and Eric were. Finally, someone gave me the address of the house Jamie and Eric were renting a room in. Apparently, Jamie came home one night, about the time I got his thought-spell, completely mad and Eric’s whereabouts were unknown. Jamie was able to lead the family matriarch to where Eric was, severely wounded. Jamie had done his best to stop Eric’s bleeding but he was unconscious.
“The family immediately brought Eric to the hospital, which was inadequate to treat him, but better than nothing. Because Harnet has an unusually high number of bonded pairs, which is why Jamie and Eric chose to study there, understood that Jamie’s behavior was consistent with the shared shock experience. Meaning that when Eric was injured Jamie went into shock as well. But shared shock generally subsides quickly.
“By the time I got there, they had institutionalized Jamie. They deemed him mentally unstable, and kept him subdued with tranquilizers.”
Dahlia started, “But I thought—“
“Yeah, Jamie’s race have a high sensitivity to sedatives, and they did have him doped too high. I tried to explain that to them, but they wouldn’t believe me. This brings me back to my research. If people were more culturally aware—“
“Yes yes I know I know” Dahlia prompted Bridgett forward.
“Well anyways,” Bridgett continued. “I crashed in Jamie and Eric’s place for a couple of days. Originally I was just there for support, but both Jamie and Eric were getting worse. You know that I have some healing ability, as it’s taught in all the schools back home.”
“Yeah,” Dahlia intoned.
“So I offered to help stabilize Eric, but they wouldn’t have it. So I tried convincing the staff at the asylum that Jamie wasn’t insane, that it was just a case of extended shared shock. That Jamie should not be on such heavy drugs. They wouldn’t hear it either. They wouldn’t even let me see Jamie. I couldn’t convince the family they were living with to help me. And I couldn’t get anyone at the university to talk to me. I think it was probably a week after I first arrived in Harnet when I busted Jamie out—“
“You what?!” Dahlia blurted in surprise. “What do you mean ‘busted him out?’ How? What happened?”
“Harnet is a tiny little town and they don’t have security at the asylum at night. So I picked the lock to the front door and then picked the lock to Jamie’s room. It really couldn’t have been easier.
“Leaving with him was another story. He was physically shaking. He didn’t respond to me at all, and he jerked away any time I tried to touch him. I was pretty sure it was the drugs, but all the healing I know is along the ‘stop bleeding’ lines. So I fed him some syrup of ipecac. He threw up a lot. He still had drugs in his system but if they had given him anything before they left it wasn’t going to get into his system. It probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do, but I didn’t know what else to do. We were they almost all night. After a while he started coming back to himself a little. Enough for me to give him water. So when I started to hear birds chirping I freaked out. Basically carried Jamie out and back into the woods.
“I hadn’t really thought it through ahead of time. I had just figured I would bring Jamie back to the house, but when I had him it occurred to me that the whole town seemed somewhat… I hate to say it because you’re going to say that I always say it.”
“What racist?” Dahlia asked.
“Yeah. Well that and I had gotten so much resistance when trying to change Jamie and Eric’s situation. So I was in the woods with a half conscious, still physically sick Jamie with some food in my backpack and no way to get home.”
Dahlia looked almost incredulous. “No way. It couldn’t have been that bad. What did you do?”
“Well,” Bridgett continued. Jamie was really taking his sweet time in the kitchen. “I cheated.” She paused.
“What does that mean?” Dahlia asked impatiently.
“It must have taken two hours of sitting in the woods before it occurred to me, but I made an anchor point in my room here ages ago mostly for practice. Took me nearly another hour to remember how the spell goes. I teleported us back to my room here. In retrospect it wasn’t that smart a decision either.”
“Why?” Dahlia seemed to disagree.
“Bonded pairs are affected by distance. You’d have to ask Jamie why, but separating them when they were both in such a bad way was rather stupid.” Bridgett berated herself.
“But it turned out alright.” Dahlia insisted.
“Obviously. Master Honeywell (or whatever Bridgett’s Master’s name is) helped me get Jamie to the medical building. They hooked him up to an IV. They said there wasn’t much they could do for him. Once Master Brown had heard the full story she arranged for Eric to be moved to Phoenix University (or whatever this university is named) medical ward as well. It took about a week to get him back here. But you know all of this.”
“Yeah.” Dahlia seemed a little amazed. “But how do you know their bond was broken? If Jamie was under shared shock wouldn’t that mean he was still bonded to Eric?”
“I know that their bond was broken because Jamie told me. I wouldn’t be able to diagnose it myself. But Jamie told me that shared shock would have only lasted a day. He was reacting to energy whiplash and then energy withdraw.”
“What?” Dahlia wasn’t convinced.
“Whiplash.” Jamie explained coming out of the kitchen with strawberry lemonade. “All of the energy that was between us ‘hit’ me, so t speak, when the bond was severed. Some of it hit Eric as well, but the connection was cut unevenly. Withdraw is not entirely accurate. It’s more like energy drain.” Jamie paused in thought for a moment, setting the drinks down. “If you can imagine that the soul creates a shell for itself to hold its energy in, then a bond requires that a hole be made in the shell for energy to be exchanged. The exchange of energy being essentially what a bond is, of course.”
“Of course.” Dahlia and Bridgett repeated, giggling.
“Yeah,” Jamie smiled a little embarrassedly. “Well anyways, when the bond is broken the hole takes time to heal over. The soul is waiting for the connection to reestablish and continues to send energy out. Yeah.”
Jamie settled in front of his book again and before he could find his spot on the page Bridgett asked, “Don’t you miss Eric?”