Chapter 7

I woke up from the nightmare at last.

I was sure it was another crazy dream. But my mind was filled with hazy thoughts. My head throbbed, my body ached. But at least, I was relieved knowing that it wasn't true. I craned my head to see my mom standing by my bed. Strangely, the room was too blinding bright that it made even a healthy person look sick. And the white fluorescent light stung my eyes, causing me to flinch away.

Mom quickly switched the lamp off, leaving just a dim of the yellowy one above the headboard. She was wearing her long white coat with a stethoscope hanging around her neck. If I still remembered it clearly, that was how she looked in her doctor uniform. It took me a while to collect my thoughts and realized where I was.

Of course, this place wasn't my room- with all the white walls, white sheet and the weird smells that got me on the verge of nausea. The hospital. This sure did not brighten things. I knew something was up.

"Mom?" I barely recognized my own voice. It came so airily weak.

"I'm right here, honey," she said in a grievous tone. "Everything's okay." Her reassuring voice contradicted with the painful look on her face. Her eyes had no light in them. That gave me alarm. I tried to sit up, but Mom stopped me.

"You'd better rest some more."

"Mom, why am I here?" I looked around myself in confusion. I had no memory of coming to this place. "Why am I in the hospital, mom? I remember that I was dreaming...about being really sick..." then I trailed off.

Something just clicked together as if my intelligent light bulb had been switched on. Why would I end up in the hospital if I was just dreaming about being sick? Unless it wasn't...

Suddenly, a horrible flashback rushed into my mind. I recalled the night we went to the carnival and then we were trapped by a street gang. Soon after that, I turned into something else, something, something ugly, except I had no idea what. I must have blacked out after that.

"Oh, mom!" I gasped, sitting up, "What's happened to me?" I began to panic; feeling the lump in my throat rise.

"Calm down, honey," she came to hold me, smoothing my hair gently, "Calm down. That's okay, it's normal." But I pulled away, wanting to know what was wrong with me.

"What was it, mom? What was it?" I insisted while tears began to well up in my eyes, "Why did you say 'it's normal'? No, mom, it's not normal. Why did I feel like...like... I'm a monster! Mom, get away from me!"

I shrunk back, shaking her hands off, but Mom came to grasp me again, trying to calm my sobbing. She held me in her arms for what seemed like forever, until I stopped choking on my emotional outburst that Mom decided to let me go. She took my hands in hers and looked me in the eyes. It seemed as if she was going to reveal the latest discovery of the eighth wonder.

"Vivienne, What you've been through...it's called 'Awakening'."

I blinked and then blinked some more.

But nothing logical came into mind. Even every neuron in my brain was racing back and forth searching for something related to Awakening, there was still nothing I had learned in school, had anything to do with this term.

"Is that a name of a new disease?" I asked in a shaken voice.

"No!" Mom said, "Honey, you don't catch any disease."

She bit her lips like she was trying to find the right word. Then she continued in a low whisper.

"In fact, you inherited it."

"I did?" I said. "How do you think I inherit it?" I asked.

My mom came to sit on the bed with me. She seemed to age a year older than I remembered, but the smell of the medicines that clung to her clothes couldn't affect the sweet motherly scent I recognized.

"I'm so sorry, honey," she said with a heavy sigh, "I did not expect it to come so early. I thought you could enjoy your human life longer."

I turned my face sharply to her.

"Wha...what...what do you mean?"

"I have spent almost seventeen years trying to protect you, but we still couldn't escape this fate," She went on in a scratchy tone, "Now I guess it's time that we have to come to terms with this."

Mom brushed a strand of hair from my face. She looked hesitated like she didn't know where to begin, but finally, she gave me a sad smile.

"It's because..." She finally said. "Your dad wasn't... a human."

I felt my heart drop a notch downward. My eyes goggled out while my mouth hung open like a goldfish. I wanted to say something for the sake of disbelief, but shock really got the best of my speech.

"Then...then what was he?" I asked, half wanting to know the answer, but half not wanting to know any of it.

"He was," Mom spoke at a slow rate of words, "- a vampire."

"Oh," I breathed and nodded back, but after the word sunk in, I jumped, "A vampire!!?"

"Sssh!...be quiet, honey," Mom hushed me, "Don't freak out. It's normal."

"No, mom! It's not! If my dad was a vampire, then what am I exactly?" I whined, feeling the icy shiver running down the back of my neck. I started to shake as if the whole place suddenly turned into a giant freezer.

Mom quickly wrapped her arms around me and gently rubbed my back. She was trying to stop me from purring like a drowned cat.

"Well, I'm a human, and your dad was a vampire, so what do you get according to Mendel's theory?"

I guess Mom just wanted to make things lighter by dropping an easy quiz on me, but now I couldn't find my strength to speak anymore. Mom had to lift my chin to make me look up and answer her.

"A hybrid," I replied at last.

"I assume you still do well in biology," She smiled dryly back.

"Do you mean I'm half-human and half-vampire?" I gulped to my own question.

"You already know the answer, sweetheart," Mom let out a short sigh, "After what happened to you, there's no doubt that you have inherited a vampiric gene. And now, well, you already experienced the Change."

"But mom, Mendel's beans didn't show any changes in color or form, at least not until their second generation, but I'm still the first generation!" I argued.

"It didn't show any change, that's why it made you look human for all these years," Mom said with a sad look on her face. "But it doesn't skip the next generation to show up. Somewhere in your body lied a sleeping DNA. And when it is awakened, it would spring out and changed your physical qualities. But you still have your human characteristics. Vivienne, you are a half-breed born from different true-breed parents, you have to accept who you are, and that's that, honey."

"I still don't get it," I murmured as if no amount of IQ in my brain could answer it.

"Honey, I can only tell you that the vampire genetics works like a caterpillar in the cocoon. This way it is not much stranger to explain how caterpillars turn into butterflies."