by SA Magnusson
“I am the target now.”
“I know. And I have done everything I can to try to avoid that, and yet, it still hasn’t been enough.”
We sat in silence for a few moments. My phone vibrated, and I pulled it out of my pocket and glanced at it. A message came across from the hospital. Active shooter all clear.
Of course, it was all clear. I had eliminated the active shooter, and Matt Gillespie had taken him away from the hospital. Not that anyone within the hospital would ever know that. And it was better they didn’t.
“I think I have to get back,” I said.
“No. You shouldn’t go yet.”
“Figure out what John Adams is after while I work, and you and I can talk later.”
“Are you sure it’s safe?”
I looked over at the hospital, shaking my head. “No. I’m sure it’s not. It doesn’t change the fact that I need to go.”
Barden breathed out slowly. “You know, I used to say you were very much like her.”
“Who? Kate?”
Barden nodded. “I thought the two of you shared a similar personality, but the more I have come to know you, the more I realize you are stronger.”
I didn’t know what to say at first. That might have been the nicest compliment anyone had ever given me. Feeling weak and being weak had been something I was all too familiar with, and though I would never claim the same strength as Kate, I didn’t think I was helpless. If the experiences of the last few months had taught me anything, it was that I most definitely wasn’t helpless. Not only did I have access to magic, but I was stronger than I had ever known.
I leaned forward, giving Barden a quick hug. “Find out what John Adams wants.”
“You know I will,” he said.
With that, I climbed out of the safety of his car, heading back toward the hospital, along with the threat of John Adams and whatever he planned. I hoped I had enough power to withstand him. Unfortunately, I wasn’t sure I did.
7
The inside of the emergency room was strangely quiet. I had never experienced it like this before, and with it being so quiet, I couldn’t help but feel as if there was something strange going on. It was eerie, an overwhelming silence which came from realizing something was different.
I headed inside, nodding to the police officers and the security guards, being mindful of how I appeared. I was dressed in my scrubs and had been careful not to get too dirty, though when I’d gone to the locker room, I had changed into clean ones. I paused at the nurses’ desk, sitting there for a moment, gathering myself. Not far from here was the place where I had battled the operative. Strangely, I could still feel the energy from the spell I’d used. That was my imagination rather than anything real, but I couldn’t shake the sense there’d been something more to it.
“Dr. Stone?”
I turned to see Dr. Locks. He was in his early fifties, with a large belly which he rested his hands on, almost as if it was a shelf for him. Rather than his usual shirt and tie, today he wore scrubs the same as me.
“Hey, Dr. Locks. It looks like we had the all clear to return.”
“We did. I’m glad you got out of here.”
I nodded. “I was getting ready to go check on the patients.”
“Anyone ambulatory got themselves out.”
Hopefully, that included my seventeen-year-old. She didn’t need this on top of her stress with her boyfriend. What about the old lady? Mrs. Jorgenson should have been able to get out of here, but with somebody like that, I wasn’t sure if she would have evacuated. She might not even have known what the alert meant.
“Have the police found him?”
“No. I understand you were the first one to interact with him?”
I took a deep breath. I had to prepare for this line of questioning. I was the reason he had been brought back, but then, I doubted anyone would blame me for that. I was doing what I was trained to do and trying to help someone. Besides, how could I have known he would have been a magical operative who wanted nothing more than to attack me?
There was something troubling about the fact that he had attacked. I wasn’t able to put my finger on what troubled me, but maybe it was only because he had done so here, in a place I considered a safe zone for me.
“He was out by the front desk. He looked as if he had ingested something.”
“A junkie?” Dr. Locks shook his head. “I guess that doesn’t surprise me. Some of those guys get wild. Especially when they’re high on synthetic or meth.”
“I’m not sure what he was on. We didn’t have a chance to do a lot. I’d given him Haldol and Ativan, and had gone off to get restraints—"
“Wait. You went off to get restraints?”
I nodded. “James and Benjamin were holding him down. Scott had gone off to get more medication. We didn’t have anyone else there. I wasn’t about to wait too long to see who might show up to help.”
Locks frowned. “I suppose I wouldn’t have waited either. Can’t believe he was able to attack like that after getting Haldol and Ativan. Then again, I’ve seen some of those guys blast through more drugs than you could imagine possible.”
Dr. Locks looked as if he wanted to continue to talk, but I wanted to go and check on my patients. “I’m going to get back to work,” I said.
Locks just nodded.
As I headed back into the emergency room, I paused at room three, debating for a moment. I needed to step inside and see if there was anything I could feel. If Mrs. Jorgenson was still here, she would likely be safe. Besides, there might be something only I would be able to detect, though if I could detect anything, it might not matter anyway. I should have asked Barden to come inside. He would have been able to uncover far more than me.
The room was empty. Someone must have moved James and Benjamin, bringing them to an exam room of their own, unless they had recovered. I hadn’t seen them, but other than Dr. Locks, I hadn’t seen anyone. I circled around the bed briefly, and when I did, I sent a surge of magic out from me. It was surprisingly easy. The whole experience had left me feeling helpless, so I was able to latch onto that sensation, and used it in order to draw on my natural connections.
Power flowed out from me, filling the circle it made around the bed. I didn’t know what I intended by coming here, though maybe it was only a matter of trying to trigger additional spells. Or it was possibly to ensure there wasn’t anything else I needed to be concerned about. As I surged power, I didn’t detect anything, though my ability to detect other uses of magic was not that well developed. I didn’t feel anything with the bracelet, no surge of magic that would warn me there was someone else here. At least this time, I wasn’t as helpless as I had been before. With the collection of spells I now had in the pouch, I would be better prepared than before.
There wasn’t anything here I could uncover. Then again, I hadn’t expected to. We had cut away the operative’s shirt, though I’d had enough of an opportunity to look at it that I didn’t think there was anything helpful about it. We hadn’t cut away anything else, which was actually a shame. Had we done so, we might have removed some of his spells before he had an opportunity to trigger them.
When I was satisfied there was nothing else here for me, I headed back into the hallway. There was more activity now than there had been before, and in addition to Dr. Locks, along with Dr. Allen—surprising, since I hadn’t seen him earlier in the day—several of the nurses had begun to return. There was no sign of James or Benjamin, and I hadn’t seen Scott.
We were on divert for now, which meant we wouldn’t take any new patients until we were able to reopen in full. It gave us a chance to work through things, and considering our power outage, it wasn’t all bad for us to be on divert. Maybe not for this reason, but now we were dealing with two emergencies, not just the one.
I found my way to the room where Mrs. Jorgenson had been. Unsurprisingly, she was still there. She lay peacefully, and I cleared my throat, knocking on the door.
�
�Mrs. Jorgenson?”
She didn’t answer. Could she have slept through the entire attack? I wouldn’t think anyone could have done so, not with the sound of screams which had echoed throughout the ER. The operative’s magic made it sound as if there were more attacks than there really were. It was their way of trying to draw me out, and it had worked. I wasn’t willing to sit back while people I was supposed to protect were in danger, especially not if they were in danger because of who and what I was.
Reaching the bed, I cleared my throat again. “Mrs. Jorgenson?”
As I looked down at her, I noticed she didn’t appear to be breathing.
Bumblefuck.
I checked her pulse, but there was no carotid pulsation. Pulling my stethoscope from around my neck—somehow, during the fighting, I had not lost that—I paused to take a listen to her heart, but there was no sound. She didn’t appear to be breathing, either.
I raced over to the wall, trying to trigger a code blue. It didn’t alert.
The power outage had affected that system, too? That was unfortunate. I raced out into the hallway, looking for anyone. There had been others out here not even a few moments ago, but now I didn’t see anyone. In a place like this, a place where we should have all the capability to resuscitate someone who struggled, I wasn’t able to do so because of a power outage. That bothered me.
It didn’t mean I could do nothing. Racing back into the room, I started CPR, though I had no idea how long she’d been down. Her body was still warm, which suggested it wasn’t long, but even a few more minutes might be enough that we wouldn’t be able to revive her. The likelihood of a successful resuscitation was often determined by how quickly the efforts were started. In this case, I had no idea.
I didn’t even have the crash cart. That meant I had no medications. It was just me doing CPR, and I hesitated for a moment, debating whether I needed to go look for help, or whether I should continue with chest compressions. The algorithm for something like this wasn’t as clear. When we’d learned advanced cardiac life support—ACLS—there had been no instruction on what to do if the power at your hospital went out and you had just survived an active shooter which had emptied the emergency room of all available help.
I decided to do chest compressions for a few moments and grabbed an Ambu bag. I gave her a few breaths before racing back into the hallway. If I could get the crash cart, then I could at least get a heart monitor on her, and if needed, I could give her a shock. At this point, it had been at least five minutes since I’d found her, and the odds of her being able to recover were pretty slim. Worse, I didn’t know if she even wanted to be resuscitated. It was possible she didn’t, and anything I might do would be going against her wishes. If we had our computers working, this wouldn’t be such a problem. There were quite a few things wouldn’t be such a problem then.
The crash cart wasn’t where it was supposed to be, either. I raced down the hall, heading toward room two, one of the designated trauma bays. At least if I was able to reach there, I might find help, even if only another crash cart.
Strangely, there were no crash carts in here, either. What the hell was going on? I could go room by room searching the emergency room, but a certain resignation worked through me. I wasn’t going to be able to help Mrs. Jorgenson.
I made my way back to her room and took her hands. They were cold now, which was enough to tell me that it would be unlikely I could resuscitate her, though her pale skin told me that as well.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, holding her hands.
She had come into the emergency room for something which should have been straightforward. It shouldn’t have been reason enough for her to die. And the fact was that she had left me wondering if—and how much—this was my fault. It wasn’t my fault the power was out, but it was my fault John Adams had sent an operative to the emergency room, and because of the actions of that operative, there were people who had come here thinking to get help and had found themselves without that help. There had been nothing I could do for her. I had been distracted by the attacker, and what was worse, I didn’t even know I would have been able to save her had we not been under attack. I still had no idea what had claimed her.
Maybe that was what bothered me more than anything.
I took a deep breath, releasing her hands, and turned back to the doorway. Brad was there.
“I couldn’t do anything for her,” I said.
“We can’t save them all, Stone.”
“I know, and yet, she came in with—"
“A bowel obstruction. I know.”
I shook my head. “That’s just it. I don’t know she had a bowel obstruction. Maybe an ileus. Maybe it was just constipation like she had when she was hospitalized a year ago.”
“Or maybe she had ischemic bowel or an embolism to her gut. You don’t know.”
And at this age, in her mid-eighties, it was possible any of those things could’ve taken place. “I don’t even know if she wanted to be resuscitated.”
“I’ve always thought we should tattoo ‘Do not resuscitate’ on people who didn’t want it.”
“That’s extreme.”
“Maybe, but at least it would make it clear in situations like this.”
“I think it would’ve been clearer had we not had our computers down.”
“What about if it happened at home, Stone?” He took my hand, and it was a strange moment of intimacy in the emergency room, a moment where we had Mrs. Jorgenson behind us, yet it still felt as if we were alone. But it was more than that. It was that Brad was making an effort to try to console me. “If she had been at home, and if she had arrested there, no one would’ve been there for her. Even if they had, it might not have mattered. You’ve been doing this long enough now to know that.”
I took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “I do know. It’s just… I think it’s just the fact we’re here now, and it feels as if I should be able to do something.”
“That’s because you’re a good doctor, Stone. You know, we can talk more about this later, but—"
I released his hand, taking a deep breath and nodding. The moment was over. It needed to be over, and I needed to focus on what I could do. There were still people here who needed me. “I know. We have patients to see.”
“We do. After the evacuation, we lost some of our staff. Nurses decided they were just going to take off, and I don’t blame them. It’s not like they get the same alert that we do.”
“Have they said when they plan on reopening the ER?”
“Not yet. To be honest, I don’t know when it will. I think the attack gave them a little more reason to keep it closed longer. If we had our power, then maybe they would’ve opened it by now, but with the attack, they figured it gives us a little bit more time to keep it closed. Not that it matters for us. There are plenty of patients here from the attack. It’s not just the patients we had here before, but now we have our own staff who are injured.”
“What happened with James and Benjamin?”
“They’re over here,” Brad said.
Something in his voice troubled me, and I waited for him to elaborate, but he didn’t. Instead, he guided me with him, making our way through the hall, veering off and taking one of the side hallways that we used for overflow. It was strange for him to guide me here.
Room 29 was small and narrow, and when he opened the door, the first thing that greeted me was a stench. It was different from the stink I had noticed in the emergency room before. That was a mixture of sweat, medicine, and other sorts of foulness. This was something else, though I couldn’t place what.
James lay on a cot. He was breathing—the steady rise and fall of his chest told me that, at least—but his eyes were still closed.
“Why back here?” I asked.
“Someone dragged them over here during the attack,” Brad said. “It’s far enough out of the way of the main part of the emergency room, so I guess they thought it might keep them safe.”
�
��Who would’ve dragged him here?”
“Scott Ryman.”
“Scott did that?” I hadn’t taken him for someone who would risk himself, but then again, he was an emergency room nurse, and there was something different about ER nurses. I hoped the same could be said about ER docs, but I wasn’t always sure.
“Yeah. He did, and…”
“What?”
Brad shook his head. “He didn’t make it, Jen.”
“What?” I jerked my head back around, looking over at Brad. “What do you mean he didn’t make it?”
“I can show you if you need me to, but…”
I studied James for a moment. “I need to see Scott.”
“If you think so.”
He guided me out, and we headed down the hall, stopping in front of room 31. Brad pushed open the door, and like before, a strange odor emanated from inside. It wasn’t typical for the emergency room, or something I would expect from the power outage. Whatever caused the odor was separate.
Scott lay on the cot, and as with Mrs. Jorgenson, I could tell he was gone. It didn’t seem as if there would be anything we could do for him. The source of the stench seemed to come from him, though why?
“What happened?”
“No one knows. We thought about sending him for a postmortem scan, but given the needs of the ER, we haven’t done that yet. With the power out like this, I’m not sure we will even try, to be honest. We might just wait until we get the autopsy done. It could have been his heart. Scott was in his fifties, and I know he had heart issues before.”
Despite that, I couldn’t help but think there was something else, some other reason behind what had happened to Scott. There was the strange odor I detected, and while it could just be that, I couldn’t help but feel it wasn’t. Could the operative have used a spell on him?
If he had, I wouldn’t even know. Or would I?
I could try to use a little magic here, if only to try and detect whether there was anything present. I made a circle of the bed, dragging my toe across the floor. Brad watched me, but didn’t say anything. When the circle was complete, I pushed power out through it, and held onto it for a moment. I thought about ways I could use that power, trying to trigger various spells, but in this case, I didn’t want to trigger anything. I wanted to know if I could detect anything. How would I be able to do that?
