by SA Magnusson
I shook my head. “Thanks for not doing that.”
“Of course, and with that helplessness, you realize you are at the mercy of the person across from you. In this case, as it was you, I wasn’t as worried as the first time I experienced that spell.”
“When was the first time?”
“I learned it from a dark mage who helped mentor me in my early years. As I think I’ve told you, dark magic users were by necessity operating outside of the rest of society. In doing so, I was forced to find someone—anyone—to work with me and help me understand the nature of my abilities. The man I found was willing to do so, but at the same time, he didn’t always have the gentlest touch.”
“He held the paralytic on you?”
“He did. He held it until I figured out a way out of it. And then he continued to try to hold it on me until I managed to use it on him.”
“That sounds awful.”
“It isn’t the way I would instruct, but techniques change over time.”
Why didn’t it surprise me Barden was a teacher with an enlightened view of his role? Within medicine, I often encountered instructors who clung to outdated ways of teaching. Much of the time, they did so thinking they could make the student more effective, or that they might make them harder, or any number of ways they justified the teachings they utilized. Rarely was it actually effective in the way they claimed. Most of the time, people came away from such teaching with a complete disregard for their instructor. It was part of the reason I tried to teach in ways different from how I had learned. I didn’t want others to suffer the way I had suffered, and I thought it better to allow them to know the answers rather than to fumble around, straining for them. There was a benefit in doing that, and in trying to understand a problem and come up with your own solution. But too often, the answer I saw used was not necessarily the most effective.
“Anyway, I teach with a different method,” Barden said, smiling. “Now we know this is effective, I will try to create others. I wonder if I can recharge this one,” he said, looking down at the quarter.
“If not, I have others.”
“You have more quarters?”
“That surprises you?”
“It has been my experience that today’s younger generation tends to not carry cash, especially not cash like that.”
I grinned at him, got to my feet, and got my coin jar from the bedroom before setting it down in front of him. It was filled with loose change acquired over the years, and Barden stared at it, shaking his head. “Well. It seems as if we don’t need to worry about having adequate supplies. Why don’t you try to rest, and I will recharge as many of these as I can?”
“That would be great, Barden.”
I debated where to go. I could head into the bedroom, flop onto my bed, and get a good night’s sleep, but if Brad woke up first, and Barden were still here, it would raise strange questions.
I headed out to the living room, taking a blanket out of the basket at the end of the sofa, and crawled onto the far end of it, opposite where Brad was resting his head, and pulled the blanket up over both of us. Snuggling in, I drifted off quickly.
When I awoke, it was to Lucy trying to position herself on my shoulder. I sat up, rubbing the sleep from my eyes. Brad was gone. I hoped he hadn’t tried to go in on his own, yet.
“Where did he go?” I whispered to Lucy.
Lucy answered by meowing, and nothing more than that. I smiled to myself. It was almost as if she tried to tell me.
Getting to my feet, I headed into the kitchen, and noticed the smell of coffee. Brad sat at the table, looking far more alert than he had the last time the Sleeper spell had been used on him. At least Matt hadn’t been lying about that. Thankfully.
“It looks like I passed out on you again. At least this time, I can’t claim I was drinking.”
“Just a long day, and you’re still recovering from your surgery.”
He smiled, though it didn’t reach his eyes.
“What is it?” I asked, glancing over at the clock. It was a little after seven, which meant we were probably later than Dr. Allen hoped we’d come in.
“It’s just I get tired of using my recent surgery as an excuse.”
“You do realize you’re not going to need to use that as an excuse forever?”
“I know, but I have an aortic repair. It’s going to change what I do.”
“Probably.”
“I won’t be able to go and join the pickup games of basketball like I used to. I won’t be able to go for a hard run like I used to. I won’t be able to—"
“Die like you almost did?”
“Fine. I’m still alive. I know I need to be thankful for that, and I am, but let me at least grieve what I don’t have.”
I smiled at him. “Or you could be thankful for the things you do have.”
“Yeah? And what do I have?”
I got up from the kitchen chair and got the coffee pot, pouring a cup for him before setting it back down in front of him. Matt’s comments came back to me. Brad didn’t know anything about the magical side of me, and regardless of whatever might be happening between us, the fact of the matter was that he might not ever be able to learn about it. I didn’t know how many people were mage familiars—people who were aware of magic but had none of their own—but I suspected there weren’t many, especially after what I had heard from Barden about non-magical users and their responses to those who used magic. They were deterred by it, forced away, as if to keep them from getting injured by magic thrown around near them.
At the same time, didn’t I want to see if there was anything that could happen between the two of us? I guessed I didn’t know.
Sometimes, it was nice to have someone like Brad who didn’t know about the magical world. If he did know, then it would open up different questions from him. He might not even be able to accept the fact I had magic, and he had none. I wondered if he would be able to accept the fact there were people far more powerful than me.
“What do you think we have?” I asked, getting a cup of coffee for myself, and sitting across from him.
“I asked you first.”
“Because that’s mature.”
“I think we both know I’m not the mature one.”
I smiled at him. “That’s very true. How about we go out to eat and talk about what we want,” I said.
“Now? I thought we had to go to work.”
“I wasn’t meaning we go now. Tonight. Or tomorrow. Whenever things start to get back to normal.”
“You know, sometimes it feels like there isn’t really a normal. Then again, that is how the ER works.”
I smiled. He was right. There didn’t often seem to be much of a normal.
“What are these?” Brad asked, pointing to a stack of coins on the counter. I hadn’t even noticed they were there. “I didn’t take you for the coin-collecting type.”
“Oh, you’d be surprised.”
“There’s a note there,” he said.
I frowned. If there was a note, then it meant it came from Barden, and I had to wonder if Brad had read it, and if he had, what might he have found?
Maybe nothing. But then again, it was possible he had seen something which would reveal the purpose of the coins.
“After you fell asleep”—I tried to think about what I had said about Barden in the past. Hadn’t I called him my grandfather before? I thought I had—“my grandfather stopped by.”
“On a Saturday night?”
“You know how old people can be.”
“My grandparents are all gone,” Brad said.
“They are?”
“Unfortunately. I lost my maternal grandparents in a car accident when I was only three. My paternal grandparents died within a year of each other. My grandmother had cancer, and my grandfather…”
“What about your grandfather?”
“He couldn’t live without grandma,” Brad said softly.
“I’m sorry.”
“Why are you sorry?”
“I’m sorry I brought it up.”
“I brought it up, Stone. Besides, I think it’s great you have a relationship with your grandfather.”
I lifted the note. It was short, brief, and didn’t have anything in it which might allude to the purpose of the coins. Add these to your collection. That was it.
The pouch Matt had given me had the coins in it that came from him, and then sitting next to it was a new stack of coins. All had the same symbol, and I was relieved by that. They were all the Paralytic, which would make it easier if I needed to use that spell—or something to incapacitate someone. At least I wouldn’t have to harm someone in order to do so.
I stuffed the coins into the pouch and turned back to Brad. “I think it’s time for us to get back to work.”
“You know, most of the time I enjoy going into work, but not today.”
“No?”
“I’d rather hang out with you, but short of that, I think I would rather be someplace with air conditioning.”
I laughed. “Hopefully, they will have the air conditioning back on.”
“I doubt it. If the air was back on, they would’ve sent a message. I think you’d better be prepared for the likelihood we are going to sweat our balls off today.”
I shook my head, taking a sip of coffee before dumping rest on the sink, grabbing Brad’s hand, and dragging him to his feet. “You’re disgusting.”
“So was sweating like that.”
“Come on. We need to get there. They need us.”
I only hoped it wasn’t nearly as bad as it seemed.
11
The sweltering heat of the emergency room greeted us the moment we got there. Unlike the previous time Brad had been hit with the Sleeper spell, this time I didn’t have any issue about being seen coming into the ER with him. I needed to get over that issue if there was going to be anything between him and me.
“I guess you’re right,” I said as we paused in the locker room.
“About?”
“About the fact they haven’t got the power back on.”
“No,” Brad said, “I figured if they had gotten the power restored, they would have notified us.”
I debated leaving the pouch of coins behind, but after what had happened yesterday, I didn’t have any interest in doing so. I wasn’t sure I would need it, but also wasn’t sure I wouldn’t, and until I knew which way it would be, I was determined to have the spells with me.
It was a strange weight strapped underneath my shirt, but I figured it was better than the alternative. At least if John Adams sent his operatives after me again, I would be ready for the possibility I would need to fight them off.
“At least today can’t be as bad as yesterday,” Brad said.
“There you go, jinxing us.”
“Don’t tell me you’re superstitious.”
“You don’t have to be superstitious to feel like things can get worse.”
“What’s worse than an active shooter attacking your girlfriend?”
I talked my head, frowning at him. “Girlfriend?”
“Fine. Whatever we are.”
I smiled inwardly. “I don’t know what can be worse than yesterday, but given my recent stretch of luck, I don’t particularly want to be here to find out.”
Heading back out into the main part of the emergency room, I paused at the desk, hesitating for a moment to check the track board. The ER was busy, each room full, and from the list of patients waiting to be placed into rooms, it suggested we had a sizable backlog as well.
“So much for it being lighter,” I said.
“You know, I liked being on divert yesterday.”
“You go ahead and tell administration that.”
“I just did.”
“Ha. Ha. You do realize I just started.”
“You don’t have to have been here long to start taking on leadership roles. Look at Dr. Allen. He was only here for two years before he started getting involved in more leadership roles.”
“Maybe I’ll start spending more time with him.”
I took a seat, pulling up the list of patients, searching for someone to start with. “You know, I see the appeal in having the residents around,” I said to Brad.
“Yeah? It’s taken you long enough.”
“With a day like this, I think having residents…”
I trailed off as the lights flickered. We were on emergency power, which meant if the lights were flickering and going out, then our emergency generator was going out. I doubted there was a backup to the backup, though to be honest, I didn’t know what set-up the ER had.
“See?” I said to Brad. “You jinxed us.”
“Oh, no. You’re not putting this one on me.”
I was about to make a smart comment to him, when the power flickered again. This time, it went out completely. As it did, we were plunged into complete darkness.
Bumblefuck.
There were a few lights, and some of the machinery was battery-operated, which meant we still heard the sound from some equipment, but those were rare. For the most part, we were now isolated.
When power didn’t come back on, I glanced to Brad. “We need to let the EMTs know we are on divert again.”
He got to his feet, sighing. “Seems like a good plan, boss.” He grinned at me as he headed out to the ambulance bay.
Practicing medicine like this was not how I had trained. It wasn’t how anyone trained. We needed power. Which meant we needed to be able to see our patients. For most emergency care, we needed electricity in order to run the labs, to obtain the imaging, to monitor heart rhythms, and obtain EKGs.
I checked the phone line, but like the computers and lights, there was no power. Somehow, losing electricity had killed off the phones too.
I still had my cell phone. There wasn’t much we could do, not with power out everywhere in the hospital.
We needed to deal with the patients we had here. Some might be real emergencies who needed immediate care. However, one of the things we dealt with in the emergency room was that not everything was a real emergency. Some patients coming in for emergency medicine care were here because they couldn’t get in with their primary care provider or because it was convenient for them. Those patients could go to a different facility.
The real emergencies, we would have to decide what to do with. Some we could triage, and we could determine how many needed more care than we could provide. Much of it depended upon how long it would take for power to be restored. Even with partial power, we could work up a few things.
I poked my head out into the front desk of the emergency room. “Do we have any information?”
Helen sat at the computer, though it had a blank screen, and there wasn’t a lot she would be able to do other than tell patients our emergency room was essentially shut down. “I heard from the command center that the generators blew.”
“Generators?”
“All of them,” she said.
“What are the odds of that?” I asked, mostly to myself.
“Not good. Makes you wonder if someone’s trying to sabotage us.”
Under any other circumstances, I would have laughed that comment off, but with what happened yesterday, there wasn’t any laughing about such things. It was possible John Adams was responsible, but could he be responsible for all of this? Could he be the reason we didn’t have electricity in the first place?
The idea he could was laughable, but power hadn’t gone out until I had gotten here.
“Let the command center know we are going to send all non-emergent patients to another ER or urgent care. We will triage the emergent patients, and if we need to transport them out, we will do so.”
Helen nodded, picking up the walkie-talkie she had under the desk for such a purpose.
When I headed back into the ER, the darkness was strange and absolute. Every so often, I caught a flickering of light, but it was brief and rare.
I found Brad tal
king to Dr. Locks. “I told the front desk we’d send the non-emergent patients to nearby ERs, and then we’ll make arrangements to transport the more emergent ones,” I said.
“Good plan, Dr. Stone,” Dr. Locks said. “It’s just the three of us this morning, so why don’t we hit the trauma bays and see what we can come up with.”
“I’ll have the EMTs call as many rigs as possible over here,” Brad said.
Dr. Locks nodded and headed down the hall, moving with a little more spring to his step than he usually did. Brad grinned at me. “See? Look who takes charge.”
“Somebody has to,” I said.
“Not surprising it’s you. You might even beat Dr. Allen’s record for getting promoted.”
I shook my head. “Go off and talk to the EMTs.”
When Brad was gone, I made my way to the nearest room. Without computers, I had no way of accessing why the patient was here, though none of these patients had been roomed recently. I pulled out my phone, logging into the electronic record that way, and flipped through the charts, trying to figure out who was the sickest. There was a chest pain in room four.
Chest pains could be so many different things, and in this guy, mid-fifties, ex-smoker, it could be cardiac, or nothing more than a virus. Inside the room, I found him sitting on the side of the bed, buttoning up his shirt.
“Mr. Stevenson?”
“That’s me. Looks like you’re having a little bit of trouble here.”
“Unfortunately. We lost power two days ago, and now our backup generators to have crashed. We are having all of our patients go to nearby facilities.” I took a step toward him. “I understand you came in with some chest pain?”
“It’s gone. It’s probably nothing, but my wife wanted me to have it checked out.”
“I do think you should listen to your wife.”
“You’re just saying that because you’re a woman.”
“I’m saying it because I’m a doctor and you have a smoking history. And it looks like you have a family history of heart problems.”
“I thought your computers were down?”
“The computers are. My phone isn’t.” I held out to him. “At least go to another ER and get a couple of labs and an EKG. Make sure it’s nothing. You’d hate for something to happen to you.”
