by SA Magnusson
“Kate?”
I turned to see Derek, dressed in navy scrubs, standing at the end of the hall. His stethoscope dangling around his neck was a bit off-kilter and he flashed a concerned smile.
“Everything okay?”
I took a deep breath, staring at the room again. Everything was fine for me, but it wouldn’t be fine for Mr. Jacobson. He’d already been dealt a shit hand with the hip dysplasia, likely setting him up for a joint replacement by the time he was forty, and now he had a rare cancer.
“Just feeling sorry for myself,” I muttered and headed toward the nurses’ station. It was time to find another patient and force myself to care the way I once did. Somehow I needed to reclaim that optimism.
“Why yourself?” Derek joined me as we made our way to the desk.
Val glanced at him, a playful smile on her face as she nodded to me. Derek only shook his head. In that way, he was so different than Dr. Roberts. Both were good looking, but Derek didn’t seem to care, and certainly didn’t use it to sleep his way through the ER. I’m not sure he would have enjoyed the working relationships if he had. Nurses could be a little petty.
“Remember how you once warned me to be careful about letting myself get too jaded?”
“Vaguely.”
“I just had another reminder.”
Derek took a seat on the chair next to me and spun to face me. “What happened?”
“Sinus infection that’s not a sinus infection.”
“What is it, then?”
“Sinus cancer.”
“Shit. How old?”
“Thirty.”
Derek glanced down the hall, his eyes going distant. “Dr. Allen?”
“How did you know?”
He shrugged. “When he’s on, we always seem to catch the strange things. He’s got a gift for it.”
“That’s the kind of gift I’d take. Better than mine.”
Derek scooted his chair closer to me. “You don’t know that. You don’t know anything about your magic,” he said, his voice lowered.
“I know enough to fear it.” I looked around, but the other nurses had given us space. They probably thought Derek and I were some sort of item. We had become friends, but nothing more than that. Having a friend like Derek made working in the ER better. I’m not sure what I’d do if I didn’t have someone like him. “My home was attacked last night,” I whispered.
“It was what?”
I nodded. “Attacked. Dark mages. A bunch of them. Knights showed up”—for some reason, I didn’t want to tell Derek that Aron had come—”and fought them off, but during the attack, I… my magic killed one of them.” That had been bothering me far more than I realized.
Derek looked at me with warmth in his eyes. He reached for me as if to hug me before pulling back his hands. “You know that’s not your fault, not if you were attacked.”
“I know. It’s just…” It was different attacking demons. Fighting creatures that shouldn’t be here wasn’t as much of a problem, but killing someone? I was a physician—a healer—and I had harmed and killed. “It’s why I don’t want to use it anymore.” A thought came to me. “Wait. Did you have any problems last night?”
He shook his head. “I wasn’t at home last night. If they were dark mages, how are you… knights?” When I nodded, he whistled softly. “And you think they’re after you because of Tony?”
“My grandparents think the mage from yesterday was on the Dark Council.” It would explain how powerful he was, but not why he hadn’t simply grabbed us then.
“You got ahold of them?”
“They’re in town. They stopped by this morning.”
“At least that explains something.”
“What’s that?”
“Why you look exhausted. You should get some rest. I’m sure I can figure out a way to cover for you. I’d make up a trauma or something.” He flashed a smile and shrugged. “Or I’d claim you were suturing. That can take a while.”
“Thanks, but I got a little rest while waiting for the CT. I think I need to have some patient contact.” I scanned the patient list and saw someone with a headache in Room 7. That seemed like a perfect penance for nearly missing Mr. Jacobson’s cancer.
As I clicked into the chart, Derek shook his head. “You don’t want that one. There’s a guy in Room One who would be better.”
Room 1 had been someone in with heart failure. I could help, but so could one of the first-year residents. I needed someone to force my empathy. “I’ll take this one, thanks.”
“Kate—”
I glanced over. “Why don’t you want me to?” As I read through the complaint, I thought I understood. “That’s why you came looking for me, isn’t it?”
“That was before I heard about your attack and what happened. You shouldn’t risk yourself.”
“I’m here. How is that risking myself?”
“Because I know what you’ll do.”
Derek followed me toward the room. “What do you think I’ll do?” I glanced over, and he shook his head. “There’s something magical about this, isn’t there?” I asked.
“I don’t know, but it’s suspicious.”
“Why don’t you want me to evaluate the patient?”
“I did, but…”
But now he worried that doing so would draw more attention to me. Or maybe he worried about the fact that my grandparents had come to town. Either way, he didn’t want to risk me. That was his assignment, after all. He was to protect me. Even if that meant protecting me from myself.
We stopped in front of the room. It was on one of the side halls, and there was only one other exam room down this way, so we had a measure of privacy. I’m not sure that mattered to Derek. “What do you know about the patient?”
“Kate—”
“It’s Dr. Michaels,” I said.
He shot me an annoyed look that I ignored. Even without any mage ability, I was still a doctor, and this was still a patient in our ER. He might think there was something magical about the patient—which meant there probably was—but that didn’t mean I couldn’t attempt to help them. And I might be the only one who could.
“Dr. Michaels,” he snapped, “the patient presented with a severe headache. Probably a migraine.”
Some of my irritation with him faded. “Why do you think it’s something magical, then?”
Derek glanced at the door. “She claims to see flashing lights and swirls of color. And she had no migraine history.”
“That doesn’t mean anything. There are plenty of people without migraines who develop them in their—”
“Fifties.”
That wasn’t as common, but I’d seen it in women going through menopause. The withdrawal of hormones could be a real bitch, and some women really struggled.
“There’s more to it.” There had to be. Derek was a good nurse, which meant that he would have recognized when a migraine variant presented. And he’d know when there was something else. “Why did you come for me?”
“She’s wearing a charm bracelet,” he said, lowering his voice. “The charms are meant to symbolize different kinds of power. I’ve seen them before.”
“A charm bracelet?”
Derek nodded. “Not the kind you get from the jewelry store.”
“Do you think she’s a dark mage?”
“Kate—”
I didn’t correct him this time. “The last guy who came in was a dark mage. And mages of the council don’t typically come to the ER.” No. They had other ways of getting care. Most of the time, magical healing was enough to take care of almost anything. It would certainly have been enough to have healed a migraine. Which meant there was some other reason.
“I don’t know. It’s odd. And after Tony left AMA—”
“Wait. He left?”
Derek nodded. “Got up and walked out after his psych evaluation. Police went looking for him, but couldn’t find him.”
That was unexpected. Could the Dark Council have come f
or him?
If so, how could he be so important at such a young age?
Derek and I locked eyes for a moment before I turned and knocked. There wasn’t an answer, so I went in.
The patient had curly black hair down to her shoulders. Her cheeks were reddened, almost as if she’d been slapped, and her brown eyes stared up at the ceiling.
“Ms. Jones?” I asked, stepping into the room. “I’m Dr. Michaels. I hear you’ve been dealing with some headache issues?”
I made a point of keeping the memory of my failure with Mr. Jacobson in mind. If I nothing else, I was determined to learn from that experience. I needed to keep an open mind when it came to her symptoms and be ready to help in whatever way I could.
While I waited for her to answer, the steady cold burn of magic along my spine made me stiffen. I glanced at Derek but doubted it was him. Could it be from her?
“Ms. Jones?”
“You can’t do anything to help me.”
“Then why are you here?”
She turned her head toward me, and her eyes retained a distant expression. “What choice did I have?” She jerked on her arms and cuffs I hadn’t seen attached to the side rails jingled.
“She was brought in by the police?” I asked Derek.
He nodded. “She was getting violent, so they brought her in for evaluation.”
“Violent where?”
“At the station.”
“Is she under arrest?” If she was, where was the cop? They should have stationed someone by the door. That was their protocol. It was for the patient as much as it was for our protection.
“Apparently, they plan on picking her up after she’s released.”
I’d seen them play that game before. It was a way of avoiding paying for the medical evaluation. Most of the patients they brought by didn’t have any insurance, so the hospital was stiffed. The ER couldn’t turn anyone away. Laws prevented it even if our own sense of right didn’t.
I made my way to the head of the bed. “Why don’t you want to be here? Derek tells me you’re having a migraine?”
The chill along my spine worsened. Someone was using magic, but where?
I glanced at the door, half expecting to see someone come barging into the room with a spell blazing, but there wasn’t anything.
Derek didn’t seem as if he was aware of it. Maybe that was my gift. I was lucky enough to feel the sense of magic used near me, even if I didn’t want to.
“I don’t get migraines. I don’t know what this is, but it’s not a migraine.”
“Can you tell me what you’re experiencing?”
“I doubt you care.”
“I care. Let me see if I can help.”
She turned to stare at the ceiling, looking away from me. “There’s nothing someone like you can do to help.”
She knew it was magical.
And she knew medicine wouldn’t make a difference.
“Why were you at the police station?”
“I turned myself in.”
“For what?”
She looked at me with annoyance and for a moment, I thought she might actually answer, but then she turned her attention to stare back at the ceiling. “Don’t worry your pretty little head about it.”
“I’m here to help.”
“Are you? It seems you’re here to annoy me. You can send me back. At least there I’ll be safe.”
“You don’t think you’ll be safe here?”
“No offense, but I don’t think there’s anything you can do that will offer me any sort of protection. At least the cops have prison. It’s almost as hard to break into as it is to break out of.”
I motioned to Derek and we stepped out into the hall. “Do we have any reason to hold her?”
“Hold her?”
“You know, a mental health hold.”
“Kate, you can’t be serious. She’s telling you that she doesn’t have anything wrong with her. You can’t go holding someone without a proper diagnosis.”
“I know that, but it seems she’s having delusions.”
“What if she’s not?”
“You think she’s telling the truth?”
“I think she believes there’s danger for her. And I worry about that danger getting to us here. Something happened to her and I have no idea whether it’s magical or not.”
“It is,” I said softly.
“Are you sure?”
“There’s definitely something magical happening in there.”
“Happening? As in it’s not over?”
The cold burning along my spine told me that it was still happening. “As far as I can tell.”
“Ah, shit.”
“What?” It wasn’t like Derek to swear. He was one of those types who preferred not to swear. It only made him more appealing to some of the other nurses.
“If something is still happening, then it’s only going to get worse.”
A sudden scream burst from the room.
9
“I know you don’t want me to try and help her magically, but I don’t know that there’re any other options.” I stared at the monitor angled over the bed, watching her rhythm. It was solid and regular. Her blood pressure was up, but only a little, unsurprising considering she was in the ER.
I glanced around the rest of the room. This was one of the smaller ER rooms, and I always felt claustrophobic in here, especially compared to the spaciousness of the trauma bays. It was one of the mental health rooms, designed to be easily locked, and a screen had been rolled over the cabinets, locked into place. The counter was bare, leaving nothing for the patient to harm herself with. With her arms in restraints—or handcuffs, in this case—there wouldn’t be any way for her to harm herself.
“You’re a doctor, Kate. Not a mage. Treat her like any other patient.”
The continued buildup of magic told me that she wasn’t like any other patient. Whatever was happening was getting worse. If I did nothing, it would continue to build and then… then she’d end up like Tony.
Was that what this was?
Could she have been attacked by the council, an attempt to burn off her magic?
After the attack the night before, I had a little more experience with dark mages, and she didn’t strike me as one.
Even though I’d lost control with my magic the night before, I had to know.
Once fully back in the room, I could practically taste the sense of magic in the room. It was nearly palpable. I could practically taste it. I stopped at the head of the cot and looked down at the woman. A sheen of sweat coated her brow and she writhed on the bed, the cuffs holding her in place. Without them, she might have wiggled off the cot.
“What hurts?” I asked.
“Everything.”
“Can you tell me more than that? I want to help you—”
“I told you,” she panted, “you can’t help me.”
“Even with magic?”
I said it carefully and was prepared to deny it if she didn’t have any magic, but thought I was right. She had to be afflicted by some spell.
She turned her head and stared up at me. “What was that?”
“You heard me. Are you a dark mage?”
I’d gone far enough with this that I wouldn’t be able to deny what I’d said. Derek stood behind me, and I could practically feel his gaze burning on my back. I knew what he must be thinking, but I needed to know before I attempted to do anything.
“What do you know about them?” she asked through gritted teeth.
“Are you?”
“No. I want to stay as far from them as possible.”
“That’s why you went to the police,” I asked as it dawned on me. “Why would you think they could protect you?”
There were other places for someone who has a connection to the other side of the Veil to go, places where mages would be able to offer their assistance. Whatever reason she had for not going told me that she either didn’t trust the people she could go to or she was
n’t nearly connected enough.
“Do you think they can prevent them from attacking you again?”
“It’s too late for that,” the woman said. “They brought me here.”
“Why would that be an issue? There’s no one here who will hurt you.”
“Are you so sure? Tell that to my son.”
“Who’s your son?”
“Anthony Drasen.”
Anthony.
Tony.
“Tony is your son?”
“You know him?”
Tony was an adult, so I couldn’t tell her anything about his case without his permission, but I could admit that I knew who he was.
“What happened to him?”
“He got into something he shouldn’t have. Idiot pulled me in, too.”
“Dark magic.”
She looked up at me, and I couldn’t tell if she was in pain or if she just didn’t want to answer. Maybe it was both. “Magic he shouldn’t have been messing with. That’s all that matters. The council don’t want anyone with that kind of power.”
“Dark magic is dangerous.”
“Only to them.”
“Why is that?”
She started to scream, keeping from answering me.
I turned to Derek and found him watching me as much as he had been watching the woman. “We have to do something.”
“You could give her a pain medication.”
“I don’t think morphine helps with a magical attack.”
“You don’t know that’s what this is.”
The steady pressure from the magical spell pushed on me. Derek might not feel it, but I knew that was what she suffered from. If only I knew of some way to reverse it. I didn’t have enough control over my magic to make it work.
“That’s what it is. Now are you going to help me or are you going to report me to my grandparents?”
“Both?” he asked, offering a hint of a smile.
With her wrists in the cuffs, there wasn’t any way she could hurt me, but the longer she screamed, the more attention she’d get from others in the ER. We didn’t want her to draw too much attention, especially if I was going to try to reverse what had happened to her.
The only problem was that I was tired. Everything still hurt from the night before, and even if it didn’t, I didn’t have enough control of my magic for me to think that there was anything I could do.
