by Ladew, Lisa
West shook his head, picking up one of her slim hands and examining it closely. “How did they not burn up if they were that hot?”
“I don’t know!” Katerina cried. “I don’t know how all of this works. I just know I put my hands over the area that is hurt and I say heal inside my head, but it’s not working right now.”
West gathered Katerina’s hands in his. “Maybe it’s working without your hands getting hot,” he said.
Katerina’s eyes negated his statement. “It’s not. I would know if it was working. I can feel it inside of me.”
West nodded placatingly, he believed her. “Maybe you’re just too drained,” he said. “You should rest more.”
The door to the tiny hospital room opened and a nurse came in. “Did you like the breakfast?” she said brightly, moving the table with the food tray on it to the side so she could get to Katerina. She didn’t seem to notice when Katerina didn’t respond, but she picked up Katerina’s hand and put an oxygen saturation probe on the end of one finger. Katerina reached over with her other hand and grasped the woman’s arm. When the nurse looked at her, Katerina smiled and said “Thank you for taking care of me,” her hand still on the woman’s arm.
The nurse smiled back and genuine warmth entered her eyes. “You are very welcome. I’m glad to see you awake and eating and doing so well.”
Katerina nodded and she let go of the woman’s wrist, her own arm slipping back to her side. She stared straight ahead at the wall across from her bed until the nurse finished what she was doing and left the room. Then Katerina came to life, struggling to sit up in the bed and grabbing West by the shirt.
“Nothing, West. I didn’t get anything off of her. I asked as strongly as I could and I got nothing!”
West thought about her words for a moment, not totally sure what she was saying. Then he understood. “Do you mean your powers are gone?”
Katerina laughed wildly. “God, I hate that word. Powers. But it doesn’t matter anymore, because yes! They are gone!”
Chapter 20
“Calm down, Katerina,” West admonished. “Don’t get too excited. Maybe you’re just too tired or too hungry for them to work right now.”
Katerina shook her head happily. “Nope, they’re gone, I can tell.” She put a finger on West’s arm, pointedly, then her eyes narrowed in confusion.
“What?” West said. “Do you get something from me?”
“Kind of. But not what I usually get from you. I only get a kind of dull emotion and a little bit of color. Blue, like always.” She concentrated on her fingers and West could tell she was trying harder now. He didn’t feel anything, no tingles or drawing sensation like he usually did when she did this. She shook her head. “No, it’s not the same. I still get something from you but it’s tiny, barely there. Maybe it’s only because our relationship is special,” she said looking up at him with hope in her eyes.
“Maybe,” West said, unwilling to say anything that would make her unhappy.
She brightened immediately when he said that. She squeezed his hands hard. “West, maybe it’s gone forever. Maybe I can be a normal person again!”
“Maybe,” West repeated, smiling lightly at her. He loved to see the joy in her eyes. He would give anything to see it continue.
Katerina’s eyes found something behind him and he turned to see what she was looking at. The flowers and balloons.
“Oh,” he said. “Those are from Emma Masterson, and those are from Jordan.”
Jordan! he thought. He needed to call Jordan! He pulled his hands gently out of Katerina’s grasp and picked up the phone, dialing room eight sixty-two. Jordan answered immediately.
“Jordan, she’s awake,” he said.
Jordan squealed in his ear and said she’d be right up.
He grinned at Katerina. “Jordan is coming up.”
“Coming up from where?”
“Blaise’s room.”
Katerina gave him a knowing look and he smiled back. “She said she took vacation from work and she’s going to nurse Blaise back to health.”
“Are they together then?”
West shrugged a shoulder. “Neither one of them has really said. There have been other things going on.”
Katerina rubbed her hands together like he had said yes. “How exciting for her!”
The door to the small room opened again and Jordan walked in looking like she just came from the salon - blond ponytail bobbing and perfect makeup on her face. She was holding someone’s hand behind her. Blaise, dressed in a hospital gown followed her in.
West crossed the room in an instant and shook Blaise’s hand, then helped him into a chair. “Should you really be up and walking already?” he asked Blaise.
“The doctor said I could walk, and I feel great. I just have a bit of stiffness on this side,” he said running his hands along the right side of his torso.
“That’s so wonderful,” Katerina said from the bed.
“Yep, thanks to you,” Blaise said.
Katerina looked at West, alarmed. She didn’t know if he had told anyone about her newly discovered and already-lost healing ability.
West shook his head slightly back and forth.
Blaise held up his hands. “I mean, if you’re going to get shot, the best place to do it is in a room with two paramedics, am I right?”
Jordan giggled and took Blaise’s hand. “You’re right,” she said.
Katerina nodded, relieved. She didn’t know how she felt about Blaise knowing what she had done. She didn’t feel that she had done much, certainly not as much as she had done for West, but she hadn’t known how then. It seemed that the power of the healing had increased each time she had used it.
Katerina held out her hand, looking at Jordan.
Jordan came right over and took her hand, smiling at her. “I was so worried about you, Katerina. I wish you would stop getting in all these messes.”
Jordan’s face fell as she seemed to realize what she had said. “Oh, Katerina – I didn’t mean –”
Katerina shushed her. She smiled at Jordan and then did her little mental trick of drinking Jordan in, asking what there was to know about Jordan. Nothing came.
“Guess what, Jordan. You’re going to finally get your wish. It looks like I’ve lost my psychometric ability.”
Jordan’s brow furrowed in worry and then her face broke out in a smile. “And you’re happy about that?” she asked tentatively.
Katerina threw back her head and laughed. “I’m thrilled about that! Why wouldn’t I be?”
Jordan shrugged lightly. “I don’t know, it kind of made you special.”
“If special is almost being killed three times and getting everyone around you almost killed too, then I don’t ever want to be special again.”
“Well butter my butt and call me a biscuit,” Jordan said. West and Blaise snickered behind her. “If you’re happy, I’m happy,” she told Katerina.
“I’m happy,” Katerina said.
A knock sounded on the door and the pizza delivery man stuck his head in. West paid the man and grabbed the pizza, glad he had gotten two of them so he could offer some to Jordan and Blaise. The morning whiled away as the old friends talked and laughed, until a nurse came looking for Blaise and scolded him heavily. Jordan and Blaise retreated back to his room, leaving Katerina and West alone.
West studied Katerina, noting her deep color and how her cheekbones had plumped up a little. She had eaten almost an entire pizza herself and still seemed able to eat more. He wondered at her incredible metabolism. Even if she didn’t have the ability to heal anymore, her body was still doing something.
He leaned close to her. “How many times have I told you that I love you?”
Katerina took his hand. “Not enough.”
“I love you. I love you. I love you.”
***
That afternoon, after Katerina took a long, healing nap, as West and Katerina tried to focus their attention to thoughts of what th
eir new life might be like, both of them carefully skirting around the issue that neither of them had a job anymore, a knock at the door interrupted them. This time, it was Craig Masterson his gold badge and black gun on his belt. His eyes widened in surprise and his face brightened as soon as he saw Katerina was awake.
Katerina smiled back and West was surprised to see the warmth in it. She seemed to genuinely like him, in spite of everything.
Craig shook West’s hand and then turned to Katerina on the bed. “I just want to say that I am deeply sorry for not believing you the other day when you told me what had happened with Deputy Director Ronan.”
Katerina shook her head wonderingly. “Apology accepted. I understand that it’s hard to believe. I barely believed it myself sometimes.”
Craig smiled broadly and got right on the business. “I must confess that I came by for a reason. I wanted to let you know our current investigation status. We still only have one suspect. The national security director, and he is getting somewhat desperate with our continued questioning of him. Word is, his senate handler is about to ask the president to bar us from any investigative action against him. If that happens, it would tie our hands completely.”
West shook his head, his face troubled. “They can do that?”
“They can. Our government can do whatever they want. I think that with enough time, I’d be able to prove that he did it – if he did – but at this point it doesn’t seem like I have much time.”
He turned to Katerina. “Any chance you’d be willing to help us? Maybe we could pull a fast one on him?”
Katerina looked worried. “Explain please.”
“We can be certain that the man knows who the ‘psychic paramedic’ is, and I believe if we bring him in for an interview, then present you in front of him and ask him if he gives consent for you to touch him to see what he knows about the incident, then we can rattle him - possibly get a confession out of him.”
West broke in. “That wouldn’t put her in danger?”
Craig shook his head. “I don’t believe so. Everyone involved in this case already knows who she is. In fact, I think we could use this plan to take all of the danger off of her. We could explain that she knew nothing about who had killed Ronan, only that someone had. That she had seen nothing and been told nothing. We could come open and clean about that part and remove any chance that somebody would continue to try to hunt her down to find out what she knows. And we won’t take it far enough that she actually touches him. I don’t think we will need to. I think what we should do is pull him in for an interview, put him into a room with some people he thinks are also suspects, then ask each of them in turn if they will agree to have Katerina touch them. When he says no and they say yes, that’s our first nail in his coffin. So far, he hasn’t backed down at all, about anything. He is acting completely innocent. I actually almost believe him, heck I want to believe him. This is the national security director to the president and it’s destroying my peace of mind to think that he is a murderer. But so far, the scant evidence that we have all points to him.”
Katerina shook her head softly and West watched a smile cross her face. “Well … it sounds like a good plan but I don’t have my power anymore.” She reached her hand out and touched Craig on the arm. He looked down at her hand slowly. “See? I don’t get anything from you. I can only get something very light from West – but my relationship with him has always been special,” Katerina said, her eyes catching his.
“It’s completely gone?”
“Yes.”
Craig paused for a long moment, and then paced in a rough circle in the only open area of the room, his expression deep in thought. Finally he stopped and looked at Katerina. “Someone should tell the reporters that.”
“Reporters?” Katerina asked, dread in her voice.
“There’s reporters everywhere. They haven’t figured out your room number yet, but someone …” His face grew dark. “ … Someone leaked the autopsy report of Kurt Kane and said you were in the van when he died. The reporters are speculating all the different ways that you could’ve had something to do with it.”
Katerina’s face fell hard. West rushed to her and snatched up her hand. He knew this was one of her biggest fears. He murmured softly to her, trying to tell her it would be OK. It would die down. He wouldn’t let anyone talk to her if she didn’t want.
“Sorry to be the one to tell you that,” Craig said, noticing Katerina’s dismay. He paced again in another short circle and then said almost under his breath, “What if we bluff him? I didn’t want you to touch him anyway, so even if you don’t have the ability, he just needs to think that you do.”
Chapter 21
The next evening, after a day of tests and naps and much more food, Katerina’s doctor reported that her heart was healing well and she would not have any diet or activity restrictions. He said there was a good chance, as long as she continued to eat healthy and have a healthy lifestyle, that she would never have any long-term issues from what had been a very minor heart attack. West had been disappointed to learn that the tiny portion of her heart muscle that had been affected had not magically healed itself, though.
Katerina continued to out-eat everyone, rushing through 6000 calorie meals several times a day. West could see her health coming back by the hour.
The doctor said she could be released in the morning and West called Craig quickly, saying Katerina had agreed to his plan. Craig sounded excited and said he would call West back, he needed to make arrangements. When Craig called back and said he had everything ready for 10:00 the next morning, West started to make his own plans. The reporters had found them, but hospital security had stationed a guard right outside her door and another at the public entrance to the floor and no one had gotten past them yet. So far, West was able to get around with relative anonymity and he wanted to keep it that way. He called Jordan and asked her to come up and stay with Katerina, saying he needed to run home and get them both clothes for the next day. He paid the director of the hospital a special visit and pleaded his case, then paid a cab driver the exorbitant sum of seventy-five dollars to take him out to his truck. He had considered asking Craig, or any of his friends, but he didn’t want to share his plans just yet, and he wanted to be alone to think about their execution. Plus he had phone calls to make.
Finally, at just after 10:00 in the evening he arrived back at the hospital, bags and other things in tow.
He burst into the hospital room, interrupting the girl talk that was obviously going on. Jordan got up immediately. “West, you took forever. I have to get back to Blaise immediately. The doctor came to see him and I missed it. I want to go see when he’ll be released.”
West kissed her on the cheek and thanked her for staying with Katerina while he was gone. Then he walked to the bedside and lifted up the box in his right hand. It was actually a kennel, and Nina stared out at Katerina from the inside, then meowed once, loudly.
“West! You brought Nina! Can she be in here?”
“I got special permission from the hospital director. She missed you. She couldn’t wait one more day.”
Katerina opened the kennel and pulled the cat into her arms, cooing to her like a baby. West smiled and let them have their moment while he busied himself setting Nina up a food station and a litter box. Nina was an easy traveler, and had been to several hotels before, so he wasn’t worried about her. When Katerina was finally done covering the cat with love, she let Nina go, thinking she would jump down and explore, but instead the cat curled herself up on the bed, between Katerina’s knees. Katerina lightly stroked the cat as she watched West go through the bags he had brought.
“How is this outfit?” he asked, holding up a light but elegant sundress.
“Depends, what shoes did you bring for it?”
He pulled out three pairs of shoes and let Katerina pick the ones that worked. He’d also brought all of the contents of her medicine cabinet and make-up bag, in case she wanted to get ma
de-up in the morning.
“West, whatever happened to Frankie?” she asked as West put the clothes she didn’t pick back in the bag.
West turned her. “Good news. He’s awake and talking and has been sent to the rehabilitation center down south. His injury was bad enough that he’ll have to learn how to do certain things again, but they say he should recover without any serious disabilities.”
“I wish I could’ve touched him,” Katerina said softly.
“I wish you could have too,” West said, “but we already knew you couldn’t save them all.”
Katerina looked out the window suddenly, her eyes misting. West wished she could understand once and for all, that none of this had been her fault.
He tried to distract her. “Are you ready for tomorrow?”
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” she said, giving him a weak smile.
***
Katerina woke up the next morning on her side, with Nina nestled in the crook behind her bent knees. Today was the day. The first day of the rest of her life without her horrible abilities. Disabilities. But first she had one last job to do to wrap things up. And then what? She had no idea. How long would she have to dodge the reporters? How long until they forgot about her? Maybe she should give an interview. Could she say that she had completely lost the ability that they were so interested in? She didn’t know what to do, but she wasn’t going to worry about it now. Now she would participate in Craig’s plan to force a confession out of the national security director, and then she would worry about everything else. She petted Nina and watched her yawn and arch her back, then hop down, looking for her food dish. West was still asleep in one of the uncomfortable hospital chairs. At least it folded out and let him sleep with his legs up and his head back.
She got out of bed quietly and grabbed her clothes, then headed into the bathroom for her first shower in several days. She felt good, strong, almost back to normal. But hungry. She was always hungry these days. When she came out, refreshed, clean, and fully clothed, West was awake and waiting for her.
