The Hollow Gods

by A. J. Vrana

  “Wow.” Mason sucked in a breath, not expecting to hear something so candid and weighty. “I’m sorry, Jaz, I really didn’t know it was so rough for you.”

  “Naw, it’s cool,” she waved him off. “I don’t think it affected me that deeply to be honest. That’s why I didn’t talk about it. It wasn’t important.”

  “Really?” He raised an eyebrow. “You weren’t just embarrassed or, you know, being secretive?”

  “Nope,” she shook her head again. “It was just life. I never even thought to question it.”

  Mason chewed over this, struggling to accept her mentality. She sounded so damn tough, like she could take life’s blows and come out stronger than before. He imagined she would have made a much better doctor than him.

  “Anyway,” she continued when he didn’t respond, “I did my MCAT after undergrad, and at the time I thought I wanted the responsibility because it was all I knew. I was used to it. Then, halfway through our program, I realized that I was sick of it all. I didn’t want anyone to turn around one day and say it was my fault that someone died or didn’t get better.”

  She turned to him and smiled. “I don’t think I could live with that for the rest of my life.” The elevator doors pulled open, the hallway mercifully empty this time. “My mom, my dad, my little brother,” she counted them on her fingers, “I felt like I failed them all. I don’t need the guilt of a complete stranger added onto it. So I decided to quit and go to nursing school instead. Not that nurses are free of responsibility, but at least we’re not making life-or-death treatment decisions. As a nurse, I still feed my pathological need to take care of people. I can advocate for my patients, but I won’t always be in a position to make a bad call and end up accountable for someone’s life.”

  Her frankness was a breath of fresh air. For the near-five years he’d been in residency, Mason couldn’t remember the last time someone spoke about the realities of their profession with such bare-bones honesty. Most people went on about how empowering it was—how rewarding it felt to help others and earn their gratitude. And he was one of those people. But no one ever mentioned the flip side—the guilt of failing, the resentment of letting someone down. It was the dark underbelly that went unnoticed behind the blinding shine of the medical community’s pride.

  “I’ve honestly never thought about it that way,” he admitted. “For me, it was just—”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know, Cap. I still remember that stupid t-shirt with the Captain America shield on it.” She gave him a sympathetic glance. “You just wanted to save somebody.”

  Staring at his shoes, Mason shoved his hands into his pockets and slumped his shoulders. “Never thought about the dark side much.”

  Jazlyn snorted, elbowing him playfully as they walked out of the elevators and back onto the main floor. “You don’t belong on the dark side, Mason. People like you just wouldn’t survive there.”

  He flinched as his side was hit, blinking after her as she sauntered off. “I’m already floundering, Sith Lord.”

  “Then go on get home!” she said in a southern accent and pointed towards the doors. “Pick up your pretty blue lightsaber and give Steve Rogers a kiss!”

  “You’re getting your universes mixed up,” he whined. “George Lucas and Marvel? Just…no, Jaz! No! You can’t do that!”

  “Screw you, I’m writing a crossover!”

  Mason spent the next hour following Jazlyn through the ER and introducing himself to her colleagues, his mind flitting back to Gene Robinson every now and again. Despite the overwhelming urge to excuse himself and find the interrogation video, he was quite at ease with the hospital staff. His earlier anxieties dissipated with the friendly smiles and curious inquiries regarding work-life in Vancouver. The atmosphere in Ashgrove was utterly different from what he was used to. He noticed none of the competition that marked the relationships between physicians and nursing staff in metropolitan hospitals. For the first time, Mason wondered just how deeply the negative emotions of patients and staff at his resident hospital affected him. So sharp was the contrast that he began to hope again—maybe he was cut out for this. Maybe he just needed a different work environment.

  As Mason helped change the sheets on one of the beds, the wail of sirens cut the thread of his dreamy escape. At the alarm, doctors and nurses quickly assembled towards the designated ambulance area, isolated near the back of the ER.

  “What’s going on?” he asked Jazlyn as she flew past him after speaking to a colleague.

  “Patch phone went off a few minutes ago,” she told him while putting together a new file.

  He finished throwing the used sheets in the laundry bin. “Yeah, I heard. What did EMS say?”

  “We’ve got a John Doe, no ID, was struck by a bus at high speed.”

  “What’s the damage?” Mason’s tone was hushed, but he couldn’t stop years of medical training from kicking in.

  Jazlyn’s fingers paused on the drawer handle, her eyes narrowing at him in silent assessment before she answered. “He’s sustained multisystem trauma, including a skull fracture, bilateral femur fracture, heavy internal bleeding, and flail chest.” She met his gaze, addressing him as though he were a physician on the trauma medical team. “EMS intubated him, ventilating at a rate of ten with good airway compliance. He’s on IV to sustain blood pressure and has tachycardia at 165 beats per minute.”

  “Jesus.” Mason breathed out. “He’s probably not going to make it…”

  “No,” she shook her head, “but you never know. Miracles do happen. You should wait here. They’re bringing him in now.”

  She rushed past him and joined the rest of the team in the trauma bay. Despite being an oncologist, Mason had done an ER rotation for his program’s requirements. No one liked doing the rounds, but it was part of the job and a rewarding experience. He’d been assigned to watch over several patients in critical condition but was fortunate enough to never encounter anyone so close to death. Regardless, he suddenly felt left out; he wanted to be with the others, running next to the stretcher, giving orders, or at least taking them.

  Unsure of what to do with himself, he paced back and forth with his eyes lowered to the floor. People died in the ER all the time, he told himself, so why was he so nervous? Why did this one stranger’s life carry so much weight? Mason rationalized it was the first time since Amanda that he was in such close proximity to death. Even though his position was that of a bystander, the feeling of powerlessness that came with being adjacent to that dimming life tickled him with unpleasant familiarity. And without Jazlyn to act as his buffer, he felt vulnerable against the onslaught of cruel reminders, the uncertainty creeping back in from the corners of his mind.

  When it became too much, Mason parked himself in a hallway chair. He pulled out his phone and searched for the only thing he knew would occupy his attention: the murder of Elle Robinson, the girl last stolen by the Dreamwalker.

  10

  It didn’t take long to find the video. It was grainy and muffled, but clear enough to make out once Mason plugged in the earbuds he kept tucked in his pocket. He clenched the edges of his phone as he hit play.

  “You killed your daughter,” said the detective, leaning over and looking the suspect in the eye.

  Gene Robinson, an unremarkable-looking man in his fifties, glanced up, startled. His hands trembled on the table in the blank-white interrogation room. “I didn’t kill my daughter,” he insisted. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “You’re denying killing anyone?” the detective choked back a laugh. “Your own wife turned you in.”

  “What I killed...” Gene trailed off, hiding his face in his hands as his voice broke. He sucked in a breath and straightened up. “The thing I killed was not Elle—not my girl. What I killed was a thrall of the Dreamwalker. The wolves lured my Elle away,” he sobbed, “and she’s lost to those woods forever. She’s never coming back.”

  “You’re damn right she’s not,” scoffed the detective. “Someone ge
t this guy a psych eval.”

  “You don’t get how this works!” Gene Robinson slammed his fist down on the table, his eyes wide, tears streaming down his face as his composure crumbled. “All that returns is a shell. The girl goes into the forest but—but something else comes out.”

  Mason was at a loss. How could this man have killed his own daughter? Gene Robinson appeared utterly grief-stricken, still going on about how smart, beautiful, kind, and dignified his baby girl had been. Mason knew of Capgras, or imposter syndrome, but most cases were so rare and outlandish, it was difficult to believe they happened outside of psychology textbooks.

  “She started withdrawing,” Gene whispered, his face hidden again. “That’s how you know. They get depressed, moody, want to be alone all the time. They’re just...not themselves. You try to get your happy little girl back, but they just...they just pull further away. Then they disappear.”

  They’re teenage girls! Mason wanted to scream at the video. How could this man be so stupid? Withdrawal could have signalled just about anything—stress, trauma, mental health concerns. How could he think normal adolescent behaviour was a tell-tale sign that his daughter had been abducted and replaced? It was terrifying.

  “When she came back, she told my wife that someone had warned her to stay away from Black Hollow,” he added after a pause, “but she wouldn’t say who.”

  “Let me guess,” the detective drawled. “The Dreamwalker?”

  “Yes!” Gene’s hand struck the table. “Who else could it have been?”

  Part of Mason wished he’d never watched the video, wished he could wipe it from existence. But both Mason and the people of Black Hollow were spellbound by the mystery of the Dreamwalker—even if for entirely different reasons. To the townsfolk, the Dreamwalker was fact, but Mason desperately needed her to be fiction.

  Nearly an hour passed until Jazlyn finally returned. Her expression was forlorn, her lips downturned as she appeared rooted in thought.

  Mason yanked out his earbuds and pushed himself to his feet. “What happened?” he asked as she stopped in front of him.

  “Doctors rushed him into surgery,” she began, planting a hand on her hip, “suited up in less than two minutes, but by the time they got inside…”

  Mason’s heart sank. She didn’t finish her sentence, but she didn’t have to. “He didn’t make it, did he?” Mason asked quietly, a sharp pain cutting through his chest. How could this happen again so soon? He’d worked so hard to get away from the traumatic death of his young patient. And yet, the day he returned to a hospital to see a friend, the day he finally began feeling capable of being a physician again, he was struck with yet another death. A distant one, yes—but it was still a cruel reminder of how ill-equipped he was to deal with life’s finale.

  “Huh?” Jazlyn blinked, looking up at him as if noticing he was there for the first time. “Oh—naw, Cap. You got it all wrong. John Doe ain’t dead.”

  “What?” His head snapped up. “Then what was with that morbid look on your face? If he’s not dead, then what is he?”

  “That’s just it!” she exclaimed, throwing her arms out to the side. “By the time Dr. Callahan got the CT scan, X-rays—well,” she hesitated, stumbling on her words. It was a rarity for the girl he knew as a spitfire.

  “Yes?” he beckoned her to continue.

  A mystified Jazlyn swallowed hard, looking him straight in the eye. “There was nothing to operate on.”

  Mason squinted at his old friend as if she had turned into someone else. “What do you mean there was nothing to operate on? Wait—how did they find time to run tests on a guy just barely hanging on?”

  She nodded quickly. “Exactly! He would have been lucky not to die on the operating table! But when the surgical team looked at him, a lot of the damage EMS reported wasn’t even there! Not only that, but his vitals were completely stable!” She sighed, shaking her arms out. “Callahan ordered the scans afterwards.”

  “How the…” Mason mouthed the words and crossed his arms over his chest. He stared at the wall as he processed this information, then turned back to a befuddled Jazlyn. “Are you sure the report on the patch phone wasn’t a mistake? Could it have been someone else? Did the surgical team get the right patient?”

  She was already shaking her head by the time he asked his first question. She seemed to have forgotten about her obligations as she worked through the shock. “Nope. It’s definitely him. Asked Terry and three other EMS personnel. All say the same thing—that’s the guy they picked up. And yes, we checked the file three times over.”

  “Did they report the trauma wrong, then?”

  “No!” Jazlyn sounded frustrated. “Terry said he was mangled and bleeding out when they got there! There was no mistake!”

  “And now? Where is he now?”

  “In the ICU. He’s still in a coma, but stable. A few broken bones, but nothing we can really do for him. We don’t know his blood type, so Callahan ordered tests. I can’t tell if he healed or if it just...never happened.”

  “Hold up—he’s drawing blood from a patient who almost died?” Mason looked at her as though this Callahan was plotting murder.

  “Duh! What would you do?” she shot back, exasperated.

  “Just give him O negative!” Mason sputtered. “How can he have enough blood for sampling?”

  “That’s how much he’s recovered!” she huffed. “They want him prepped for a transfusion just in case. But either way, wouldn’t you want this dude’s freaky blood on file? Pretty sure that’s why Callahan wants it drawn!”

  “I guess…”

  Mason paced the cramped hallway for the umpteenth time, then forced out a breathy laugh from his already-tight chest. “Jaz,” he suddenly stepped forward, gripping her by the shoulders. “I know this is totally against protocol, but could you let me see this guy?”

  “What!” she leaned back as he grabbed her, eyes widening. “Are you nuts? Do you have any idea how much trouble I’d be in if I let non-medical personnel see a patient who just got out of surgery?”

  “Come on,” he pleaded in a harsh whisper. He knew it was a bizarre request, unfair even, but what if the doctors miscalculated? What if Mason left the hospital thinking all was well, only to find out John Doe had actually died? And if John Doe was as Jazlyn claimed, how did he manage to heal so quickly? Mason couldn’t fathom leaving without a glance. “You know me. And technically, I am medical personnel. I’m a licensed doctor—a specialist at that! And you’ve been showing me around all day, so I’m sure it’s fine. Please, Jaz, I need to see this guy for myself. After what I’ve been through, this could really mean something. This could help me.”

  His tone was desperate, sorrowful even, his eyes brimming with tears as he gulped down the emotions. How he yearned for something to take him back to his old self—the hopeful young med student who was ready to conquer the world.

  “Fine,” she sighed after a drawn-out pause, then jerked out of his grasp to raise a finger to his nose. “But only for a minute. If they catch us, I could lose my job.”

  “You got it,” he nodded like a puppy. “Only a minute.”

  She nodded back stiffly, then turned around and waved for him to follow. The intensive care unit was only a short walk away. Jazlyn turned abruptly at the end of the hall, opening one of the rooms and poking her head in to ensure no one else was inside.

  “Coast is clear,” she hissed back to him before holding the door open. “One. Freaking. Minute,” she warned. “I’ll stand guard.”

  “Thank you. So much,” he replied emphatically, his eyes shining.

  Rushing inside, he looked back at his stone-faced partner as she pulled the door shut, leaving him alone in the quiet. Over on the bed was the patient, lying perfectly still with a heart monitor and an IV bag hooked to his left hand. He had a chest tube between his ribs—treatment for a partially-collapsed lung. How could he have been well enough to bypass surgery and only need the tube? Walking over, Mason examined th
e young man he’d wanted to see badly enough to risk his friend’s career.

  His face was bruised and lacerated, and there were bits of red on the sheets—clear signs that he was still quite hurt. Yet Mason felt uneasy, as though this man was somehow aware despite being unconscious. A scowl marked his harsh features like he was struggling through an unpleasant dream, fighting his way back to the land of the living.

  Fumbling around the drawer for a penlight, Mason quickly inspected his target’s pupils. Indeed, everything looked normal. While the left side of his body was black and blue from soft tissue damage, nothing appeared severely broken, just as Jazlyn had said. Could this stranger have really been hit by a bus moving at high speed? If so, he should have been wholly mangled, if not dead.

  How could a person recover so rapidly from being ground into the pavement by a bus? Curiosity burning, Mason rushed over to the chair where the patient’s torn, bloody clothes and personal items were left in a plastic bag. Rummaging through, he gripped something leathery and solid—a wallet. Emptying its contents, he found nothing but some cash and a small, lilac piece of paper with a name scrawled across in chicken scratch.

  Happy Birthday, Kai Donovan.

  A knock sounded against the door, followed by Jazlyn’s voice.

  “Are you done yet? I’m freaking out over here!” she hissed through the crack.

  “C-Coming!” he jerked back, returning the penlight to the drawer and stuffing the wallet’s contents away before throwing it into the plastic bag. He rushed out of the room, giving the strange young man a parting glance as he closed the door behind him.

  “Thank God,” Jazlyn huffed. “I thought you’d never come out.”

  He smiled sheepishly. “You said one minute.”

  “Yeah, and you were in there for at least two!”

  Mason ducked his head as she glared at him. “Sorry—couldn’t help myself.”