In the beginning, this had been the most confusing activity of all; she hadn’t even known she was doing this when her body first matured enough to infiltrate another’s body and absorb their illness into herself. She ended up in the hospital for countless weeks with first one set of symptoms and then another. As soon as the doctors diagnosed a disease and began treatment, the symptoms would fade and be replaced by something totally different. Aamira’s body, in an attempt to survive, was releasing the illness into the ether, but then she would make physical contact with another sick child and absorb something of that one’s malady, and the cycle would begin again. Go figure.
Now she and Jeremiah were linked; what one felt, so did the other, and Aamira’s body, being the stronger, began supporting the weaker. Oh yes, it hurt to allow the wounds left by the surgical incisions to touch her, but she was stubborn; Aamira breathed through the pain, calling down healing from wherever it came in the universe, surrounding them both in brilliant white light. The nurses, oblivious to what she was truly accomplishing, kept a close eye on them both, this hospital volunteer who chose to assist the most troubled of patients, and her charge, a small boy who was battling serious odds. If they had eyes that could see, truly see, Aamira knew they would notice a growing light around her and the boy she cradled; the same soothing light she felt whenever she offered healing, a brightness disturbing the dark cast of the child’s troubled aura.
Unexpectedly, the room darkened infinitesimally as Aamira rocked, a cold breeze flitting through the room. Aamira felt a thrill of fear burn through her and shivered. Looking up, she realized there was someone standing before her that hadn’t been in the pediatric ICU a moment ago. Tall and thin, he seemed to be robed in darkness and swirling, colorless mists, yet she couldn’t even see a face beyond the folds of his black hood. No one else seemed to notice the stranger, although there was a nurse standing right next to her checking the wires and tubes that were attached to the boy and an assistant nearby who was changing his bed linens.
Pretending to talk to the boy in her lap, the actual words made easier to disguise by the fact that everyone entering the pediatric ICU was required to wear a mask, Aamira gathered her courage and whispered: “I remember you. I saw you that day, when my friend Clara died. Only I didn’t know she was dead.”
She waited, wondering if he had heard her or if this was some illusion she was visiting upon herself by thinking of death and loss when she, herself, had been a young patient in far off London a long time ago. No response. Teenage stubbornness winning out over sanity and sensibility, she tried again. “Clara disappeared when you walked between us. I remember. Did you take my friend away?”
The hood tilted and she sensed he was looking at her. The intensity of his mere glance made her shiver again, that simple act causing her to feel the pain in her chest even more fiercely.
“This one is mine,” declared the being, his voice raspy, as if dry from centuries of disuse. The child in her arms burrowed into her desperately. Behind her, one of the other children in the ICU suddenly startled, crying out as if awoken by a terrifying dream. The nurse checked to see that Aamira would be good on her own for a few moments and moved to check on the crying child.
“Not anymore,” was her whispered reply. “He’s getting stronger, I can feel it. What are you, anyway? Why can’t anyone see you but me?”
“You are one,” he said. “It is his time, and he can see.”
“You mean, because he’s… dying… he sees you?”
“It has always been so.”
“And I see you through him?”
“So it would seem.”
“Who are you? Death? Are you meaning to take this boy too?”
“I am… an escort.”
“Well, he’s not dying today.” She was looking not at this creature, but at the child’s trusting face, staring into those innocent eyes and making a solemn promise.
“It is his time.”
“Yeah, you said that. And who determines that?”
The being paused, perhaps searching for an answer she would understand, or perhaps he had never been asked the question. “It is the natural order of the universe.”
“Apparently, I’m part of the natural order too, ‘cause here I am. He’s mine now. I’m saving him. So go away.” She lovingly hugged the child closer to her.
His tone changed to something approaching annoyance. “You have been… instrumental… in improving the odds of several. You cannot save them all.”
“I can save this one,” she boasted, as sure of herself as any other teenager.
“Are you certain?” In answer to her challenge, this messenger of death gathered himself to his full, fearsome height, larger than life, and the room around them turned eerily dark. Perhaps it was his aura she had been seeing, this misty blackness that swirled around him. It now solidified and expanded to fill the room with unnatural coldness, no matter that he declared himself part of the natural order of Creation. It carried with it the odor of stale graveyard dirt; it held the timeless finality of death that all humans could recognize and most would fear.
Aamira could see this being, this entity, in all his bone-chilling power even though she wasn’t the one who was supposed to die. He reached toward the child with a skeletal hand, intending to extract the soul from his tiny tortured body. It was his role; it was his due. Perhaps he thought it a kindness. Perhaps he was too numb to care. Perhaps there was no caring, no empathy within himself, and it was simply his job. The result was the same; he reached for the boy.
The child whimpered.
In response, Aamira seemed not to waiver at all, did not move outside the continued rocking of the chair they occupied, but if anyone there had eyes that could see they would sense, the way she did, that her aura became brighter, stronger, laced with a bit of a golden glow at the edges, as she joined more fiercely with the child. It became a contest of wills.
“Pretty much,” she whispered, using her own life force and the glow pulled down from somewhere above to sustain the child.
“I bring peace. You offer only continued suffering.”
“Are you certain?”
“Let him go.”
“He can go if he wants, but I don’t think he wants.” She brushed her chin against the little fist wrapped around her shirt collar. “I think he wants to stay. To grow up and see the world. To just go home to his family. To know love.”
The messenger snarled. His hands became claws, threatening to rip the child from her, to rip the soul from the child by force. “Insolence! You are but a random mortal fragment; I am an avatar of Creation, I will not be opposed.”
Again, the boy whimpered. So did Aamira, brave as she was; the being was truly terrifying, obscuring all light around himself, his dark being snapping with electricity. She wasn’t even certain what he was, just that he was sentient. And powerful. Still, she could not allow herself to fail the boy.
“No.”
“I will take what is mine,” he snarled. Aamira couldn’t know that none had ever defied him before, that he had never been opposed. Perhaps he had never even been seen before, other than by the one he had come to collect, and opposition was nonexistent.
Until now.
Unbeknownst to her, for this creature of death, reaching toward Life was like swimming through molasses, like running through clay; that lacy golden light, that life force, was impossible for him to penetrate. Still, he tried.
Silently, she responded to his challenge. You say you are an avatar of Creation, but you stink of death. This is no longer your place! In Aamira’s eyes, their aura together was still muddy and unpalatable, but anything was better than the black that heralded death. Their combined heartbeat was growing stronger and she could see the lacework of golden light surrounding them like a filigreed shell, marveling at its beauty. I will not let you touch the boy; he belongs to Life!
The Escort subsided and withdrew his power.
Aamira’s chest was spasming from the a
bsorption of a mere minor portion of Jeremiah’s surgical traumas, which were now hers. Her beautiful black face was wet with the exertion of holding that pain, with repelling such power. And the chair was wet with urine. Afraid, but still unwilling to surrender the child, she took a deep breath and crooned to him, comforting herself as much as the boy, then again addressed the creature. “Forgive me if I try to postpone that for a few people. Dead is forever!”
He looked at her strangely, perhaps appraisingly. “It can be.”
“Anybody ever tell you that you make no sense?”
“No one tells me anything at all.”
“Glad to be the first, then. Now go away and let us be.”
He tilted his head, and Aamira had the impression of a bird of prey focusing on his next target. “This will not end well for you.”
Then he disappeared.
The room brightened infinitesimally, or perhaps she just stopped concentrating with such stubborn determination; the atmosphere lightened, and she began to breathe more deeply, to loosen the tension between her shoulder blades. It’s okay, it’s okay. It’s gone, we’re okay, she murmured, cocooning the boy in warmth and safety and love.
As her fear ebbed, so did the boy’s, and, having absorbed all the energy that Aamira could safely give him, the exhausted child fell into a deep asleep. Aamira stayed connected as long as she could, knowing she still needed to hold onto enough strength to get away to somewhere quiet where she could dispel the injury and pain the boy had relinquished to her. This job wasn’t easy.
“Oh, look at that! He’s tinkled all over you!” The nurse clicked her tongue at them, and the sixteen-year-old wasn’t about to disabuse anyone of the notion of whose pee they were sitting in.
“I’m so sorry, Aamira, I had just changed his diaper before I gave him to you, but clearly, he’s quite a well-hydrated little boy!” She looked at his peaceful, sleeping face. “And quite relaxed, thanks to you.” The nurse checked the fluid drip, then rechecked each monitor; everything had to stay in balance for optimum results with a heart patient. In the ICU, this was of utmost importance, and another reason Aamira had learned to sip, not gulp; to trade health for illness but only bit by bit. She had discovered that if you improved a patient too quickly, the sensors would notify the nurses of a sudden change, and they would then be looking for a reason, which would lead to unwanted questions. If I’m ever found out, I’ll probably end up a lab rat in some government think tank… or in some rich dude’s private collection of ways to live forever. Go figure.
That entity frightened her badly, made her see how close to death this little boy was, made her realize how shocking it would be to hold a child while he breathed his last and succumbed to death. The encounter also made her realize what a precarious position she was in, what danger she was leaving herself open to after being noticed by him. She had placed herself squarely in opposition to this strange creature of death who held infinite power. He’s a freaking death monster. Could he take me along with the boy? She carefully placed the child back on his bed, still sleeping, and headed to the nurses’ locker room to shower and change. And to purge what she had collected.
At first, she had spent her time practicing taking a bit of illness or injury from the kids, enough to give them a boost but not enough for anyone to become suspicious, since she was unsure what they might notice. Even more concerning was how to dispel whatever she had absorbed without being discovered. It had required much covert experimentation. Once, in her rush to be of service to those in need, she had made a grievous error. The most painful injury she had ever obtained was from the broken arm (radius and ulna, compound fractures) of a screaming eight-year-old who had come in with multiple injuries following a fall. Aamira had caught up with him before they even had him out of the ambulance and, holding his (other) hand, she had paced the stretcher, pinpointed the worst pain, and focused on it until they had him in an examining room where the doctors shooed her out of the way. In those few reckless moments, she had succeeded in calming him until they could get more pain meds into him.
But in completing such a rash action, the break had become hers. She felt she would pass out from the pain. She thought she must be dripping blood all over the floor, and, cradling her injured arm against her body, she gasped. In the flurry of activity of the well-trained trauma staff, a nurse thought she was going to faint from the sudden shock of seeing a child in such pain. Aamira was quickly ushered to a gurney parked in the hallway with instructions to lie there until the dizziness passed.
Alone in an alcove of the Emergency Department, and afraid she would go into shock and lose consciousness (and be found with an unexplainable, freshly broken arm), she grabbed at a nearby pushcart and released her newly-collected injury into it and watched it burst into pieces. Then she really did faint. Later, Aamira was commended for keeping the child calm for those first moments and no one ever realized she had been in tremendous pain herself. That was a lesson I’ll never forget… if you grab for pain, you’re going to get pain; maybe too much to handle.
Aamira dropped her forehead to the tile wall and allowed the hot water to wash away her tension along with the pungent smell of her own urine. Stupid, stupid, stupid. What if he had grabbed the boy anyway? What if he grabbed you too? You don’t know what that thing is!
Scrubbing herself down with unpleasant antibacterial soap, she took notice of the various scars on her body, the ones she had picked up since she started absorbing various injuries over the last few years of experimentation. This thing she could do was not without consequences. Her once flawless black body now bore the marks of several injuries inherited from other people, and these were just the ones that could be seen on her skin; she wondered if she was affecting her own organs when the illnesses she absorbed concerned a patient’s organs. Case in point, was she hurting her own heart? Since it was unlikely she might wheedle her way into getting X-rays or an MRI, she didn’t have an answer.
How do I find out what I’m dealing with? What do I do if he comes back? If?? No, when! Aamira groaned, thinking how she had always disliked listening to mama’s folktales handed down from the Egyptian side of the family. I have to ask mama. Like, right now.
But right right now, she was hurting from the injuries she had just absorbed and needed to purge them. The nurses weren’t stupid. If you walked around with an illness, they were going to find you out. Where do they go when they die? What does it feel like?
Borrowing fresh scrubs the nurses kept around for just such icky calamities, she chose an unpainted waste water pipe, took careful hold with both hands, exhaled gently, and ‘leaked’ the bad energy into it, knowing it would flow through the pipes like static and hopefully dissipate somewhere far down the line. The taste in her mouth from forcing the injury to flow out of her body was enough to make her gag and the metal became warm under her hands. At least there was no colossal explosion, as there would have been when she was first learning her craft. I really need to find better ways to get rid of this crap energy I keep collecting.
She had listened to mama’s stories of ancient and far off lands deep into the night and, although she had had little sleep, felt much better about her situation. If that ‘Escort’ dude shows up again, I’m sure I’ll be ready for him. As soon as school was done, she headed straight for the hospital and was pleased to see her favorite nurses were on duty. They were all favorite nurses, of course; they loved children as much as she did. The nurses remarked how much better little Jeremiah was doing today but he was napping, so they sent her to play with the children in the peds playroom.
She went right to work, scanning the room with squinted eyes to see if there were any disturbing auras, anything that would give her a clue of where to look for that Escort fellow. At least, she thought it a fellow, but technically, she had yet to see his or her face. Or it. Maybe it was an it. But she had only seen him when she was connected to a severely ill patient, one in danger of dying.
She found not one, but three chil
dren in seriously questionable health; two with muddy brown glows around parts of their bodies, most likely correlating to the location of their illnesses, and a third with her body encased in a soft, dull black. Not good. She hoped she wouldn’t have to spread herself too thin to keep up with the workload of boosting their energies after getting so little sleep. She chose the child with the darkest aura, the thin one with the gaunt face and sunken eyes, and plopped down on the floor next to her. She knew how to talk to kids; one had to wait for the child to accept them before intruding further. Sometimes they just wanted to be alone with their own thoughts.
“I like what you’re building. Are you making a house out of blocks?” The girl kept her eyes on the wooden squares she was stacking but showed Aamira a little plastic horse tucked carefully beside her.
“No, it’s a barn, silly! The horsey needs a place to sleep. She’s really tired.”
“Oh, I see,” Aamira said, moving just a bit closer. Now their knees touched, and it was enough; Aamira relaxed and tried for a tentative joining. If it worked, she might be able to find the Escort again, and could check out what was wrong with the girl at the same time. “What’s the horsey’s name? They like to have names, you know.”
The child considered this for a moment; such important decisions required serious thought. “Her name is Clara. Just like my friend. Would you like that, Clara?”
At first Aamira thought the child was talking to the horse, but then someone else sat down across from them. Or kind of someone. Aamira could see right through her; a girl of maybe thirteen, long blonde hair and beautiful light blue eyes. Aamira thought her heart would stop right then and there. This was her friend Clara, the friend who had died years ago, the friend that Escort guy had taken away.
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