by Hunter Blain
I took a step before a thought struck, freezing me in place. How would I heal the kids?
Without knowing how I knew the answer to my question, I looked up at the brilliance that was the sun and opened my hands, palm up. Closing my eyes, I brought my arms out to my sides while soaking in the energy that had traveled millions of miles to be absorbed into my being.
I was aware of passersby as they ignored the man basking in the sunlight. A portion of my mind had to remain vigilant to make sure the armor didn’t accidentally manifest, but the rest of me reveled in the purest energy our solar system could offer as it flowed through my being.
My well of power was mostly recharged, but I was still able to draw in raw energy that was being stored in the armor like a battery. If the armor had been visible, I was confident the gold lining would be glowing radiantly.
I didn’t know how long it would take to top off the celestial tanks using the sun-basking method, but I felt I had accumulated enough to do what I’d come for.
I briefly wondered how big the battery was, considering I had inhaled a fission bomb and had felt like I had plenty of room to spare before firing the stored energy at Lolth.
Lowering my hands, I opened my eyes to stare between buildings into the baby blue sky where white, fluffy clouds drifted aimlessly. It was beautiful, magnificent even. The sun and I hadn’t been on speaking terms for quite some time, and it was nice to see it had forgiven me.
My eyes dropped to the lobby doors and I stepped through, the motion sensors sliding the tinted glass apart. A cool blast of air rushed to caress my skin, somehow reinforcing that what I was here to do was the right thing. I might have been projecting, though.
Looking around, I noticed the black bubbles on the ceiling, understanding they were security cameras. Realizing I had no idea how I would get past the front desk and countless hospital personnel, I quickly cast a glamour and was impressed to see that the armor enhanced my clumsy camouflage. I had never been good at altering the minds of mortals—despite what the legends said about vampires—and was pleased to see the armor had actually created an entire doctor’s outfit, my black coat fading to a clinical white.
Looking up, I saw words painted in different colors that had lines indicating a direction. The emergency room was in red and shot down the hallway to the left. I opted to instead go for the cancer ward, as I guessed my presence might be noticed in the ICU where everyone was on red alert.
I followed a blue line to the right and toward a bank of elevators.
Walking past a small waiting room, I saw a mother clutching a moaning child to her bosom while rocking back and forth, whispering that everything would be okay. I couldn’t tell what was wrong with the child, but deduced it was something internal; probably an infection or something similar.
The mother’s concerned eyes flicked down the hallway toward the front desk of this wing, waiting for someone to come help her daughter. My own gaze followed back the way I had come and could see that all the hospital personnel were moving at a frantic pace, barely able to keep up with the madness.
Looking back toward the waiting room, I locked eyes with the mother who wordlessly pleaded that I do something, anything, to alleviate her child’s pain.
I walked forward with a smile that didn’t touch my eyes and kneeled down, bringing my face to eye level with the sick girl.
“Hey there,” I said in a soft voice. “How are we feeling today?”
“Oh, thank God, Doctor. We’ve been waiting for hours! My baby’s sick and we don’t know what’s wrong!” the mother got out in a single breath as if she would burst if the words didn’t leave her mouth. I couldn’t blame her. Hours of waiting with a sick child must have been a torture I would never know.
“Is that true?” I asked the girl while lightly poking at her dangling foot that had pink unicorns sprinkled across her white shoe. “Can you tell me what’s wrong?”
In answer, the little girl moaned while turning her face into her mother’s shirt, which was already wet with tears. My eyes looked at the woman and I felt an undeniable strength and determination that no book or movie would ever be able to adequately convey emanating from her. This woman would die for her child, and that love pulsed off of her in an aura that made the smile—which had only pulled at my lips—finally touch my eyes.
“She keeps saying her tummy hurts, but I don’t think she ate anything.”
“I think I can help. May I?” I asked the mother as I motioned with open hands to pick up the child. She stared into my purple eyes, and quickly nodded after an instantaneous internal debate.
As I kneeled down on one knee, the mother turned her daughter to me, and I stuck my hands under her armpits to bring the girl closer. I made sure she remained on her mother’s lap, for both their sakes.
Once she was positioned in a way I could better see, I let my hands drop to rest on my knee.
As I gave the tip of her nose a gentle boop with my index finger, I asked in a voice reserved for conversations with small children and adorable puppies, “What’s your name?”
She looked at me, mesmerized by my eyes, and whispered, “Cla-Clawa.”
“Clara. That’s a beautiful name. Can you show me where your boo-boo is, Clara?”
Clara motioned to her belly, which I noticed was distended.
Lifting her white shirt—that also had pink unicorns on it—to just above where she pointed, I gently placed a hand on her stomach and asked, “Here?”
Clara nodded a few times before adding, “It huwts.”
“I know it hurts, sweetheart, but I think I know how to make the ouchy go away. Can I do that for you?”
The mother gasped while reaching out with her hands before quickly pulling back, wringing them nervously atop her chest as she watched. The little girl noticed and looked worriedly at her mom. Sweat had broken out on the woman’s brow.
“Do you want me to make the ouchy go away?”
“It’s...it’s okay, baby,” the mother answered, doing her absolute best to hold back the tears that were threatening to spill from her red eyes. I was impressed by her ability to convey peace to her child, even with a storm raging in her heart.
Turning back to me, the girl smiled and said, “O’tay.” Her voice was sweet and beautiful to my monster ears, like light raindrops on a lush field.
With my hand resting on her stomach, I said, “Close your eyes for me, okay, sweetheart?”
“O’tay,” the little Clara said again as she did as instructed. The mother’s hands were once again trying to fight the brain’s commands to stay still, attempting to reach for the sick child and pull her from my grasp.
I willed my energy into her belly, asking the armor to find what was wrong. Without knowing how I knew, I understood that an ulcer had burst in her stomach, and the acid was oozing its way into her abdominal cavity.
With a focus of mind, I closed the wound, completely removed the ulcer, brought the inflammation down, and neutralized the acid by a process I didn’t understand but knew the armor did. The armor, sensing my desire, countered the extra hydrogen atoms of the acid by introducing hydroxide ions from the moisture in my own body, removing one hydrogen atom from the H2O in my blood and sending a flood of the remaining hydrogen and oxygen molecules into Clara. The introduction of hydroxide ions neutralized the acid that was eating away at her liver and one of her kidneys.
I did a double check of her blood to make sure it hadn’t been transferred from the liver to the rest of the body, and was relieved when I saw we had made it just in time.
Now, I know movies always do the “just in time” crap, but I’m telling you that the acid had almost eaten through the bottommost portion of the liver, where it would have either been pumped throughout the body or destroyed the rest of the organ as it tried to filter out the acid. She had been minutes from dying an excruciating death.
As icing on the cake, I sent extra energy into Clara and made sure she felt as right as the rain she reminded me of.<
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She opened her eyes as I lifted my hand from her belly, and we all noticed that my palm was glowing a warm white.
Realizing my mistake, I willed the energy to cease flowing, and my hand dimmed before going out completely while tugging her shirt back in place, her stomach no longer distended.
“Are you an an-gel?” Clara asked, separating the big word into two portions.
I didn’t know what to answer, so I chose to remain silent as I lifted my finger to my lips. “Shhh,” I said with a wink.
Clara giggled and suddenly threw her arms around my neck, which surprised both me and her mother. With my hands frozen in midair, I regained thought and brought them to Clara’s back, wrapping them around her tiny frame in an embrace.
My heart exploded with an outpouring of emotion as I held the child who had been near death. Even so close to her body shutting down, she had been unable to articulate anything more than a tummy ache to the overwhelmed hospital employees.
The mother brought both her quivering hands to her mouth as voluminous tears began to stream down her face, the space between her eyebrows lifting up toward her forehead.
“Thank you,” she mouthed, bringing her hands down, ready to hold her child who was no longer going to die a needless and painful death.
A part of me didn’t want to break the connection, feeling a warmth in my core I didn’t want to lose. After a second, I forced myself to hand Clara over while lifting myself to a standing position.
Being a monster who had murdered countless mortals over the centuries, I had no idea what to say, so I turned and began making my way toward the bank of elevators. My mind reeled with what had just happened.
“Wait!” I heard the mother say.
I froze in place before turning around to see her rush to meet me. Glancing at the waiting room, I saw Clara was already playing with some of the toys the hospital provided, leaving us alone to talk.
“I-I thought you were...him and were going to take my baby away. I...I just didn’t want her to hurt anymore,” she tried to explain. I scrunched my face, not understanding, before it hit me. She’d thought I was Death coming to take her child, and was now trying to justify the fact that she hadn’t fought me by rationalizing.
“But you’re not him, are you?” she asked softly, looking back and forth between eyes the color of sunset. “Who are you?”
“Someone who wants to help,” I answered honestly without telling my mouth to do so.
After her gaze flicked from eye to eye a few more times, she lunged forward and wrapped her arms around me, sobbing uncontrollably with profound relief.
“Thank you. Thank you! Thank you, thank you, thank you!”
I returned the embrace with a gaping mouth, not used to people reacting this way to me. I was John the Vampire after all, a killer (of children) who fed off the blood of (the innocent) mortals.
“Cherish your time with her. Tomorrow is not promised...to any of us.”
She pulled away from me then, her face glistening in the sterile light of the hallway, and nodded quickly a few times.
“Thank you, John,” she said, glancing down at my chest before lifting my arm to kiss the back of my hand and then resting her cheek against my fingers, sighing in relief under the light of a new life with her baby. Then she turned and excitedly made her way back to Clara.
It hit me, then, that she had used my name.
“Huh?” I asked, looking down. John was stenciled on a white plastic name tag. My fingertips grazed across it, feeling the indentation of the letters as I admired my armor’s glamour. Dropping my hand and giving Clara one last look, I resumed walking down the hall to the elevators.
Pushing the up button resulted in the elevator closest to me opening, and I stepped inside. It smelled stagnant and was a tad stuffy, even for me. Bright LEDs illuminated the box, and I looked at myself in the stainless steel panels that acted like a passable mirror. The man staring back at me wasn’t smiling, and I didn’t know why.
My eyes landed on a map near the doors, and I found the correct floor, pressing the corresponding button. There was a pleasant ding as I passed the levels until I came to a stop. Once the doors slid open, I stepped into another bright, white hallway with colored guiding arrows on the wall in front of me. I chose to keep following the blue lines, acknowledging the few employees with a smooth nod as they passed.
It didn’t take long to find the cancer ward. The air felt different here. Stale with the strong aroma of cleaning chemicals. It felt cold, too, but not in regard to the temperature. It was just...cold. It was like watching a documentary on the Artic, where every scene was coated in snow and the narrator constantly reminded the viewers how freezing it was. I always seemed to get chills and feel colder after being immersed in whatever I was watching long enough. This felt the same; a false cold that didn’t stem from the temperature of the air.
I saw the nurses’ station at the center of a big square with rooms lining all around. All but one was occupied, and my heart broke as I began to understand why the one room was empty.
A custodian was wheeling out a large cart with a bedsheet hanging out while a nurse cleared a digital whiteboard hanging on the wall inside. Somber faces told me all I needed to know. Beds usually didn’t free up in a place like this because the patient up and got better all of a sudden.
Maybe I was wrong, though. Maybe the kid had gotten better and the morose expressions of the staff were because their Paid Time Off got cut or something. Maybe I was lying to myself.
It was at that moment I knew, no matter how much these people were paid to watch over sick kids, they didn’t make near what they deserved. To watch a child wither and die while their helpless parents shriveled into hollow husks of themselves took a special kind of person. Hell, I don’t think even I could withstand the heartache of these deaths.
Well, things were about to change.
I looked at the first room that was just to my right and walked in.
An elderly thin Black man was asleep in the uncomfortable baby-blue recliner. His dark gray hair was a perfect balance between the ebony of youth and ivory of old age.
I looked at the unconscious child who was tethered to this world with a violating mass of machines that beeped and whirred in rhythmic succession. The tube going down the boy’s throat creased my face in a deep frown. His lips were chapped with a white film across the surface like a morning frost.
My gaze flicked to the digital whiteboard and saw his name was Simon, and he was dying from the final stages of brain cancer.
The pit of my stomach dropped out as doubt crept into my mind, kissing the back of my neck and making my hairs stand on end. Ludvig, the experienced paladin, couldn’t fully heal Hayley because of how intricate the human brain was. One slight mishap could cause catastrophic damage.
“What is it, Doc?” the smooth voice of the man asked as he stirred in his chair, fully awake after seeing a doctor staring with such concern at his flesh and blood.
Clearing my throat, I half pointed a finger at Simon and said, “I...I don’t know if I can fix his brain. I was prepared for anything, but didn’t expect this.”
“You gotta try, Doc,” the man urged. “He’s my grandson and all I got left in this world.”
“Where are his parents?” I asked, knowing it wasn’t my place but unable to help myself.
“When the bills started rollin’ in, my daughter and her husband took on second and even third jobs to help pay the hospital. They worked and worked to try and cover the bare minimum payments. Even I got my old job back at the refinery down near the gulf. They couldn’t pay me much, but anythin’ helped.”
I just stared at the man whose gaze had drifted to the boy being kept between life and death by machines, a lump forming in my throat as to where the conversation was heading.
“What...what happened to them?”
His jaundiced eyes turned to stare into my very soul as his brow wrinkled further and his bottom lip quivered while he
said, “They got in a accident on the way up here one day. Both of them had worked more than twenty-fo hours straight, but wanted to see their baby.” A single tear rolled down his cheek for his lost daughter and son-in-law.
His eyes landed back on his grandson and his emotions steadied with the determination to see what was left of his family survive.
My own eyes followed his to land on Simon, who had a white hospital gown on with blue splotches spaced evenly. I stepped forward, willing myself to his bedside, and saw they weren’t splotches but tiny dinosaurs with big cartoon smiles on their faces. The lump in my throat expanded as the thin cloth that covered this child personified the very innocence held underneath.
“How much...” I started to ask the man, but was all of a sudden unsure whether to finish with did they owe or do you owe.
“I don’t even know no’more. The lady that walks ‘round for payment only stops at the door for a moment when she does her rounds...after...” His lip quivered again and he lost the battle of composure, bringing a fist up to his mouth to try and control the bubbling, helpless sorrow that was attempting to escape. “She can’t even look at me for more than a second. I-I think she blames herself for what happened.”
A fault line in my heart cracked, feeling all the pain of this unjust world emanating from such a small room.
“If there’s anything you can do, Doc, you gotta try. They told me he duddn’t have much time lef’. I-I don’t wanna say goodbye. Not to him. It’s not right.”
My eyes locked with his, and I could feel him pleading. The weight of what he was asking must have shown on my face because he slowly nodded his head before looking back at his grandson.
“I’ll see what I can do,” I said as I stepped to the side of the bed and placed a hand on Simon’s head. He was cool to the touch, and it concerned me.
