Burden of Solace Read online

  “I am not the killer you seek, Inspector. Perhaps, when you come to realize that, I can help you find him.”

  CHAPTER 11

  “Dr. Whelan?”

  Cassie looked up, startled from her thoughts. She had no idea how long the pen in her hand had hovered over the patient chart she held, nor when the fresh-faced nursing student had begun trying to get her attention. She’d been like this all day, unable to stop thinking about the incident last night.

  “Are you finished with that chart?” the young woman asked. “I can file it away for you, or I can come back later.”

  The student was a shy, clumsy blonde who had earned the nickname ‘Squeak’ on her first day. One of the doctors had asked her name and all the poor girl could manage was a high-pitched sound. Cassie was more than mildly annoyed by the sophomoric hazing that followed. She’d suffered enough of that herself before she learned to stand up for herself. She let it be known that if she heard anyone use that kind of sobriquet then they would find themselves on the receiving end of a harassment complaint.

  Cassie scrawled a note and handed the clipboard over, smiling. “Sorry. Yes, thank you Laurie. That would be great. Filing it, I mean.”

  The girl started to turn away, then abruptly turned back, startling Cassie once more.

  “Thank you. You’re the only one of the doctors that ever says ‘please’ or ‘thank you.’ It means a lot.”

  A flash of shy smile and she scurried off with her arms full of charts. Cassie got the distinct impression that this introverted young woman was finally feeling her worth. A few weeks ago, that load of charts would have ended up scattered all up and down the hallway. Now, she exuded a new-found sense of certainty. Cassie made a mental note to speak with the head training nurse about ways to continue building confidence in this one.

  She reached up to remove her reading glasses before realizing they were still in her coat pocket. She puzzled over that a second. In her distracted state, she hadn’t even noticed that she was able to see the chart clearly - without the corrective lenses she had needed since she was a teen. She held up her hand and focused on it, moving it closer and until it almost touched her nose. She looked up and out a nearby window and saw a pigeon waddling down the sidewalk over a block away. She was no optometrist, but it appeared she now had better than 20:20 vision.

  It was another in a series of bizarre discoveries Cassie had made since last night. A tiny discolored scar on her left buttock - a grammar school war wound from Betsy Sheppard stabbing her with an insanely sharp #2 pencil - was gone. The network of tiny lines and dots on her hands and arms from Scratch’s not-so-tender affections were also erased. Most infuriating of all, her ears were no longer pierced. Both earlobes were smooth and unperforated. She was ashamed of the little hissy fit she’d had in front of her mirror, stamping her feet like a little girl when she discovered that little detail, but this was all so crazy-making.

  One mystery had been solved when she came into work this morning. Overnight, another one of those crazed lunatics had been admitted. To Cassie’s relief, it was the same wild-eyed woman who had attacked her last night. From the look of her, sometime after the attack this nutcase had tried to set herself on fire. She was singed and incoherent but gave no indication that she recognized Cassie. At least the specter of murder, even in self-defense, no longer hung over her.

  Simone, one of the triage nurses, interrupted her thoughts by slapping two files on the counter. “I’ve got a little boy with a broken arm in Exam Three or a woman with the sniffles she thinks is Ebola in Five. Your choice.”

  “I’ll take the kid. But if Typhoid Mary gets too bitchy, come get me. I haven’t kicked anybody in the ass all day.”

  *

  “Good morning, Mrs. Childers. I’m Dr. Whelan. I’ll be handling your son’s treatment.”

  The X-rays showed a break worse than expected, multiple jagged fragments and severe dislocation of the bones at the elbow. It was going to take surgery and some steel pins to put this little guy back together again. The kid was trying hard to be brave, but Cassie could feel the fear in him. He was trying to act tough - that over-the-top braggadocio that little boys thought made them big boys - but he had seen the unnatural angle of his arm, heard the sound and felt the pain. Now he was surrounded by serious medical people with serious medical faces. He may not know the exact score, but it was clear to him that he wasn’t winning.

  His mother also knew things looked bad, but she wasn’t handling it as well as her son. Her baby was hurting, and she wanted somebody, anybody, to make it go away. She was a raw, histrionic nerve, and a serious problem for the nurses and techs trying to work on her son.

  “What happened to that doctor, Willis or whatever? You can’t just keep passing my boy around like a hot potato. Now they send in some little white girl what ain’t even old enough to be a real doctor? This ain’t right.”

  “Ms. Childers, I assure you - I am a doctor. And I specifically asked for your son’s case. I promise you, I’m not going to hand him off to anyone else.”

  Mom wasn’t buying that. She looked Cassie up and down and then got right up in her face.

  “Skinny little thing like you? Uh-uh. I wanna talk to whoever’s in charge here. This is discrimination.”

  I should have picked the soccer mom, Cassie thought. She understood this woman’s fear and maternal instincts, but sometimes you had to sedate a momma bear in order to help her cub.

  “Let’s step out into the hall, shall we? Jamal, you sit tight. We’re gonna get you fixed up, kiddo.”

  As soon as they were outside the door, Cassie rounded on the woman. In that moment, it didn’t matter that the mom outweighed her by a factor of two, nor that Cassie needed to look up to lock eyes with her. Momma bear had awoken a dragon.

  “Mrs. Childers, your son has a serious break and from what I can tell so far it will probably require surgery. Now, I can go get Dr. Wills to come down here and explain to you that he’s not experienced in this kind of surgery. He can drop whatever he’s doing, stop helping whoever he’s helping right now, and come tell you exactly that because it’s the truth. You know what else is true? All I have to do is say the word and a security guard will come escort you someplace else, someplace away from your son. Now, I’m going to give you two choices. Number one, we can step back in there with big smiles on our faces and tell your son that we’re both totally focused on making him better as fast as we can. Or, number two, I can go back in there and tell him that I’m going to fix him up and his mother will see him after he gets out of surgery because at the moment she’s being detained and possibly even questioned by DFACS about how he got hurt in the first place.”

  Cassie paused to let that implied threat sink in.

  “Now, I know you’re worried and afraid, but so is he and he’s just a kid. He’s my patient, not you, so you need to do what’s right for your son, and that is not putting on a show like this is Real Housewives of Atlanta. Are we clear?”

  Momma Childers looked surprised to find herself pressed against the wall. She probably had no memory of inching backwards as Cassie emptied the clip on her. Cassie could feel her cowering before the tiny alpha female she had underestimated.

  “Yes. I’m sorry. Just... Please help my baby. He’s hurtin’ bad.”

  Cassie gave her a soft smile and a firmer squeeze on the shoulder.

  “That’s what I do. But right now, he needs his momma to tell him it’s going to be okay. He needs to see you being calm, so he can be calm. Can you do that for him?”

  The big woman swallowed hard, then nodded. Cassie locked eyes with her, waiting for her emotions to settle before ushering her back into the examining room.

  Jamal looked up as the two re-entered the room.

  “Everything okay, momma?”

  The mother came up to the head of the exam bed and gave his good hand a squeeze.

  “It’s all good. This is the doctor for you, I’m sure. She’s gonna take good care of you.�
�

  Cassie approached his injured side and began unwrapping his hand to make sure it was getting good blood flow. His fingertips had a definite purple tinge, which worried her.

  “Your mom wanted to make sure you got the absolute best, so I had to let her in on my secret.”

  Jamal looked dubious. He might be a kid, but he wasn’t gullible. “What secret?”

  Cassie leaned in close, next to his ear.

  “That this is just my secret identity. I’m really an exohuman. And my power is fixing broken bones.”

  “Nuh uh.”

  Cassie’s finger traced an X across her chest. “Cross my heart.”

  “How come I never heard of no bone-fixin’ exo?”

  “Duh. What part of ‘secret’ don’t you get?”

  She turned to Simone, who was wheeling in the pre-op cart to get him ready for surgery. Laurie, the little blonde nursing student followed her in. She spoke to the nurses in hushed tones.

  “I don’t like the circulation in his hand. We may have a compressed artery. I want to get him under and on the table, stat.”

  Simone immediately prepared an injection to relax their patient so they could work more efficiently. Cassie turned to the mother, hoping this wasn’t going to start another dispute.

  “Ms. Childers, I’m going to get him into surgery right now. We need you to sign some consent forms. Laurie, can you take her to get those, please? And please tell Tina to page Dr. Zacharias. Jamal, we’re going to give you a shot to help with the pain and then you’ll take a little nap. When you wake up, your mom will be there, and you’ll have a cool cast on your arm.”

  The blonde opened the door as the mother gave Jamal a big wet kiss, which he didn’t wipe away. “I’ll be right here when you wake up, little big man. Don’t you worry about a thing.”

  Then Cassie felt a wave of fear wash over her, which made no sense. This wouldn’t be her first orthopedic surgery, not even her first on a child. She had total confidence in her abilities, so why was she feeling this rising panic. It made sense that Jamal would be afraid, he was the one going under her knife. She could see that fear building in his face and his body language. It was like she was picking up on his emotions as if the feelings were her own. She pushed away the baseless anxiety and focused on calming her patient.

  “Hey, these casts come in colors, you know. You have a preference? Hot pink, maybe?”

  The boy took the bait. “No! Not pink. That’ll get me all kinds of trouble at school.”

  “Well, what would you like then? How about black, like a ninja?”

  Jamal was starting to feel the prep injection and his eyes drooped. His words were a little slurred. It was so strange, but Cassie thought she could actually feel him chilling out. With him partially sedated, it was safe for her to cut away the temporary bandages that immobilized his arm.

  “How’s ‘bout gray?” Jamar mumbled. “Like the Guardian. Know who I mean?”

  “175? Sure do. He and I are friends. I talked to him just yesterday.”

  The boy laughed. “You a lie.”

  “Nope. I’ve even got his phone number.”

  “Bullshit,” the boy declared, except it came out sounding like ‘booshish’.

  Cassie bit her lip as she surveyed the child’s forearm. It looked bad. There was definitely a major circulatory problem. If they didn’t act fast, Jamal could easily lose the hand and possibly some of the forearm.

  “Simone, go get that room ready - like now. We’ve got to move fast. I’ll see if I can manipulate the bone and get some blood flowing again.”

  “On it.” The nurse was out the door, yelling orders as she went.

  Cassie started gently pressing various spots around the misshapen elbow. She glanced over at the X-rays hanging in the lighted boxes on the wall, but they didn’t show her what she needed to know - the angles were all wrong. She stared at the joint, calling on the encyclopedic memory of human anatomy that medical school had drilled into her. In her mind, she overlaid the bone structure and artery patterns on what she was seeing, trying to visualize where the problem might be.

  The images sprang into her mind, vivid and detailed. It was as if the arm had been cut open and she had it spread out to examine. Except nothing had been moved out of place, she realized. She was seeing all of this as it actually was, like some kind of live 3D color X-ray. There were at least three jagged bone fragments, some of them almost sideways to their proper alignment. The kid was a mess. Even if she could save the hand, he’d likely never have full range of motion in that arm. Again, she was amazed by the detail of her visualization.

  How weird. I’ve never done this before.

  She closed her eyes and concentrated on what her mind was showing her. A part of her, the analytical part, tried to make sense of it all. Her intuitive side disregarded the ‘how’ and ‘why’ and forged ahead.

  She needed to find whatever was interrupting the flow of blood. She traced the collapsed vessels up from his hand until she found it. One of the fragments was pressing a knife-like edge against the brachial artery, a bit above where it divided to follow the two bones of the lower arm. The bone wasn’t only pressing against the artery; it had sliced into it. The only thing that had kept it from erupting into a geyser was that same piece of bone. If she moved the broken bit, she’d have to move quickly to seal the opening before the bleeding reached a critical level.

  She visualized the procedure: Clamp the artery, move the bone, stitch the tear. She moved the fragment in her imagination and held it away from the artery. Blood flowed, but she thought of a clamp stopping the flow as a needle pierced the arterial walls, pulling fine thread behind to bridge the gap. The needle and thread glowed green in her mind, rapidly sewing up the opening and pulling it closed. With a thought, she imagined the joined edges of the smooth muscle structure healing. She saw them fuse together in a flash of accelerated healing, green and vital like life itself. Next, she moved the fragments of bone, twisting and reassembling the pieces like a broken tea cup. Once again, the broken parts fused together with a green glow until the boy’s elbow was once again whole and healthy.

  Her eyes opened and she sighed. If only it were that easy. Then she noticed the color returning to his hand. She felt his wrist for a pulse. It was strong and steady. She looked at the elbow, where a confused and unnatural bend had been a mere moment ago. It looked normal, unblemished and unbroken.

  “What the actual fuck is going on?”

  CHAPTER 12

  “Then your Granny, she punches the bast’rd right in the kisser. Heh! That was a sight to see.”

  Cassie stared into the untouched whiskey in her cup as she let Riley’s words wash over her. A thrill ran through her as she contemplated what she was about to do, the wish she was about to fulfill. She looked up, into his animated eyes and smile as he spun on into another of his yarns.

  She was still learning to control her strange new powers. After the miracle with the boy, she’d been able to convince everyone in the ER that she’d manually shifted the bones back into position to restore circulation again. Afterwards, she’d quietly experimented with her new abilities, her ‘x-ray vision’ and ‘healing touch’ as she’d come to think of them. She’d found that she could zoom in, all the way to the cellular level, and anything that wasn’t right, wasn’t natural, jumped out to her immediately. Angry red where bleeding lay hidden inside, ochre yellow in tissues starved of oxygen, silvery-blackness where toxins crept.

  And she could fix them, like she did with the boy, simply by thinking. She only needed to visualize ripped flesh rejoining, knitting itself whole again, and it happened. Bones fused, nerves rejoined, and blood vessels sealed, all within the space of an instant. The most astounding part was the revitalizing energy, green and alive, that flowed from her touch into her patients. She could feel it replenishing and fortifying them, without taking anything from her. She had no idea where that restorative energy came from; she was merely its conduit.

  So f
ar, she hadn’t told anyone about what had happened, and she’d been careful to only use her power on unconscious patients, when no one else was around to see. That was about to change. She could tell her grandfather was about to segue into another story when she interrupted him.

  “GranDa, I need to speak with ya. Something’s happened to me. Something strange.”

  He stopped, his smile fading into worry only to be quickly reversed again. He reached out and took her hand, blindly reassuring without any basis for doing so. He was an eternal optimist, always seeing the silver lining before he even noticed the cloud.

  “A boy, is it?”

  She laughed and shook her head. Even in his twilight, he hadn’t given up hope of her finding that one person who would fill her life the way Granny had for him. News of even the possibility of a great-grandchild would send him happily into the heaven that awaited.

  “No, it’s just me. I... Something has happened to me and I’ve changed. I can see things that others can’t. I can heal people.”

  “Child, you’ve always had the healer’s touch. Your name is rich with the tradition. The Cassidy clans of old served many a northern chieftain as physicians. It’s one of the reasons I wanted your parents to give you the name.”

  “This is different. It’s not my training or talent. This is like... exohuman stuff.”

  That got a reaction from him. Riley Whelan was no fan of exos. His less than glowing opinion of the “showoffs in gray” had played a part in Cassie’s similar feelings. At least it had until she met Guardian 175.

  “So, you’re to be a Guardian now? Flyin’ around, dressed up in tight gray long johns?”

  “No. I mean, I don’t know. Definitely not the outfit. This is all so new to me, confusing. But the ability is the thing. If I have the power to help people, don’t I have an obligation to use it?”

  He took a moment to mull that over.