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Our Paranormal Chernobyl The difference between good luck and bad is as thin as the blade of a knife. Take the case of Acting Silver Avenger Laura Pender: Ed’s telekinetic knives had entered her back at the right shoulder blade, shattering the scapula. Unlike steel knives, which might have blunted against the bone and deflected upward into the less vital muscles, the coppery shards penetrated in a straight line. They sliced through the protective muscle around her lungs and sheared off the right superior lobe, instantly collapsing the lung. The knives shot through the Pectoralis minor, disconnecting much of the muscle the kept her right arm attached to the torso, and exited above her right breast, between the second and third ribs. A few millimeters higher, and the blades would have cut the thick brachiocephalic vein that runs like the Alaskan pipeline from the heart to the wrist of the right arm, and she would have died of internal bleeding within a minute. Or, if Ed had aimed for the left side of her body, he would have sliced through the pulmonary artery (think Mississippi River to the Brachiocephalic’s pipeline) and she would have bled out in seconds. As it was, from the moment she fell face-forward onto the deck and Ed fell ass-backward out of the sphere, she had almost four (count ‘em, four) consciousness-free, devil-may-care minutes to live out before she would suffocate on her own blood. Some people are just lucky. Harris DuFord, only three inches tall and effectively stranded in his elevated pilot’s chair, had been nearly helpless. He could not move Pender, could not press bandages against her wounds, and could not even check if she was breathing. He could only drive, pushing the sphere as fast as possible over the city, and work the radio, and watch her blood spread across the gleaming deck of his ship. After broadcasting to Maggie and PRIMUS, DuFord tuned to the frequency used by the city’s fire and ambulance crews, and began hailing Cook County General, directing them to get an emergency crew to the helipad on the roof and wait for a fifty-foot white sphere. He was afraid that they would think it was a prank call. Yesterday, they might have thought just that. But this morning the hospital staff had already admitted to the morgue a dead dragon and a score of other deceased metahumans; that afternoon they’d withstood a forced MRI by a masked madman; and not an hour before Q-Ball’s call they’d patched up an unconscious costumed archer. They were ready to believe anything. He reached the hospital in three minutes and ten seconds, and nearly wept when he saw the three paramedics waiting on the roof. He extended the ramp and the trio scrambled aboard. Pender was still unconscious. Though the speakers, DuFord told the medical team how she had been wounded, without naming Ed explicitly. The team, two men and a woman, looked around for the owner of the electronic voice, but DuFord deliberately ducked down behind his navigation equipment. He told himself that he just didn’t want them to waste any time playing "Look at the Ti-D-Bowl Man." He told himself that if he had to reveal his secret identity to save Pender’s life, that he would not hesitate. He was sure. Almost positively sure. By the time they reached the ER the team had stopped Pender’s bleeding, vented her with a breathing tube, and hooked her to an IV. She regained consciousness as they moved her to a bed. The pain woke her. She opened her eyes to the bright lights and the masked figures around her bed, so familiar from the last time she’d lain down in an ER, and thought that she’d been shot again. But she was not the center of attention, she noted with some annoyance. Besides the nurse holding her wrist and talking to her, the staff were focused on the next bed over. What the hell could be more interesting than her own gunshot wound? The plastic breathing mask and the array of tubes restricted her movement, but she managed to turn her head far enough to see the next bed. The curtain had been pulled back. Doctors and nurses were crowded around the bed, blocking her view of the patient. She was surprised to see a white PRIMUS uniform in the mix, his back to her. Who was that, Mehldau? Why was he here? She tried to organize her memories. She remembered being in the big sphere, yelling to get DuFord to land the thing… and then nothing. Mehldau couldn’t have been there—he’d already gone into the ambulance with the woman they’d found in the pool of blood. Oh. The one with her tongue cut out. The one who was pregnant. "We’ve got crowning," one of the staff said. Pender couldn’t tell if it was a doctor or a nurse. "Okay," said another. "We’re going to do this right here. Bring the post-natal box in." A controlled flurry of activity as the staff moved to new business. Two green-clad staffers left the room in a rush. "Ma’am? You’re going to feel the need to push, but I need you to hold off until I tell you to. Do you understand? Just nod if you understand." Pender had never witnessed a birth. Her sister had once asked Laura to be her birth coach, but then the agency got a call on a Roswell sighting in Louisiana—a guy who glowed yellow and couldn’t be hurt, wouldn’t that be nice right now—and Laura had to go. Her sister did fine, and her niece Samantha came out healthy and pink, just the way babies were supposed to. After all, kids were born all the time. How hard could it be? The woman moaned, the same hollow sound Pender had heard in the schoolhouse. "Don’t push!" the doctor called. "Don’t push! Okay, I need—thank you. All right, ma’am, I’m going to count to three and then you can bear down. One, two—" "Stop the car!" The limousine driver glanced over his shoulder at his passengers—an old man in a gray suit, a young guy in a black suit, a severe looking woman in blue, and next to the woman, an old chubby guy with duct tape over his mouth and wrapped around his wrists. The driver was paid an inordinate amount of money to ask no questions obey directions. He began to slow the car, looking for a spot on the shoulder to stop. The young man, Mr. Woodbridge, spoke next. "What is it, Purity?" "We’ve got to turn around. We’ve got to go back to the hospital." Woodbridge regarded her, eyes expectant. "Yes?" "Yes. He is born." A nurse stepped aside, and Pender could see the child. The doctor, squatting down, held the mucous-covered infant, the umbilical cord still attached, as a nurse suctioned its mouth and nostrils. It began to squall, and the doctor chuckled. "It’s a boy. He looks healthy and mad." He deftly clamped the cord and cut it. Then he lifted the child up to where the mother could see him. This infant, Pender realized, was a meta. She knew it beyond a shadow of a doubt. Laura had always had the knack for picking out metas. She could shake hands with someone who looked as harmless as an accountant and know. But she’d always needed that touch to know for sure. Now, across a room, she felt that same electric surety she’d felt when she shook the hand of Van Varret, the N’awlins hick who couldn’t be harmed. The woman, the new mother, held out her arms. In the lights of the ER, the woman was both younger and more haggard than she had appeared in the darkened school room: a once-attractive face lined by fatigue and malnutrition. The doctor hesitated for a moment, then set the child against her chest. "Just for a moment," he said. "We need to do the APGAR and some other tests…" The woman, eyes closed, kissed the baby’s head, then sighed as if in relief. Something seemed to relax in her face. Then she seemed to sense Laura’s gaze, and turned her head. Her eyes had a strength they’d been missing a moment ago. The infant, lying on its belly against her breast, regarded Pender with wide, calm eyes. Agent Mehldau noticed Laura for the first time. "SA Pender! My God! What are you—what happened?" "Her—" the woman said. Her eyes gleamed with unshed tears." He hur -t her." The "T," which requires a tongue to tap against the alveolar ridge, was almost non-existent. Almost. The woman sat up in bed, holding the child to her chest, and swung her legs over the side. "Wait a second—" the doctor began. A nurse said, "Sit down, honey! You don’t want to—" The woman stood up. Her hospital gown was lopsided, hitched up on one side by some monitoring device wired to her leg. Pender, though she had never seen a birth before, was pretty sure that the mothers didn’t usually hop right off the table. The nurse reached the woman’s side and tried to take her arm. The woman shrugged her off. "Please," she said. The "L" was very soft, but the force in her voice was unmistakable. The nurse glanced at the doctor, then dropped her arm. The nurse’s eyes stayed on the baby, ready to catch it if it fell. The woman walked the four feet to Pender’s bed, the nurse and Mehldau on either side. Then she bent at the waist and offered the baby to Laura. "Hol’ him," she said. The "L" seemed stronger. Laura had no choice. She could not move her right arm, and her left was strapped down by IV tubes. The woman set the baby on the bed, its head propped in the crook of Laura’s arm. Pender could feel nothing, so evidently the pain meds were charging full force through her bloodstream. Laura looked down at the thing. It was still unwashed, a thin film of blood and mucous covering its head and arms. The umbilical cord jutted from its belly like a thick yellow sausage link. Laura should have been disgusted. But instead she could only see how beautiful the child was. How beautiful he was. The woman lifted the plastic mask from Laura’s face. Laura bent her head close, and inhaled. His scent was complex, but complete in itself, and right. "-iss him," the woman said. And Pender did. She kissed him, tasting him on her lips. She closed her eyes, and sighed with something like relief. |