Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
DARBY
She sat up slowly and wrapped her fingers around the warm ceramic, bringing the drink up to her face and inhaling the delicious scent of chocolate and coffee. “He’s alive.” She took a sip, imagining the energy from the caffeine funneling through her body like a runner on a race track.
Her friend rested his palms on the counter and leaned forward. “For how long?”
“Ideally, a few decades.” Darby couldn’t help the smile that formed on her lips—the same expression that had captured her face when she stepped back from the makeshift operating table on her workbench and realized that her crazy idea had worked.
“You did it?”
“I did it.” She took another long sip. “He’s stable and sleeping right now, and hopefully will stay that way for the rest of the day. Even with the amount of healing I was able to do with magic, his body still has a long way to go.”
Henry raised a brow. “You mean you couldn’t bring him back from the dead in one day? I’m shocked.”
She made a face at him. “Stop it. Besides, he wasn’t dead.”
“Mostly dead.”
“Which is still a little bit alive.”
He shook his head slowly in admiration. “You’re amazing, you know that? But don’t forget that you’ll also find yourself mostly dead if you keep pushing yourself like this. When was the last time you slept?”
Darby waved his concerns away with her half-empty mug. “I’ll be fine. I have some of your special magic to keep me going. I knew renting a room above a coffeehouse was the best decision I would ever make.”
“Darby.” The edge of warning in his tone caused her to sober as well.
“I’m joking—kind of. But I promise that I will get some real sleep after my next shift is over.
” She looked up at the clock and stood. “Which reminds me that I need to change before I go. Would you be willing to check in on Captain Monstrego every once in a while? Just to make sure he’s still breathing and that Raven hasn’t gotten in the window.
I’m not sure what he’s going to do when he sees all the shiny screws. ”
“You’re still going to work?” His forehead creased in concern. “Surely Fransten will understand if you need to take a day. You’ve just worked a medical miracle.”
“That he doesn’t know about,” she reminded him.
“Besides, I’m feeling better already. I might as well make use of this energy while I have it.
” She set down her empty mug and placed a hand on one of his forearms, giving it a reassuring squeeze.
“I’ll be alright, Henry. Send a message if something happens with the captain? ”
Henry was quiet for a moment, his lips pressed together in a thin line. Finally, he nodded. “I’ll look in on him.”
“You’re the best!” Darby leaned across the counter and planted a kiss on Henry’s cheek, grinning as he shoved her away.
“That’s enough of that. Go on, get out of here. But if you don’t come back here and sleep as soon as your shift is over, I really am going to put a sleeping tonic in your next drink.”
“What do you mean, he’s dead?” Darby gripped the file in her hand as her head spun, leaving her feeling suddenly breathless and dizzy. “When I left two days ago he was expected to make a full recovery.”
Merry, propped against the thin pillow at the head of his cot, shrugged. “The nurses won’t tell us much more than that. Apparently he had some sort of emergency in the middle of the night and had to be rushed into surgery, but it was too late. His bed was empty when we woke up.”
Darby’s eyes welled with tears at the thought of the young soldier, William, that she had stitched up just a few days before. Her emotions were amplified by her exhaustion, she knew, but losing a patient was always hard. “Surgery? But why wouldn’t Dr. Fransten call me in?”
“As if he needed you to perform a procedure that he’s likely done a hundred times before in his career.” Lacey’s voice grated on Darby’s nerves, and her tears immediately evaporated. “If it were an emergency, why would he waste the time to summon you?”
Lacey pushed past her, with perfect blonde curls bouncing every step and leaving behind the scent of lavender and vanilla.
She set down a canvas roll of tools on the table beside Merry’s cot and unrolled it, taking her time in searching out a long-handled magnifying glass.
Darby was momentarily distracted by the amusement in watching Merry’s face turn a bright shade of red as he regarded Lacey with a dazed, awestruck expression.
Lacey turned to him, tilting his head to the side.
“Look up,” she commanded briskly before putting the glass to her eye.
“Besides,” she continued, directing her comment to Darby without pausing her examination, “if you had been here yesterday like the rest of us, Dr. Fransten wouldn’t have needed to call you in the first place. ”
“I was at home. Dr. Fransten gave me the day off.” Guilt gnawed at her insides.
If I had been here, maybe William wouldn’t have died. But then again, if I had been here, Captain Monstrego certainly would have. Is it always going to come to this, having to choose between one life or another?
“Hello? Are you even listening, Shelton?” Lacey’s tone dripped with annoyance.
Darby shook her head, desperate to clear the melancholy thoughts. “I’m sorry; my mind was drifting. What did you say?”
The pretty optometrist wrinkled her nose in distaste. “I was just commenting that it must be nice to be so superfluous as to be able to take a whole day of personal time right in the thick of an emergency.”
Darby regretted asking. “He told me to leave. We performed nearly twice the amount of surgeries that day than we do in a week.”
“And yet he was still here yesterday.” Lacey shrugged pointedly as she replaced her tool.
She rolled up the canvas. “Your eyes look just fine,” she said to Merry.
“There is some minor irritation, but that’s likely just caused by the amount of dust and debris that were in the air. You’ll be fine in a day or two.”
The young soldier looked a little crestfallen. “Are you sure?”
“Absolutely. But if there is any concern, let me know.” Lacey slipped past Darby, throwing a pointed look over her shoulder as she left the room. “I’ll be around. Some of us actually take our positions seriously.”
Merry’s eyes were glued to the door for a few moments after she was gone. “Why don’t you like Dr. LeBlanc?”
“What do you mean?” Darby took Lacey’s position on the side of his bed and began removing the bandages from his shoulder.
“You looked like you swallowed something sour the moment she entered the room. But she’s not sour; she’s as sweet as candy.” He let out a dreamy sigh.
Darby chuckled. “And I would bet that the only problem with your eyes is that they wanted to look at her again.”
“N-no! They really were bothering me.” His face was once more a shade of crimson.
She paused her work, raising an eyebrow.
“I mean it!”
“Mmhm.”
“So why don’t you like her?”
“I don’t dislike her. Dr. LeBlanc is extremely talented and very good at what she does.”
She’s just holding a grudge because what she’s doing is not with Dr. Fransten.
“But?”
“But nothing. I shouldn’t even be talking about this with you; it’s very unprofessional.” She pulled off the last bit of bandage, revealing a tight, even row of stitches. She gently touched the area around it, feeling for swelling or lumps. “Any pain?”
“Not more than usual.” Merry studied the wound in fascination. “I look like one of my mother’s sewing projects. Are those going to be there forever?”
“No, but it will be a few weeks until we can take them out. In the meantime, try to limit use of this arm as much as possible.” She pulled a small jar of medicine from her coat pocket and spread a layer over the stitches before replacing the bandages.
“You have magic. Why can’t you just heal me? Didn’t you use it before?”
The very thought of reaching for magic at the moment made her head pound. “I do, but it’s a limited resource.”
His face scrunched in confusion. “What do you mean? They taught us in school that magic was energy. It’s just…there. Like the air or the dirt.”
“It’s a little more complicated than that, but yes.
” Darby tied off the end of the bandage and helped him pull his shirt back over his shoulder.
“But accessing and using magic requires energy, too—kind of like the way you need to use muscles to breathe or to lift something heavy. My magic ‘muscles’ can only do so much before they need to take a break and replenish their energy.”
Merry nodded slowly. “But that also means they can get stronger, right? The more you use your muscles, the stronger they’ll get.”
“To a point, yes. Just like with muscle strength, everyone has natural limits. I might be able to heal a cut or a bruise easily, but the kind of injury that would require a body weeks to heal on its own would deplete me much faster. It’s much more efficient to use magic in an emergency to keep someone alive until their body can start the healing process on its own, and I can help more people that way. ”
“I see.” He stared distractedly into the distance before giving his head a small shake. “One last question.”
She poked his side playfully. “You have a lot of questions.”
He twisted the sheet nervously in his hands. “Captain Monstrego. Did he…?” His voice wavered. “I know he was in pretty bad shape, and I haven’t seen him since.”
Darby hesitated, searching for the right words to say.
“He’s gone, isn’t he?” Merry’s face crumpled with grief.
“He’s…not here.”
“So he’s dead?”
What do I say? I don’t want to lie to him, but I also can’t just go around announcing to the world what actually happened.
“He’s not here,” she repeated slowly.
Dr. Fransten’s voice suddenly interrupted from behind, causing her to jump. “Shelton—my office.”
She gave Merry a sympathetic smile as she jumped up. “It’s going to be alright. I promise.”
Darby followed Dr. Fransten’s retreating form to the large, well-furnished office across from her own. It was impeccably neat and organized, from the straight, even rows of books arranged by height on the shelves to the perfectly balanced display of furniture.
“Your working space is a reflection of your mind,” the doctor had told her the first day of her internship. “Both must be well-maintained and in order.”
“Shut the door, please.” Dr. Fransten took a seat behind his wide, polished desk. He gestured to the consult chairs in front of him. “Sit.”
A tingling sense of worry began creeping up the sides of her neck as she sat. “Is something wrong, Doctor?”
Dr. Fransten steepled his long fingers in front of him. He looked at her for a long moment. “I noticed this morning a slight discrepancy in some of the reports from the last few days.”
She tensed. “I’m so sorry, Dr. Fransten. I’ll get to work—”
He held up a hand to silence her, then pulled two pieces of paper from his desk.
He slid one towards her. “This is a list of every patient that was admitted over the last three days. You’ll note a mark here that indicates that the patient is deceased.
And this.” He placed the second paper beside the first. “This column is the report from the undertaker documenting the corpses that were picked up for transport, and here is the number of occupied cots here in the hospital. You’ll notice the numbers do not quite align. ”
Darby felt the blood in her veins slowly turning to ice.
“Normally such a small discrepancy would not be worthy of notice, especially given the nature of our sudden influx of patients. But the name of the missing patient happened to catch my attention.”
She swallowed nervously. Dr. Fransten stared at her, his eyes seeming to bore into her very soul.
“Shelton, what happened to Captain Monstrego?”