29. Clark #2
Handing him the glass, I pointed at the fridge with my other hand and said, “Thanks for that. I was dreading going to the superstore tomorrow morning. Did someone magic up my fridge, too?” Robert, who was still chugging away, nodded in an affirmative motion.
“We weren’t sure which apartment you both would be in, so we had them both cleaned and prepped for your return.”
There was just one thing still terribly wrong.
“Where is Becky? Is she really on a cheese farm? Because that sounds like the type of excuse parents use to tell their kids their dog is dead without coming right out and saying it.”
Robert rolled his eyes. “Would I lie to you?”
“Yes,” I shot back, absolutely certain he would.
“Well, you are going to be my new boss as of the will reading, so as I said before, my loyalties are with you, and with Olly, now, because she is so important to you. No lies.”
“Okay...Robert. And you might as well call me Clark. Mr. Evans reminds me too much of my grandfather.”
“He loved you, you know, Clark. He had odd ways of showing it, I will admit, but he did really love you. As much as he was capable of, anyway.”
The emergency room at night was insanity.
Too many people, and the only chairs unoccupied had cloth covering them.
Cloth! Great for soaking up rainwater and blood and any other bodily fluid.
No way was my Olly and our—I mean, of course, their—baby getting anywhere near those seats.
Olly had been sleepy at home but was now approaching system failure in that they was about to fall asleep standing next to me, so I decided to dabble a little on the dark side with my new abilities and see if we could get through triage faster.
I mean, even Obi-Wan Kenobi used his powers to do something similar, right?
Okay, so maybe not quite similar, but Olly was going pale, and I wasn’t going to stand for it if there was anything I could do to help them.
I approached the female triage nurse and asked, politely and calm, “Excuse me, Nurse? What kind of wait time is my partner looking at? She hasn’t been able to sleep in a long time, and she’s eight months pregnant.
She can’t stand against a wall all night.
And yes, I see that there are two chairs free, but they are cloth seats and are perfect petri dishes. ”
“Sir, she can sit or not sit, that’s not my problem.
What is, is squeezing as many patients as possible through this place while it is at capacity and emergencies keep arriving by ambulance.
There’s a rock concert on Citadel Hill, of course we’re overrun.
Please, go back to your partner and pay attention to how she’s doing, give her someone to lean on, literally, and if anything about her condition changes, bring her back up here.
Next!” She made a swooshing motion with her hand to direct me away, and then waved up the person standing beside Olly.
Nope, this pedestrian method of doing things wasn’t going to work. Time to be a Jedi...sort of.
“Excuse me, Nurse,” I said, approaching the counter’s plexiglass bubble once more and pissing off the person behind me.
I had no idea how to compel someone, but I started talking like the hypnotist I had seen years ago on campus and decided that would have to be good enough.
I reached out and touched her mind, and the biggest things that I was struck with were frustration and exhaustion.
Okay, I could work with that. I focussed on the nurse’s sense of empathy, because despite acting like a drill sergeant to keep the ER moving along, she cared deeply.
“Take a look at my partner. She hasn’t slept in two days.
See how pregnant she is, but look at the bruises on her neck, her wrists, her face.
There are more bruises under her clothes.
See how her collarbone sticks out, like you just want her to sit down and have a full meal.
Can you see all the marks in her veins from here, from where just earlier today she was hooked up to several IV drips, IVs containing medicine she did not consent to.
She was literally tased earlier tonight.
Look back at her baby bump, and picture the child, unmoving now for hours, on drips of god only knows what type of medications, and what it might have done to her.
Now, isn’t it time to have some labs done and see a doctor? ”
The air felt thick around me, and the nurse, who had been hanging on my every word from about the middle of my speech, lifted up a paper and called, “Olive McLeod to booth one.” I felt like jumping in the air with a fist raised, but decided to go slowly, as though walking around broken glass, because who knew when the effect could wear off?
I just kept projecting a super pathetic image of Olly into the nurse’s mind, along with their name and health card number, and hoped that in a moment the wheelchair at booth one would have Olly in it.
When I saw Olly make their way to the wheelchair and the nurse there gesture for them to have a seat, I barely heard through the plexiglass the nurse I was projecting to say, “Marty, make sure she gets in, fast. This case is a top priority.” Marty nodded, and when he started wheeling Olly to the back, I ran over and followed.
All of a sudden, it was abundantly clear why it felt better to maintain a very strict code of ethics with this psychic stuff.
It was too seductive, too easy, too rewarding.
I had gotten Olly through triage in a matter of minutes, just by extending myself a little bit.
And the nurse was unharmed, it seemed like.
I wasn’t going to do it again, I told myself.
Not unless absolutely life-and-death necessary.
It took about a half hour to convince them that I wasn’t Olly’s trafficker or pimp.
As soon as they had Olly remove their clothes and put on a johnny shirt, the nurses saw the other injuries, and that did not help my case.
They made me wait in the hallway with the door closed so, in theory, Olly could tell them all about how I had used and abused them.
Bought them, even. I think, in the end, Olly may have had to use their powers to convince them that I was their friend looking out for them, and I was allowed into the room.
Olly also had convinced her team that they really had been stowed away in that Mental Health Inpatient Unit.
While there were no records of her on file to be found other than the ones she had gotten before the kidnapping, the first round of labs done could not be argued with.
Olly had most definitely been given things that could not easily be identified, but that had impacted her numbers.
More blood was drawn, and the way they reached out for my hand while the nurse stuck them with the needle broke my heart a little.
The best thing that happened was within a few minutes of them convincing the staff to let me be with them in her little room.
They wheeled in an ultrasound machine, and the sound of Bea’s heartbeat filled that room, with Olly immediately bursting into tears.
As if awakened by the sound of her mother’s distress, Bea visibly moved, and Olly laughed, actually laughed, as two kicks were made on her lower right side.
“Just like Maya, my little soccer player.”
After four hours of waiting on labs, another ultrasound two hours later, and tests I couldn’t even identify, I couldn’t complain they weren’t doing everything in their power to make sure Olly and Bea would be okay.
I couldn’t help it, I gave each member of the team working on them a light touch on their minds, to make sure no Organization snakes had been embedded here, able to pinpoint our arrival thanks to the terrifying power of foresight.
Everyone was clean, real, and very concerned.
When one of the residents found out Olly had been “experimented on”—Olly’s words—he looked like he might be ill.
They wanted to admit them for observation, but when Olly was on some drips of their own for a few hours, Olly was adamant that they be allowed to go home.
One advantage of being a psychic? They were sent home with a long list of instructions and some supplements they should be on, considering their lack of prenatal care, and a firm talking-to about coming back, hell, calling 911 if they felt the slightest bit “off.”
As we walked toward the car, the sun rose on a night from hell.
I contemplated happy endings and reached out for Olly’s hand.
I was incredibly grateful when they took it, entwining our fingers together.
I knew Olly was scheduled for check-ups every week until Bea was due to arrive, and that there was no way I could trample all over Olly’s trauma and push them to be admitted to the hospital.
Not long now. Just seven-ish weeks to go and then, finally, Bea would make her appearance in this world.
I’m not her father, I reminded myself. She has one, and he is probably going to be a wreck when we go see him.