Authors: Adrian Howell
“It should have been me,” I mumbled dazedly. “She could have healed me.”
I couldn’t shake the irony of how, in the middle of all that gunfire, the only one of us that got hit was the smallest. And the most irreplaceable.
“There!” shouted Candace. “Look! It says ‘clinic’ right there!”
“But that’s not a–” began Rachael.
“Any clinic is fine!” said Ed Regis, not looking up from his work. “Just get us there.”
I hadn’t seen the roadside sign either, but it could have been a maternity hospital for all I cared. We needed a doctor. Any doctor.
Rachael pulled off of the main road and, a few minutes later, parked the van in the shadow of a square, single-story building that looked more like a house than a hospital. The lights were all off, but Scott and Rachael got out anyway, ran up to the front door and started pounding on it. I followed them.
There was a large white sign on the wall next to the front door, and seeing it, I understood Rachael’s initial reaction. It was a veterinary clinic.
“Hey,” called a voice from behind us. “Hey! We’re closed at night.”
Turning around, we saw an elderly man walking toward us from the house adjacent to the clinic.
I asked frantically, “Are you the doctor here?”
“Yes,” he replied tartly. “Alfred Hanson, DVM, at your very sleepy service. Do you kids have any idea what time it is?”
“It’s an emergency, Dr. Hanson,” said Rachael. “You have to help us!”
“Well, I’m already up,” sighed the man, stepping up to the front door and unlocking it for us. “What do you have?”
“Gunshot wound,” I told him.
“A dog?”
“Not exactly.”
Scott and I escorted the veterinarian over to the side of our van where Ed Regis had already pulled Alia outside, holding her carefully in his arms.
“But I’m a vet!” protested Dr. Hanson. “That’s a person!”
“She’s a mammal, isn’t she?!” snapped Ed Regis. “You’re going to treat her.”
“She needs an emergency room! I’m not qualified.”
I pulled on his arm. “We have no time to explain but we can’t take her to a human hospital. Please, Doctor. Please!”
“I could lose my license over this,” he said, shaking his head.
“You’ll lose a lot more than a license,” warned Candace, waving her gun at him.
Ed Regis took a step forward and snarled, “You save this child’s life or I swear to God I’ll personally take you on a tour through realms of pain you never dreamed existed!”
“I’ll be sixty-three years old in a month,” the doctor replied evenly. “What exactly did you have in mind?”
“Please,” I said to him, unable to hold my tears back. “She’s dying. She’s my sister. I’m begging you, Doctor. Please don’t let her die here.”
The animal doctor’s eyes moved from Ed Regis’s furious, bloody glare to Candace’s gun, and finally to my sister’s lifeless form.
“Alright, bring her in,” he said, heading for the door. “Quickly!”
We followed Ed Regis as he carried Alia into the small clinic and placed her gently down onto a rectangular operating table.
As we watched breathlessly, the old veterinarian inspected the wounds on Alia’s stomach and back. He frowned at Ed Regis’s first aid. His eyes stopped briefly on the many crisscrossing scars across Alia’s back and my old blast mark on her left side, but he didn’t comment.
“She’s gone into shock,” he said. “We need to get her to a real hospital. Otherwise she’ll die for certain.”
“Out of the question,” said Ed Regis. “Do what you can here.”
“You asked me to save her life, sir!” the vet said heatedly. “I can stitch up the wounds but she’s lost too much blood. She needs a transfusion.”
“Then we’ll do it here,” I said.
“For Christ’s sake, kid, I don’t keep human blood at an animal clinic!”
“You’ve got needles, don’t you?!” I shot back. “I’ll take care of the blood. You get to the stitching.”
“You know how to draw blood, kid?” the vet asked skeptically.
I nodded. “I’m actually pretty good with a hypodermic.”
The old man shook his head and muttered something ugly about drug addicts.
Improvising with the vet’s tools which, after all, weren’t meant for people, I handled the transfusions myself.
Normal blood transfusions aren’t just about type matching. They’re complex processes, with screening for special conditions, allergies, infections and the like, but we didn’t have the time or the expertise for it. I knew Alia’s blood type from our time at the PRC, and I wasn’t a viable donor. But I knew that Ed Regis was a match. Asking the others, I found that Scott and Candace also shared Alia’s blood type. Three people was a lucky start, and if that wasn’t enough, I was prepared to do a little blood running of my own, breaking into the neighboring houses and bringing back donors at gunpoint.
As the vet worked on my sister’s injuries, I started out with Ed Regis, drawing a little more than a pint of his blood and transferring it straight to Alia, who was still losing blood through her open wounds.
“More,” said the vet when the transfusion was complete.
“My turn,” said Candace, sitting down with me.
Candace winced a little as I inserted the hypodermic needle into her arm.
“Sorry,” I said. My hands were shaking a little. “I haven’t done this in years.”
“Where did you learn?” Ed Regis asked from my side.
“You don’t want to know,” I replied.
“The PRC?”
I nodded, and then, if only to help suppress my anxiety by keeping my mouth moving, I explained, “When Alia was little, she couldn’t even stay in the same room with a stranger. She used to spit her guts up whenever someone touched her. So I asked the doctors to teach me how to take her blood samples. I gave her other shots too, when the experiments required it.”
Ed Regis put a hand on my shoulder. “She’s going to be okay, Adrian.”
I shook my head. “Who are you trying to convince?”
The minutes ticked by like a slow-moving storm.
Scott and Rachael spent some time cleaning and patching up the gash on Ed Regis’s head. Meanwhile, Candace looked at the cut on my left hand, but it was small and already closed up. I didn’t really need a bandage, but Candace insisted and I didn’t protest. My head cleared just a little when she washed the dried blood off with disinfectant.
“I’m taking a little extra, Scott,” I said as I drew his blood last. “Lie down if you feel faint.”
“Take all you need,” he replied resolutely.
I kept my eyes on my work, unable to look at Alia and the vet. My sister had lost consciousness in the van, and she hadn’t woken or made any sounds since we brought her here. All I knew was that she was still alive. But only just. The vet had already resuscitated her twice. If her heart stopped again, it could easily be for the last time.
“That’s enough blood, Adrian,” said Dr. Hanson. “Don’t kill your friends.”
By the time Dr. Hanson finished operating, I felt pretty faint myself.
“She’s going to be alright, isn’t she?” I pleaded.
“She’s a strong child,” Dr. Hanson replied quietly. “We’ll just have to see.”
“Thank you.”
Dr. Hanson nodded. “I wish I could move her to a more comfortable bed, but I don’t have anything for human beings here.”
“How about in your house?” suggested Ed Regis. “It’ll probably take a while for her to recover and we don’t want anyone finding her in your clinic anyway.”
“Are you still threatening me, sir?” asked Dr. Hanson.
“No,” said Ed Regis. “I apologize for my words earlier, Doctor. Now I’m begging you for just a little more help.”
“You people don’t look like criminals,” said Dr. Hanson. “Are you sure you won’t tell me why you brought this girl to me instead of taking her to a hospital?”
“You’re safer not knowing,” warned Ed Regis.
Dr. Hanson shook his head. “I’ll take the chance.”
“Fine,” I said. “I want to move Alia before the sun comes up, anyway.”
The veterinarian’s eyes widened as I telekinetically lifted my sister up off the operating table.
Then he laughed out loud.
“I always believed you guys were real,” he said, smiling broadly. “I just never thought I’d meet any in my lifetime.”
“We’re real, alright,” said Scott, smiling also. “We’re psionic.”
“Come,” said Dr. Hanson, his tone noticeably lighter. “You may stay in my home as long as you need.”
The old veterinarian led us over to his house: a quiet blue two-story with a neatly cut lawn. It had a shuttered garage large enough for two vehicles, and Scott was allowed to hide his van inside.
As I walked with Dr. Hanson, levitating Alia in front of me, I was surprised at how light my sister felt in my mind. Perhaps I was just dazed by what was happening. Here was a man who was actually happy to discover that psionics really existed.
Dr. Hanson lived alone. His wife had passed away several years ago and his children lived far away. It was hard to know how he really felt about suddenly having six fugitive houseguests, but he seemed okay. Of course, there was no way to be sure that Dr. Hanson wouldn’t betray us. Who was to say he wouldn’t call up the police or something the first chance he got? But we had to trust him. The only alternative would have been to hold him prisoner inside his house, and if this doctor suddenly went missing so soon after what had happened at the hotel and on the road, the police would come to this house and either way we would be caught.
We moved Alia into one of Dr. Hanson’s two guestrooms. I set my sister down onto the bed and then carefully tucked her in. Alia’s face still looked pale and lifeless, and her breathing was barely noticeable. But she was alive.
“She’ll need to be watched constantly for the next few hours,” said Dr. Hanson.
“I’ll watch her,” I said.
“Me too,” said Candace.
Everyone else quietly exited the room. Before leaving us, Ed Regis told me that he would speak to Scott about somehow getting an emergency message out to the Resistance. Honestly, I had forgotten about Raider’s mapping mission, but I was glad that Ed Regis would take care of it.
Standing next to me as I gazed down at Alia’s face, Candace took my hand and gave my fingers a squeeze. “Good thing Rachael’s a hider,” she said. “This place is way too close to Wood-claw, but at least we’ll be safe here until…” Her voice faltered a little as she said quietly, “I hope she wakes up.”
I forced a smile. “Don’t worry, Candace. She’ll wake up. Give it a day or two and she’ll be fine. She’ll be just fine.”
I was saying it as much to myself as to Candace, but I meant every word. I knew that my sister was going to be okay. Because that was the only way it could be.
“You sure picked the clinic, Candace,” I said, wiping my eyes. “Wait till Alia hears she was saved by a puppy doctor.”
“I was so scared.”
“Alia’s strong. You’ve no idea how strong she is. She’ll be fine. I promise.”
During the surgery, Dr. Hanson had removed Alia’s bloodstone pendant, and I discovered that I still had it in my pocket. I carefully hung the little unicorn from one of the bedposts so that Alia would see it when she woke.
“She’ll be fine,” I said again. “We just need to give her some time.”
“Come on, Adrian,” said Candace, gently pulling me toward a long sofa set diagonally across from the bed. “Let’s at least sit down. I’m feeling a little light right now.”
“Sorry,” I said, remembering how much blood I had taken from her. Sitting beside her, I said, “Thanks for saving our lives back there, Candace. You really have turned into a Knight.”
“I just turned psionic a month ago,” said Candace, and then added into my head,
“I didn’t think you’d hear me in time.”
“What happened out there?” I asked. “Why Wood-claw? How did the Angels get in?”
Candace took a moment before she answered slowly, “We weren’t discovered, Adrian. Mrs. Harding just announced that it was ‘time to make the transition.’ Those were her words. Some of us disagreed, but there was a vote and…”
I gave her a disbelieving look. “You mean Wood-claw voted to accept the rule of a tyrant?”
Candace nodded.
After all her talk about not going down without a fight, Mrs. Harding and the majority of her followers had elected to accept Angel conversion and join the flock. Perhaps Tigress was right. Perhaps the war really was over and we just didn’t know it yet.
Candace explained, “We were all on lockdown for the transition when Terry showed up with that girl. No one was allowed in or out without Mrs. Harding’s permission. That’s why we couldn’t warn you.”
“And Terry?” I asked, dreading the answer.
“I can’t be sure,” said Candace. “When she found out what was going on, Terry went berserk. You should have seen her, Adrian. She tore the whole place apart. She killed Mrs. Harding with her hook, and her dog too. And how many more Knights, I don’t know.”
“Where is she now?”
Candace sighed. “It was our fault. Scott and Rachael and me… we tried to help her. Terry held the Knights off so we could escape. But she didn’t make it out.” Candace’s voice cracked as she said, “They shot her twice, Adrian. At least twice.”
“Dead?”
“Maybe,” said Candace, shaking her head miserably. “I don’t know.”
I did. If she couldn’t escape, then Terry would have fought to the death. I regretted my words to her back in the car. It was wrong of me to question her courage. Terry Henderson was the greatest warrior I had ever known. It burned me up to think that after everything she had done for us, for me personally, for Alia, for the Guardians, and for Wood-claw, that she would die at the hands of gutless turncoats. It wasn’t the ending she deserved. It was a cruel fate brought about by an unforgivable betrayal. And yet, if not for her sacrifice, Scott and the others would never have been able to rescue us from the Wood-claw Knights.
“I’m really sorry, Adrian,” said Candace.
“Don’t be,” I said resolutely. “She knew what she was doing.”
I didn’t cry for Terry. I was too spent to cry anyway, but more than that, I took just a little comfort in the knowledge that Terry had died fighting for us, which was the way she would have wanted it. Just like James. Just like a Knight. As Ed Regis had said to Alia, we were all soldiers, and sometimes dying came with the job. And we all meet our end someday.