Sentinel Event

by Samantha Shelby

  “It’s just, he’s about the same age as my son,” another woman replied, “and seeing him like this, oh, you know. I wouldn’t want to see my own son like this. It must be horrible for him.”

  “I wouldn’t get too attached to him,” replied the first woman. “I heard what happened. With stuff like that, I doubt he’s going to survive long.”

  Aidriel wanted to tell her that he agreed with her.

  “He’s waking up.” Dreamer shushed them. “He’ll hear you.”

  Aidriel managed to get his eyes to open and found four faces looking down at him. Dreamer and the first of the other women, a nurse, had long enough hair that it hung around their faces and was moving steadily. They were all riding in the back of some sort of private ambulance.

  “Are you in any pain?” asked the man, a doctor. Aidriel attempted to lift his hand to touch his face, but it was strapped down.

  “Don’t try to move,” the second nurse told him. “You’ve got severe bruising.”

  “You don’t have to tell me that,” he mumbled miserably.

  “And you look like you got mauled,” piped in the sniffling nurse, “by a bear.”

  The other nurse and doctor gave her a dirty look, but she shrugged it off, muttering, “Well, he does!”

  “How did you ever become a nurse?” asked the other nameless woman.

  “I worked at a doctor’s office; not too often you saw severe injuries or death there. Give me a break, will ya?”

  Dreamer’s eyes glazed over at the mention of the bear, and she stared listlessly out the side window until Aidriel spoke again.

  “Where’re we going?” he asked gruffly.

  “You’re being transported,” answered the doctor. “North, toward Lake Erie. I guess the jet couldn’t meet us any closer. I don’t know how much we’re at liberty to tell you, but it was decided the Bird Cage wasn’t safe enough.”

  “Where is safe enough?”

  “We can’t tell you.”

  “I can’t even know where I’m going?”

  “No. Are you in any pain?”

  “What kind of a question is that?”

  The doctor nodded and began to fumble around with something out of Aidriel’s line of view, muttering about giving him more analgesic.

  Dreamer, who was sitting above Aidriel’s head, leaned over him and whispered, “What saved you?”

  Aidriel felt a blanketing of calmness and comfort originating from the arm where the shot of painkiller had been administered.

  “I don’t know,” he murmured, blinking heavily. “Ask Williams. He was there.”

  “He won’t tell us anything.”

  “And two orderlies were dismissed,” added the sentimental nurse.

  “We’re just the peons,” confirmed the other nurse.

  Aidriel moaned and relaxed, sighing in agreement.

  Tammy the nurse was leaning against one of the many corners at the hospital in Fort Wayne, a cigarette dangling from her fingertips. She was on break, the day was fine, and she liked this secluded corner under the trees. Birds were singing, but Tammy was paying no attention. If she looked closely, she could see the heads of the men working on the roof of one of the hospital’s many wings, and watched as they tossed their refuse into a dumpster below.

  Someone very close-by said her name; she jumped and nearly dropped her cigarette. Whirling around, Tammy saw a middle-aged man in a wheelchair, his hands on his lap and his eyes fixed intently on her.

  “Oh, Dr. St. Cross!” she said with a sigh of relief. “You startled me.”

  “Is Matilda keeping you company?” he asked, meaning her Passer.

  “She’s around somewhere. But how have you been? Did you come for a follow-up?”

  “I came to talk to you and a few of your colleagues.”

  “Oh, okay…”

  St. Cross was a slight, restless man, and he flexed his shoulders and clasped his hands in front of his chest before he continued.

  “I received a disturbing phone call about Aidriel Akimos.”

  “He’s not here anymore; he was transferred from the psych ward over a week ago.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “Out of state. I thought you knew about it.”

  St. Cross had not, as deTarlo claimed, retired from his work and was finding it difficult to take it easy outside the loop while he was on medical leave. He sat very still and watched Tammy’s face, his keen eyes conveying his wariness to let on that he was in the dark. The nurse took a nervous drag on her cigarette and shifted back and forth on her feet.

  “Dr. deTarlo got A.S.M. to fly him away somewhere. It was all top secret.”

  St. Cross’s eyes widened minutely with anger and he looked away in thought. He unclasped his hands and flexed the fingers slightly, a sign he was about to become animated.

  “Forget for a second about patient confidentiality,” he said, “because I believe there is something going on I am unaware of, and my patient is in danger.”

  Tammy dropped her smoke and stamped it out on the sidewalk, making herself more comfortable against the brick corner.

  “I’m very sorry,” she apologized, and he made as if to try and convince her, but she quickly continued, “I thought for sure you would be kept up to date. You’ve been working with Aidriel for years.”

  “Five,” St. Cross agreed.

  Tammy looked sympathetic.

  “Did anyone tell you he tried to kill himself?” she asked softly. St. Cross’s face at once expressed his pain at the news, but not surprise.

  “Tried to hang himself a couple weeks ago,” explained Tammy.

  “And deTarlo finally got Williams’ attention.”

  “Yeah, guess so.”

  “Well I’ll be…,” St. Cross mused. “I couldn’t get more than a perfunctory letter and she gets Aidriel shipped off to Kelly Road.”

  “Where?”

  St. Cross deliberately changed direction, both literally and figuratively.

  “When last I saw him, the attacks were getting worse, and now there’s no doubt in my mind that the Passers are to blame.”

  “You’re kidding!” Tammy’s mouth hung open for several seconds as she let it sink in. “I just thought he was delusional.”

  “Unfortunately, that’s what everyone seemed to think.” St. Cross raised his eyebrows and smacked his lips at the beginning of his sentences, a vaguely annoying habit he fell into when he was trying to make a point. “For the last year and a half it has been my opinion that Aidriel’s claims were at least partially true. I tried to garner any information I could from Passerists not only as to the how, but the why. There had to be a good reason why Aidriel was one of a handful of people on the planet who are actually harmed by the spirits.”

  “And…?”

  “I was cleaning the gutters and my ladder fell over, so here I am.” He indicated the wheelchair. “My patient was snatched away from me and even from himself.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean the Passers have even more influence than we give them credit for. I think I was not intended to be involved, and now that I’m out of the way, deTarlo and Williams can do whatever they want with Aidriel and my hands are tied.”

  “Did you ask Andrei about it?”

  “Yes, I did. Just before it pushed over the ladder so that I would land on the curb and break my back.”

  Tammy stared at him as if she didn’t believe his Passer was capable of that.

  “There’s something about Aidriel,” said St. Cross, “that makes the Passers forget their good intentions. Andrei has spoken of the Paradox of Natural Judgment.”

  “Matilda’s said something about that too!”

  “How the souls of the tortured are the protectors, while those that lived in opulence at the expense of others become tormentors.”

  “What does that have to do with
Aidriel?”

  “My theory,” said St. Cross, “is that these harmful Passers do not realize they are following a preordained plan. That plan is to kill Aidriel so that as a Passer, he can do some incredibly vital act of aid… Real aid…”

  The psychiatrist smiled at his private joke. Tammy was too preoccupied with her own thoughts to notice, and hesitantly asked, “Am I callous to think that doesn’t sound so bad?”

  St. Cross abruptly changed the subject again: “I actually came here to ask you a pointed question. I’ve heard recently about dreams that the hospital medical staffers have been having while caring for Aidriel. They all dreamt that they were Passers present at his death, and when his spirit left his body, they attacked and devoured it.”

  Tammy’s face paled and she was struck speechless.

  “It appears you too have had the dream,” commented the psychiatrist. “As have I. As has anyone I have specifically asked, and can confirm that it is indeed Aidriel. Perhaps everyone at one time in their life has had it.…”

  “What do you think it means?”

  “It means Aidriel’s going to die.”

  Before leaving for the dead zone, deTarlo had taken the time to rebuke Kara, but Williams was too busy to bother with his own Passer. Just before leaving, he’d tried to find the ghost to no avail, and surmised it had left the area.

  Chester had actually known of Rod indirectly before the Passer’s death. Rod’s life ended when Chester was a boy, through tragic circumstances. Though Chester had never seen Rod in living form, the Passerist knew Rod’s brother, Craig.

  Craig had the misfortune of being attracted to a young woman who resided across the street from the apartment building on Balete Drive where Chester had lived with his father when he was a child. On the second date with the girl, Craig was walking her to her door in the new-moon darkness after a late dinner. The young lady’s vindictive ex-boyfriend or ex-husband—Chester couldn’t remember which—was waiting in the shadows, and attacked with the intent of killing the woman he considered his own. Craig intervened, and for his efforts, received a bullet to the head at point-blank range. He didn’t die immediately. Craig was conscious for eight minutes, bleeding to death on the sidewalk while the ambulance rushed unsuccessfully to save him.

  The noise of the struggle, the shot, and the girl’s screams drew the attention of several of the neighbors, including Chester. Awakening and crawling out of bed and to his window, the then-young Passerist saw lights coming on in casements up and down the street. The attacker saw the activity too, and fled the scene, but was later caught by the police. Chester had opened his pane, and the night was quiet enough for him to hear the young woman’s frantic sobs and Craig’s pathetic, garbled effort at last words. One does not forget witnessing such a thing, even from a distance.

  The girl involved moved away shortly after the murder and was never heard from again. Strongly affected by the horror of his death, Craig’s Passer wandered the streets for years, becoming a homeless resident. It was possible it had not been assigned a living companion by whomever it was that arranged such things. Chester was on speaking terms with it. He could recall even as a boy feeling that it was a shame Craig had died; the Passer had a good sense of humor. Williams and many of the neighbors were saddened by Craig’s final release to pass on when the killer was executed.

  Rod was close with his brother when both of them were alive, and was absolutely devastated by Craig’s death. Overwhelmed with grief, Rod spent days numbing the pain with alcohol. Only days after the murder, Rod walked down to the beach at nightfall to guzzle Everclear and mourn, and passed out drunk on the sand. The tide came in, and Rod went out. Chester sent the unfortunate mother a card of condolence at the loss of both of her sons within a week. He never knew what became of her and had wondered all the years since. The Passers of her children didn’t know or wouldn’t say.

  Rod did not immediately become Chester’s Passer companion. Williams grew up in the company of first a preteen boy, then a middle-aged man, both of whom were closer to Chester than any living relationships. Each parting was painful, but Williams knew it was inevitable that the Passers would eventually be released from their purgatory to, as the name Passersby indicated, pass on to oblivion.

  When Rod came to Chester, Williams was in his mid-twenties, a difficult time in his life. His relationship with his parents was rocky and the choices he was procrastinating to make for his future were unclear. Rod, despite his untimely demise, was an anchor; a perfect example, it turned out, of why Passers were so priceless in the lives of those still confined to flesh and blood. While still alive, Rod was a poet or a teacher or the like, whose life was well in order for being in his mid-thirties. While a spirit, Rod was instrumental in helping Chester find a solid psychological foundation.

  Though he’d never be so insensitive as to voice it, Williams secretly felt that he had somehow taken Craig’s place for Rod, and that the Passer needed him to be as close as a brother. Of course the ghosts still had emotions; they were bodiless souls, not just wise holograms as so many critics tried to portray them. Chester understood them—he had spent years shirking living company for the Passers that never made themselves seen; those were the most fragile. The ones that carried the most pain, suffered the most grief, and hid themselves to keep it muted and private.

  But Chester could always see them; he could corner and drag the secrets out of any of them. He began to recognize the signs of pain that the Passers displayed, and could perceive it in the people he knew, who were even more careful than the dead to hide it. Pain was all around, but though personalized, it was all the same.

  “Do you agree with her at all?” Rod had asked him after deTarlo made the comment about Passers becoming unneeded in their first meeting about Aidriel.

  “No, not in the slightest,” Chester responded with all certainty. “We need each other, your kind and mine. We save each other.”

  Rod was clearly troubled, but nodded. “I save others by atonement,” it said. “The horror that happened to me can be prevented from happening to others.”

  “Is that how you’ll achieve the peace to pass on?” Chester asked, dreading the answer.

  “Not for many years, my friend,” Rod assured him. “I can tell you with all certainty that I will stand by you until the day you die.”

  Williams’s dismay at the subject evaporated instantly.

  “Good,” he said. “Now let’s figure out the problem at hand. This man that claims the Passers harm him.”

  “You’ll have things to learn from this man,” foretold Rod. “But in the meantime, I will tell you something about the near future. In Iowa, when they become aggressive, you’ll have to walk away. You won’t want to, but you’ve got to remember I warned you to walk away, and you have to do it immediately.”

  “Iowa? When am I going to be there? And who are they?”

  “You’ll know when the time comes. You have to trust me. Do you?”

  “I always have.”

  “Alright. Now we can focus on Kelly Road.”

  The ambulance hit some kind of rough patch in the road and jostled harshly. At least that was what the nurses told Aidriel when he awoke with a start.

  “You’re fine, just a bump,” the sentimental one said.

  “Felt like we hit something,” he mumbled. He must have been out for hours, because the painkiller had worn off.

  “Nope,” they all said at once, except Dreamer, who was looking over her shoulder and out the windshield of the van.

  Aidriel lay still and listened, his ears straining to catch any threatening sounds through the clearing fog imposed on his brain by too much sleep. The ambulance bounced and jolted again, and the driver muttered a curse. The medical mercenaries all sat in silent tension.

  “Unstrap me,” Aidriel said. “I can’t protect my head when I’m like this.”

  “You can’t protect your head anyway,” said t
he doctor without thinking.

  The engine promptly sputtered and died, and the driver began to cuss more vehemently. The passengers could hear honking horns outside the vehicle and it began to wobble and violently shake. The doctor and nurses scrambled to hold onto something.

  Aidriel felt pain in the pit of his stomach, and his ears began to ring. He was defenseless, not to mention drained and still recovering from his last encounter.

  The ambulance continued to shake powerfully, the driver panicking and cursing, turning the wheel with all his strength.

  “I can’t brake!” he yelled out. “I can’t steer!”

  Afraid to speak, the travelers braced themselves, the rapid breathing of the women coming out in soft, frightened gasps. It sounded as if the vehicle went onto a shoulder, scraping against a metal guardrail. The doctor was beginning to shout something to the driver when a great force struck the side of the van nearest Aidriel. The ambulance tilted dangerously, then crashed back down on all its wheels.

  Aidriel turned his head up to look for Dreamer and saw her tense face.

  “Unstrap my arms!” he called to her, and without hesitation, she reached over him to comply. He got a glimpse of her hands, the knuckles still white from clutching the side of the stretcher. The instant his arms were free, he sat up and undid the other strap across his legs. Another blow against the side of the ambulance set it harshly rocking and Aidriel slid off the stretcher into the knees of the doctor and nurses, who held onto one another in terror. Dreamer lost her balance and ended up bent over the stretcher, gripping the sides of the secured cot for support.

  As soon as the vehicle had dropped to its wheels again, Aidriel balanced himself on his feet and reached around Dreamer to find a secure grip, squeezing his fingers into the gap on the other side of the gurney just before the next blow. Once more, the ambulance ground against the guardrail, teetering perilously up on two wheels and finally tumbling over. Aidriel clutched the sides of the stretcher with one arm over Dreamer to shield her, and bent his legs around the framework of the cot as they fell.