Sentinel Event

by Samantha Shelby

  “Why do the Passers move? In crowds?”

  Chester hesitated as he tried to translate the meaning of the questions.

  “Many Passers are moving,” Tosya clarified. “Crowds of them, walking without words across the lands and into the sea.”

  “They’re migrating?”

  Now Tosya was lost and paused to think.

  “Are all Passers going?” asked Chester. “Flocking like birds? Following a silent signal, like compass needles turning toward a magnetic pole?”

  “Yes,” Tosya agreed. “Not just here, but in all of Asia and Europe, I have heard.”

  “I’ve been isolated,” Chester started to make excuses.

  “I called Dorotéia,” Tosya continued. “It is the same in South America. Longer than it has been here.”

  The third of those gifted with special sight, Dorotéia was a Brazilian woman in her forties. Like Tosya, she was not officially associated with any organization, but she stayed very current on Passer events. Chester wondered why she had not called him, if she knew about this migration before either he or Tosya did.

  “Why didn’t she get in touch with me?” Williams asked. “It’s been going on in Brazil longer than there?”

  Tosya answered with an affirmative.

  “Seas of Passers go through the cities,” he said. “Have you not seen this?”

  Chester looked out the window of the car, and though he could see Passers, none of them were “migrating.”

  “No, I’ll look into it.”

  “Okay,” Tosya agreed. “Do svidaniya.”

  Chester laid his phone on his lap and continued to stare out the window, bewildered.

  Dreamer was relieved to see that Maralyn had left when she and Aidriel went back out to the car to get the two tubs of supplies from the trunk. The phlebotomist found it bizarre that Aidriel was suddenly as chivalrous as possible, ensuring that he carried the heavier carton. Their room was in the back corner of the top floor, as far from other guests—and their Passers—as possible. It was the middle of the week, fortunately, so the hotel was mostly empty.

  It made Dreamer nervous that they were sharing a single room, but she thought it was probably safer that way. Aidriel unlocked the door with the keycard and held it open for her. She shyly thanked him and set down her tub, taking in the room.

  “Which bed do you want?” she asked.

  Aidriel set his container on top of hers and looked at the beds thoughtfully for a moment, then studied her face before he answered.

  “Why don’t we push the beds together?” he suggested.

  Dreamer wasn’t sure how to answer and stared back at him, watching for a hint of sarcasm or teasing. He appeared to be serious.

  “Uh, why?” she mumbled.

  “They’re…small,” he said.

  “They’re doubles. That’s not too small.”

  “I think we should push them together.”

  Dreamer was becoming uncomfortable with where the discussion was going, especially since she couldn’t detect any hint of jest in his face or voice.

  “You want the beds to be right next to each other…,” she clarified.

  “Yep.”

  “So it’s one big bed?”

  “Right.”

  “So you want to…share…a bed.” It made Dreamer blush to say it. The corners of Aidriel’s mouth turned up so slightly it was barely perceptible, but he nodded.

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” stammered Dreamer.

  She saw the flash of disappointment in his eyes as he turned away, shrugging as if he didn’t care. The phleb was astounded and confused. A short time ago, Aidriel was yelling at her and insinuating that she was stupid, and now he was suggesting they become cozy. She just couldn’t understand him.

  “I’ll take that one,” Aidriel said, pointing toward the further bed. “I don’t want to be between you and the door, in case you need to get out.”

  His wording made Dreamer shudder, but she didn’t argue. Nothing else was said while they set out the supplies to their liking, Aidriel looking carefully around the room while Dreamer went through the tubs to see what clothing had been sent along with them. None of their personal belongings had been packed, but a set of scrubs and plain clothes for each of them had been. Her set of jeans and a long-sleeved shirt matched the one he was currently wearing. Dreamer smiled slightly; that was most likely not intentional.

  In the bottom of one of the containers was a grouping of uninteresting essentials, including soaps, toothbrushes, tissues, and the like. As Dreamer began to take out and arrange the items in a tidy cluster on the sink beneath the large mirror, Aidriel plopped onto his back on his bed, clasping his hands behind his head.

  “You tired?” asked Dreamer from the bathroom alcove.

  “No. We should have food delivered.”

  “Alright. You need any pills?”

  “No. What should we eat?”

  “Whatever you would like, as long as it’s not seafood.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Dr. Ana deTarlo ignored the stares of Williams’s staff and flight crew as she paced up and down the asphalt of the tarmac next to the car. Her cell phone was glued to her ear and her heels clicked severely. She’d called everyone she could think to, and was getting nowhere.

  “Why don’t you just ask the Passers where they are?” she had demanded of Chester earlier when they realized they had lost Dreamer and Aidriel. Williams was sitting in the front passenger seat of the car, tapping furiously on his tablet device.

  “I’ll ask Rod when it finds us, and Kara,” he answered without looking back. “But they might not know where they went either. Even if the Passers did know, they wouldn’t tell us. I don’t think the spirits want us anywhere near the guy.”

  Williams had been receiving important phone calls himself, and had boarded the plane to use a more comfortable environment while he worked. He would get off the line with one of his employees just to have another call and tell him the same news. They’d been trying to get a hold of him since the story broke.

  “Tell deTarlo to get on board right now,” he told his assistant, his phone lowered against his neck as he was still on the line. He hadn’t taken the time to locate his Bluetooth earpiece.

  It had required one of the security guards to get involved before Ana reluctantly obeyed and clambered precariously up the steps to the plane.

  “We can’t just leave without them,” she argued immediately. “What if they just got lost?”

  “Shut up,” Chester hushed her, focusing his attention back on his call. With an icy glare, deTarlo stood over him and waited impatiently for an explanation. When he finally hung up with a troubled sigh, she demanded, “Well?”

  “Within the last twenty-four hours,” Williams explained sullenly, “a strange migration of Passers has begun in Asia, Europe and South America, possibly the other continents as well. Seems that all the spirits are inexplicably disappearing entirely or abandoning their charges and heading for the U.S.”

  It didn’t appear to sink in for deTarlo at first, and she just stared at him without speaking.

  “What does this sound like to you?” he asked. “Things turn intense for our guy after the sentinel event, and all of a sudden, Passers are becoming violently bipolar and are now traveling great distances to get here.”

  “Are you telling me that every single ghost on the planet is coming here after Aidriel Akimos?”

  Chester looked grim, a flash of panic setting his eyes aflame.

  “If they do,” he said, “that will be over a billion Passers converging on a single person. He’ll be like a piece of tissue paper in a hurricane.”

  Stunned, deTarlo sank into a chair and let the hand gripping her cell phone flop into her lap. What could be done? She desperately wished Dreamer would answer her cell phone, or that they could someho
w warn Aidriel about what was coming. It was truly meltdown worthy, but the shrink calmly took her clipboard out of her shoulder bag and began writing feverishly. Her report had to hit the press before this happened. Soon, the entire world would hang on her every word.

  Dr. St. Cross leaned his elbow on the arm of his wheelchair with his head in his hand, his green eyes tensely following the movements of Todd, a thirty-something male nurse barely out of school. Andrei looked on from nearby, harboring a similar annoyance toward Todd, but for a different reason. The nurse was not a believer in taking Passers’ word as gospel.

  St. Cross had known Todd’s parents for years; they used to be neighbors. Todd was a nice enough guy, and was eager to accept the psychiatrist’s request for private employment for the duration of the planned trip while the nurse was looking for a permanent job. But Todd could be pushy and overbearing, in an endearing way, and had no problem with telling the wheelchair-bound older man how things were.

  “You don’t need so many books,” Todd had insisted, scooping an armload of them out of St. Cross’s suitcase and dumping them on the bed. The shrink had winced at the harsh treatment, but uncomplainingly bit his tongue. It was driving him crazy how untidy Todd’s packing of his clothing was; everything would be wrinkled.

  Todd paused importantly after stacking the suitcase and medical case by the door. He crossed his arms and looked around the kitchen of the house, stroking his goatee and pretending St. Cross and Andrei weren’t there.

  “Okay, we’re ready,” he finally said without bothering to consult the shrink. He glanced at his watch, muttering something about having plenty of time to catch the plane. St. Cross still did not complain and began to wheel his chair toward the door.

  “Just wait here,” Todd said, holding out his hand in a stop motion. “I’ll take the stuff out to the car and come back.”

  St. Cross stopped and waited. He had to implement some of his calming techniques to tolerate the younger man. Taking out his mobile, he checked for messages and was disappointed not to find any.

  “My friend,” Andrei said suddenly, “perhaps you should take with you your case, the one in the bedside table.”

  St. Cross looked to his Passer’s face, wondering why the ghost would tell him to bring that. Was it possible Aidriel would need it? The shrink was doubtful. But there was no denying Andrei’s ability to glimpse into the future. There was a reason behind its suggestion.

  The psychiatrist wheeled down the corridor and into his bedroom, taking a magazine organizer–size plastic case out of his nightstand drawer and bringing it back into the kitchen on his lap.

  Todd returned, and seeing the case, asked, “What’s that?”

  “Absolutely essential,” answered St. Cross.

  With a charitable shrug, Todd took the handles of the wheelchair and pushed it out the door, closing it on Andrei. The Passer stopped angrily for a moment before stepping through the wood panel and following them across the porch and down the ramp.

  “I saw some of my medical record on deTarlo’s clipboard,” Aidriel said, poking holes in his foam food tray with his fork. “I noticed something about a ‘sentinel event.’ What is that?”

  Dreamer dabbed at her lips with a paper napkin before she answered.

  “Usually it means some unexpected injury, illness or death of a patient while in a hospital’s care, like surgery on a wrong part of the body or a baby that dies for no apparent reason. I think in your case, it refers to your suicide attempt, since it was less than seventy-two hours after you left the hospital last time.”

  “Oh.” Aidriel thought for a moment and stabbed at his ravioli.

  “I heard Mr. Williams talking about it with a doctor,” Dreamer continued. “They consider the increase of hostility toward you after Mr. Watts’s death a sentinel event also. It’s kind of like an illness spread to you while you were under their care, only it was, I don’t know, a mental illness.”

  Aidriel made a face of disagreement but didn’t answer. He and Dreamer were sitting across from each other at the little table in their room, the Italian food they’d ordered from a pizza place between them. The sun was nearly set outside and they’d kept the curtains closed and turned on the lights. The remote for the television was lying at the foot of Aidriel’s bed where he’d left it after handling it earlier while debating whether to turn the TV on; he’d elected not to.

  “How much does Dr. deTarlo discuss with you about your records?” Dreamer asked with a casual flick of her gaze at him.

  “No one discusses anything with me,” Aidriel answered, eating a raviolo. Dreamer just nodded and waited.

  “So how long have you been working at the hospital?” he asked her. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you before.”

  “Only a couple of weeks,” she answered. “I was a contingent, but one of the other girls is on maternity leave so I was working in her place. I also worked at a Coma Center.”

  “That’s one of those hospitals for brain-dead people, right?”

  “Sort of. Most of the patients are actually still alive in the brain, just indefinitely unconscious. Like from car accidents and stuff. I liked it; it was nice and quiet. They’d play classical or mood music, and kept the lights pretty low. I worked third shift, so I was never there when the families visited. I didn’t have to draw much blood, either, so I spent a lot of time reading. They just had a staff of medical workers for any possible scenario.”

  Aidriel listened and simply nodded. He liked the way she carefully cut her Alfredo noodles into small, manageable bites with her plastic fork and knife and made him wait for her answers so she wouldn’t talk with her mouth full. It somehow made the disposable dishes from which they ate seem ridiculously cheap.

  “You don’t work there anymore?” Aidriel asked about the Coma Center. Chewing, Dreamer shook her head.

  “I was technically still an employee when I switched to the hospital. Since it was third shift, and the hospital was first, I went straight from one to the other, and pretty much spent any time off work sleeping. I had weekends off, though, and it was only going to be until the other girl got back from leave, so it wasn’t too big of a deal. And the Coma Center wasn’t a demanding job. I quit them both to work for Williams.”

  “Why’d you do that?” There was a hint of guilt in Aidriel’s voice.

  Dreamer watched him for hidden signals for a moment, waiting because they both knew at least part of the answer. Finally she shrugged and went back to eating.

  “Better money,” she said simply.

  Aidriel wondered if she was lying just so he wouldn’t feel like a total jerk.

  “What about you?” Dreamer asked. “Where do you work?”

  He had to think briefly before answering.

  “My last job was at a gift store. You’d think it’d be a pretty safe place to work, but I had two heavy framed pictures and a glass statuette fall off the shelves on me. The last one cracked me open, and they thought I was just a klutz and fired me.”

  He tilted his head forward and pointed to a recent scar on the top of his skull, barely visible under his hair. Dreamer swallowed hard and appeared troubled.

  “How many times have you been to the hospital?” she asked.

  “Too many times to remember. I don’t really want to dredge anything up.”

  The phlebotomist looked uncomfortable for asking and quickly nodded, remembering patient privacy. Neither spoke and finished their food awkwardly. Aidriel pushed his foam dish aside and stuffed a stick of gum into his mouth. Leaning his elbow on the table, he rested his head against the knuckles of his fist, watching Dreamer. She quickly stood, collecting everything from the table and carrying it to the garbage can under the sink. Shyly refusing to look at him, she gathered clean clothes from the plastic storage tub and asked, “You mind if I shower?”

  Without lifting his head from his hand, Aidriel shook it no, and Dreamer retreated into th
e bathroom. He sat still and listened to the water turn on, then indifferently got to his feet and paced the room. Three times he wandered from one end to the other, picking up the remote, pausing in thought, and putting it down again, finally finding himself at the window. Pulling aside the curtain, Aidriel looked out into the twilight, at the line of houses directly behind the hotel. There was no activity that he could make out, though several of the windows were illuminated in light. He didn’t see any Passers, and was relieved, at least for the moment.

  The familiar thought came to Aidriel: when he lay down tonight to sleep, he might be awakened by an attack. Just the possibility made his nerves tingle with dread, and he asked himself if he were to die, would he be ready? He had thought he was ready weeks ago when he tossed the rope over the ceiling hook in the living room in his apartment. The former owners had a hammock chair hanging from the hook, so he had known it would support his weight. It was strange how fondly he recalled that rope. Did he wish for it again? Would he like to die tonight?

  The lights in one of the houses below went out one room at a time as the occupants retired to sleep. Aidriel tried to think of what he still wanted to see or do before he died, in case the Passers would kill him soon. Every night could be his last night. The only good thing that had happened to him since his attempted hanging was that a girl had come into his life. A girl that he felt a connection to, however slight, and was beginning to feel affection for. He wouldn’t want her to be the one to find him if he were to die, and wondered if that meant that he really liked her.

  Having come to the conclusion that Dreamer needed him and relied on him made Aidriel experience a sense as familiar as a memory, but entirely new to him. In his youth he’d gone through the usual teen stage of feeling he could take on the world and was impervious to anything as long as he wished to be. But all his dreams of grandeur had vanished when the attacks began and he’d been broken ever since. Having Dreamer with him, shielding him in the small way she could and relying on him for protection in return, he felt like he had reached the stage of maturity he had been cheated out of. She was strong, he suspected, but she was still a woman, and being with her made him a man. He was a target and a patient, but above all—most importantly, he reminded himself—he was a man and should act like one. The most basic aspect of fulfillment was accepting the weight of manly responsibility; a whole world might open before him if he would step up to face it, as Dreamer’s very presence was inspiring him to do.