Tatyanna

by Lindsay Johnston

  “No, I am sorry to say he is at home playing with that beast of his.”

  “The truck or the wolf?” she asked. The people around the bar sniggered, but she was being completely serious.

  “The truck,” Luka replied. “Here, m'lady, I would be honored if you would take my seat.”

  “Uh…thanks,” she said uncertainly, glancing around to see if she was about to be punked. She held out her hand to shake Luka’s. “Thank you for your kindness,” she said. Luka glanced down and saw her tattoo, paling slightly. Tatyanna simply shrugged in response. “Do you like it? I don’t know too much about phoenixes.” As soon as she mentioned ‘phoenix,’ the area around her cleared out almost instantaneous, and she wondered what it was that she had said, or did. She did know one thing, the people who visited the bar were a weird bunch.

  “You certainly know how to clear out a bar,” Emmett said, picking up the dirty glasses and beer cans. “The next time I want an easy night, I know who to call.”

  “You have some explaining to do,” Tatyanna accused fiercely.

  “Oh?”

  “What the hell did you put in my drinks last night?”

  “What do you remember?”

  “That’s just it. I don’t remember. I remember coming in here last night with Dimitri. I remember that big hulk of a bartender on the other side of the room came on to me and fled as if I had rabies, and then you handed me a drink. After that, I don’t remember anything until my sister woke me up this morning and I had this tattoo on my wrist,” she said, her voice raising as she replayed what few memories she had of the night before, shoving her wrist in his face.

  “I didn’t do anything to your drinks last night,” he said, pushing her hand away with the rag he had been using to clean the counter.

  “Well, someone did! I must have been completely smashed not to remember anything.”

  “What do you think you had to drink?”

  “Beer? Maybe some shots. I don’t know. I’m not a drinker.”

  “More like you’ve never had a drink in your life. You had a total of four Shirley Temples last night.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Sprite and grenadine.”

  “So it must have been the grenadine.”

  Emmett raised his eyebrow at her. “Grenadine is a pomegranate flavor.”

  “Oh,” Tatyanna said, dumbfounded, grasping that she hadn’t been drunk the night before. “So maybe you slipped me something?” she asked, hopeful and sick all at the same time.

  “Unless I want to be hung upside down by my ball sack, I would never put anything into your drink. Even if you were a typical twenty-one-year-old, I still wouldn’t try to slip you something.”

  “What do you mean, ‘even if I was a typical twenty-one-year-old’? I’m as normal as you can get.”

  “Are you?” he questioned her.

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “Well, let’s see. At sixteen, your bangs turned blue, for no apparent reason and have stayed that way. You have never felt like you have belonged anywhere, except at home while speaking with your cat, and you woke up this morning with a phoenix tattooed on your wrist, and you are wondering how it got there. I can tell you the tattoo has always been there but you weren’t ready to see it yet.” He stated the facts of her life as if he had been there to witness it all.

  “How the hell do you know all that?” she demanded of him. He merely smiled and refused to answer her. She considered batting her eyelashes at him to try to wiggle a response out of him but decided she would look stupid and changed the subject. “Why’d you push my hand away with that dirty rag?”

  He shrugged. “It was convenient.”

  “It was disgusting.”

  “To each their own.”

  “Whatever. I don’t know why I am still here,” she said, looking around. The bar was still packed as before, but now everyone was avoiding her and had taken up new seats in every corner of the place.

  “Don’t you have a new job you have to be getting to?” Emmett asked, already knowing the answer. Tatyanna tried hard not to roll her eyes at him but ended up giving in to the temptation. She was also tempted to ask how he knew about her new job, and opened her mouth to ask, and then closed it, knowing it would be a waste of time.

  “What’s your new job?” a voice asked, pulling out the stool next to her. She was hoping it would be Dimitri so she could bombard him with her questions. Instead, it was the man she had met coming into the bar. She didn’t have time for him because of her upcoming shift.

  “I am a nurse at Liberty Hospital.”

  “I bet that job suits you,” he said, earning a glare from Emmett. She looked between the two men and could tell Emmett didn’t think highly of the man. She wondered why and kept the thought to herself, not wanting to succumb to whatever game Emmett was playing with her.

  “What makes you say that? You talked to me for barely thirty seconds earlier, and now, you know my life story?” she asked defensively.

  The man thought for a moment and then nodded his head in agreement. “Something like that.”

  “Whatever. I’m out of here,” Tatyanna said, turning away from both men and stomping off to her car, mumbling about everyone being crazy.

  Emmett turned to the man in front of him and slapped him upside the head. “What the hell is wrong with you, Cale? Grandfather told us not to push her until she was ready.”

  “She is never going to be ready at the pace she is going. She doesn’t even recognize who she is, or the power she has inside of her.”

  “We have a plan and we need to stick to it. If we move too soon, we could jeopardize the whole mission. By then, we might be too late to save our world, if we have to wait to find someone else with her power.”

  “I think you are just afraid of her finding out who you really are and the fact you have been hiding the truth from her for years. You are all moving way too cautiously around her. We need to give her a push in the right direction.”

  “No, Grandfather said—” Emmett started to say, but Cale cut him off.

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know what he said, and you know what? I don’t have to listen to him. So I think I might just visit her at work and see if I can’t help her to figure things out a little sooner.” Cale got up off the stool, ignoring Emmett’s calls after him.

  Chapter Four

  Hell Week

  By the time Tatyanna arrived back at her parents’ house, she was pressed for time. She only meant to spend an hour at the bar, and was surprised to see four hours had passed. She thought over her bizarre conversation with Emmett and wasn’t sure what to make of it or him. There was something familiar about him, but she didn’t know what it was. Tatyanna knew she hadn’t met him before, yet she was completely at ease with him, even when he was spouting off her life story as if he were reciting the facts from a book.

  Then there was that annoying stranger she had met when she first arrived at the bar. The only thing he had going for himself was he was cute, with his blond hair buzzed in a military cut, and his broad, muscular chest she happened to notice once…okay, maybe twice, but when he opened his mouth, all that went out the window. His jerkish attitude reared its ugly head. There was something about him, and he, too, acted like he knew her better than she knew herself. It was all very weird. Everything about that bar and everyone connected to it, was weird. As much as Tatyanna told herself she would never go back, she knew she was only kidding herself. She was drawn to that place, and unfortunately, it was the only place which held the answers to her questions.

  Tatyanna checked the time again. If she didn’t pull her head out of the clouds, she would be late for her first day of work at her new job. She quickly changed into her scrubs, ran a brush through her hair, and pulled it back into a ponytail. She rinsed her mouth out with mouthwash, and declared herself ready, grabbed socks and her tennis shoes on the way out the door. Tatyanna figured she’d put them on in between stop lights.

  Tatyann
a arrived at the hospital in a nervous wreck. She knew she got the job because of her father, a fellow doctor in the hospital, and that made her very self-conscious. She knew she could do the work, but she wasn’t really a people person, and that made her anxious. During her initial interview, it was highly suggested she get rid of the blue in her hair. She held firm and said that wasn’t an option. She wondered how her new boss would take to her tattoo. Tatyanna considered if she even had a chance at her new job, or if she had inadvertently gotten herself fired already.

  Tatyanna had enjoyed her job at the nursing home over the last few years, but she was tired of the job itself. It was the same thing, day in and day out. The only high point was hearing the stories the patients would tell her about the ‘good ol’ days,’ and seeing their spirits lifted after a visit with her. She felt like she was able to make them feel young again, reminiscing about the times, when life was carefree and they had the world by the reins.

  However, Tatyanna wanted to help make people get better, not count the days until they died. She always felt at peace with the elderly, but could no longer be around death, knowing she was outliving all of her friends there. The elderly had accepted her, blue hair and all, and never judged, like her peers often did. Tatyanna knew, though, it was time to move on. There was something bigger, and better, out there for her. She only hoped she would find it at the hospital.

  Quickly making her way through the maze of the hospital, Tatyanna arrived at 4-West. She checked in, and it was immediately obvious her boss didn’t approve of the new tattoo. Actually, her boss didn’t like anything about her; especially that someone had pulled strings to get her that position. Even though she was a nurse and had the years of schooling behind her, she was reduced to a nursing assistant; back to giving sponge baths and changing bedpans. To make matters even worse, Tatyanna was on the cancer floor where, sadly, death was often inevitable, despite the medical breakthroughs. She would have walked out, but knew she would never hear the end of it from her father. So, Tatyanna pasted a big smile on her face and thanked her boss for the opportunity to work there, grabbing her schedule of what patients she needed to visit.

  This went on for the rest of the week. Tatyanna would show up to work and the nursing supervisor would gleefully inform her she was on bath and bedpan duty. It took everything Tatyanna had not to punch the woman. The only high point of the day was knowing she would be seeing the same patients and noted their smiles when they saw her coming in. There was one little boy in particular who had grabbed ahold of her heart and hadn’t let go. He was in stage three leukemia, and it was his second go-around of it.

  Tatyanna had seen pictures of Danny before he became sick, and he was once a happy, energetic, curly redheaded boy. His skin was as white as his head was red, but the sun never deterred him from playing outside, and he had the freckles spread across his skin to prove it. Looking at him now, he was rail thin, with a shiny, hairless head, and had IVs and various tubes attached all over his body. It made her nauseous every time she thought of him being so sick. The worst part was he was only seven, yet he talked as if he were seventeen. He knew more about his disease than most doctors. The seven-year-old had come to terms with dying and was at peace with it.

  Tatyanna knocked on his door before opening and said, “Hey, Danny,” as she entered into his room.

  “Hey, Taty.” Danny had complained the first day he met her that Tatyanna was too much of a mouthful to use every time so he decided to shorten her name. “Is it time for my bath already?” he asked, with a little bit too much enthusiasm in his voice.

  Tatyanna noticed a woman was sitting beside his bed, clenching his hand tightly and trying not to cry. It must have been his mother because Danny was the spitting image of her. She dabbed at her eyes with a tissue when she felt like her son wasn’t watching, on the verge of bawling. Tatyanna assumed his young mother had been given some devastating news about her son’s condition. Danny continued to beam at her from his bed, eyeing his mother and nodding his head vigorously.

  “Umm, yes, it is…but since you have a guest, I can come back later…” Tatyanna said, letting her words trail off as she watched the woman stand up.

  “No, don’t wait on my account,” she sniffed loudly. “I will grab some lunch and then I’ll be back. Maybe, if you are feeling up to it, we can go outside for a little bit.”

  “Sure, Mom. Sounds great!” Danny’s mother quickly left his room, without looking at Tatyanna.

  “Okay, Danny, what was all that about?”

  “Wow, nothing gets past you, does it?”

  “Not when you are a big, mean nurse like me!”

  “Big? Mean? I think you mean Nurse Beverly,” he said, mentioning her supervisor.

  “She’s mean to you, too? I figured it was just me she didn’t like.”

  “Where have you been? She’s mean to everyone, except the single dads and some of the male nurses.”

  Tatyanna laughed. “That is more than I wanted to know, but I’m just glad I’m not the only one on her shit list.” As soon as she said it, she slapped her hand over her mouth. “Umm, I mean…”

  Danny waved it off. “I might be a kid, but I know things. I’ve heard worse words than shit before.”

  Tatyanna shook her head at him. “Do you really want another bath today?”

  “As uncomfortable as it is for you to give me a bath, it’s more uncomfortable for me, but I have been feeling better these last few days, so why not. Maybe there’s something magical in the water.”

  “Maybe you’re getting better,” Tatyanna suggested, pulling the items she would need off her cart and turning on the water to get it warm enough.

  “No. According to my mom, the chemo isn’t working this time around.”

  “What about a bone marrow transplant?”

  “I had one the first time around, but since it is back, I don’t know. My mom isn’t telling me anything and to be honest, I don’t think I have much time left. I think this is it for me,” Danny said, with grave certainty.

  Tears threaten to form in Tatyanna’s eyes, and she had to turn her back on Danny, pretending to grab something from her cart, to keep from crying. She didn’t say anything for several minutes as she prepared everything for his bath.

  “How do you know that?” she finally asked him, as she dipped the sponge into the water.

  “I don’t know. I just know the thought of dying brings me peace. No more pain, no more tears, no more pretending everything will be okay. I know it is hard for my mom to accept, but I’m ready for death.” Danny had such conviction in his voice it was hard for Tatyanna to speak.

  She wished with all her might she had it within her to heal the young boy. To take away his tears, his pain, and to give him life instead. Tatyanna wished him a long and healthy life, one where he would be able to grow up and lead a normal life, and have a family of his own, without the threat of cancer ever hanging over his head again. As she wished for his well-being, her hands glowed a slight blue as she dropped her sponge into the water, squeezing out the excess and gently washing his back.

  When the bath was over, Tatyanna helped him get dressed and got a wheelchair ready for him for when his mom came back to take him for a walk on the hospital grounds.

  “Come on, Taty. Can’t you give my mom a reason why I can’t go?” he begged her.

  “Can’t go? Have you looked outside? It’s gorgeous out.”

  “But, there’s this movie that’s coming on…”

  “Uh, uh. No way. Go and make your mom happy. There will be another time for your movie.”

  “Thanks, Taty,” he said, defeated.

  “Yeah, yeah. On to my next patient.” She rubbed his head playfully.

  As she left his room, Tatyanna’s heart felt heavy for the little boy. In such a short time, he had made it past her walls, and she knew she had an honest friend in the kid. She couldn’t imagine having to be so brave at such a young age, and genuinely wished him the best.

  Rou
nding the corner, Tatyanna practically ran into Beverly, her supervisor, or as she preferred to call her in her mind, Devil Woman. “Shouldn’t you be halfway through your list by now?” the older woman snarled at her, her carefully manicured hands around her very thick waist. Tatyanna wondered how the woman ever became a nurse anyway; she couldn’t walk a few steps without having to stop and catch her breath. All she ever did was sit, eat, and yell at people.

  Tatyanna was barely able to contain herself from rolling her eyes. “I was with Danny. He wanted a bath.”

  “Humph,” was all Beverly said.

  “Whatever. Just let me be on my way so I can help my next patient.”

  She walked past her supervisor before Beverly called out to her, “You have a real attitude problem, you know that?”

  “I only have an attitude toward people who judge me before they even know me.” Tatyanna continued to walk away from Beverly.

  “Oh, I know your kind. You had your daddy get you this job, and you didn’t even bother trying to earn it for yourself. You come in here, with your blue hair and tattoo, without even thinking about the overall presentation of yourself.”

  “What should it matter what I look like as long as I do a good job?” Tatyanna asked, stopping and turning around to look at her supervisor. She didn’t receive a response. “If you dislike me so much, then why don’t you just fire me?”

  “Oh, and have you running back to Daddy to complain? No. Instead, I will make your life miserable until you leave on your own accord. But, I will do you one favor,” she said icily.

  Tatyanna laid her hand over her heart and batted her eyelashes. “That’s so sweet of you,” she said sarcastically.

  “I think you need a serious attitude adjustment, and I know just the floor. I had a nurse call off this weekend and you will fill her spot.”

  “Where?”

  “The Emergency Room. But, until then, you will continue to show up here every day and be my personal slave,” Beverly said, walking off.