Rendering Nirayel - Thief's Prophecy
Nathan P. Cardwell
Rendering Nirayel - Thief's Prophecy
Copyright © 2007 Nathan P. Cardwell
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in Canada by Double Dragon eBooks, a division of Double Dragon Publishing Inc. of Markham Ontario, Canada.
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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ISBN-10: 1-55404-472-3
ISBN-13: 978-1-55404-472-6
First Edition July 26, 2007
Also Available as a Large Type Paperback
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Saint Francis Hospital-08/01/10-3:46 AM-1104 South Chestnut-Houston, Texas
When he entered the game, his eyes became fixed and dilated. That condition was followed shortly by thin lines of drool at both corners of his mouth.
***
As a Paramedic, Jesse Berrach had led a fast-paced life. It was a demanding profession, fraught with long hours of work and little reward, unless what one values is the preservation of life itself.
Even so, most find themselves left with precious little time for such luxuries as a family, which, incidentally, had been the primary grounds for his divorce, an action of legal proceeding that suddenly seemed to accelerate in direct correspondence with his current dilemma. As such, he not only found himself unable to attend, but was quite literally without means to acquire legal counsel due to mounting financial difficulties relating back to said same dilemma.
To Jesse, this reality had become all too evident when he received his one and only hospital visit by the soon to be "ex," Mrs. Berrach, just as he was waking from a sedative given to him the previous night. As he opened his bleary, uncomprehending eyes, there she was, standing next to his bed, gently patting his hand. Observing him wake, she leaned in close, proceeded to remind him of an upcoming court date, and then politely excused herself, as she was expected at a dinner engagement with her attorney, Biff.
Just after their initial separation, and almost six months prior to her warm imparting of the news in I.C.U., he had begun to spend a great deal more time on the job. He liked his work. Specifically, he liked helping people. One simply has to be careful about getting too close to the victims. There is always the one in a thousand chance of screwing up because you weren't paying proper attention. It isn't always easy to maintain a professional distance, but the alternative is grim. People really don't appreciate how many close calls there really are, and what they should remain mindful of is that if bad things never happened, there would be no ten o'clock news.
Jesse had failed to maintain that distance one night while attempting to reach the sole surviving victim of a gas line explosion in the State Tag Agency building. The woman had been pinned beneath a section of rubble, quite near to where the explosion had taken place. The only reason she had survived the initial blast itself was due to her position within the agency's walk-in and fireproof safe. She had indeed suffered no burns whatsoever. Unfortunately, the safe wasn't quite explosion-proof.
Due to the extensive damage caused by the explosion, and the building's pre-existing state of dilapidation, the remaining structural integrity remained in question. Until the area could be secured, no one could move in.
So, there she lay, pinned beneath rubble, screaming and screaming and screaming and… Well, one can only listen to so much agony before completely losing one's mind.
At some point, Jesse, as well as several other paramedics and firefighters, finally broke the line. The decision to do so had been both unanimous and simultaneous, as if the particular aspect of human decency that had driven them all to the same breaking point had been singular in its timing. At the time, he had actually felt a great relief. It was good to find that the world had not become so professional that a person could literally lie screaming until she finally expired, while the so-called professionals just stood back and watched, or listened as the case may be.
They had made their way about two thirds in when the woman's screams suddenly waned, and then ceased. They all momentarily halted as the implication prompted questioning glances leveled at each other.
"Look," said one of the firefighters. "If she's dead, there's no reason to risk our necks…"
"We don't know if she's dead," returned a paramedic. "She could have just slipped into shock."
"I dunno. I gotta bad feelin 'bout this. Besides, if she's passed out or somethin, then she's outa pain, right? Let's go back and wait for the chopper."
"Hey, Berrach! Not that way! There might be another…"
Another explosion suddenly ripped through the floor beneath them, and as the entire substructure gave way, the small group of wayward heroes was quickly swallowed by surrounding debris in what would later be described by witnesses as a scene likened to the fury of all hell breaking loose.
Jesse would remember nothing past the initial percussion of the blast itself.
***
As next of kin, Sarah had been duly notified upon Jesse's admittance to I.C.U. She took the next available flight down, and was met upon her arrival at the hospital by the attending surgeon, who proceeded to advise her of her brother's condition as best he could, which was to say very little, as the full extent of damage had yet to be determined.
The remainder of his report to her was mostly an accounting of the accident, and how lucky her brother was to be alive at all. This was further reinforced by the fact that no one else had survived.
Realizing that his attempt to comfort the woman was not only not succeeding, but apparently serving to exacerbate her misgivings-a realization prompted primarily by her sudden pallor and ever widening eyes-he finally recommended several good hotels she could stay in while waiting for the full results on preliminary tests.
She politely thanked him, but did not take his recommendations. After locating Jesse's room, she settled in for the night, and the next day, and the next night and so on.
This turned out to be something of a trial for a number of the staff, who eventually prompted an unspoken contract between themselves and the now infamous Mrs. Hoffman. The agreement was simple. They stayed out of her way, and she refrained from making their lives a complete and utter living hell on earth.
Of course, this is not to imply they were without the means of retaliating against her more flamboyant displays of vehement vigil. They simply replaced the coffee dispenser with an unmarked decaffeinated brand. The results took almost two full days, but she did finally run out of steam. Upon noticing her unconscious exhaustion, one nurse actually performed something of an Irish jig.
***
Jesse regained consciousness approximately
seventy-two hours after admittance. His neck had been immobilized, so he couldn't see that Sarah had slumped down in the chair next to his bed after having fallen asleep while watching television.
It was just after ten P.M., and the news was running a follow-up story on the accident with home footage someone had sent in. The amateur film was unsteady, and the focus kept moving in and out, but it still managed to cover the complete path of everyone who had broken the line.
He watched in rising horror as they ran it again in slow motion. The woman pinned beneath the rubble, then a shaky panning of the camera as it zoomed in on the men, including Jesse, which made for a total of three paramedics and four firemen.
As if on cue, they all stepped over the yellow parameter tape, and then advanced towards the cries of anguish. This was of course, despite the cries of authoritarian objection they left behind.
Then the group momentarily stopped. This prompted even louder objections from the dissenter's superiors, until that is, when it all abruptly ended in a shockwave of rubble and twisted I-beams.
Mercifully, he had been heavily sedated, and lost consciousness before the eye-witnesses were paraded through a number of interviews, all of which proffering their own particular flavor of perspective while the footage ran again and again, like instant replay in a football game.
The next day, he learned of several other developments. First, he discovered that he had been fired due to reckless endangerment. He explained that he had not led the party, that everyone who broke the line had done so on his own. This explanation was quickly noted, and then duly disregarded. The second thing he learned was that due to the specific cause of his injuries, as defined by the Commissioner, his primary insurance carrier would not cover anything. In violating safety regulations, he had nullified the policy.
According to the somewhat overly excited Intern who had first advised him of his condition, he had broken and/or fractured almost every bone in his body. As this was accompanied by multiple lacerations, requiring just over five hundred assorted stitches, staples et cetera, the full body cast he really needed would have to wait until the majority of stitches, staples and so on were removed. This had required some fancy traction devices to immobilize him, and it hadn't taken long before he commenced to long for said body cast.
Even then, the initial cast itself was far from conventional. Due to ongoing tests and surgery, the cast was actually a group of molded and interlocking braces that could be individually removed as needed. By the time the real cast finally came off, he had no recollection of how much he had looked forward to it while immobilized in traction.
In truth, he had been quite lucky. The nerve damage to his spinal cord was minimal. He was actually learning to walk again. That sounds real easy if you say it fast enough, he had thought when his therapist praised him after successfully traversing the entire length of his room with only minimal assistance.
Actually, Sarah was far more impressed than he was, or at least she appeared to be. In fact, she had seemed to project a positive attitude throughout his entire recovery, though Jesse believed this was probably the Doctor's doing. It was simply that he knew her well enough to know that she was usually a pretty straight shooter. Ordinarily, if she had been worried, she would have said so. The only reason she might appear otherwise would be if she had been coached by the M.D., who struck Jesse as someone who also fancied himself as something of a shade-tree head-shrink, and was probably attempting to address the depression that often accompanies Jesse's sort of situation.
On the other hand, I just lost my wife and my job, and I look like a crippled version of Frankenstein's monster. If I were anything but depressed, that's when you should declare me nuts, he thought while returning Sarah's depressingly positive smile.
Of course, there was the occasional bad dream. This usually consisted of the same home video replay, depicting the other firemen and paramedics, whose last act of compassion would ultimately be labeled as reckless endangerment. "Reckless!" shouted the Commissioner. "Nothing but unprofessional, and reckless!"
Then there was the woman, whose last moments were spent pleading for help that would never arrive. And yet, sometimes he would actually make it to her. He would pull her from the debris, and just as he was about to place the oxygen mask over her face, she would change. Her skin would shrivel, and her eyes would grow dull, and sink back into their sockets. Then she would face him and ask the same question. "Why?" Why?
After a while, Sarah began to cut back on her visits. The trips were becoming costly. As soon as she knew he was out of danger, she had reduced her visits to one a month. Jesse understood. "We live in a practical world, Sis. Don't worry. I'll be outa here in no time."
But once on his own again, he was faced with the four walls of his confinement, which is to say, a level of boredom that he had never known existed. As a Paramedic, his life may have been fast-paced, but as a Patient, its pace was rapidly becoming anything but fast.
Then he caught himself watching one of the soaps his sister frequented. That's when a real sense of claustrophobia set in. On her next trip, he sent her to his apartment to retrieve a number of personal items, including his laptop. He needed to find some way to occupy his time that didn't involve daytime television. The ratio of incurable disease/coma/freak accident/amnesia cases to the remaining healthy though back-stabbing/spouse-cheating/double-crossing cases was beginning to appear a bit lopsided.
After her visit, he began to spend a lot of time on the computer. This was mostly at night, as the day shift nurses didn't like his tying up the phone lines. At first he had tried several off-line games to appease the day staff, but he lost interest quickly as the lack of interaction wasn't too different from being stuck in a hospital room.
Surfing the net while the nurses weren't looking was kinda cool, but he decided to curb that particular interest when his creditors raised the maximum of his VISA card limit for the third time in a three-month period: a proposition decidedly detrimental to what remained of his resources. That E-bay's a killer .
Then a package from Sarah and Dieter came in the mail. The content of the package was an online game called Wayward Fates . Beneath the title, the slogan read,
~Welcome to a world where Destiny is what you take of it, unless Destiny takes you first.~
Attached was your standard get-well-soon card. Sarah wrote a small letter on the inside leaf, explaining that she would be down for another visit the following Friday. She was going to see if she could get permission to take him outside. The weather should be nice.
At the end of the letter, Dieter had added one line. "Get your gimpy ass in the game, Twerp!" He had signed this by the pseudonym Borin Krue, but Jesse recognized his writing, if you can call it writing.
He immediately sent Sarah a voice-message through e-mail. He thanked her for the gift, and then asked her to inform her inbred red-necked reject of a husband that he would indeed get his gimpy ass in the game, and that he looked forward to kicking Mr. Hoffman's bombastically idiotic ass with such proficiency while in said game, that such would surely correct said Mongoloid's most unfortunate writing impediment. P.S. Give Bubba my regards.
Long ago, someone said, "When one door is closed, another is opened." WF was one weird door, all right. Some folks ride dirt bikes, others watch soap operas, and some play Wayward Fates . So maybe it's not quite as cool as dirt bikes, but when all other options are eliminated, it still beats the ever-living crap outa watching Luke and Laura take full advantage of Medicare in order to facilitate their dual hip replacements.
***
Nurse Donavan was right on time. He could hear the squeak, squeak of her loafers coming down the hall. When she got to his door, she stopped. After a moment she poked her head in.
"Okay, kiddo, the coast is clear," she whispered.
"Thanks, Peg. I owe ya, big time."
"You bet you do. How you gonna pay up?" she teased.
"Hmmm… I suppose there's room up here for two," he replied wi
th a lecherous grin while patting the side of the bed.
"Honey, you wouldn't survive it," she laughed.
"Hey, If I gotta go, I can't imagine a better way," he offered while raising both eyebrows several times in quick succession.
She looked sternly back at him over the top of her bifocals, and then shook an authoritarian index finger in his direction. "I got grandkids your age, so you just best behave yourself, young man."
"Or what?" he inquired defiantly. Do I gets me a spankin?"
"Oh, go on with ya," she laughed. He could still hear her chuckling half way down the hall.
He pushed himself to a sitting position, and adjusted the hospital bed accordingly. Then he unlocked the bedside cabinet and withdrew his laptop. After jacking into the phone line, he booted up, punched in an outside connection, and finally patched into WF.
Unless one of the Interns showed up earlier than ten A.M., which he seriously doubted, he figured to get in a full six, or maybe even seven hours, before she returned to give him the fifteen minute warning as the day shift started.
He selected his main character, and then clicked the enter button.
***
CLASSIFIED-Log entry #1439-Janis Dolen-Data retrieval-Time code,
Note: The release of Doctor Kwibee was premature. This action was taken previous to my arrival, and is considered by this agent to be a severe breach of National Security. Furthermore, without the missing data, there can be no further developments made to the program, other than the masking adaptations based on Kwibee's notes. This filtration software would appear to be our only possible means to a direct interface at this point.
***
CLASSIFIED-Log entry #1440-Janis Dolen-Data retrieval-Time code.
Preliminary interviews have revealed no useful information. Civilian personnel have been released for medical treatment upon that confirmation.
***
CLASSIFIED-Log entry #1441-Janis Dolen-Data retrieval-Time code.
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