“I warned you that my grandfather was the one who understood this procedure best,” Ruby went on, “but the three of us have enough experience combined that I’m confident this will be successful. You already know Dr. Jeong—” Jeong waved at me. “And this is Dr. Morris. Do you have any other questions?”
“You’re all bone magi?”
“Dr. Morris is a facial reconstruction surgeon, not a magus. He’s here for the actual surgery and to supervise the reconstruction of your hand. He’ll also help with your rehabilitation, if that becomes necessary.”
Rehabilitation. I clenched my good hand against a return of the shakes. “I think I want you to start now,” I said, “before I think about this too much and freak out.”
The three of them chuckled. “See you soon, Helena,” Ruby said, and the lights went out.
I blinked. The light was all wrong for early morning and felt artificial, not like sunlight, and my bed was unnaturally hard and tilted up at the head. I scratched my head and felt cloth brush my face. What—?
“Helena,” Malcolm said. I blinked again—he wasn’t in bed beside me. The bed was too small for that. In fact, it wasn’t my bed. Malcolm sat beside me, holding my other hand in both of his. He was unshaven and there were dark rings under his eyes like he hadn’t slept in days.
Memory returned. I looked at my left hand, with which I’d scratched my head without thinking. It was heavily bandaged and looked three times its normal size. I sucked in a horrified breath and closed my eyes.
“Calm down, Helena, it’s fine,” Malcolm said, moving closer and putting his arms around me. “The reconstruction was successful—it’s just going to take time to heal completely.”
“It looks swollen. It looks like a grapefruit. Malcolm—”
He turned my face toward him and brushed his fingers across my cheek. “There’s a plastic ball under the wrappings. It’s to hold your fingers in place while the tendons heal so they don’t heal crookedly. It’s all right, love. I wouldn’t lie to you.” He pressed something small into my right hand. “Don’t let this upset you, but your wedding ring was embedded in your flesh. It doesn’t look at all damaged.”
I examined my ring, a simple gold band that shone brightly under the fluorescent light attached to the wall, and started shaking. I slid my right arm around Malcolm and held him, pressing my face against his bristly cheek. “I’m sorry,” I said tearfully. “I believe you, it’s just—it’s all too much.”
“I know.” He kissed my damp cheek. “It’s perfectly reasonable for you to be upset. In a few days, they’ll finish the healing, and the doctors say your hand will be completely restored.”
I nodded. “How long did it take?”
“You were in surgery for thirteen hours. I’ve been here for the last three, waiting for you to wake up—they wanted you to wake naturally so you wouldn’t lose any memories.”
“I could lose memories?”
“It happens sometimes when you’re roused from an induced unconsciousness abruptly. They weren’t in any hurry. What do you remember?”
I thought back over the afternoon—yesterday afternoon, according to Malcolm. Wallach’s fulcrum and the anchors. The magic, and the anchors vanishing. Wallach diving for the anchor and me trying to stop him. Viv—
“Viv,” I said, clutching Malcolm’s shirt. “What happened? Is she all right?”
Malcolm’s face went still. “She’s still unconscious,” he said. “At least, she was three hours ago when they brought me here. Physically, she’s unharmed, but…nobody’s ever been struck by that amount of raw magic and survived. So they have no idea what to expect.”
I sat up. “I want to see her.”
“Not yet. Let me get Dr. Wallach. She’ll want to make sure there aren’t any lingering effects. Then you can get dressed and we’ll go to Viv’s room.”
I waited impatiently for far too long before Malcolm returned with Ruby. The doctor smiled when she saw me. “You’re alert. That’s good. Give me your hand—no, your good hand.” Her hand was warm and firm and closed over mine reassuringly. “Vitals are all strong, you’re breathing naturally, no infections…as soon as we finish the healing of your hand, you’ll be as good as new. It’s a relief.”
“Really?”
“There was a chance the anchor’s field might have had lingering effects that could have spread throughout your body. A small chance, so I didn’t bring it up, but it would have extended your recovery time by weeks. But everything’s fine.” She released me and opened a cupboard by the bed. “I want you to relieve yourself before I let you go, just in case there are other problems we weren’t aware of. But here are your clothes, and as soon as you’ve done that, you can go. You’ll be hungry in about an hour. Don’t gorge yourself or you’ll vomit. Malcolm, you’ll need to monitor that. Talk to Rick before you leave to set up a time to return for the final healing.”
I used the tiny bathroom and felt better. I hadn’t realized how much I’d needed to go until I’d peed about a gallon of liquid. Ruby checked my physical condition again, smiled, and said, “I’m glad everything worked out. I’ll see you in a few days.”
“Why are you a doctor, but Mr. Wallach wasn’t?” I blurted out. It was irrelevant, but I’d been wondering it ever since meeting Ruby.
A shadow passed over Ruby’s features, and I felt like kicking myself for bringing up her dead grandfather. “Grandpa was too impatient for school,” Ruby said. “He left high school at sixteen and then…well, it was the Fifties, and he was a smart black man—even if he hadn’t been impatient, it would have been hard for him to get a degree. So he was self-taught for the most part, studied with the Wardens when he could, collected knowledge from all over the place.”
She chuckled. “He faced bigotry and racism his whole life and never cared. It was all about the knowledge. I asked him once how it felt being a black man in a white man’s world, and he looked at me like that was the dumbest question of all time. Said black and white meant nothing when our world was under siege by monsters that didn’t give a damn what color we were. I wish I had that kind of confidence.”
“I’m really sorry for your loss,” I said.
Ruby nodded. “Thanks. I also wish he’d been less of a stubborn ass, because maybe he’d still be alive. He was convinced this magic would be his legacy. Like he didn’t already have a hundred legacies to his name.”
I didn’t like to say I thought the oracle had been right all along, and Wallach had ignored its advice and that had gotten him killed. It would have been cruel, and it would also have raised the question of why the oracle had apparently given in at the end, if giving in had meant Wallach’s death. “I wish it had worked,” I said instead.
“Me too.” Ruby smiled sadly. “You may have trouble falling asleep tonight. Hot bath, herbal tea or cocoa, and don’t force it. See you soon.”
Malcolm helped me dress, and we left the room. It was on the opposite side of the corridor to Green 1 from the one I’d been taken to first. I didn’t feel wobbly or tired, I wasn’t hungry; if not for the continuing numbness of my left hand, I would have felt in perfect condition.
Jeong was at the central desk in Green 1, chatting with one of the nurses. He looked even younger under the lights of the enormous room than he had in Abernathy’s. “How old are you, anyway?” I blurted out.
He laughed. “I’m twenty-seven,” he said. “I have a condition where my body’s self-repairing abilities work way too well. Keeps me from aging as fast as the average person. It’s a rare side effect of the bone aegis. Feel more confident now?”
“Is it bad for me to say yes?”
“Not really.” Jeong pushed off from the desk he was leaning against and picked up a tablet. “Let’s see…it will take two days for the tendons to finish repairing themselves—”
“What do you mean?”
He glanced up at me before returning his attention to the screen. “We induced a regenerative field in your hand, very localized, to encour
age your tendons to repair themselves. The alternative was keeping you in a medical coma for those two days, something we never like to do because there are potentially harmful side effects. The field will disappear in a few days, at which point we’ll complete the healing process. Come back on Tuesday—it can be in the evening, if that’s easiest—and…that will be it.”
He spoke so casually of regeneration it made my head whirl. Malcolm said, “We’ll be there. Thank you, doctor.”
“Call me Rick,” Jeong said. “I’m glad something in this mess worked out all right.”
“I’m sorry about Mr. Wallach,” I said.
“Me too. It’s a huge loss.” Rick looked suddenly even younger, his eyes shadowed with pain and his lips pinched tight. “I can’t believe you tried to save him. Didn’t you know how dangerous that was?”
“I didn’t. I have a history of doing stupid things without realizing how dangerous they are.”
Rick smiled. “I’m glad we didn’t lose you. Two losses are bad enough.”
A chill passed over me. “Two losses? You mean…Viv is dead?”
Malcolm put his arm around me, supporting me as my knees wobbled.
“Oh, no, she’s alive,” Rick reassured me. “I shouldn’t have said it that way. I don’t have any idea of her condition, I’m afraid, but I do know she’s not dead. And that means there’s hope.”
“We’re going to see her now, if she’s allowed visitors,” Malcolm said.
Rick checked a different tablet. “She is. And she has the best bone magi helping her.”
“Thanks,” I said, but I noticed he hadn’t said she would be fine, and that scared me.
20
Malcolm kept his arm around me as we walked back through the halls. I was grateful for his support. Now that my fears for myself were mostly eased, I could focus on my fears for Viv. I needed someone who could tell me what was wrong with her, and more importantly, tell me what it would take for her to recover.
The infirmary corridors all looked the same to me, but Malcolm walked with confidence to a room with the curtain drawn and opened the door. I took two steps inside and stopped, my heart in my throat. Viv lay unmoving in the hospital bed, her bright magenta hair the only spot of color in the room because she was paler than usual, her lips white and cracked, her eyelids sunken. An IV drip led to her left arm, and she was hooked up to a couple of monitors that beeped and hissed quietly. On a rolling bed beside her, Jeremiah stirred and sat up. “Helena,” he said, his voice hoarse. “You’re well.”
I raised my bandaged hand. “Mostly. But Viv—”
“No change,” Jeremiah said. He sat with his feet dangling above the floor and ran a hand through his hair, scratching his head. “The accident drained a lot of her magic, but they’ve restored that and she still won’t wake up.”
“Does she…what about her brain function?” Just saying the words made me feel ill.
“That’s all normal, too,” Jeremiah said. He hopped down and took Viv’s hand in his. “She’s not a vegetable. But they can’t get her to wake up.” He rubbed the back of her hand with his thumb. “She doesn’t respond to anything.”
I walked to the other side of the bed. Viv’s breathing was shallow but steady, barely noticeable. “She saved us, Rick said. She broke the fulcrum and saved everyone in Abernathy’s…maybe saved the oracle too.”
“Forgive me for not being comforted by that,” Jeremiah said.
“No, I didn’t—that’s not what I was thinking. I meant, how did she know it would work? The diamond fell off one of the tallest bookcases and didn’t even crack when it hit the floor. Viv couldn’t possibly do more damage than that. And she knew it was indestructible.”
“I don’t know,” Jeremiah said. “I haven’t talked to anyone about what happened. Viv didn’t even tell me what she was involved with, working with Wallach—said she wanted it to be a surprise.” He laughed bitterly. “That phone call from Lucia was some surprise, all right. The kind of surprise I could go my whole life without getting.”
“So you don’t know about the realignment magic?”
Jeremiah shook his head. “Are you all right? They said you were caught up in the explosion that killed Wallach and did this to Viv.”
“I’m fine, I guess.” I pulled a chair next to Viv’s bed and sat. “Mr. Wallach found a way to keep the invaders from getting into our world ever again. He wanted to shift our reality away from theirs, seal the cracks they use to get in. And it almost worked.”
“That’s insane. No wonder—” Jeremiah closed his mouth, pressing his lips tight against more words escaping.
“No, really, it was working. The anchors—the parts that connected the magic to our reality—they started to move. That’s what killed Mr. Wallach. He got caught in the field and it—” I remembered that twisted wax figure and swallowed bile. “And I brushed up against it.” I waved my bandaged hand at him again.
Jeremiah nodded. “Was anyone else hurt?”
“No. Just the three of us. It could have been so much worse.”
“She’s not dead. That means there’s hope.” Jeremiah didn’t sound hopeful.
The door opened, and Lucia entered. She didn’t look surprised to see us there. “I understand the surgery was successful,” she told me. “Glad to hear it.”
From Lucia, that counted as gushing happiness. “Thanks. They’ll finish the healing in a few days.”
“You’re still the luckiest person I’ve ever met.” She stood beside Jeremiah and regarded Viv. “No change?”
“None. Does anyone know what happened yet?” Jeremiah said, his voice tight with frustration.
Lucia didn’t take her eyes off Viv. “Pirolli is still analyzing the fulcrum. He and Osenbaugh have recreated the event, as far as possible without repeating it, and he says there was a microcellular event that altered the fulcrum to make it vulnerable to, as he put it, a percussive intervention.” She scowled. “He means it was weakened enough that hitting it could break it,” she said to my obvious confusion. “God save me from academics.”
“But Viv couldn’t have known that,” I said.
“I won’t know what Haley did or did not know until she wakes up.” Lucia’s scowl deepened. “About all we do know is she bashed it with her toolbox and the fulcrum shattered, releasing all the energy it had absorbed from the node along with its direct connection to the node’s energy.”
“She should not have survived that,” Malcolm said. “The power of a node is fatal to humans.”
“I know that, Campbell. She’s lucky all it did was drain most of her magic. Right now I have my best minds working on the problem. Haley ought to be dead, or at the very least brain-fried.” Jeremiah’s exhausted face went paler, but Lucia didn’t notice. “I don’t even know enough to speculate. It might have something to do with the node itself. Nobody really understands how the named Neutralities affect their nodes, and I only learned the oracle is separate from the node yesterday, so it’s even weirder than I thought. Or something about the store’s environment affected her. It’s all just random guessing at this point.”
My stomach chose that moment to rumble with hunger. Lucia’s lips curved in a half-smile. “And life goes on,” she said.
“Not for everyone,” Jeremiah growled. “Don’t you dare make light of this, Lucia.”
The smile vanished. “I’ve lost the most brilliant magus this node has ever seen, Washburn. The oracle was nearly destroyed. I am sorry for your personal tragedy, but don’t you think you’re the only one who’s suffering here. Haley’s alive, and we’ll figure out how to rouse her. Until then, I have work to do.” She nodded at me. “Are you going back to work tomorrow?”
I’d lost track of what day it was. “I guess so. I feel fine, just hungry. My hand doesn’t even hurt.”
“I’ll have a few auguries for you. Call Judy Rasmussen and let her know you survived. I made her go home around midnight. Right now I have to deal with the fallout from Palembang.” She was
gone before I could ask what had happened with Palembang. She’d made it sound like everything was well there when we’d spoken before the realignment’s failure.
Jeremiah was staring blankly at the wall, his hand closed into a fist. I put my hand on his arm. “She’s right. They’ll figure it out.”
He nodded, but didn’t look at me. “Go get some food,” he said.
“You should come with us.”
He shook his head. “I’m not hungry. I’ll have to leave eventually to go to work tomorrow. Until then…I don’t want to leave if there’s a chance she’ll wake.”
“I understand.” I hugged him impulsively and left.
I thought Malcolm would take me to the central hub to be teleported out of the Gunther Node, but instead he led me along the magenta line to a big, low-ceilinged room that smelled of roast chicken and green beans. “The cafeteria,” he said. “It’s a little early for lunch, but they feed people twenty-four hours a day.”
“I had no idea this was here.” The cafeteria was unexpectedly cheery, its walls covered with posters done in a World War II art style, but with slogans altered to apply to fighting the Long War. I gazed at a picture of a Forties-era housewife in a cheerful polka-dot apron whose thought bubble read What the invaders don’t know WILL kill them! and wondered if there was a Warden marketing department that came up with these things.
Malcolm helped me fill my tray with chicken and a pile of green beans—even the food felt like WWII-era dining—and then cut the chicken into small pieces I could manage. Despite what Ruby had said, I didn’t feel much like eating, but my stomach ached with hunger, so I valiantly ate my meal and idly eavesdropped on the few other diners in the room. They weren’t talking about anything interesting, but maybe they were just influenced by the poster that read Be like Dad and Keep Mum!
While I was eating, Malcolm pulled out his phone and texted someone. Moments later, another phone buzzed with an incoming text. Malcolm withdrew my phone from his back pocket and handed it to me. GLAD YOU’RE WELL. STOP SCARING ME, Judy’s message read. I typed a reply one-handed and went back to eating. “I’m glad she went home,” I said. “Was I really there for thirteen hours?”
The Book of Destiny Page 22