Extreme Medical Services Box Set Vol 1--3

by Jamie Davis

  “Yes,” Ashley sighed. “You have to understand, my sister and I are very different. We are two sides of the same coin. She attends the fallen heroes on battlefields, personally ushering the most deserving of the fallen souls onward in their spirit journey while I heal the surviving injured and wounded. In the Crimea, there was a sudden surge in vampire attacks in the areas around the battlefields. Some of the wounded soldiers in the hospital died and were turned as well, so I went east to the battlefields to investigate. There I found Ingrid. She was looking into a sudden decrease in the available souls after the battles and took issue with Artur coming out at night and finishing off the wounded and dying on the field of battle, turning them into his vassal vampires. He, too, sought out the strongest and best among the warriors.”

  “Artur always fashioned himself as something of an armchair general,” James said. “It doesn’t surprise me that he would want to associate with former warriors. So your sister took offense?”

  “She took it personally and spent the better part of two months trying to hunt Artur down,” Ashley said. “Eventually, Ingrid and I were able to track his vampires back to his lair. There was a confrontation in that country inn involving too many vampires to handle on our own, and we had to fight together to kill most of them. In the end, Ingrid confronted Artur, but he ended up getting away before she could reach him. She could have stopped him permanently had she caught up with him. In the end, he escaped and left the battlefield wounded to me, and those who were dying to her. She swore she’d never forget what happened. There have been a few other run-ins over the years where Artur had other close calls. He always managed to escape in the end.”

  “Your sister sounds like a bit of a badass,” Brynne said with a chuckle. “Would she have staked him if she had caught up with him?”

  “Oh, most definitely,” Ashley said. “She is a powerful and capable woman. She wouldn’t have used a stake, though. The Eldara can manifest heavenly blades of pure silver, wrought in the forges of the upper planes. With that in her hands, she would have been more than a match for even an elder vampire lord like Artur, had she been able to bring him to a fight.”

  James chuckled, “Artur has always been such a pompous ass. I would love to see him turn tail and run, and settle this thing once and for all.”

  Ashley looked around at the three others at the table. “Which brings us back to the matter at hand. Why has Artur shown up here, at this particular time? He is always working some angle. It has to be connected.”

  “James, you’ve known Artur longer than any of us,” Dean asked. “He’s your friend. What could he be up to?”

  James held up a hand in response. “He’s not a friend, Dean. I’m extending him hospitality according to tradition; that is all. He and I have never been what anyone would call friends. I thought it curious that he came here. We have never gotten along. I assumed he was just passing through on business and needed somewhere to stay while he accomplished his work. I thought he stopped here just to annoy me with his little slights like the attack on Codi. Now, I’m not sure.” James pulled out his phone and tapped a message on it while the others watched. “I’ll have Celeste look into what Artur has been up to while he’s been here.”

  “I’m almost certain he is connected to what is happening here in Elk City,” Ashley said. “It all makes sense now and perhaps is why I was chosen for this assignment, in this time and place, given my prior encounters with him.”

  “It gets tiring that your bosses can’t seem to send you a direct message explaining everything to you up front. It would make things so much easier,” Dean said.

  “I told you, I’m a change agent. I influence things based on my instincts and impressions of the people I’m working with. If the gods interfered directly, there’d be no such thing as free will, ever. The most they can do is work through agents like the Eldara to help people realize their choices. In the end, though, it’s up to them to make the decisions.”

  Brynne interrupted them, “But Artur has only been here for a week. How could he be involved? The attacks have been going on for several months.”

  The assembled friends at the table fell silent while they pondered that point.

  James broke the silence. “Celeste will find out,” he said. “She has excellent resources and contacts throughout the extended Unusual community. If Artur is up to something more than his usual unsavory business, she’ll find out. In the meantime, Dean, she informed me that you might accept a position here to help with the health of our employees in the building. Have you made up your mind?”

  “I think I would like that very much,” Dean said. “I want to keep helping people somehow, and being suspended with nothing to do all day doesn’t appeal to me. I’d rather keep busy while everyone out there decides my fate for me.”

  “Excellent,” James said. “We’ll set you up with a full suite of assessment tools, and I have a portable blood lab downstairs that we’ll get set up for you.”

  “I don’t know how to run something like that. I can use a handheld blood analyzer like the iStat, but I’m not a lab tech,” Dean said.

  “Don’t worry, we’ll take care of all the training you need,” James countered. “Maybe we’ll get you so used to working here you won’t want to go back to working for the city. I know I can pay you better.”

  “Anyone can pay us better,” Brynne quipped. “I keep telling you that we don’t do it for the pay, it’s something we would almost do for free. In fact, in many rural areas, there are volunteer EMTs and paramedics who provide all the care on ambulances.”

  Dean listened as the conversation turned to healthcare reform and how people paid for that care. He thought about the possibility of staying here and working for James. He decided that, while it might make a nice distraction for him right now, it wasn’t something he wanted to do long term. He belonged on the streets, caring for those who couldn’t care for themselves.

  8

  The next two weeks went by for Dean in a blur. He got set up in an office on the second floor and familiarized himself with the equipment James purchased for him to use, or in some cases already had, for onsite medical care. He found out that at any given time, there were upwards of sixty feeder humans staying in rooms like Codi’s in the Nightwing building. They were all there voluntarily and were compensated quite handsomely. There were males and females, and all were there to supplement the bagged blood supplies purchased to feed the vampires in James’ coven as well as any visiting vampire dignitaries like Artur. The large number was important to maintain and monitor since it took time for the human body to replenish lost blood supply. While the fluid itself was replaced rather quickly just by drinking water and other liquids in the course of a few days, it took upwards of forty-five days to replace the life-giving cells in the blood that were depleted after a feeding.

  Since the incident between Codi and Artur, Dean paid particular attention to any of his charges who exhibited any signs of additional injury or assault. They all came in once a week to get their blood tested, and he checked them over for signs of infection or illness. If he saw a fever, slow healing wounds or other symptoms of disease, he referred them to a nurse practitioner on James’ payroll in a nearby medical office building. All of the feeders, as they called themselves, were pretty matter-of-fact about what they did. They were thankful that the testing could be done on-site by Dean. Previously, they had to go to a regular lab, and the technicians asked awkward questions about why they had to get tested so frequently. Some of the lab techs thought they were involved with the porn industry because of the frequent blood tests.

  It didn’t take long for Dean to learn that each of the resident vampires had their favorites, and a few of them called down frequently to see when their feeder of choice would be back on the menu. Dean would check the records and let them know when he thought they’d have replenished their blood based on what the hemoglobin and hematocrit numbers were. He was struck by how normal the whole situation seemed
to him after just a few days. Once he was sure that no one was being coerced into being there, and that they were being paid very well for the services they rendered with their bodies every month and a half or so, he settled into the routine of testing and keeping records.

  Artur seemed to have settled down too, at least no one else who reported to him had an injury indicating anything more than a vigorous bite. The worst of the wounds he saw were able to be closed with a butterfly bandage or even a mere band-aid. Still Dean knew Artur was up there. He was aware that Artur was plotting something sinister to undermine both James and the Station U program. He spent his downtime texting Ashley and Brynne, or surfing the web to find out what was happening with the latest attacks by The Cause on Unusuals. The attacks always seemed to coincide with a Station U ambulance call. Their Unusual patients were starting to realize that fact. The number of calls the unit received daily had dropped off quite a bit. They were all rightly afraid of being the unwitting victims of attack, and while they didn’t necessarily blame the paramedics themselves, the Unusuals knew that it was often the ambulance that heralded the next assault.

  Ashley was also worried about it and had taken to going out at night herself, somewhere, to try and track down the source of the attacks or attackers. Dean always asked to go with her but she refused, saying that she was traveling in a manner he couldn’t, and he would not be able to keep up with her. The combination of her shifts at the ER and the late night forays into Elk City were starting to take their toll on her. She insisted that she didn’t need any sleep in the human sense, but Dean also knew that when she spent her divine energy, she became fatigued. He had seen it firsthand for himself once when she had healed a wounded dryad with a septic infection on a weekend trip to the mountains. Her powers might be formidable enough to cause a vampire lord to be afraid to cross her directly, but they were finite and needed to be recharged from time to time.

  The worst part was that he was unable to do anything about it. Ashley was worried, too. She had said before that he had a role to play in stopping the attacks and resetting the balance in Elk City. But, since he was put on suspension following the murder in his apartment, that link between him and the potential solution had faded somewhat. At least, that was the way Ashley had put it. He was still linked somehow, but it was now more tenuous and signaled to her that his chances of influencing things were diminished. Dean mentioned that change one evening when he convinced Ashley to stay in and not go out prowling Elk City for clues, or whatever it was she was looking for.

  “What if getting me off the street, away from providing patient care for the Unusuals has been what changed my involvement in this whole situation?” he asked Ashley as they cuddled in the dark of his bedroom late one night.

  “What do you mean?”

  Dean continued the thought. “I mean, what if getting me off the Station U ambulance was the whole reason for setting me up for Zach’s murder? You said that the link to my involvement changed in your eyes as soon as that happened. So what if it was all about taking me out of the equation on the streets? That would make it so I couldn’t act directly to save my patients in a given situation, whatever that is.”

  “That makes sense,” Ashley said. “But it could take months for the legal case to resolve and for you to get your job back. The way things are going right now, there aren’t going to be any Station U patients left to call you, or at least not any that are willing to take the risk to make that call. The terror campaign and attacks against them are working. Brynne and the rest of the paramedics there are only taking about one call a day. Eventually, the city is going to see the drop-off and start asking you all to take regular EMS calls for humans. Once they start cycling you all back into the regular rotation, Station U as we know it will cease to exist.”

  “Okay, so we have that much figured out, but what can we do to change it?” Dean asked. “I can’t get back in the ambulance unless we can somehow prove my innocence.”

  “It’s one of the things I’m working on, Dean,” Ashley said. “I’ve been trying to get a sense of where the connection between you and Zach is. Whenever I try to focus in on it, I’m just drawn to the center of the city and then the sensation dissipates. I know you’re frustrated about this. I’m frustrated, too. It’s almost as if someone is cloaking their involvement magically.”

  “Is there some way we can overcome that with a magic of our own or pierce the veil?” Dean asked. “If magic or some magical ability is being used, there must be a way to counter it, right?”

  “It is not always that simple, Dean,” Ashley replied. “There are hierarchies of magic out there. You need to know the kind of magic being used to identify the way to counter it. I’m not even sure if it’s magic at all, just a suspicion.”

  “Is there a way we can find out?” Dean asked.

  “Maybe,” Ashley said. “It’s not without its risks, though. Because it centers around you and your involvement in this, you would be the one to pay the price.”

  “That sounds ominous.”

  “Magic and magical powers all have a price, Dean,” Ashley explained. “It’s basic physics. Matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed, merely transformed in some way to another type of matter or energy. That transformation and the control of it comes at a cost. Just like my fatigue when using my powers to heal, those who deal with such magic and the use of their skills must pay a price to balance the energy equation. You will be asked to compensate them for that price they must pay.”

  “What kind of compensation?” Dean asked.

  “I do not know,” Ashley replied. “It varies and depends on many things including the way the individual caster feels towards you personally. If they don’t like you, you pay more. If they like you, you pay less. If they like you a lot, maybe you pay nothing.”

  “So how do we go about doing this?” Dean asked. “I’ll pay the price. I can’t just sit here and watch while the whole Station U program gets scrapped, just because I did nothing to stop it.”

  “Be careful what you say, Dean,” Ashley cautioned. “You do not yet know the price that will be asked. If the caster doesn’t like you or doesn’t care, your willingness to pay more will cause them to raise the cost. As to how we go about this process, I need to talk to James and do a little investigating on my own. If we are going to do this, I want to stack the odds of success in our favor for a change.”

  “So what do we do in the meantime?” Dean asked. “I’m going stir crazy stuck here in this building. At least take me out with you on your next nighttime excursion. Maybe having me with you will change the balance somehow. It’s got to be worth a try.” Dean leaned forward from where he was lying next to her and kissed her lightly on her shoulder. He had missed her on those many nights when she left to go out and search for answers. It had been over a week since they had spent any meaningful time together. “Come on. You know I can be very persuasive if I want to be.”

  Ashley laughed and turned towards him in bed. “I’ll think about it. In the meantime, you can try very hard to persuade me. I give you my permission.”

  * * *

  ———

  * * *

  By the next morning, Dean was sure he had convinced Ashley to take him along on her excursion around the city that night. He asked her directly as she got up to get ready for her shift in the ER, and she looked at him for a minute then nodded in assent. He saw her smile when he jumped up and gave her a hug and kiss. This was the best news he had heard in a while. He was finally going to get out of this building and do something to take care of the city he had come to love and support for a change. He had gone for short walks during his days, in between his duties for James. However, he had never really had a purpose or destination for where he was going. Dean had quickly returned to the building to spend time in his room watching the news of the attacks, or surfing the web for the increasing reports of strange creatures living in the city. That was all he could do until now to try and get a handle on the events
beyond his control.

  Ashley showered and got ready for work while he made them some breakfast. She opted for just half a bagel with some cream cheese, yogurt, and some coffee. As soon as she was finished eating, she gave him a kiss and left, leaving him alone again. At least, this time, he had something more to look forward to. He decided to do some research on the origins of magic and how some Unusuals might harness it to help or harm him in his quest for answers. While he didn’t have the extensive library of myths and legend they had at Station U, he did have the Internet, and he knew how to search for those same books online in website or eBook form. He found much of what he was looking for in the public domain section of the Google Books Library Project. The original Grimm’s fairy tales were a good starting point, but he also looked for magic use in several Eastern, Asian, and African cultural myths, too.

  A lot of what he read supported what Ashley had told him the night before about the price that must be paid for the use of magic. Some of the stories were more than a bit gruesome and disturbing in the prices demanded in pay for a magical intervention. He thought he would just meet a local witch, or priestess, or something, and they would conjure up an answer for him. Dean snorted at the thought. He should have known better, though. He had seen enough about what went on in the Unusual community over the last several months riding with Brynne at Station U to know that nothing would be that easy. He would have to be very careful about how he responded to whomever Ashley found for them to consult. One wrong word could commit him to a bargain he would not be able to back out of.

  Dean wrapped up his research when he saw on his watch that it was time to head to the medical office downstairs to start his work screening and assessing the feeders again. He decided to ponder the potential price that would be asked of him while he went about his work for the rest of the day. How far would he go to resolve things here in Elk City? He would need to have a firm understanding of that for himself before Ashley returned later and they began their quest to find an answer to the magical block protecting their adversary.