by C. E. Murphy
He inhaled. I pointed a finger at him and he coughed on his words. “Does it appear to you that anyone in this room is providing illegal medical advice, or in fact trying to remove Mr. Holliday from the hospital’s expert care?”
He inhaled again. I thought if I could keep him doing this for a few minutes, he might just puff up and blow away like a hot air balloon. It was worth a shot, so I carried on full bore. “I didn’t think so. I’m sure you’re familiar with the idea of positive thoughts and prayer shoring up the ill, Doctor, even if you don’t subscribe to its usefulness yourself.” His nose pinched again and I smiled less pleasantly this time. “That’s what I thought. But you’d hardly deny the family and friends of an ill man the chance to surround him with those thoughts and prayers, would you? I didn’t think so.” Somewhere in the middle of that I started walking toward him, and he started backing up. By the time I got to the end, I was smiling so hard it hurt, and he was on the wrong side of the door that I closed in his face. I turned back to Melinda and Morrison, triumph writ large in my expression.
“That,” Melinda said, “was Bill’s older brother.”
It turned out ritual suicide wasn’t an option while hanging out in a friend’s hospital room. Morrison wouldn’t even let me crawl under Billy’s bed and hide in humiliation. Billy’s brother—who, now that I knew was his brother, did bear some resemblance to him, in a shrunken-down, weasly kind of way—gave me the world’s flattest look and then ignored me wholesale when he came back into the room. I not only couldn’t blame him, I was sort of grateful.
Bradley Holliday had driven up from Spokane the moment his shift at Valley Hospital ended, which was why he wore doctor’s whites. On hearing he was from Spokane, I wanted to know any number of things, like why I hadn’t known Billy had a brother, if he lived nearby and whether or not Bradley Holliday had ever met a teenage girl named Suzanne Quinley who’d gone to live in Spokane after her parents were brutally murdered. I figured the answers were “You never asked,” and “No,” respectively, but I wondered, anyway.
I also wondered why my friend Billy, who loved all things paranormal and who had married a woman like himself, had a brother who became livid at a healer’s drum in a hospital room.
I sat down on the far side of Billy’s bed, making myself as small as possible while I put a hand on his shoulder. It hardly mattered: none of the others were paying any attention to me, but I felt like I needed to be surreptitious, anyway.
The coil of energy flared inside me as I touched Billy’s shoulder, impatience sparkling through my skin like champagne. I felt a knot loosen in my shoulder and let my eyes close for a moment, absurdly grateful that the power was responding. It hadn’t been a couple of weeks earlier, and although it’d been behaving since then, the idea of failing my friends again made my stomach clench with nausea.
In a way it was helpful to have Brad over there talking intently with Melinda and Morrison. It put less pressure on me to be the performing monkey, and I was uncertain enough about what to do as it was. I did know one thing: pouring my life essence into Billy, like Melinda had tried to do, was right out. She didn’t have the healing knack that I did, but that hadn’t been the important part of what she’d been offering. She’d been trying to give him the will to live, and Billy wasn’t missing that. What I’d felt was more like a siphon draining away what would have normally made him vital.
And siphons were a metaphor I could work with. The idea brought a smile to my lips even as I concentrated on my breathing, unwilling to interrupt and bring attention to myself by asking for my drum. Ideally I would pop by the garden that housed my inner self, invite Billy in and do a little fixer-upper from there. Even more ideally, I’d pop right into Billy’s garden and do my work from inside his own head, but the one time I’d fallen into somebody else’s garden, it’d been Gary, and I didn’t really have much idea of how I’d done it. I suspected I hadn’t done it at all, in fact, and that the old man’s sense of self had just overwhelmed my newbie attempts to set up his shop in my head. It all meant that realistically, I was going to try slipping inside my garden, drawing Billy’s soul closer to mine and pinching off the siphon that was drawing life force out of him. It seemed very straightforward and simple.
Oh, what my life had come to, that such things should seem simple.
A few deep breaths had me drifting, like the clarity Morrison’s drumming had brought on was simmering just below the surface, waiting for me to pay attention to it again. My goal this time was an internal journey, not an external one, so there was no lens flare effect or rearrangement of the color spectrum into neons and pulsing life. Instead I slid down a brightly colored rabbit hole, tumbling chaotically through my own mind into a place I didn’t recognize at first.
There were familiar elements. The pond with a waterfall feeding it at one end, for example, and the pathways that lay in straight lines through the grounds. But the grass, usually cropped so short I could see dirt between individual blades, had grown up to ankle-deep, and there was a hint of Kentucky blue to its color now. Leaves were fully open on trees that were still tidily trimmed, and a few of the hedges even bore flowers, though I had no idea what kind. The garden had been rectangular and functional last time I’d been in it, but now the far end, away from the waterfall, seemed hazy, as if fog were hiding the possibility of more.
It was almost pretty.
I stood by the pond, rotating slowly and trying to remember when I’d last actually gone inside myself. I’d been looking outward for days, searching for Coyote—my erstwhile spirit guide, who’d stopped speaking to me after I threw him out of a dangerous situation—but I’d been avoiding taking a look at the state of my soul ever since the catastrophe that had cost two people their lives. It seemed unlikely that those events had led to all the blossoming going on around me now.
Of course not, said a snide little voice inside my head. Because horrible things happening couldn’t possibly have any positive aspects, like forcing you to get your act together.
I really hated that voice. I was almost certain it’d been there before my shamanic powers had been woken up. It was the almost part that made me nervous. Sometimes I wanted to ask if other people had snarky little voices that gave them smart-ass commentary on their lives, but I was afraid they’d say no.
Obnoxious little voice or no, I sat down by my pond, trailing my fingers into the water. It struck me suddenly as being a good conduit for reaching Billy, even working into the siphoning of life essence he was experiencing. I could still feel my hand on his shoulder, in a vague, disconnected way, which was interesting. I’d never tried paying attention to my physical body while inside the garden of my mind. Then again, I hadn’t really needed to, and now I was trying to build a bridge between myself and my patient. Trying to find a way inside him so we could get the healing process started.
It was my right hand both on his shoulder and splooshing around in my pond. The most peculiar thing was that having two body awarenesses going on at once only sounded strange when I tried putting it into words; it felt completely natural. I turned my focus to my fingers, calling up the bubble of power that resided inside me.
It responded as easily as it had before, splashing through me in silver-blue joy at being used. Warmth and glee ran up through my torso and into my arm, washing down the blood vessels just as it had done with Gary, and then poured itself into my pond. The charged water glimmered and shone, quicksilver with life and depth of its own. My consciousness spilled into it, and over Billy’s skin, making me aware of his heartbeat, his breathing, first on the surface, and then slowly from within, as if he was permeable and I was water.
I cut the snide little voice off before it could comment, that time. I knew perfectly well the permeation was what I was trying to accomplish, but it didn’t make succeeding any less surprising to me. Still, having my brain back-talk at me when I was trying to concentrate couldn’t be of any help.
The entire sensation was incredibly subtle, like
being brushed by fur so soft I couldn’t be sure I’d been touched. It could also have been insanely erotic, and for a moment I was torn between gratitude I was working with Billy and a fantasy about working with Morrison.
God, I wished I would stop thinking things like that. I set my teeth together both literally and figuratively, and concentrated on the idea of permeating my way through flesh and bone and into Billy’s psyche, so I could enter the garden of his soul and work my anti-siphoning magic.
For a minute there, I thought it was going to work. I slid through dreams, trying not to look at them, under the unlikely logic that they weren’t my business. Traipsing around in people’s unconscious minds: my business. Snooping while I’m doing it: not kosher. I had an interesting set of moral boundaries going on there.
But the water metaphor was working, letting me drain down toward his garden. I got the impression that the idea of the garden was something I superimposed on Billy, and that he adapted to because I was the one awake in this scenario. Regardless, it provided the structure I needed, a bright spot at the center of his being, hints of green visible even from my outside vantage point. I exhaled a sigh of relief.
Warm, heavy blackness came down around his garden like a Carolina night, so thick and dark there was nothing left to breathe. There were faint shining prisms in the black, ripples of purple and blue that had the faintest living texture to them when I saw them from the corners of my eyes, and which disappeared entirely when I looked straight at them, too dark to be seen.
My water metaphor held together, leaving me beading against tar, unable to push through the darkness. I gnawed my lower lip, wondering which level of reality I was doing that on, and tried to pull the droplets of myself back together, coalescing into a whole presence lingering within Billy’s mind as a semi-welcome guest.
Sleepy, weighty midnight swam around me, trying as hard—harder—than I was to enter that core of Billy’s self. It brought slow pressure to bear, something about its presence suggesting it had all the time it needed, and that it would eventually prevail. I, on the other hand, was beginning to think I had a limited window in which to save my friend’s life. The sleepy power didn’t seem to be interested in acknowledging me, and I couldn’t tell if Billy knew I was there. If my water metaphor had failed, there had to be another way. Something more direct, something completely the opposite of what the weight that kept Billy asleep was trying to accomplish.
A needle sounded good. I restructured the idea of my approach without putting too much thought into it, half afraid I’d tip something off if I was too noisy about my intentions. Coyote had told me more than once that the psychic planes were dangerous places, and while I felt relatively safe in the confines of Billy’s head, he probably had, too, and now he was stuck in a coma. I made the idea of myself thin, piercing through the uncomprehending darkness with ease as I injected myself toward Billy’s garden. One pinprick hole to carry a healing element into the garden. It made sense.
I smacked into a barrier hard enough to make my head ring and landed back in my own body, holding a hand over my eye. “Ow.”
“Walker?” Morrison was beside me, his hand hovering over my shoulder. I moved my fingers away from my face, brushing his touch away before it happened.
“I’m okay.” My left eye socket hurt. Not like the hangover, which I’d managed to forget about, but as if I’d been smacked with a ball. Or like a needle tip had hit bone instead of forgiving flesh. “I’m all right.” I put my hand over my eye again, squinting the other one at Melinda. “Mel, I think I should talk to you.” I didn’t want to give Brad a significant look, but my squinty eye flashed to him, anyway. “Alone.”
Brad exhaled in noisy exasperation. “She’s one of your insane friends, isn’t she, Melinda?”
“Joanne Walker,” Morrison said in clipped tones, “is a police officer under my command. She is here because I asked her to be. If you have a problem with that, Dr. Holliday, you can take it up with me.”
I wanted to cheer Morrison or hug him or something equally inappropriate, but my mouth had broken into a wide grin and my tummy was jumping with barely contained jiggles of laughter. “Doc Holliday,” I said happily. “I mean, I never got why your parents were cruel enough to call Billy Billy instead of Will or William, but Doc Holliday you did to yourself.”
The look Morrison gave me suggested I wasn’t helping matters. The look Bradley Holliday gave me suggested he’d heard the joke several thousand times now and it wasn’t any funnier than it had been the first time. Me, I didn’t care. For one brief, shining moment, life was good. Still grinning, I turned to Melinda, and all my humor fell away at the scared look in her eyes. “Crap,” I said quietly, and looked at Brad again. “Can you give me a minute with Mel, please?”
“She’ll tell me whatever you tell her,” he said pompously. I glanced at Melinda, who shrugged and nodded. I shrugged, too.
“Okay. There’s something keeping him asleep. Something that’s trying to drain his life energy. You were feeding it with all that pow—” I glanced at Morrison and Brad, shrugged again and modified what I was saying to “—good will you were giving him. I could get through it, but I couldn’t get into Billy’s psyche. He can take care of himself.” I lifted my hand to my eye again, then let it fall. “His own shields kept me out, and they’re keeping that thing, whatever it is, from draining him dry, too. I’ve never had to get through somebody’s shields, Mel. I don’t know how to do it, but I can learn, and then between me and Billy we’ll get that leech off him. It’s going to be okay.”
Melinda began a nod, taking a quick breath to speak, but Bradley beat her to it with a growled “This is preposterous. Bill needs medical care, not a quack with a drum and a mouthful of new-age nonsense.”
Morrison scowled at me, clearly on Brad Holliday’s side of things. I sympathized with them both, which only made everything more complicated. “I’m sorry, Captain. If it was going to be easy, the doctors probably could’ve woken him up. But I’ll figure it out. I really will,” I promised, then offered a hopeful smile and added, “Look at it this way. At least nobody’s dead.”
Morrison’s cell phone rang.
CHAPTER 6
I steepled my palms and fingers together against my mouth, fitted my thumbs under my chin and tried not to throw up. I had the distinct feeling I’d just made the at least it’s not raining comment on a much nastier scale, and from the tension throbbing in Morrison’s temple, he thought I had, too. For a few seconds the only sound in the room was the beeping of Billy’s monitors while we all watched Morrison pick up the call.
He tilted his head back and exhaled, shoulders slumping a little before he cast me an indecipherable glance and left the room with an apology on his lips for whoever it was he was talking to. Relief-tinged nausea settled into my bones and I put my head down on my knees and breathed for a minute. If somebody was dead, the look Morrison’d given me wouldn’t have been unreadable. I was willing to take small favors where I could get them. A shiver swept over me and I curled my arms around myself more tightly.
Melinda put her hand on my shoulder. “Thank you, Joanie.”
I shook my head against my knees. “I didn’t do anything.”
Brad’s disgruntled “You certainly didn’t” came across the room in a mutter. Melinda ignored him, squeezing my shoulder.
“You’ll find a way to help him,” she said with quiet confidence. “And at least I’ve got something to tell the kids.”
“What,” Brad snapped, “that their father is being held captive by a psychic whammy? Melinda, you have got to start dealing with the real world here. Bill is in a coma and he may never wake up. These things aren’t caused by evil spirits and magic. It’s a physical condition and has to be treated with science and medical professionals, not voodoo and snake oil.”
I lifted my head to watch him rant, hands steepled against my mouth again. “We’re all worried, Dr. Holliday,” I said when he was done. “I know you’ve already lost
one sibling.” Careless of him, my snide little voice said, but I didn’t let it out. Brad didn’t like me as it was. Joking about dead family wasn’t exactly the best way to win friends and influence people. “I hope the doctors can help him. In the meantime, maybe voodoo hoodwinks won’t hurt.” I could hardly believe I was hearing myself say that. How very far the mighty had fallen.
I stood up and gave Melinda a hug. “I’m going to head home and see if I can scare anything up about sleeping sicknesses and…” I trailed off with a sigh. And penetrating mental shields was how the sentence ended, but my coping mechanism had slid out of place, and it just seemed like too much to say right then. “I’ll call you as soon as I’ve got anything, okay?”
“Okay.” Mel returned the hug and I heard the argument with Brad start up again as I left the hospital room.
Morrison was folding his phone closed as I came down the hall. “Everything all right, Captain? Who was on the phone?”
He gave me another look I couldn’t read. “Everything’s fine. Just a friend.”
“Tell your friend he’s got lousy timing,” I said.
“She,” Morrison said, then looked like he wished he hadn’t. A too-vivid mental picture of Barbara Bragg snagged in my mind and I closed my hands into fists. Morrison noticed and I tried to find something else to do with my hands. “What’s going on back there?” Morrison asked just a shade too loudly. I seized on it, grateful for any change of topic.
“Oh, you know.” I had something to do with my hands now, gesturing down the hall toward the elevators. Morrison went for the stairs, probably out of sheer contrariness, but I followed him anyway. “Brad’s back there trying to convince Mel it’s dangerous to let me within fifty yards of his brother, and she’s telling him that Billy isn’t Caroline, and that everything’s going to be all right.” My vast psychic powers didn’t actually include telepathy, but I figured it was a pretty good guess as to what was going on. Morrison cornered on the stairs and threw a furrow-browed glance back at me.