Promises in the Dark

by Lois RH Balzer

  Promises in the Dark

  Legacy : Part Two

  by LRHBalzer

  *

  *

  He never made it to the end of the corridor.

  Something made him stop and turn around, listening to the familiar heartbeat. Come on, Chief. Settle down. He shouldn’t have mentioned the panther; he was never sure if Sandburg could actually see it or not. Hell, he was never quite sure if he was seeing it or not.

  “You still here?” A nurse walked by, shaking her head at him. “Your friend is fine here, honey. You go home and get yourself some sleep, you hear me? You’ve been here too long already. Not going to do your friend any good if you get sick, now are you?”

  James Ellison nodded at her absently, dismissing the advice she had already given him several times as midnight rolled into three in the morning. He knew exactly why he had stayed. Sandburg had clung to his arm, caught in the fever, terrified he would give away the sentinel’s secret in his delirious ramblings. As long as Ellison sat beside his partner, Sandburg remained calm, trusting him to know what to do. The few times he had ventured away—to the restroom or to get some coffee— he had come back at a run in time to catch the young anthropologist tugging at his IV lines and ready to bolt the hospital, biting his lip to avoid speaking. Just as he felt the need to protect Blair, Blair’s need to protect him was equally as strong, equally as powerful.

  But the fever had broken finally, Sandburg seemed rational again, and Ellison’s body was demanding sleep. Three or four hours, a shower and change of clothes, and he would be back, probably before his partner even woke up. He took a few more steps toward the exit, then turned around again, listening as Sandburg muttered to himself, resigned to the panther’s absence—and Jim’s absence, it seemed.

  The nurse materialized in front of him. “I’m serious, honey. He’s not going to sleep as long as you’re hanging around, fretting about him. We won’t let anything happen to him, the darlin’. He’s fine here.” The nurse picked up a tray of juices and headed to the far section of the Emergency Ward.

  Ellison waited, listening for a minute, staring at the curtained alcove until Sandburg settled down on the bed. A few hours sleep would come in handy about now, he reminded himself. Sleep deprivation wouldn’t help either of them. And Sandburg seemed quiet enough … The crisis had passed. Yes, he would go home.

  He continued down the hall, then stopped at the nurses’ station, leaning on the counter while the nurse at the Emergency Room Reception, a woman with impossibly-red hair, was on the telephone. As soon as he’d made the decision to go home, it hit him that he was more than tired; he was exhausted. Suddenly, all he wanted to do was go back to the loft and get some sleep. Actually, all he really wanted to do was take Sandburg back to the loft and end this whole nightmare week, but that didn’t seem to be a possibility for the next day or so anyway.

  The nurse hung up the phone and looked up at him, smiling when she saw who it was. “Is your friend sleeping yet?”

  “Not quite. Listen, I’m going home for a few hours— You have my number written here somewhere, right? Wait, here’s a card with my home phone and my cell phone number. And I’ll just write my pager here, too—just in case. Call me if there is any change, but otherwise I’ll be back by eight o’clock. He’ll be in a regular room by then, won’t he?”

  The nurse glanced up at the white board on the wall, checking the name of the doctor, then waving down a young woman who was passing through, dressed casually in dark jeans and sweater, her white lab coat open to reveal a stethoscope around her neck. “Check with Doctor MacNeill. She’s listed as his doctor here.”

  The doctor he had spoken with several hours before saw them looking at her and detoured to come over, her eyebrows slightly raised, questioningly. “And you’re with—? I’m sorry, I’ve seen you here tonight, but I’m not sure which patient you’re with.”

  “Blair Sandburg. My partner. I’m Detective James Ellison, Cascade Police. My partner appears to have malaria.”

  “Right … our malaria victim. We don’t see that much around here. Surprised us all.” She glanced through the sheets on her clipboard, then stopped on one, replacing it at the top of the pile. “He’s had his initial regimen of 1000 mg of chloroquine, and is scheduled for another 500 mg in a few minutes. He seems to be reacting well, so far. We’ll keep him here until a room opens up, but that probably won’t be for a while. We’re running a full show here tonight.”

  “I noticed.”

  “Between the flu epidemic, an apartment fire, and several automobile accidents, we’re busy. Then again, it’s Saturday night in Cascade— What else is new?” She started to move away, but a hand on her arm stopped her.

  Ellison rubbed at his forehead, trying to ease the tension there. “Sandburg’s okay, isn’t he? He’s on medication; his fever is down.”

  “For now. It’ll probably fluctuate for a few more hours. Don’t be surprised if he’s nauseous or has difficulty sleeping. The chloroquine sometimes affects patients like that. Once we get this acute attack under control, we’ll start him on primaquine. We’re just waiting for the lab results to come back on that. When you brought him in at—” she paged through her notes, “at six o’clock, it took awhile for the diagnosis to be made. He only started treatment at nine p.m.”

  “What is the primaquine for?”

  “Chloroquine only takes care of the current attack, but we need to also eradicate the parasites from his body. For that we usually use primaquine, unless the patient has a G6PD deficiency.” MacNeill looked up from her papers, to Jim, as though he might know this little detail about his partner.

  He shrugged. “Sorry, can’t help you there. Any side effects to these drugs?”

  “That would vary person to person. Primaquine can cause abdominal cramps or methemoglobinuria. As I said before, Chloroquine can cause insomnia or—”

  “Jim?” he heard clearly. “I feel lousy …”

  “Nausea,” Ellison supplied, turning and heading back to Sandburg’s curtained-off room at a run.

  *

  Blair Sandburg was cold. His partner had just left his side, and suddenly he felt cold and alone and he couldn’t see the damned panther under his bed. Couldn’t even hear him, once Jim was away from his bed. Life just wasn’t fair sometimes. The curtains around his bed felt like a confining prison, trapping him, slowly getting smaller.

  Malaria. What a stupid thing to get. If he was going to be sick, why couldn’t he have contracted some exotic—but quickly curable—disease that wasn’t quite so common? He shivered as a chill swept his body and rolled onto his side, trying to get further under the thin cotton blanket, but he ended up tangling his IV tubes.

  This really sucks, Jim. I can’t move.

  He struggled with the tubes and needles, trying to get bleary vision to cooperate, but only succeeded in tangling himself further. He started shivering more, his head falling back to the pillow as dizziness struck again. Wandering black blotches clouded what little vision he had and the icy chill grabbed hold of him. Everything suddenly got a little too overwhelming. He could feel his heart beating rapidly, his stomach muscles tensing and releasing. “I am not having a panic attack,” he whispered to himself. “I am not having a panic attack,” he repeated, for good measure.

  He tried to breathe rhythmically in and out, but the breathing-in part was a ragged inhalation of air that made him dizzier, and the breathing-out part made his stomach do dangerous maneuvers. “Jim,” he said faintly, his eyes pressed closed, “I feel lousy. Oh, god …” He tried to turn over, to find the disposable trays that he had been throwing up in earlier in the evening, but he couldn’t find the energy to do so. Damn it, Jim, I’m gonna throw up all over myself.
I could use a little help here.

  Then Jim was there, rolling him onto his side and placing the tray beneath his mouth. Just in time, too, even though there was little in his stomach left to bring up. He couldn’t see Jim, but he knew that touch, that presence. It calmed him, let him breathe again. His heart slowed in response, finding a comfortable cadence as he let his partner and friend handle the outside world.

  Trustworthy hands.

  Jim’s voice, steady and in control, talking to the nurse. Blair’s arms were moved, the tubes detangled and cleared properly. The cloth on his face felt good, cool and moist, wiping his forehead and cheeks, then his mouth. He was dimly aware of being allowed to sip some water, then spit it out in the tray. Jim moved him around, adjusting his position on the bed, tying his hair back. His gown was loosened, the damp cloth wiping the sweat from his chest and back.

  Capable hands.

  An extra blanket was shaken out and placed over him. The warmth was wonderful, easing everything but his spasming stomach cramps. It was impossible to open his eyes. Jim was talking to the nurse again. Her hands were cold on his skin as she fixed the tape holding the IV in place on his arm. He could hear the sides of the bed being lowered. More talking. Jim, behind him now, whispered to him and drew him closer to where he was, one hand beneath the covers, resting on his stomach, knowing a soothing slow massage that would relax the protesting abdominal muscles. The other hand, warm and steadying on his forehead, anchored him to the Sentinel, rather than to the hospital room.

  Comforting hands.

  He fell asleep.

  *

  Ellison sat quietly in the chair by the bed, his eyes closed, his hand resting on the back of Blair’s hand. His thumb slowly moved across his partner’s palm, kneading it gently, monitoring the changes from chill to fever that were slowly spiraling down as the anthropologist’s body began to regulate itself. It was almost seven in the morning, but the light in the hospital ward hadn’t changed as the hours passed.

  He had spent the last four hours sitting in this chair, dozing and thinking, trying to put the events of the week into some kind of perspective. Talk about spiraling down … This was a definite wipeout. It had all started when he had almost killed a department store guard—would have killed him, but for the man’s protective vest. The rest of the week had just piled on top of that horror until the actual shooting seemed a distant memory. I haven’t even asked Simon how the guard is doing now. His concentration had been elsewhere.

  Maybe losing his sentinel-enhanced senses had been the right idea. Blair had chalked up his temporary loss to purely psychological reasons, but ones he was still in control of, ultimately. Maybe the kid was right. There had been a certain amount of choice involved. One thing Ellison would never have a choice in, though, was whether or not he had the senses. Sandburg had drilled that idea until he had accepted it. He had the senses. His choice lay in whether or not he used them …

  This time, the motivation to reestablish them had been to find Incacha’s killer. What would it be next time? Who would it be?

  Incacha …

  The loss hit Ellison again, and he cringed inwardly against the sudden pain.

  Incacha had died. In my home. In my territory. My turf. According to Incacha’s beliefs, his spirit was now free to take on the form of a bird and continue his existence on that plain. But Incacha hadn’t been ready yet to die. He hadn’t prepared himself. He was out of place. The timing had been wrong. He should not have died yet. Ellison wasn’t sure how he knew that, but he did. And something had happened between Incacha and Sandburg, something that was still haunting his partner, despite his assurances otherwise. Words had been said that could not be taken back. Things had been said without time for explanation or context.

  Sandburg had rallied and had pulled Ellison together; his senses, gone for over a day, had come back in brilliant clarity. Blair had guided him to where the panther could lead him. Or else maybe Blair’s presence had simply allowed him to find that place in himself again. Whichever, it had worked.

  And yesterday … The eco-terrorist was in custody, although Simon had already warned Jim that the charges against him would be hard to stick. Bud Toren was dead, with no witnesses other than the Chopec, who were now on their way back to Peru. Without their testimony, there was little else to go on. Spalding knew little, if anything, of what had gone on in his own company.

  It was all damned unfair. All of that. And this. Another hospital, another sleepless night.

  Sandburg’s fingers twitched suddenly, then closed around his thumb and Ellison looked up, blinking twice to clear his burning eyes. Blair’s eyes were open but heavy-lidded, exhaustion etched on his fever-flushed face. His temperature appeared to be hovering around 101, refusing to go down further. Each time the nurse had come in to check Blair’s temperature, Ellison had noted the reading and then used the fluctuations in temperature to test his own tactile guesses. He was now getting Blair’s temperature right each time, so the night wasn’t a total loss. Sandburg would probably come up with another hundred experiments to check it, though.

  “How you feeling, Chief?”

  “I thought you were going away.” The young man’s voice was hoarse, little more than a whisper.

  “I was going to.” Jim shrugged, looking away, uncomfortable. “I came back.”

  “You were listening. You heard me.”

  “Yeah, well, someone’s got to keep an eye on you.” He leaned forward and mussed Sandburg’s hair.

  “But this sickness thing, that’s going beyond—”

  “No. No, it’s not.” Jim shrugged again, unable to find any words to put with the conviction. “I needed to be here. You need me to be here. No big deal.”

  Blair gave a ragged smile, willing to let the statement stand. “Good.” His eyes drifted closed, then opened again. “Jim, I’ll be okay now. My fever’s over, right? Why don’t you go home and get some sleep yourself? I don’t need a babysitter.”

  “I might as well stay. I doubt if I would have got any sleep at home anyway. Too quiet.”

  “I should make a recording of my heartbeat for you to listen to when I’m not there,” Blair joked.

  “It’s not the same.” Ellison yawned, glancing at his watch.

  “It’s Incacha, isn’t it?” Blair asked, his eyes closing again. “His presence is still there.”

  “It’s a lot of things, Chief. That’s just one of them. Get some sleep; the quicker you get better, the quicker we get out of here.”

  He watched his partner succumb to sleep, despite his best efforts to stay awake and pursue the conversation. There would be time to sit and talk later … Although the trouble was that they were left with a topic that neither had any reliable information on, and no vocabulary to use to discuss the problems that they couldn’t even isolate yet.

  Ellison extracted his hand from Sandburg’s and slowly pushed to his feet, stretching his back and legs. He walked around the end of the bed and helped himself to some water and juice that had been left on a tray there, swishing the apple juice around in his mouth, hoping to get the bad taste out. Footsteps approached and stopped, the curtains were pulled back, and a new nurse smiled at him tentatively, then went to Sandburg and took his temperature and checked his pulse, taking care, Ellison noted, not to waken her patient. He decided he liked her, and left his partner in her care as he used the facilities and walked back and forth up and down the corridor, trying to get the kinks out of his lower back.

  He hadn’t been back long when Simon Banks, traces of the familiar cigar smoke on him, entered the ward. Jim listened to his approach, not bothering to turn in his chair and look at him. He felt the hand on his shoulder, the quick press of the muscle. The inevitable question. “How is he?”

  “Not bad, actually. He had a bit of a reaction to the medication, but they cleared that up and he’s sleeping now.” Ellison moved his hand to Blair’s head, checking again for fever despite the nurse’s assurance that his temperature had
n’t changed. Still at 101. Sandburg was curled on his side, his face half-hidden in the blankets around his shoulders, as he had been for the last forty-five minutes.

  Banks moved to the far side of the bed, looking across at Ellison. “You said on your telephone message that he has malaria? How’d he get that? Can’t you take drugs now to prevent it?”

  “You can, and he did. But it still shows up sometimes, despite our best intentions. He could have contracted it anytime in the last six or seven years, or even as recently as twelve months ago when we were in Peru with you. The good news is that they’ve put him on the right medication and it’ll clear up. He’ll be back at work in a few days, so life will soon resume to normal …” His voice trailed off. He straightened up in the chair, his hand returning to Blair’s hand. “Although I doubt it will. Nothing’s that easy.”

  “What do you mean?” The captain’s question was as non-threatening as Banks could make it.

  Ellison took Blair’s hand in both of his own, as though the contact was the only thing keeping Blair in place. At last he glanced up, holding the captain’s worried gaze before he returned his careful attention to his partner. “Simon, you know the pause button on a VCR control? That’s what I need. A pause button. I need time— we need time— to sort this all out. It happened too quickly. Incacha’s death. The whole Cyclops oil thing— Janet Meyer’s murder. And there was something else, too,” Jim added, his voice lowered, his eyes moving back to Simon’s. “Incacha passed something on to Sandburg when he died, a different kind of responsibility, and I know it’s eating at Blair. He doesn’t know what it means, what he is supposed to do. We need time—”

  “To do what?”

  “I don’t know. To fix whatever has gone wrong. I wish I could tell you more but I’m really not—”

  “How much and when?” Simon interrupted immediately. “Would a week do? Beginning immediately?”

  A smile flickered across Ellison’s features. “We’ll make it do. We just need to talk about it, to work it out for us. Thank you.”

  Simon groaned, looking like he wished he could take his offer back. “I can’t spare you any longer than that. We’ve got a few officers on vacation this week and another recovering from an injury. It’s a bad time.”