by Kiel Nichols
Eric touched the other arm. “She’ll be OK.”
* * * *
The first thing Bryce saw when he walked into the waiting room was Gideon with blood all over him and Kristano and some other guy flanking him. Bryce’s gut twisted at the feeling that, once again, he was left out.
“Hey Gideon, any word?” Bryce had picked up a Box O’ Joe from Dunkin’ Donuts before heading over. He knew they’d need the coffee to be flowing constantly while they waited. He had a small stack of cups and a box of condiments.
“Nothing yet. I think she’s going to be OK, though.” Gideon came over and gave Bryce a hug. “She’s going to be fine.”
Although it was foolish, he felt better when Gideon said it. As his big brother, Gideon had always made sure that everything was going to be fine. He didn’t lie. If he said that Raina was going to be OK, she was. He let out a long sigh of relief.
Gideon’s arm was still slung over his shoulder when he introduced Bryce to the guy he hadn’t met.
“Bryce, this is my friend and associate Eric Bevan. Eric, my little brother, Bryce.”
Bryce held his hand out. He couldn’t figure out how it was that since this thing started a month and a half ago, his brother all of a sudden started bringing people into the detective agency. He didn’t think Gideon was getting paid to protect Raina, and if he was, it couldn’t have been much. How could he afford to keep hiring men?
“Eric is consulting on a side project. He was meeting me at Raina’s house this morning when she was shot,” Gideon answered his unasked question.
“And how did that happen?” Bryce asked, fierce. “I thought she was being protected.”
“You can’t protect against a sniper rifle fired from across the street. She was just standing in the doorway,” Gideon said. He sounded defensive, and he was rubbing his eyes. “It never should have happened. We should have taken the possibility of it into account.”
“You couldn’t have known,” Eric said. “Even with Raina’s prediction, you couldn’t have known.”
“Raina’s prediction?” Bryce questioned.
Kristano stepped into the silence caused by Eric’s blunder. “The other night she dreamed about a gunshot. It wasn’t a prediction so much as it was a prophetic dream. We all have them sometimes.”
Bryce relaxed. “True enough. Coffee, anyone?” Bryce poured himself some coffee and sat down to stare blindly at the television. Gideon and Kristano both paced the room like caged tigers while Eric toed off his shoes and sat in the lotus position on the chair.
They occasionally tried to chitchat, but no one was really able to keep up the effort. Kristano kept leaving to “check in,” and somehow he would come back with specific updates on how far along they were and how Raina was faring. Bryce figured he must have had a friend who could check on the status.
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, a doctor in surgical scrubs entered the room. He motioned for everyone to sit.
“Raina came through the surgery very well. We’re going to need to monitor her for another two hours before we can move her into a regular room. Her prognosis is excellent. We’re going to want to keep her in the hospital for a few days, as much for the sake of the baby as for Raina’s sake.”
Bryce jerked. Baby? What the hell.
“Give us about five minutes to get her settled, then one of you can stay with her. Are there any blood relatives here or the baby’s father?” the doctor asked, looking at his chart.
“I’m the baby’s father. Raina’s my fiancée. She has no other family,” Gideon said, not looking at Bryce.
“Good. Because of the pregnancy, you have the rights of a spouse to stay with her. The medical team gets final say on any medical decision that does not involve the baby. Frankly, I don’t think there are going to be any decisions that need to be made regarding her care. She seems to be very strong.” The doctor made a note on his chart before continuing. “The others can visit for five minutes an hour, one at a time. I’m guessing we’ll have her in a regular room by tonight.”
Bryce listened to the doctor in a kind of numbed shock. How could Gideon have done this to him? Gideon knew he was in love with Raina.
Gideon promised to wait five minutes before heading down to the room. A moment later the doctor left.
As soon as the doctor left, Bryce turned on Gideon. Without thinking, he punched him right in the face. The blood that flowed from Gideon’s nose didn’t make him feel any better, and he was fisting his hand to do it again when Kristano grabbed his arm.
Gideon just stood there, making no effort to defend himself. “Let him go, Kris. I deserve it.”
Kristano didn’t let go. “No, you don’t. You were meant to be with her, and Bryce is just a spoiled child who saw his favorite toy taken away.”
Bryce wrenched his arm out of Kristano’s grip. “How dare you? Who the hell are you anyway? You have no idea what my feelings are for Raina, and he knew about it and fucked her anyway.”
Gideon shoved himself in Bryce’s face. “You will not talk about Raina that way.” His voice was too calm. “It wasn’t like that, and you know it. Raina would never cheapen herself like that.”
“So what are you trying to say? That you fell in love?” Bryce infused the last word with every ounce of venom he had.
“Yes, that’s exactly what I mean.” Gideon took a deep breath and looked at the clock. “I have to go see her.” Gideon turned back and said, “You think you’re the only one capable of having feelings for her? I tried to resist her, but I couldn’t. I fell in love with her, and as soon as she gets better, I’m going to marry her.”
Bryce turned and grabbed his jacket to leave. “You’re no brother of mine.”
* * * *
Raina lay with tubes and wires attached to her body. She was pale against the white sheet. Gideon didn’t know how it was possible for her to look tired when she was sleeping.
He had kept a vigil by her bedside throughout the long day. Every time the doctor or the nurse came in to check on her vital signs, he asked them when she was going to wake up. Eight hours before, the answer had been “anytime.” Seemed to him that “anytime” had passed many hours ago.
Gideon had been holding Raina’s hand, talking to her softly about the baby, when yet another doctor came in to see him.
“Mr. McConnell?”
“Yes?” Gideon stood up. An older black woman in a white lab coat came in.
“I’m Dr. Johnson, Raina’s attending physician.”
Dr. Johnson began examining Raina. After a few minutes, she said, “I’m a little concerned that Raina hasn’t woken up from the surgery. Normally, the patient starts becoming restless within twenty minutes or so of surgery. It’s also not uncommon after such a trauma to the body for a patient not to wake for several hours. One difference is that she was unconscious when she went in. Sometimes the body just needs to rest a little longer after trauma, but we need to make sure there was no damage to her brain.”
“You’re saying she might be brain damaged?” Gideon’s legs felt weak. He didn’t know if he could process this.
Dr. Johnson put her hand on Gideon’s arm. “I don’t think she is, but we need to rule it out. I was able to schedule her for an MRI. We should be able to get a better idea of what’s going on when we get the results. There is good news, Mr. McConnell. She is responsive to basic stimuli. If there is a problem, it may not be long term.”
“You know that she’s pregnant? Is an MRI safe?”
“The MRI is only for her brain. The baby will be fine,” the doctor answered. “Try not to worry until we have something to worry about. This is just a precaution.”
Gideon just nodded. Kristano? Did you hear that?
Yes. I’m going to tell Eric. Hold on.
Although Eric could communicate with Kristano, and Gideon could easily communicate with Kristano, they hadn’t had the time to establish the connection directly between Gideon and Eric.
A moment later, Eric
came into the room. “It’s time for my five minutes. I heard what happened. Let me see if I can sense anything.” Again, Eric put his hand on Raina’s head. After a moment, he moved it. “She seems exactly the same as she was before she went in. I don’t know what to tell you.”
Gideon tried to take that to heart, but it was hard. She looked so delicate in the bed, and she hadn’t moved a muscle.
Two orderlies came into the room. “Time for the MRI. I’m sorry, but you’ll have to wait in the waiting room. I’d say that we should be back up in about twenty minutes.”
When Gideon returned to the waiting room, he found Detective Wijinicki waiting for him.
“Hey, Gid. More bad luck for your girl?”
Gideon was unsure how to answer the question. He decided evasion was the word of the day.
“Actually, I think that she was targeted and that the shooter set the house on fire as a distraction to get away.”
“Are you any closer to figuring it out?” Wijinicki asked, taking notes in his notepad.
“No. We’ve finally determined that it has something to do with her work. It’s the only area of her life we haven’t been able to totally eliminate.” Gideon figured that turning the cops onto Raina’s work was the most sensible solution.
“What did you find?”
“She’s been working with a scroll from the Archeology Department. I’d start there. That’s where I’m focusing my energy.”
“Sounds good. How is she?”
“In a coma.”
“Sorry, man,” Wijinicki touched his arm briefly. “Keep in touch. I’ll want to talk to her again when she wakes up.”
“No problem.”
Gideon just hoped that she would wake up.
Chapter 16
If he thought the wait was long before while Raina was in surgery, it was nothing to the wait while she was getting the MRI. The twenty-minute mark came and went. It was almost two hours before another doctor came and got Gideon and Eric from the waiting room.
“Mr. McConnell, I’m Dr. Matthews, a neurologist. I’d like to show you what we found and ask you a few questions if I could.”
Gideon felt almost sick from fear. Dr. Matthews led him and Eric into an empty room. Dr. Matthews went over to the computer and began calling up a file. “I know you won’t know how to read this, but I want to show you, visually, what we found.”
“Is Raina OK?” Gideon asked.
“Frankly, I don’t know. The human brain is still, to a large extent, a mystery to us.” Two brains appeared on the monitor side by side. One of them had extensive areas of red and yellow across the lobes, the other didn’t. Gideon was afraid that the doctor was going to tell him that Raina’s brain wasn’t working as much as a normal brain.
“This is average brain activity.” Matthews tapped the picture of the brain with large patches of gray then tapped the other. “This is Raina’s. As you can see, Raina’s brain is considerably more active than the normal human brain. As a matter of fact, she is currently using forty-seven percent of her brain. This is a nearly unfathomable amount of brain activity. I’ve only ever seen this level of activity in science fiction movies.”
Gideon didn’t know what to say. Kristano, are you here?
Yes. I don’t know what’s going on either, though. We didn’t have this type of technology when the tribe’s powers were active. I don’t know if this is normal or not.
“Is this what is causing her to stay unconscious?” Gideon asked.
“I have no idea. I have some questions about her, though. Some of them might seem unorthodox.” Dr. Matthews took off his glasses and untucked his shirt to wipe them. “Has Raina demonstrated any sort of, well, psychic ability?”
Before anyone could answer, Dr. Matthews rushed on. “I know it seems like an unusual question, and perhaps even a cliché, but parapsychologists have theorized that brain activity changes during a psychic episode. I’ve never heard of a sustained change or one measurable by an MRI, but I at least have to eliminate that possibility.”
Dr. Matthews stood up and touched Gideon on the arm in comfort. When he did, the point of contact glowed blue. Dr. Matthews snatched his hand back. “What the hell was that?”
“Holy shit,” Eric said. “You’re Earth!”
Close the door, Kristano said through their link.
Eric must have heard Kristano also because Gideon saw him flick his hand toward the door, and it glided closed.
“What are you talking about?” Dr. Matthews looked at Eric like he was insane.
Kristano materialized right in front of Dr. Matthews, making him let out a little screech and staggering back.
“My God.”
“Not exactly,” Kristano said, smiling slightly.
Dr. Matthews rubbed his eyes. “How? What? How?” He pulled out the rolling chair and fell into it. “Where did you come from?”
“I’ve been here the entire time,” Kristano said.
The doctor reached out to see if he was real. “What are you? A ghost?”
Kristano laughed. Why do they always think that?
“No, I’m not a ghost. My name is Kristano, and I have some special abilities. As do my friends here.” He indicated Eric and Gideon. “As Raina does. As you do.”
Dr. Matthews stood abruptly. “That’s impossible.”
Kristano winked out. Dr. Matthews waved his hand, and his hand passed through empty space. “What kind of trick is this?” He began to sound angry.
Kristano reappeared. “No trick. I can go invisible or incorporeal. Raina has other talents. She is clairvoyant and precognitive.” He gestured to Gideon and Eric. “Gideon can control fire, and Eric can use magic.”
The scientist in the doctor took over. He made a circle around Kristano, poking at him. “Fascinating. Maybe it has to do with shifts in dimension. When you go invisible maybe you step through some sort of dimensional portal or something. Do it again.”
Although Kristano didn’t like feeling like a seal doing tricks on command, he had to make the man understand that Raina was different if he was ever going to help her. He went invisible but not incorporeal. The doctor swung his hand out again and this time, made contact. It made him jump.
“Holy cow. I need to record this. I need to get you into a full-body MRI. I wonder if you would disappear or if the machine would still take readings.” Dr. Matthews looked like he was going to try to drag Kristano away.
Kristano grabbed Dr. Matthews’s arm. “I didn’t show you so that you could turn me into a lab rat. I’m showing you so that you understand that Raina is different. Her physiology is different. You need to help her.”
Dr. Matthews stopped and took long, deep breaths. “You’ve been secret for a long time, haven’t you?”
“Thousands of years.”
Matthews jerked. “Thousands of...my God, your body could hold the key to so many things, eternal youth, immortality, even the cure for the common cold. If we could isolate what makes you different by running tests on you, we might be able to help millions of people.”
Gideon spoke up for the first time, “We’re talking about Raina! She needs your help, and you’re blathering on about something that’s not even possible.” He grabbed Dr. Matthews’s shirtfront. “We need to help Raina, now!”
Eric laid his hand on Gideon’s arm before he could pick the doctor up by the collar. “Can you make him help us, Kristano? We need him to complete the ritual. Then if you have to, you can scrub his memory.”
“Whoa, wait a minute,” Dr. Matthews said quickly. “What ritual? And I don’t want to forget. This is incredible. You must be a subspecies of Homo sapiens. Maybe even the next step on the evolutionary ladder.”
“We’re not. Only part of what we are can be explained, the rest is magic.” Kristano understood Gideon’s urgency, but he thought the man needed a chance to process. He hadn’t even asked about his own role in what was happening. Kristano didn’t think that it had hit the man yet.
“There’
s no such thing as magic,” the doctor said with so much conviction that Kristano wanted to prove him wrong.
He didn’t have the chance. Evidently, Eric decided to do a demonstration. He waved his hand and the doctor was dressed in a chicken suit.
“What?”
“No, you didn’t get that on magically. What am I talking about?” Then he turned the doctor into a woman. Dr. Matthews grabbed his own breasts in disbelief. By the time Eric changed him back into himself, the doctor was trembling. He patted his chest where the breasts had been, then grabbed between his legs to make sure he still had all his equipment before sitting again.
Dr. Matthews sat in silence taking long, slow breaths. “I need to understand something. Why would you show yourself to me, now? I assume that there are more of you on the Earth. Why would you risk yourself by coming out at this point?”
“First of all, there aren’t a lot of people who can do these things, but there will be,” Eric explained, choosing not to explain the difference in Kristano. “Those who have the latent ability will become what we are. I know we’ll all be exposed eventually, and I, for one, have no problem with some basic medical tests.”
Gideon let out a low growl to remind Eric about Raina.
“Much more important is that Raina needs her doctor to be fully informed about her situation. We need to know if what’s happening to her has a medical cause. We need you to be Raina’s doctor, now. You can be the rest of the world’s doctor later.” Eric moved forward so that Dr. Matthews had to tilt his head back to maintain eye contact. “We all care about her. Gideon loves her, and when she gets better, he’s going to marry her. They’re having a baby. Dr. Matthews, this isn’t about thousands, it’s about two—Raina and her baby.”
Kristano thought that Eric made a lot of sense. He personalized it so that the doctor wouldn’t forget why he became a doctor in the first place.
Dr. Matthews rubbed a hand over his face. He walked over to the window and looked down into the bustling Emergency Room parking lot. “I think under the circumstances, you can call me Asia. What did you mean when you talked about a ritual?”