Grayscale

by A. E. Clarke

  “Oh, hello—are you the brother who called?”

  “Yeah. Is she going to be okay?”

  “Yes, she should be. The bullet didn’t do any major muscle damage. Your sister is very lucky.”

  “She was in here from another freak accident a couple days ago.”

  “Okay, so maybe a bit less lucky.” We both smiled for a second before I sighed and he shuffled through his papers, trying to gather them.

  Alex and Brent were brought into the room by another nurse, and Alex walked over angrily and smacked the back of my head.

  “Idiot! What the hell were you trying to—” He stopped suddenly, his face showing his horror at his own behaviour. “Oops.”

  I started laughing, and before I knew it, I was crying, burying my face in my hands to cover the streams of unexpected tears. Brent came over and wrapped me in his arms.

  “Okay, so who are you two?” the nurse asked.

  “I’m Holly’s boyfriend, Alex Henderson. This is Brent…”

  “Jesse’s boyfriend.”

  “I…see.” The nurse didn’t seem the most comfortable with the two of us hugging, and Brent pulled back a bit, but when I leaned into him again, he stopped moving. I knew he was worried about homophobia, but I really needed the comfort.

  “If you could release Jesse from your iron grip, Brent, I need to get some information from him.”

  I had to admit, I liked this nurse. He managed to have a bit of a sense of humour without the rudeness of the doctor Holly had last time.

  I sat on the foot of Holly’s bed and answered what questions I could about her and why she was on the bus—without her wallet, no less—at five in the morning. She’d left her wallet at work the day before, which was more of a problem than if she’d simply not had access to money. I’d ended up paying for Holly’s dinner—and Alex’s and Brent’s, for that matter—the night before, with the promise of being paid back. “She’ll be okay, right?”

  “She had a burn on her hand, but it seems to have disappeared, and she has the obvious worry of a gunshot wound in the shoulder, but she was remarkably lucky. It could have been much, much worse.” He smiled grimly. “She could have been anyone else on that bus.”

  If she had been anyone else on that bus, I thought, scowling and trying consciously not to bite my lip, then the bus wouldn’t’ve exploded, but all right.

  I sighed, and the nurse handed me a box of tissues. “Thank you.” Brent’s hand was on my shoulder, and I leaned against it. “One of these days, I’m sure she’ll learn to stop hurting herself.”

  “Does she have a history of ‘freak accidents,’ as you put it earlier?”

  I looked up. Doctor Yeung, the same rude doctor who had been there for the explosion—the first explosion, I corrected myself—was walking into the room, his hand already outstretched for a handshake.

  “When someone is caught in two explosions in three days, that’s generally cause to look into their patient history and see if there’s something in there that indicates—”

  “Indicates what? Predisposition towards explosions?” I hadn’t meant for the retort to come out quite so angrily.

  “No. To see if there is some sort of complex in her history that could explain her causing these explosions. I’m not—” He held up his hands in protest, as all three of us started to loudly disagree with what he was implying. “I’m not saying that’s what’s going on. There’s no indication of that at all in Holly’s files. But it’s a possibility we have to look at when there’s a situation like this, and I was hoping you would be here, Jesse and Alex, and—I’m sorry, I don’t think I caught your name…?” He held out his hand towards Brent, and Brent smiled—my heart melted a little bit—and shook the doctor’s hand.

  “Brent, Jesse’s b-boyfriend.”

  “Ahh, so that’s who you were texting last time.”

  I cocked my head, and the doctor shrugged.

  “I’m a people watcher. I like taking in the little details about people’s body language and their behaviour.”

  “You realize how creepy that sounds, right?”

  He laughed and nodded. I felt Brent’s hand tighten on my shoulder, and my eyes widened.

  Wait, did I just say that?

  “It means I’ve figured out some of the causes of things in the clinic more easily than I otherwise would have, though, so I doubt I’ll be stopping anytime soon. On to the topic of your sister.” he moved to Holly’s bedside. “I’m sure you’ve heard all about how lucky she is, and I’m sure you’ve corrected everyone and told them how unlucky she is.”

  “Which side are you on, Doc?” Brent asked. I winced. There were very good reasons I was dating him. His attitude during situations like this was definitely on the top of that list.

  “I’d say she’s a bit of both. She’s unlucky to be in these situations, but she’s lucky she wasn’t worse off.”

  I nodded, biting my lip, and Brent reached over to brush a finger across my lips to make me stop.

  Dr. Yeung smiled at the small gesture. “I’m pleased to tell you, she will be fine. Judging by her remarkable recovery from the last visit—I looked at the burn, and there isn’t a single shred of evidence that it had ever been there, somehow—she’ll be fine very soon. I’d be willing to bet she’ll wake up within a few hours. The only reason she’s asleep right now is that we loaded her up on painkillers as soon as she arrived.”

  I nodded. “Makes sense. At least she’s in la-la land.”

  “I assume you’re going to stay and wait for her to wake up?”

  I nodded, as did Alex; Brent paused for a second then nodded as well, looking a little guilty at the wait. I put a hand on his forearm and rubbed it in support. He didn’t need to worry that he wasn’t jumping to spend the day in the hospital.

  I’m sure as hell glad that you are, though, I thought, intertwining my fingers with his and leaning into his side as the doctor left the room.

  Chapter Seventeen: Holly

  I blinked the sleep out of my eyes and yawned, which was when I realized that I couldn’t stretch both arms. In fact, I could barely feel one of my arms. I looked down, the world still a little hazy, and saw my arm was in a sling with a lot of bandages wound around my shoulder.

  “Oh, yeah.” I blinked a couple more times. Three figures swam into view. I recognized Jesse first, then Alex—it took me an extra moment or so to recognize Brent, Jesse’s boyfriend.

  “What the fuck happened this time?” I asked. If I sounded a little groggy, I guess that they ignored it.

  “You tell us, Holly.” Alex gently laid his hand on my leg. “You were shot, and a bus exploded.”

  “Yeah, that’s her telling us,” Jesse muttered.

  “Shut up.”

  “That’s…” I frowned, as if straining to remember. Though some bits were hazy, I remembered the explosion of energy, but I wasn’t about to tell Alex and Brent. Not right now.

  I need to talk to Alex soon, though, I thought, trying not to scowl as he leaned over and kissed my forehead.

  He straightened up again. “Were we supposed to call the doctor over when she woke up?”

  “He’s checking in every five minutes anyway, Lex,” Jesse answered. “He’ll be here soon.”

  “Is it the same guy?” I asked, a smile creeping to my face through the fog.

  Jesse laughed, rolling his eyes. “Yeah, it is. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised you’re happy about it. How are you feeling?”

  “Awesome.” I closed my eyes and lifted my clumsy left hand to my forehead. “The only thing I can really feel is a massive headache.” The front of my head was pounding.

  Alex rubbed my shoulder—the good one, but he still rubbed harder than I’d have liked—and mumbled something about Tylenol, which made me chuckle and, in turn, jiggled my bad shoulder. I felt it should have hurt more than dying had, but I was feeling it through a haze of painkillers, so it was bearable.

  I met Jesse’s gaze. Come on, we need to talk. Underst
and what I am trying to—

  “Hey, guys, could you let me have a minute here?” he asked.

  Okay, you’ve figured out what happened. Good, but…fuck.

  Brent laid a hand on Alex’s shoulder and guided him out.

  “I like him,” I said.

  “Who? Brent?”

  “No, Alex.” I rolled my eyes.

  “So, I’m guessing I can surmise what happened?”

  “Who the hell actually uses that word?”

  “Am I right?”

  I drew my lips taut. “Yeah, probably.”

  “Care to elaborate?”

  “Well, I was…I don’t know if I want to go into it here.”

  “Speak in generalities.”

  “Okay, as much as I can…” I drew in a deep breath. “I’m on the bus, this guy points a gun at a baby that won’t shut up. He’s drunk, so the other drunk guy on the bus—a college kid—dives at him, tackles him, and they’re both on the ground. He somehow gets to the gun before me. I convince him to not shoot the first guy, and then…” I coughed. Ow. “As soon as I touched the gun, I realized I’d built up all the energy before, when I was trying to see if I could just taze the guy, and I hadn’t released it. I don’t know if I can take it back into my body completely or not.”

  “You touched the gun and it went off,” Jesse guessed.

  “Yeah. No one actually shot me.”

  “Weird. And, uh, painful.”

  “Not bad right now. I think they gave me something pretty strong.”

  “What happened with the bus, if that was your energy going off?”

  “I…I think it might have been the pain.”

  “Oh?”

  “Well, when I got shot, I could feel the pent-up energy, all of it, kind of…stream out in every direction.”

  “Ah.”

  “The people got hit with it, and so did the gas tank, and it kind of went boom.”

  “Went boom? Is that the technical term?”

  “Stop making fun of me. I’m in pain.”

  He immediately sobered. “Right, sorry. Just so used to it.”

  I stuck my tongue out at him. Like I really cared.

  “Well, you know the energy direction practice we were doing yesterday?”

  I nodded. “When I pooled it in my hands?”

  “Yeah, that. Try pooling it—less obviously, I mean—around the wound in your shoulder. Hopefully, it’ll give your healing energies a jump-start.”

  I shook my head. “I’m still impressed you’re so knowledgeable about this. I had absolutely no idea.”

  “Hey, I don’t actually know anything. I’m just pulling all this out of my—”

  “Talking about alternative medicines?”

  I looked up, and Dr. Yeung was standing at the foot of my bed. Jesse startled. I guess he hadn’t noticed him, either.

  “Yeah. I’ve been studying them under my brother here.” I nodded at Jesse, and he blushed.

  “How’re you feeling, Holly?”

  “A little woozy, I suppose. Kind of like I’m thinking through a fog.”

  He scribbled something down on his chart. “That’s a fairly common way of putting it. It’s the painkillers. That should probably go away in a couple of hours.”

  “Oh, good.”

  He walked towards my right side. “This might hurt a little, even through the painkillers.” He started unwrapping the bandages, and I felt the cool air hit the wound. Oooh, that’s not going to look pretty.

  Bracing, I glanced down. Oh. Well, that definitely wasn’t the big gaping hole it felt like it was—like it should have been.

  “Jeez, I keep building up my hopes for these huge, badass scars and burns, and nothing! What gives, body?”

  Jesse burst out laughing, and the sound was enough for Alex and Brent to come back in, both holding coffees. Brent delivered one to Jesse, along with a quick peck to the cheek, and they stood together, arms entwined. Alex came over and sat in the chair next to me, putting his hand in mine.

  “Well, the good news is that this is healing a lot faster than we were expecting it to,” Dr. Yeung said. “I can’t say I’m particularly surprised, with how quickly you healed from your burn. Sorry about the spark, though.”

  I blinked. “Sorry?”

  “There must have been some static in the bandages. When I reached in to check how your wound was doing, I shocked you.”

  “I didn’t even notice.” I laughed nervously. I’d noticed something else strange, and it looked like Brent had caught it as well.

  Alex, completely unaware, rubbed my arm. “It’s okay, hon.”

  “When can I get out of here, Dr. Yeung?”

  “You really don’t like hospitals, do you?”

  “Bad experience as a child.”

  “You’d think she’d do a better job of staying out of them, wouldn’t you?” Brent remarked, and I had to laugh. Even though it was weird for him to say it when he didn’t know me that well, the looks on Alex’s and Jesse’s faces were priceless.

  Priceless horror.

  “It isn’t intentional!” I protested.

  “You should theoretically be able to leave this evening, Holly,” Dr. Yeung finally answered. “We’re going to keep you here to run a couple tests to make sure absolutely everything’s okay.”

  I nodded. That was what I’d hoped—that I wouldn’t be kept there overnight.

  Alex kissed my forehead again. “I’m going to go take these two to lunch, and then we’ll be back for…” He looked at his watch. “It’s about ten thirty right now, so we’ll be back around three. Does that sound okay?”

  I nodded and settled back into my bed.

  Chapter Eighteen: Jesse

  Lunch was both awkward and uneventful. Alex was very nice about finally being able to grill us about our relationship, but…well, he wanted to grill us about our relationship. It got to the point a couple times where I held up a hand and said, “Nuh-uh, that’s prying too much,” but he hadn’t seemed to catch the hint.

  Still, he did pay for lunch. We ended up wandering around the mall for an hour or so afterwards, since we were in the area, and we all needed a bit of distraction before going to collect Holly from the hospital.

  Brent and I ended up trying on a few shirts, with Alex standing there suppressing his laughter as we pushed our sense of fashion onto each other, and we were in much better spirits by the time we left the mall and pulled onto the highway to go back to the hospital.

  We walked in the front door this time, instead of going to Emergency.

  “Right here, guys.”

  “Holly!” I whipped around on one heel, half in the elevator, and caught Brent’s little smirk out of the corner of my eye. Maybe my dancing when I was alone wasn’t quite as secret as I’d thought it was.

  “I’ve already checked out,” she said. “Can we go home now? I’m starving, and the food here is—”

  “—is hospital food?”

  “Yes. That’s a perfect way to put it, in fact.”

  “Let’s go.” I grabbed for Brent’s hand, and he gave me a sheepish smile but this time didn’t pull away instinctively. We were clearly making progress with his worrying.

  Alex draped an arm across Holly’s shoulders, not noticing her grimace of pain, and the four of us headed back to our place before Brent and Alex went home.

  As the door closed behind Brent and Alex, I wheeled around and smacked the back of Holly’s head.

  “Ow! What the…? What was that for?” She swung back at me, and I grabbed her hand, holding it away from my body.

  “Well, firstly, you really should know by now not to try to hit me when I’m expecting it.”

  “Let me go and tell me what the hell that was for.”

  “Why did you try to be the hero?”

  “If I wasn’t supposed to be a hero, why do I have this power?”

  I dropped her arm. “I’m…confused.”

  “I did a lot of thinking today.”

  “
That’s a first.”

  She drew back her hand as if to smack at me again but then lowered it. “I was trying to figure out what happened to give me this power.” Her hand was pulsing, intermittently glowing and fading, and she didn’t seem to realize she was doing it. “I don’t know if it was natural or if it was some sort of…some sort of higher power.”

  I snorted, and she rolled her eyes.

  “At this point, I don’t know what to believe or not believe.” She shrugged.

  “Okay, true. Can’t say I’ve always believed in superpowers, either.”

  “That’s exactly it. I think the phrase you used before was something more like ‘superhuman abilities,’ but most people would probably say I have superpowers—what superheroes have.”

  “Or supervillains.”

  “I don’t want to be a villain, though, which is why I’m so pissed I blew up that bus.”

  My hair was standing up on end again, and this time, Holly noticed. She started breathing deeply, which didn’t go nearly as well as either of us hoped: it took her a full minute to calm down enough for the energy to subside.

  “Okay, so that’s what we’re going to work on today,” I said.

  She blinked a couple times. “We’re…what?”

  “Our training. We’re working on you calming right down when you’re about to blow—” I stopped. She had recoiled from my words as if I’d punched her. “Err. Well, definitely before it literally blows up like it did today.”

  “Yeah, thanks for that.”

  “Sorry. Was thinking about my instructor from the anger management classes.”

  “Anger—you think I have the same issues you did? I don’t recall getting angry at anyone who didn’t have a gun, and I don’t recall throwing a coffee can through the window when I didn’t get my way.”

  “I don’t recall blowing up a bus, either,” I said calmly. I motioned to my hair, which was back to standing on end. “You can’t control yourself and your emotions when you’re like this. I’m not saying what you’re feeling is anger, but it’s still heightened, and it’s the same technique to calm yourself down whether it’s anger or something else.”

  I watched her try and fail to calm down again, shaking my head and crossing my arms over my chest. “Come on. Let’s go up to your room. You really need to work on this.”