The Wyrms of &alon

You would think a society smart enough to cook up mag-lev hover-cars and wireless telecommunications would have also been smart enough to have doctors who specialized in traumatic injuries, and have a healthcare system with prices and insurance premiums that didn’t gouge peoples’ life-savings the way military-grade ammunition tore through the skull, the meninges, and the temporal lobe of the brain as it passed through an innocent man’s head when fired from the barrel of the smoking gun.

Yes, you would think that. And you’d be wrong.

I shook my head.

“Black.”

The nurse lifted the dead man’s head. Dregs of blood got smeared all over her gloves as she slipped the black tag around his neck.

“But… I swear, he grabbed my arm,” she said.

She was an optimist, like I wanted to be. But this was no time for smiles.

Softly, I pressed my hand on the nurse’s arm and sighed. “It’s just death spasms. The body acts, but the mind is gone.”

“I understand.” She nodded gravely. “Thank you, Doctor.”

I made my way back to the waiting room, leaving behind the bloody mess the trauma bay had become.

Like every other hospital in the country—the country that God would never forsake—there was no dedicated team of emergency room physicians. Instead, those duties were performed by whomever the hospital’s scheduling algorithm had assigned that week to the ever-changing roster of physicians who had to be on call in the emergency room. Seeing as I was technically classified as a member of the mental health faculty, being on call in the emergency room often meant providing counseling to patients in distress, or to loved ones struck through by grief. But, with the exception of the greenhorniest of greenhorns, pretty much all of the nursing staff were well aware that I was also a neurologist, and so they made a point of getting as much mileage out of me as possible, if and when the need arose. I was almost always more than happy to oblige them. I was just as much of neurologist as the grandees on the third floor who seemed to think that a person could be either a neurosurgeon or a general practitioner and never anything in between, so it was definitely satisfying that, as far as the nurses were concerned, I was the de facto face of our neurological department. Besides, I valued the nurses’ opinions far more than those of my self-absorbed colleagues on the third floor. Nurses were the infantry of the medical profession. They were the ones with the stories to tell.

A day like today, though, was the worst of all worlds. Push came to shove after the second wave of victims arrived. Any pretense of fulfilling my algorithmically delegated counseling duties went out the window as I was compelled to assist with disaster snowballing in triage.

Police had to keep victims’ families and the concerned public at bay to give us enough time to process the bodies. You could hear the yelling and the weeping echoing down the halls. That the emergency room was located in one of the more modern parts of the hospital only made matters more difficult for law enforcements. The halls in WeElMed’s modern extensions were far wider than their antique predecessors, and demanded a larger number of officers to keep trouble at bay.

As I paced—still unsure of whether it was even worth trying to get back to the families in the waiting rooms—a hand pressed on my shoulder. I whipped around, half-expecting another nurse or patient transporter asking me to play the game of life and death and pass judgment on yet another victim, assigning them their tag color, only to find myself face to face with Dr. Arbond.

“Lass it tight!” I swore, first flinching, then gritting my teeth.

Cassius chuckled.

I spooked easily, and Cassius knew it.

“You’re out of surgery,” I said.

“Nah, just between ‘em.” Cassius’ smile folded into a jowled frown. “You’re supposed to be with the sad folks, Dr. Howle, not the bleeding ones.”

Dr. Cassius Arbond was an irascible old codger of a surgeon, bald like a mountaintop; dark-skinned and bright humored.

“Only on paper, Cassius. The nurses asked for my help, and I’m more than qualified to—”

“—You can’t be everywhere at once,” Cassius said, cutting me off, “And you need to stop trying. We’re doctors, Genneth, not doormats.”

Dr. Arbond shook his head, glancing downward with a click of his tongue before he looked me straight in the eyes.

“It’s bad out there, isn’t it?”

I looked down, dejected. “You have no idea.”

“I know how much you hate pulling triage duty,” he said.

“You should take a vacation one of these days, Genneth, or you’ll work yourself to death working people back to life.”

“I—”

“—No, you don’t need to worry about these folks anymore, you’ve got plenty more trouble to deal with.” He pointed me to the waiting room. “Now, go on, get out there, and don’t you worry about breaking any hearts; I’ll fix ‘em right up, good as gold.” He patted me on the back for good measure.

I knew better than to argue with him. He was at that age where it was more likely he’d drop dead than change his mind, and so I walked, out of one fray and into another.

Cassius was absolutely right. I hated triage. Staring at agonized faces, watching for pupil contraction, directing nurses and transporters to prod their fingers into eye-sockets around the edges of the eyeball, or jab tongue depressors underneath fingernails, as if to pry the nail up with a crowbar—and all just to measure basic responsiveness and brainstem integrity… it made me nauseous. And don’t get me started about the gore.

I shuddered and then took a deep breath. My wife put it best:

You’re addicted to helping people.

It had been like that for years, now. Decades, even. I often wished my intentions were as noble as Pel made them out to be, but I just couldn’t escape the sinking feeling that I only was the way I was because it helped keep the hurt at bay—and the guilt. Those hollow days when you felt like lead often had trouble catching up with you if you were knee-deep in strenuous work. There was an apotropaic power in the gratitude of others.

Sometimes, it felt that was all that kept me going.

Noise and movement hung in the waiting area like fog over Elpeck Bay. People flitted to and fro as nurses and physicians loaded and unloaded victims from stretchers into beds and as families grasped and reached, trying to cling, only to get pushed away.

“Make room.”

“Please, Ma’am…”

A whole bunch of scruffy-looking fellows—cut, bruised, blood-splattered—sat listlessly in the waiting room. Those that couldn’t find a chair sat on the floor. Those that couldn’t sit on the floor slumped against the wall, no doubt hoping that their physical injuries weren’t serious enough to merit the priority treatment that, as scruffy-looking fellows, they weren’t likely to get. Nurses were hard at work trying to make up for lost time. They swabbed down the scrapes from falls and the bloody streaks left by bullet-grazes with peroxides, and squeezed trails of resin across the sterilized wounds to seal them shut.

If only all wounds were so easily treated. I spied Dr. Klimpton and Dr. Wadi amidst the crowd. Klimpton was leading a small, prayer-less prayer circle, holding hands with cloudy-eyed faces as he led them through encouraging words. At times like these, the hospital chapel would be standing room only. Once upon a time, Dr. Klimpton used bonafide prayers, but that hadn’t gone over too well with management, to put it lightly. Director Hobwell was obsessed with ensuring that the hospital did not endorse or unduly favor any one Lassedile denomination over another.

I didn’t blame him in the slightest.

For a moment, I was adrift, looking around to see who was most in need. I almost shook my head.

‘Most in need’—what drek. All of them were in need!

A commotion broke out near one of the entryways. A crowd metastasized from the scores of pacers and pensive news-watchers scattered across this and other rooms.

Applause broke out. To what, I couldn’t tell. People broke down in tears or in shouts of “three cheers!”, only for a disgruntled voice to shout out in protest near the heart of the gathered crowd.

“I’m no hero! Stop saying that. Just get away. Get away!”

The crowd parted, all murmurs and wary eyes, revealing the resentful hero for all to see. He had a long, cleft-chinned face with big ears and a short-brimmed hat and the kind of stature that cast a shadow even as he clutched his side, hunched over halfway. His arms were lanky struts, topped by fists tightly clenched. The spattered burns of stray welding sparks on the fellow’s denim coat and matching pants identified him as a construction worker, or maybe a plumber. Other stains on his clothes, though, were fresh and wet.I made a beeline for him as he staggered into the waiting room.

“You a doctor?” he asked, looking me in the eyes.

I nudged my shoulder toward him. “Come on, let me help.”

He slung his arm over me. I helped him limp over to a seat that had just opened up near the back of the room, relatively far from the watching crowd.

“Nurse!” I said.

One arrived post-haste. He regarded the construction worker with awe.

“You were on the news. You’re—”

—The slender man grit his teeth. “Ice it,” he said. “I’m nothing and nobody.”

Clearing his throat, the nurse glanced downward.

“Sir, you’ll need to take off your shirt.”

He complied, revealing tanned skin stretched taut over lean muscle. Though hidden beneath layers of sun, sweat, and time, it was impossible for me not to notice the half-faded craters of cigarette burns dotting his right forearm. Most obvious, of course, was the nasty laceration that shot through his left flank.

The nurse quickly went to work, swabbing down the wound—the man squeezed my hand in his, trembling—before waving the resin wand over the cut, trigger depressed, coating it in the translucent paste. The stuff was incredible, like epoxy for human flesh. Brand once described it to me as an “quasi-synthetic extracellular matrix for the facilitation of suture-free healing.” The biodegradable, opioid-infused gel swelled to fill and cover the wound. Over time, it would dissolve from the inside-out as the body healed itself and filled up the wound.

As the worker’s injuries were being treated, I took the liberty of checking the news with a glance at one of the large consoles mounted up on the wall. After what I saw with Brand at lunch, I’d declared my intentions to go on yet another disaster-porn fast. I didn’t have the stomach for that sort of television anymore.

“Heroic First-Responder Saves Dozens in Dressfeldt Court Massacre,” read the title on the screen.

The screen was split down the middle. On the one hand, an aerial shot of West Elpeck Medical, looking down at the courtyard; on the other, a shaky video of my newest patient leading people down a tunnel into the construction site, one after another after another, like Lassedite Athelmarch among the crusaders—only without the ignominious end.

For all but the most shameless of news organizations, it was an unwritten law that, during acute crises, the interiors of hospitals were no-go zones for all but the discreetest, most sensitive photojournalists. There was a modicum of basic respect owed to victims of horrid tragedies and their immediate families. Unfortunately, all bets were off once patients were discharged. As I took in the heartbreaking guilt that wracked this brave man’s body, I was not looking forward to the media circus broadcasting his emotional crisis live on national television. That was the kind of thing that could ruin somebody’s life. The longer I stared, the bigger the pit in my stomach grew. My mouth went dry, and I bit into my cheek.

All those people…

“Doc…?”

The prompt pulled me back into focus. Exhaling to steady myself, I met my patient in the eye.

“Sir…” I began.

“Kurt, not ‘Sir’,” he said.

I nodded. “Well, Kurt… it seems like you’ve had quite the day.” I smiled sadly.

He sighed. “Don’t tell me you’re that kind of doctor.”

“If by ‘that kind of doctor’, you mean one who’s concerned about your well-being going forward, then I’m proud to say I’m guilty as charged. You nearly blew a gasket back there Kurt, and that worries me. If you were just another Tom, Dick, or Harry, I’d feel more at ease, but… let’s face it,” I tilted my head, “you’re not. You’re in the national spotlight. Think about it: if you’re having trouble being in the spotlight now, how will you fare once you’re discharged from the hospital, out in the open where the paparazzi might pounce?”

Kurt’s eyes went wide. “Oh God…” he muttered, shaking his head, as if to dispel a demon.

“Let me be clear,” I continued, “if being left alone is what you really want, I’ll oblige, but… only once you’ve convinced me that I don’t need to worry about you being a danger to others, or yourself.” I looked over the chaos all around us. “There’s been enough blood and tears for one day.”

Kurt’s lips trembled. He contorted with the stuttering, shattered kind of agony that set in when a man raised to think that men didn’t cry found himself watching the Sword.

“A danger to others… really?” Kurt shook his head. His jaw trembled like he’d swallowed a bitter herb. “That hits the nail on the head. They call me ‘hero’, ‘Angel-sent’, but it’s all a lie. I was just a guy doing my day job.” His fingernails bit into his palms. “Whenever I close my eyes, all I can see are faces on the ground bleeding out onto the pavement from the holes in their heads.”

“You blame yourself…” I said.

“Of course.” His lips contorted with bitterness. “I wasn’t strong enough. I wasn’t fast enough. I got a bunch of folks to safety by shooing them down a tunnel, but that bastard saw it, and shot down the ones I tried to get through in the second wave. But if I’d been stronger, faster, and smarter, maybe they wouldn’t have had to die. Maybe…”

Tears glinted in his eyes.

“But look at the people you helped,” I said. “If it weren’t for you…” I looked around the room. “Kurt, you’re not the first person I’ve talked with. I can tell you, for a fact, there are people in this room who would hug you until you snapped in half.” Given Kurt’s physique, that would be a long hug indeed. “You saved their lives!” I added.

Kurt shrugged. “And all at the low, low cost of a lifetime of regret,” he said. “What if I’d gotten there sooner? What if I hadn’t hesitated? What if I’d been able to smash the guy’s damn head in?” He shook his head. “The good isn’t worth the hurt, Doc.”

Kurt glanced up at the monitor on the wall, watching footage of the shooting play and replay. “I hope they carve out that son of a bitch’s empty heart and feed it to the birds. And, while they’re at it, bomb every bullet factory back to the stone age. No one man should be able to inflict that much death. It’s not right.”

Inhaling sharply, he turned away from the footage and looked up at the ceiling’s fluorescent lights. “Beast’s Teeth… what kind of god would preside over horrors like this?”

“I wish I knew,” I said. And that was the truth. It was a question that haunted me for most of my life.

I still wasn’t any closer to finding an answer.

Nearby, a woman cried out in horror. Others in the waiting room quickly followed with gasps of their own as I looked up to see all eyes turn to the entryway.

I turned to the console screen. A brand new “breaking news” update graced CBN’s broadcast.

“Killer apprehended, arriving at WeElMed for treatment.”