Page 15

Chapter Fifteen

I ducked instinctively at the sound of shattering glass but nothing hit me. I twisted back to Gwen. “Are you hurt?”

She gaped at me, eyes wide with shock. “What was that?” she said, her voice high and thin. She gasped, bending forward in pain.

I slid around the booth to get closer to her. “What’s wrong?”

She straightened, still gasping in pain, and I saw the gaping slice in her forearm.

I didn’t have much more time to think anything but ‘long’ and ‘bad’ before blood started to well out of the wound and my attention shifted from Gwen’s state of mind to ‘shit, stop the bleeding’.

I grabbed a napkin, realized it was heavy paper not fabric, and swept everything off the table so I could use the tablecloth instead. I wrapped it around Gwen’s forearm and applied pressure.

“Gwen, can you lift your arm a little?” Slow the blood flow. I have to slow the blood flow . The first aid lessons Mitch had insisted I have had apparently stuck in my brain. “Gwen. Lift your arm, it will help stop the bleeding,” I repeated, tapping her elbow gently when she didn’t immediately obey.

She blinked at me, her blue eyes huge, her face white. She was biting her lip hard enough I was surprised it wasn’t bleeding, too.

Shock. Which might be useful for a minute or two. Because once it wore off, her arm was going to hurt like a motherfucker.

But she lifted her arm. I needed something to support it, so she could keep it there but I didn’t want to release the pressure. The tablecloth was already turning red. “Stay calm. Deep breaths. Close your eyes and focus on just breathing, okay. Help is on its way.”

As though to prove my point, Maia reached us at a run, barking orders over her shoulder.

Rufus was close on her heels.

“Maggie, what the hell happened?” he asked.

“I don’t know, the light, I think.” I tipped my head back to inspect the lights. Sure enough, there was a gap in the row. “One of them fell. Or exploded. I’m not sure.”

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“There’s glass in your hair,” Maia said, her dark eyes sweeping over me. “Are you sure you’re not cut?”

Nothing hurt. And I couldn’t feel anything damp in my hair like I might be bleeding. “I’m fine. Let’s focus on Gwen.”

“An ambulance is on its way,” Maia said. “Five minutes out.”

She dropped a backpack at my feet. The emergency kit one of them usually carried. All our cars carried a first aid kit capable of treating most things from bullet wounds down. They even had antidotes to common poisons and pathogens. Which was why Mitch had insisted on me learning to use most of them.

“Keep pressure on it until I tell you to stop,” Maia said to me. “Rufus, take off your jacket, put it under Gwen’s arm.” She kept talking to the three of us while she pulled supplies from the kit.

I focused on doing as I was told, trying to ignore the still spreading blood stain on Gwen’s makeshift bandage. My own breathing had gone shallow and I tried to slow it down. Fainting wasn’t going to help anyone.

“Maggie, I’m going to need you to let go. Gwen, this might hurt,” Maia said.

I removed my hands. They were stained with blood, too red under the lights, and my vision went spotty for a few seconds. Maia moved with speed and precision, no wasted movement, undoing the tablecloth and re-bandaging the wound with actual bandages, all the while talking to Gwen softly.

I closed my eyes for a minute, trying to fight off the shakiness from the adrenaline rush.

“Maggie,” Damon said, softly.

I opened my eyes. He was standing at the end of the booth closest to me. “I’m okay,” I said. I clenched my hands shut, not wanting to see the blood.

Damon noticed, his eyes darkening with concern. “Are you sure? I’ll cancel the rest of the meet and greet and come with you to the hospital.”

Hospital. Right. Gwen would need stitches, if not surgery. She was even paler, her eyes still closed, but she was responding when Maia asked her questions.

Where was the damned ambulance? I sucked in a breath. Get it together, Maggie. I was fine. Gwen was not. But she would be. And if Damon stayed, we wouldn’t wake up to headlines about explosions at Decker’s disrupting the night. It was just a freak accident. Nothing newsworthy.

“No,” I said firmly. “You stay here and finish up, if the team thinks it’s safe. It was an accident. I’ll be fine at the hospital.”

No doubt his team would be scrambling to search the place for threats, but there’d been no follow up to the light. No other explosions or attacks. And it had exploded over Gwen, not him. Barely anyone knew she was in the city. If Usuriel had spotted her and decided to take her, she’d be gone. I couldn’t have stopped him on my own. There was absolutely no reason to think anyone else would target her. It was a bad bulb and bad timing.

Damon stood his ground, the muscles in his jaw tightening as he stared down at me.

“Seriously,” I said, “I’m fine and you can’t do anything I can’t at the hospital. I’ll make them take us to St. Isidore’s. Meredith will help us.” Or if she wasn’t on duty, there’d be another healer in the hospital. The healers who worked in hospitals knew tanai existed. We’d be fine.

He nodded, but waved off the Decker employee who was standing at a not-so-discreet distance, obviously ready to usher him back to the meet and greet. Half the people still in the queue were gawking at our table, trying to see what was happening.

“Get everyone back in line,” Damon said, his tone as close to a snap as he allowed himself to get in public. “I’ll be over in a few minutes. I need to make sure everything’s okay here first.”

“Of course, Mr. Riley,” the employee said and backed off.

The paramedics arrived next. They didn’t fuss with Maia’s work, just took Gwen’s vitals, got us to repeat what had happened, asked Maia what the injury was, and then bundled Gwen onto a stretcher to be carried out.

The shorter of the two, a black woman with close cropped curls, who was in charge, asked, “Who’s coming with us?”

“Me,” I said, pushing out of the booth. “We need to go to St. Isidore’s.”

“St. Isidore’s? Is this a healer situation?”

That was the delicate way of asking if Gwen was a witch. “Yes.” I wasn’t going to explain she was tanai. It was enough that they knew I wanted a healer to examine Gwen first. Meredith would know if Gwen’s parentage would cause any issues.

But the paramedic didn’t ask for any clarification. “Fine. Let’s go.”

I turned to Maia. “Call ahead. Let Meredith or whoever the healer on duty is know we’re coming.”

The ride to the hospital didn’t take too long, though the medical smells made my pulse pound. Hospitals brought back too many bad memories

Gwen’s new bandage was stained by the time we reached the hospital. The paramedics had dosed her with a hypo of painkillers and hooked her up to an IV they assured me was just saline.

When the ambulance’s doors swung open, Meredith was waiting for us. She looked like it had been a long day already, the green scrubs under her white coat wrinkled, but she smiled at me, pushing the long brown braid of her hair back over her left shoulder.

“Maggie, hi,” she said. “Hang on.” She turned her attention to the paramedics, letting them update her. When they were done, she stared at Gwen for a long moment before stepping back and nodding at the paramedics. “Okay, let’s take her through to the ER. I’ve got an exam room ready.” She watched intently as the paramedics unloaded Gwen and trundled her off in the stretcher.

Meredith turned to me. “Are you hurt?”

“No.”

“There’s glass in your hair.”

“So people keep telling me.”

“I’ll get a nurse to clean it up for you.” She glanced down at my hands. “You can clean those, too. What happened?”

“A light globe exploded. Or the fitting fell. Or both. Glass and metal falling from the ceiling, anyway. Gwen was in the way.”

Meredith was too professional to wince but she made sympathetic noises as she led me toward the ER.

“It looked bad. Lots of blood,” I said, clenching my hands again. The blood was mostly dry now and the tight sensation was nearly worse than the fresh blood had been.

“We’ll take care of it,” Meredith said. She lowered her voice. “She’s tanai?”

I nodded. “Yep, her mom is…from there.”

We’d reached a door labeled ‘Exam Room 5’. Meredith waved to the nearest nurse, a slightly frazzled looking redheaded guy who had a datapad in one hand and a box of bandages in the other.

“Pete, this is Maggie. She had a close encounter with an exploding industrial light bulb. Her friend got the worst of it but can you find someone to get the glass out of her hair. Examine her scalp, too. And the rest of her clothes. There could be glass shards anywhere. And she needs to wash her hands. Once she’s done, she can come back here. No need for a patient record, I’ll take care of that.”

Pete nodded. “Sure thing, Dr. Dempsey.” He nodded his head at me. “C’mon, we’ll use one of the cubicles. It won’t take long.”

He started walking and before I knew it I was seated in a curtained-off cubicle while he angled a bright light at my hair and picked glass out with tweezers. After he made me put on a gown so he could check for cuts and shake out my clothes. For once my game club casual had paid off. My jeans and leather jacket had protected me from the glass. Pete declared me glass-free and pointed me at the sink so I could finally scrub the blood off my hands.

When I was done, Pete escorted me to the exam room, where Meredith was rebandaging Gwen’s arm.

“Okay, so it’s not too bad,” she said, with a quick smile as I came in. “It’s a long cut, about six inches but actually not too deep. But the bleeding is still…active, so we’re going to take her up to an OR, let a surgeon look at the vascular structures, then stitch her up. Anyone who needs to know she’s going into surgery?”

“No. She’s from the UK. No relatives here that I know of.”

“Well, she’s awake enough to consent, so that’s not an issue. It shouldn’t take too long. I think she’s possibly nicked a small artery and I’ve given that a boost to help it heal. The surgeon will clean it up if they need to. If the artery’s fine, it’s a straightforward job to close the wound. They’ll use a nerve block not a general. She’ll probably be able to go home in a few hours. You can wait in the VIP waiting room, if you want. Or you can go and we’ll keep you updated.”

“She’s staying with me and Damon. I’ll wait.” I wasn’t leaving Gwen alone in a hospital where she knew no one.

“I thought you’d say that. So let’s get you settled in.”

She walked me out of the ER and up a floor to a waiting room, scanning me in with a palm scan. She pointed at a screen on the wall. “If anyone else is going to join you, you can page me there and I’ll make sure reception gives them access.”

“Is Gwen really going to be okay?” The memory of the long bloody gash on her forearm was fresh. Too much blood.

“Yes. She was lucky. Didn’t sever anything muscular, as far as I can tell. Her hand and fingers are all moving fine, so if there’s any nerve involvement, it’s minimal. Once the surgeon is done, I’ll give her another boost but I’m not expecting there to be any complications. She’ll be sore for a few days, but that’s what the good drugs are for.”

“Are there any issues because she’s tanai?”

“I don’t think so. Gwen said she’s never had an allergic reaction to anything. So, fingers crossed, it’s all smooth sailing. Sitting here and waiting is the hard part. Info about access to the public link is all on the screen there so you can hook up if you need to.”

I didn’t. The signal on my datapad was fine without the hospital’s link, but I couldn’t focus. I updated Damon and left a message for Aubrey. Then sat and tried to be patient. Meredith’s estimate was right on the money. It only took a few hours before a nurse came to take me to Gwen’s recovery room. I tried to be quiet as I entered the room. Gwen seemed small on the big hospital bed, her eyes closed, her chest rising and falling. Asleep, probably. Meredith stood next to the bed, focused on Gwen, one hand hovering over her chest. Checking her energy field.

I did the same. Gwen’s was a pearly blue, with a hint of the smokiness I associated with Callum and Cerridwen. Her Fae heritage, presumably. But it seemed pale. Too translucent. And she was too still, though the rise and fall of her chest was regular.

“I thought you said it would be a nerve block?” I asked softly.

“It was. But she’s been through a lot. She’s sleeping. Which is the best thing. There’s no nerve or muscle damage and she’s all patched up.”

Gwen’s arm was now stained with iodine, but the gaping cut had turned into a neatly stitched wound covered by a surgical shield. She was still hooked up to a drip and a few other things; monitors were beeping softly in the background.

“The drip is hydration and some antibiotics,” Meredith said. “We’ll send her home with painkillers, but the nerve block will last about twelve hours. Hopefully more like a day. We’ll keep her a bit longer for observation, then you can go.” She nodded at a chair on the far side of the room. “You can wait in here. There’ll be nurses in and out and I’ll update you in an hour or so.”

Right. She had other patients to see.

“Thank you,” I said and started to move around the bed toward the visitor’s chair when all the monitors started beeping wildly.

I froze as Meredith headed toward the bank of screens.

“What’s going on?”

“I’m not sure,” she said as Gwen started gasping for air. “Looks like an allergic reaction. Could be the sedatives or the antibiotic.”

She hit a button on the wall and laid one hand on Gwen, sending a jolt of magic into her.

A few seconds later, a nurse came running through the door carrying a thick plastic syringe with a bright orange cap on one end.

“What’s that?” I asked, trying not to panic.

“EpiPen,” Meredith said as the nurse handed it to her. “It will take down the reaction if that’s what it is.”

She put the EpiPen against Gwen’s thigh under the surgical gown and hit it home. Gwen squeaked in pain and them slumped back against the bed.

After a few seconds, the machines started to calm down.

“Maggie, go wait outside,” Meredith ordered.

I stood out in the hallway, trying not to panic, and wishing the recovery room wasn’t so well soundproofed. I got brief bursts of noise when various hospital personnel ran in or out of the room but no one stopped to update me. I leaned against the wall, beating off incipient panic as the sounds of machines beeping and rushing feet triggered too many memories of too many hospital visits. Gwen would be okay. She was young. Strong. Stronger than most humans, with her half-Fae blood.

I won in the end, maintaining some semblance of calm. When they let me back in, Gwen was lying with her eyes closed, several blankets piled over her.

Meredith stood by a bank of monitors, looking at the readings and typing numbers into her datapad.

“Is she okay?” I asked, the words almost snapped.

Gwen opened her eyes. “I’m fine.”

She didn’t look fine and she sounded wiped out. Still a few shades too pale underneath the flushed cheeks. Blood loss, surgery, and an adrenaline shot will do that to you.

“She will be fine,” Meredith confirmed, turning away from the monitors. “The allergic reaction is under control. We think it was the antibiotic. Gwen, I’m going to ask you a few quick questions now you’re back with us. I take it you’ve never had xenocylicate before?”

Gwen shook her head. “I never get sick much. And I’ve never had a bad injury. Or surgery.” She gestured at the bandage wrapping her arm.

“I’ve made a note on your medical records, but it’s not a medication many people react to,” Meredith said. “Do you know if your human parent had any allergies? It could come from the Fae side, but it’s not a known contraindication. I’ll need to send a request up through the Cestis to follow up on that.”

“Is that a thing?” I asked.

“Yes. Tanai react differently to some medications,” Meredith said. “But this one should have been safe. It’s synthetic, it doesn’t contain any plant-based material, no iron. Gwen, any family history?”

Gwen closed her eyes again. “I don’t know my father. I don’t even know who he was.”

Meredith shot me a confused look. “Long story,” I mouthed.

Her mouth turned down as though she was all too familiar with that kind of long story. She focused back on Gwen. “Unusual allergies can be inherited. Have you ever had your DNA run?”

Gwen opened her eyes, sitting up a little straighter. “The Cestis in the UK, they did it when I…er…”

“Came out of the realm?” Meredith prompted.

“Yes, that. But they were looking for a parental match, so they could make an information request to try and find my father. Nothing came up. They didn’t say anything to me about medical stuff.”

“Nothing came up in the UK database,” Meredith corrected. “The privacy laws are extremely tight. There’s no automatic sharing beyond the immediate jurisdiction. Those have to be requested additionally and usually there needs to be a good reason before most countries allow searches by non-citizens. If the Cestis thought you were English, they could only run it there. But with a medical reason, we can do it here.”

“How does that work?” I asked. “Running her DNA if she’s tanai?” DNA analysis for medical problems had become a lot more accessible. But as the technology had improved, various companies had failed as their methods became outdated. Then had come a bunch of very expensive lawsuits about who got the data and in the end, in most countries, the databases were now run by the government.

“We have ways,” Meredith said. “The databases the Cestis control pick out only certain genetic information to match against the general population databases. Nothing that stands out as…different. It works.”

That made sense. “And you can search for relatives here because it’s a medical issue?”

These days the legacy DNA sites that people used to trace their genealogy were highly regulated when it came to living people. In cases where a child had been conceived via donation or had proof that a parent who raised them was not their biological parent, they were able to get medical history, along with the relevant genetic data for medical issues, if the databases had a match, but they received nothing else about the individual they matched with, unless both parties consented.

“Yes, because it’s an unusual allergy and Gwen doesn’t know her parents, we can request a broader medical history search as well as a parental match,” Meredith said. “If there’s a parental match, then your father would, of course, be informed that there’s a match and that his medical history was accessed, but you don’t have to agree to release any information to him. Of course, neither does he, beyond the medical history.”

Gwen nodded. “Yes, that’s what they told me in London.”

“If your DNA is already on record, this is all fairly simple,” Meredith said, “I make a request from the Cestis’s UK database, they send the profile, and we do the medical history search via the US Annex site—that’s the Cestis-controlled database. Though, if you don’t want to know, we can just check your profile and see if it identifies any of the known allergy markers.”

“No, I’d like to know. If he’s out there. I mean, I’m not sure I want to know who he is, but I’d like to know the medical stuff.”

“It does make things safer.” Meredith pulled up a form on her datapad. “Read this and authorize with a palm scan.”

Gwen read the form, chewing her lip. But she scanned her palm at the end, handing the datapad back.

“Great. We’ll have the medical scan back in a few hours. We’ll see with the history. But, like I said, don’t get your hopes up about any contact.”

Gwen nodded. “I’m not expecting anything from my father at this point. He washed his hands of me when I was born. But that’s okay. I don’t need him.” The defiance in her voice was undercut by the slight quaver. She looked very young. And I knew what it felt like to be young and abandoned or betrayed by everyone who should have protected you.

“No,” I said, gently. “You’ve done fine. You know, my mom was, well, difficult and I still turned out okay. You’ll find a whole different kind of family as you find out what you want to do and where you want to be. It will all work out.”

“And it will work out even better if you know what medications to avoid in the future,” Meredith added cheerfully. “So I’ll get this started and we can check your profile for allergy markers and anything else. Whether or not there’s a match in the database is just a bonus.”

Gwen managed a half-smile. “I’d like to know where I’m from at least. I always thought I was English, but it looks like I’m not.”

“You were born there. You’re English. And your father might not have ever had his DNA profiled,” Meredith said. “That’s one reason for no match.”

Or he had dumped Gwen in England because he didn’t want anyone to be able to find him. He’d left her financially well off, so he probably had enough money to not have to skimp on medical care. But not everyone thought DNA testing was a good idea.

“Either way, we won’t know until we get this all underway,” Meredith said. She swiped up on the datapad and did her own palm scan. “There, that’s the request sent. I want to keep you here for observation another hour or so, and we should know the basics by then. If everything’s under control, we’ll send you home.”

She fixed me with a stern look. “You did say Gwen’s staying with you? I don’t want her alone in case she has another reaction.”

“We’ll watch her,” I said reassuringly. “Don’t worry.”

“Okay,” Meredith said, “Well, you two hang out here. I’ll get some coffee and food sent for you, Maggie. And Gwen, you can eat something in a little bit once we’re sure your stomach isn’t going to react to the antihistamines.”

“I’m not hungry,” she said.

“No, but between the surgery and the adrenaline and the antihistamines and your injury, your body has burned through a lot of fuel in the last few hours. You’ll feel better if you eat. Even if it’s just jello or something to start with. How’s your pain level?”

“My arm doesn’t hurt at all.”

Meredith smiled. “That’s what I like to hear. The nerve block is holding. I’ll send you home with some pain meds. You can start taking them tomorrow morning before the block wears off. But hopefully you’ll only need them for a few days. The cut should heal easily enough. I’ll leave you two alone, but you can ask the nurses to page me if you need me.”

By the time Meredith reappeared a couple of hours later to see how Gwen was, she was looking almost back to normal, sitting up in bed and talking about Damon’s game tactics. That she understood a lot of what he’d done and how it affected the flow of the gameplay boded well for her potential as a game designer. She could think in game, the same way Damon and the other game designers I knew did. I could follow the storylines and figure out tactics, but when they started brainstorming worlds and all the interconnected threads, my brain noped out after a certain point.

Plus, the bonus side effect of her being so caught up in the match was that, as far as I could tell, she hadn’t noticed Usuriel.

I wasn’t bringing him up. She’d had enough shocks for one night.

“Okay,” Meredith said when she came back into the room. “Gwen, I need to let you know there were two matches in the DNA database. So we have the medical histories, but there’s nothing on them you need to worry about. So we’re just going to write this off as a strange reaction and take it from there. It’s on your medical history now, and I’ll send you the information about the medication. It has a few brand names so it’s good to know so you can tell your doctors in the future.”

“Okay, that’s good,” Gwen said. She chewed her lip for a moment. “Was one of them my dad?”

Meredith nodded. “Yes.”

“Oh.” She didn’t say anything else and there was a long silence. I stayed quiet, giving her time to process. It was one thing to know your dad might be out there. Another to know that he was out there and had ditched you. At least, I imagined it was. Another layer of hurt.

Gwen eventually heaved a sigh. “Right. So he is out there somewhere. Well, I have what I need from him, I guess.” Her mouth twisted and then her eyes widened. “Wait, you said two matches?”

“Yep, two. The search looks for parents, siblings, other close relatives like aunts, uncles, first cousins.” Meredith replied.

“ Siblings ? I could have a half brother or sister out there?”

“It’s a possibility. It could be a cousin,” Meredith said gently. “But remember, they’ll be notified that a match has been made, but it’s up to them as to whether they want to release any more information. If someone has their profile locked down, the medical history is all you’ll get. Outside of parents, there’s no automatic access to how the person is related to you.”

Gwen’s mouth turned down. “That seems unfair. Aren’t there medical things where it might be more likely you have the same thing if it’s your sibling versus say a cousin?”

“Once you have the history, that becomes a bit of a moot point,” Meredith said gently. “It’s to protect people’s privacy. And, sometimes, their safety. People can choose not to have any other contact.

“Do people really not want to find out?” Gwen asked. “If they have a brother or sister out there?” She sounded bewildered. As an only child she’d probably grown up dreaming, like me, about a big happy family.

Meredith hesitated. “Families are complicated. And if you didn’t grow up with your biological siblings then there’s usually a reason. Affairs, or messy divorces, egg or sperm donation in the parent’s past they never told their kids or even their spouse about. Abuse, sometimes. Not everyone wants to know. Or deal with it if they do. And speaking of dealing with it, you should sleep on this. Take a few days to think about it. Wait and see what happens. If someone initiates a contact, you can take it from there. If they don’t and you decide you want to know, then you could send a contact request. Or there are other legal processes if there’re valid reasons you would need to know their identities.”

Like a false name on a birth certificate? Would a court give Gwen the name of her dad if she wanted?

Gwen nodded, looking more than a little overwhelmed.

“That all sounds sensible to me. Can we get out of here now?” I was starting to feel like Gwen looked. Exhausted and not entirely sure I was awake. The clock in the room told me it was nearly five a.m. Mondays were never my favorite day of the week, but a Monday on a couple of hours sleep was going to be a real bitch.

Meredith moved closer to the monitors, pressing various buttons and comparing the readings against Gwen’s chart.

“I think so. I’ll just check her aura,” Meredith said. She studied Gwen for a time and then asked, “May I touch you?”

Gwen nodded and Meredith rested two fingers on her forehead. Curious, I let my sight shift into the magic, to see the aura for myself. It was stronger now, not as misty as earlier. And I couldn’t see anything unusual. Meredith would be doing a deeper scan, using whatever magic it was that healers did to see all the things that I didn’t even know to look for.

Whatever she saw, it seemed to satisfy her because she moved back, smiling. “Perfect. Let me get you set up with some pain meds and you’ll be out of here.”