Page 123 of Death's Daughter
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The emergency room entrance is a blur of flashing lights, movement, and shouting. Ambulances are parked at skewed angles, gurneys are overturned. And, perhaps most ominously of all, dozens and dozens of crows are perched silently, waiting, on the roof overhang. So many of them that the ledge shimmers with their blackness, like oil glimmering on water.
When the sliding glass doors pull back to admit me, I find only more chaos inside.
“I don’t know, I don’t know, she just dropped. Please, someone help us!”
“I can’t get a pulse!”
People lie sprawled all over the floor, some of them in scrubs, others in regular clothes. Dead. Others are crouching next to them, frantically pounding on unmoving chests and puffing air into slack mouths. Clearly, this is where Nova entered.
I move deeper into the waiting room, where a nurse in Snoopy scrubs is attaching defibrillator pads to a man’s chest. His fingertips are translucent. Nova must have pulled hard on him.
I follow the trail of bodies to the swinging doors that lead into the actual emergency department. No one even tries to stop or question me when I push through the doors.
It’s more of the same back here. Frantic voices, people rushing around, bodies on the floor, including a security guard.
“Chessa?” I shout.
But there’s no response.
Nova wouldn’t kill her. Shewouldn’t. Chessa is leverage. Nova is smarter than that.That’s what I keep telling myself.
Smarter, yes. Also about a whole box of fries short of the proverbial Happy Meal, too.
I keep moving.
Then, one of the pale blue divider curtains—about halfway down the aisle—is drawn back roughly, metal hooks clinking.
I whip around to see Detective Morales. She lowers her hand from the fabric curtain to continue pumping ineffectively on a young woman’s chest.
“What the fuck is this, Trelane?” Detective Morales demands, thin lines of horror and disbelief sharp in her voice. “That girl from before? She walked through here, like Typhoid Mary. Blood all over her clothes, and people dropping left and right.”
Morales pauses long enough to bend over the patient—a student, based on the Beecher-themed scrunchie securing her dark hair in a messy bun and the backpack resting next to her wrapped ankle—and give rescue breaths.
I hurry toward her. “Where?” I ask. “Which way did she go?” I don’t have time to explain, or, for that matter, come up with an explanation she might believe.
Resuming chest compressions, Morales stares at me for a longmoment over the patient, evaluating me. “You know what this is, don’t you.”
It’s not a question. But I answer anyway. “Yes, and if you want me to stop it, I need to know where she is.”
Morales sucks her teeth and shakes her head. “I knew there was something off about you. Iknewit.”
She was right, just not in the way she thought.
“Never mind.” I start forward, past Morales.
She lifts her hand, jerking her thumb over her shoulder, indicating a set of doors on the other end of the emergency room. “The elevator, through there. She took your friend. I couldn’t…” She pauses with chagrin. “I didn’t put it together fast enough to stop them, and then I couldn’t leave.” She gestures to the girl on the bed. “But backup is coming.”
Backup that is more than likely going to be way too late and utterly outmatched.
I nod and keep going.
“You owe me an explanation, Trelane,” Morales calls after me. “Don’t think I’m going to forget it.”
Well, there’s a silver lining. If Nova kills me, I won’t have to havethatconversation.
On the other side of the doors, I find the elevators, just as Morales said. A hospital directory hangs on the wall just above the buttons for UP and DOWN.
