8

 

Caleb crossed the room to the stocky woman with the brown hair atop the table and stood between her and the medic sprite. Her wild eyes did not even blink as she turned her attention toward him and swiftly brought the metal tray across his cropped blonde head. Caleb roared and stumbled back falling over the medic sprite that had finally succeeded in loading some medications into paper cups. It was heading toward Mallory and the door when Caleb stumbled over it, sending a rainbow of various-sized, colorful pills into an arc through the air. As the pills scattered across the floor, Mallory rushed to try and stabilize Caleb, but she had trouble finding traction as her feet rolled across the pills. Her legs were trying to go different directions when Caleb’s weight landed solidly on her outstretched arms. Electric pain rocketed up her broken arm, and she screamed in agony. Caleb’s momentum finished off the work the pills had started, and Mallory found herself knocked off her feet for the third time that night. Both teenagers tumbled to the floor in an awkward pile.

The commotion of flailing, screaming teenagers broke the trance the nurses were under. The woman on the table blinked several times, and the man on the floor let his opponent loose. Both sprites momentarily free from their human adversaries righted themselves and headed quickly toward the medication dispenser, once again measuring and adding doses to paper cups. A cleaning sprite swept into the room and began to vacuum up the loose pills around the room. The two nurses clamored past the sprites, and they both spoke at the same time as they helped the teens to their feet, “Do you know what’s happening? What happened to the Dikaió? Are you okay?”

Caleb shook off the nurses and spoke with a power and authority Mallory had never seen. He was intimidating even while dabbing away a spot of blood rolling down his forehead, “The Dikaió is out all over the city. The Matriarch’s daughter has burns and a broken arm that need to be treated. You’ll have to work without your sprites. I assume you’re trained for emergencies, if needed.”

The male nurse replied, “Well, we’ve had training, but we’ve never had to…” he trailed off, noticing Mallory’s burns for the first time.

Caleb spoke soothingly, “Tonight, you’ll use all your training,” he leaned in to look at the nurse’s name tag. “Jerry, time is of the essence, and we are counting on you. The Matriarch’s daughter and the Administrator’s granddaughter may have the key to restoring the Dikaió, so we need to get them back to our parents as quickly as possible. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir!” Jerry nodded and left to find a wheelchair.

Mallory had never heard the word ‘sir’ to address Caleb before. She was certainly not ignorant to the ways they were all becoming more like adults than children now—but after watching adults treat Caleb not just as an equal, but as a superior, she might not ever be able to recapture the image of him as her childhood friend. Nevertheless, he was someone she could trust, and he always looked out for her.

The female nurse turned to look at Mallory’s burns and arm, measuring the wounds, asking questions about the smoke and how long ago the burns occurred. Mallory didn’t answer, feeling dazed. Maybe she was hungry.

“Sir?” Jerry asked Caleb as he returned with a wheelchair for Mallory. “Can I look at your head? That wound doesn’t look good.”

 

Caleb brushed away more blood that was starting to run freely down his head and stared at it incredulously, but he replied with the same air of authority: “I need you to look after Mal first. She is to be your prior— . . .”  His sentence trailed off, and his face grew pale. Caleb passed out, falling into the male nurse’s arms, nearly bowling him over. Jerry lowered him carefully to the floor and began examining the head wound.

Mallory pushed past the female nurse feeling panic rise, “Caleb!” Her voice caught and her lungs and throat ached from the shout.

Jerry turned and stood up in her path holding up his hands, “Mallory, please.”

Caleb got ‘sir,’ and she got the familiar first name. True, the staff at the hospital were pretty familiar with her at this point, as her lack of Dikaió and various inventions to compensate had resulted in multiple hospital visits over the years. Mallory knew some of the doctors, but she had never taken the time to learn the nurses’ names. Still, she was the Matriarch’s daughter. Should she not get a ‘ma’am’ at least? The male nurse continued, “We’ll make sure he’s taken care of, but my orders are to look after you, too.”

“You probably killed him!” Mallory yelled and ducked past the nurse in her path and knelt beside Caleb. She put her hand on his chest, it rose and fell in shallow motions. He was breathing, thank goodness.

“Ma’am?” The female nurse seemed to respect her position at least. She knelt down beside Mallory and looked her in the eyes. “I’m sorry—but we can help him. Please let us help you, too.” Mallory met the woman’s gaze with what she hoped was a withering ocular response. Stocky and strong, Mallory noticed the nurse was young and quite pretty with large eyes and a light brown complexion like tea and milk, just slightly lighter than Mallory’s own—but that could have just been a result of working nights at the hospital. Mallory did not recall seeing this nurse at the hospital before; she must be new since Mallory’s last visit. There was no familiarity then with Mallory as a patient, though she seemed to know who she was based on the respectful title.

“Ma’am?” The woman said again and reached out and touched Mallory’s good arm compassionately.

Mallory recoiled from her touch but stood up and nodded at the woman: “Okay, I’ll go with you.” She looked at the male nurse: “You see to him; I don’t want this one near him. She’s done enough.” Mallory eyed the woman suspiciously as though checking to see that she was no longer armed with a metal tray before sitting down in the waiting wheelchair. These were the same people who said she would feel a “little poke” before drawing sword-like needles and stabbing them into her—she did not trust anyone wearing white in a hospital, especially someone who could knock out a behemoth like Caleb Aiworth.

A cloud passed over the female nurse’s face, but she pushed Mallory’s wheelchair slowly out of the office and toward another set of double doors on the right side of the lobby. The doors swung open of their own accord without a Dikaió command. They apparently knew the nurse well enough to open for her with the old magic. Two large-shouldered men in white uniforms were on the other side of the doors leaning against the wall. They were watching some medic sprites with curiosity as the sprites continued their nightly duties as if nothing was wrong whatsoever. The men seemed totally unphased by the loss of Dikaió or at least amused by it. The female nurse paused and addressed the nonchalant duo, “Jerry needs a gurney in reception. There’s a patient there with a head injury who is unconscious.”

“A head injury you gave him,” Mallory added with venom.

The two men’s eyebrows arched, and they looked at the female nurse expectantly for more details. She rolled her eyes and said, “Just get the gurney, okay?”

They both smiled wolfishly and pretended to cower away from her like she was going to hit them. The nurse huffed and puffed then turned her back on them, stamping down the hall, muttering under her breath, “I’d like to give all of you some strong meds to keep you quiet for the night.” The two men laughed, then ran off to find a gurney for Caleb. Mallory did not appreciate their flirtatious humor at Caleb’s expense, and she certainly did not appreciate this vicious nurse’s inappropriate comments. The woman had nearly killed Caleb even if it was just an accident. If she could have used both arms, Mallory might have knocked her upside the head with her own medication tray if the opportunity had presented itself. In her present condition though, she was going to have to suck up the indignity of being treated by this woman. She closed her eyes and clutched the sides of the wheelchair, while the nurse nearly ran down the hall in heavy, thudding steps. She took two turns, and then opened a door to an examination room.

As soon as they entered into the room, a medic sprite burst through the door carrying a sky-blue paper gown.

The nurse raised her hands in amazement: “Stop,” she commanded, but the sprite continued into the room and lay the gown on the examination table. The nurse started to get agitated and reached for a clipboard on the wall, never taking her eyes off the sprite. It was clear that she intended to beat the poor thing into submission.

“It won’t do any good,” Mallory said standing and walking toward the examination table. “They seem to be indestructible. I’ve seen people all over town beating them, and nothing happens. They just keep working.”

The nurse plucked the clipboard off the wall but looked away from the medic sprite and focused her attention on Mallory, “What happened tonight?”

“I ran into a burning building to save the Administrator’s granddaughter.”

“I mean what happened to the sprites . . . the Dikaió?”

Mallory stood in front of the exam table and repositioned the gown on the table. She started trying to pull off her shirt, but the pain in her arm and the burns all over hurt too much to do more than raise her shirt above her belly button. Mallory looked at the nurse suspiciously, weighing what to tell a citizen about what had happened that night. She settled on a guarded version of the truth. “It was a careless word. One of the ones they’re always warning about . . . Look, I’m going to need some help here.”

“Oh right, sorry.” The nurse immediately transitioned from a curious person into a human medic sprite; she was all business. She opened a drawer in the small desk and pulled out a pair of crooked scissors, and she started to cut a line up the entire back of Mallory’s jacket and shirt.

“Whoa! Whoa! What are you doing?” Mallory tried to turn away.

“You’re never going to be able to raise your arm to get these off, and there are parts of your clothing that that are fused to skin where the burns are.” The nurse pointed to a few patches in her jacket and shirt where the fire had burned through. Tiny strips of blackened thread intertwined with white blisters and red puffy skin, and when Mallory shifted her body in any direction, those threads pulled tight. Their tips were inside her like tiny flexible hooks.

Mallory felt her stomach heave. Having noticed the wounds, it was impossible to ignore them, and then pain again broke through the adrenaline of the night. “I think I need to sit down,” she said, and the nurse helped her onto the examination table and continued to cut off her clothing. It was a slow and painful process. Once the big cut up the back was made, the nurse cut down along the sleeves of the jacket and shirt. When she got to a point where the fabric was fused, the nurse had to cut slowly, gently pulling around the area, leaving bits of fabric around every burn. The nurse’s tailoring was agonizing, and Mallory felt like her skin was on fire again, but she bit her lip and tried to tune out the pain, staring thoughtfully at her silver reflection in the medic sprite that had frozen in place in the corner while the nurse worked. Mallory tried to ignore the snipping scissors and searing pain by focusing her attention on how they might go about fixing the Dikaió.

She bit her lip and tilted her head in thought. Clearly the Dikaió’s magic was not completely gone. So far, she had noted that the sprites were still doing their tasks. Some of the doors were still opening. It might be useful to figure out what in the city was still working, but the major issue was the one that Mallory understood all too well: The gift of the christening seemed to be gone. No one was able to command the Dikaió with their voice anymore. Everyone was as helpless as she had been as a child. If it were not for her rebellious determinism and the books she had read, Mallory would have gone crazy.

That made her think of the Dikaió Chorus her grandmother knew—he had survived with his books as well. Perhaps books were not the problem; maybe books were the key. If the Dikaió could not be fixed, they would need someone to teach them how to live like her, and that meant teaching every citizen how to read, how to learn to rely on themselves rather than magic.

The nurse was kneeling on the floor, and she began to cut Mallory’s pant leg.

“Really?” Mallory protested.

“Would you ever wear them again?”

Mallory looked at the muddy, torn, fire-singed pants and shrugged, “No, I suppose not.” She bit her lip again and looked thoughtfully at the nurse. “Can I ask you something?”

The nurse did not look up and kept cutting up Mallory’s pant leg toward her thigh, but she said, “Sure.”

“Do you know how to read?”

The nurse paused and looked up at Mallory, “No, of course not.”

“Isn’t it hard to remember everything you have to do here in the hospital without reading? Medications, treatments, patient’s names?”

“Well, we do have to rely on the medic sprites quite a bit to keep things straight.”

“Are the medic sprites answering questions about those things now?”

The nurse turned to the sprite standing in the corner: “What is this patient’s name, sprite?” The medic sprite remained silent and still. “What is the patient’s name in room 231, sprite?” No answer. “What medication was prescribed for Harry Botain in room 231, sprite?” Nothing.

The nurse put her face in her hand and began to cry with frustration. “What are we going to do, ma’am?”

Mallory was put back by the nurse’s tears. She had been looking at her as another citizen and not a particularly good one after what she did to Caleb, but now Mallory saw her as she was: a young girl, barely older than Mallory, who had been christened and raised for the job of helping others here at the hospital but had no real understanding of how to do that without the Dikaió. On the other hand, she was performing the job of helping Mallory out of her clothes with a lot of care without any Dikaió at all.

“The Governor’s son asked if you had any emergency training, yes?”

The nurse wiped her tears and shook her head. “No, some of us have had emergency training in case someone needs help outside the hospital without the use of the medic sprites. There is a team of emergency doctors, nurses, and sprites that handle most of those calls. I’ve never had to do anything like that and would not be expected to, so I haven’t had much of that sort of training.”

“This job that you’re doing now, helping me out of my clothes, isn’t that emergency training? Wouldn’t a sprite normally do that?”

The nurse snapped back to her task and started cutting again when Mallory brought it up, but she spoke while she worked: “No, some things the sprites can’t do.”

“I guess, for now—to answer your question—you should stick to those things the sprites can’t do and whatever emergency skills you know from what the sprites used to do, at least until we figure out what they’ll still do without commands.”

The nurse got to a patch of pants on Mallory’s thigh that had burned through and began to cut carefully around it. Mallory inhaled sharply as the fibers tugged at the burn on her leg, but she clenched her jaw and gripped the bed to keep from crying out. The second pantleg had managed to avoid the fire and went much faster until Mallory was completely loose. The nurse helped her into the paper gown, not tying it so it would rest loosely over her injured skin until all of her wounds were cleansed and dressed.

Mallory touched the nurse on the shoulder, “We’re going to get through this, okay?”

The nurse nodded, “I’m going to go find a doctor to see what we can do for your arm and burns.” Then she left, taking Mallory’s ruined clothing in heaps with her.  

As soon as the door closed behind the nurse, the medic sprite came to life; it pulled a glass thermometer off the wall, held it up, and Mallory allowed it to place it in her mouth. Then it grabbed an oximeter out of a drawer and placed it on Mallory’s finger to check her heartbeat and oxygen levels. While the meters were checking their levels, the sprite grabbed a blood pressure cuff. It moved toward Mallory’s broken arm. “No, no,” Mallory said, “This one.” She waved her good arm at the sprite. She had spent her whole life being ignored by the sprites, and yet in a moment of need, she fell into the same expectations everyone else had tonight, thinking the sprites understood what she said without the magic of the Dikaió translating.

The sprite whipped the cuff across her broken arm and inflated it before Mallory could pull away. It squeezed against burned spots, and she felt her bone shift beneath her skin; the broken edges first grating against each other then snapping loose. The pain was excruciating, and she held her breath until she finally released a scream while the cuff deflated and her bone shifted against her injured flesh again.

The oximeter sounded an alarm as her heart raced, and her oxygen levels dropped. The medic sprite swirled to the counter and pushed a red button on the wall, and a red light above the door began to flash. It ripped open a drawer producing a clear plastic facemask connected to a large rubber balloon. As it turned back toward Mallory, the sprite sprouted two new arms, for a total of four, and came rushing toward her. With two arms, it pushed Mallory backward onto the bed, with another it pulled the thermometer loose, and with its fourth arm, it fitted the mask over her nose and mouth. Then it began to pump the balloon. Mallory felt air rush into her mouth and nose, violently inflating her lungs. It almost hurt more than the smoke she had inhaled at City Hall. She coughed and squirmed, trying to get away from the sprite, but its strong silver arms pinned her into place. The oximeter alarm grew louder and more urgent as Mallory struggled to get away, her heart rate increasing. She tried to shake the device off, hoping that the lack of alarm would calm the sprite, but the sprite seemed to sprout a fifth arm and gently pinned her arm with the oximeter to the table. Mallory felt like she could not get a good breath, and the room was getting fuzzy around the edges. She wasn’t sure how much longer she could hold out against the sprite.

Then a metal chair clanged against the side of the sprite. The young nurse had returned, and she was back to beating the sprite, trying to get it off Mallory. Another woman was with her, wearing a white lab coat. The other woman ducked under the chair as the nurse swung it again at the sprite. She reached up from her crouching stance and removed the oximeter from Mallory’s finger. The alarm ceased, and the sprite stopped pumping the rubber ball and searched for the oximeter. The ducking woman pulled the cord off and dropped the device in her white coat pocket just out of the sprite’s reach while Mallory gasped for air, panting wildly.

The crouching woman spoke calmly near her ear, so Mallory could hear above the clanging of the metal chair hitting the sprite, “Slow down, take deep breaths, or you’ll hyperventilate.”

Mallory held her breath a moment and tried to count her breaths slowly as the haze on the outskirts of her vision began to recede. The woman in the white coat crouched patiently while the nurse continued to flail on the sprite. The sprite remained utterly unphased by the beating and continued to search for the oximeter, holding the disconnected cord. After a while, the sprite left to search for a new oximeter to attach to Mallory’s finger.

“Next time, don’t hold your breath,” the crouching woman said. “It needs to see a normal oxygen reading to register that you do not need emergency resuscitation. Breathe deeply and calmly, or it will start pumping the mask again.”

Nodding, Mallory breathed deeply and calmly, allowing the returning sprite to attach a fresh oximeter to her finger. After a short time, the sprite pulled away all the medical equipment, including the blood pressure cuff still wrapped around Mallory’s arm. Mallory reeled in pain as the fool thing callously ripped it off, but she kept breathing normally for fear it might try to save her life again.

The nurse continued to wail on the sprite with the metal chair with rage and frustration while it returned the supplies to their various homes in the examination room. She followed it to its place in the corner of the room pounding out a beat that would rival the Dikaió musicians during the christenings.

The crouching woman yelled at the nurse, “Please, stop! It’s done.”

The nurse looked wildly at the crouching woman, and Mallory warned, “Watch out, she’s dangerous!”

“I can see that,” the crouching woman replied. “That’s why I’m still down here out of her reach.”

The nurse blinked, the wildness cleared from her eyes, and she looked sheepishly at the floor. “Sorry,” she mumbled.

The crouching woman stood up then and looked at Mallory but spoke to the nurse, “Quite alright, Jennifer. What are we looking at here?”

“Oh yes, she has several partial-thickness burns, particularly affecting her left arm. Her jacket was missing a sleeve on that side, so the skin was likely more exposed—”

“I used my sleeve to cover my nose and mouth, trying to keep out the smoke.” Mallory interrupted.

“Clever,” the now-standing woman said then motioned for the nurse to continue.

Mallory was non-plussed to be dismissed and said through gritted teeth, “Yes, it was rather clever. Thank you.”

The nurse rolled her eyes and continued her report, “Besides the smoke inhalation, there are multiple contusions, and the right arm appears to be broken.”

The now-standing woman moved around to the other side of the examination table to look at Mallory’s arm. She pulled on a pair of gloves and felt along the forearm up to her shoulder. Mallory hissed as she felt bone scrape against bone again just from the woman’s touch. She noted that there was a small protrusion of skin in her forearm when her arm was in this position. The torturer in the white coat noticed it too and began to bend Mallory’s arm to a sling position. This time Mallory cried out from the pain, “Ahh, you’re as bad as the Sprite. Please tell me you’re not a doctor!”

The woman’s eyebrows lifted, but she seemed otherwise unphased by Mallory’s comment. “I am Doctor Navarro. We’re going to have to do surgery to set your arm, and properly debride and dress these burns.”

Mallory knew very well who the woman was. Doctor Navarro had treated her for at least six different injuries in her life, including a broken leg two years previous, but she never remembered any of her patients. Mallory looked at her sideways: “Can you do surgery without the Dikaió and the sprites helping?”

Doctor Navarro nodded. “Yes. Of course. Well, not me, but the surgeon can. It’s more difficult to be sure, but doctors are required to spend a semester working Dikaió free in medical school, just in case of emergencies. You have nothing to worry about.” The doctor turned to the nurse, “Take her to pre-op, and tell them to get started as soon as—” she paused and turned to Mallory and asked, “When did you eat last?”

Mallory’s stomach rolled. She had missed out on the party feast that night because of all the commotion, which meant the last time she had eaten was a quick bite in the late morning at the Farmer’s Market just before she started shopping. Alex, Caleb, and Mallory had stopped at their favorite Dikaió chef’s stall for chaffles: Chef Adam filled a waffle iron with shredded cheese, eggs, and roasted veggies. The waffle iron turned the cheese and egg into a salty waffle that was crispy on the outside and fluffy on the inside. He served it with a sweet and spicy sriracha sauce. It was delicious. It was divine. Her mouth watered. She was starving. “This morning. Why? What are you offering? Hospital food I suppose.”

The doctor looked back at the nurse, “Let’s get started as soon as possible. Fasting until post-op clears her, okay?”

“Fasting?!” Mallory shouted. “You’re a monster! I’m starving!”

The doctor smiled at her. “You can eat whatever you want when you’re out of surgery. Doctor’s honor.” She raised two fingers in a Dikaió scout’s salute. Mallory dropped her head backwards against the soft examination table and sighed in defeat.

“I’ll be back,” Jennifer the nurse said as she walked out the door with the doctor, and a few minutes later she was. She motioned toward a hospital bed in the hallway being pushed by one of the flirtatious orderlies they had encountered earlier.

Mallory walked over and climbed up on it. “Has anyone let my parents know I’m here?”

“Of course. Your mother authorized whatever treatment you need.”

“Are my parents coming?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t heard anything about that. Just that we’re supposed to get you to surgery right away.”

Mallory laid backward and watched the rectangular Dikaió lights in the ceiling tiles float by like clouds in a stiff wind as the bed was rolled down the hallways. The regularity of the flashing lights made her mind slow, and the events of the night began to fade into meaninglessness. She was incredibly sleepy. She woke briefly in the operating room to an anesthesiologist placing another face mask over her nose and mouth. The man noticed she was awake, and his eyes twinkled with a smile. “It’s okay. It’s just a little silly gas to make you laugh.” Mallory did not feel comforted in the least with another mask on her face. Some motion to her side caught her eye, and she saw a medic sprite carrying a tray of shiny, sharp scalpels, scissors, saws, and other nasty looking instruments toward her. The sprite set the tray on a table and picked up a scalpel. A bodiless voice from somewhere outside her field of vision yelled, “No, no, I’ll do it! Stop!” Mallory was sure that she was in mortal danger, but she could not seem to move her arms and legs. And for some reason, she found the whole situation quite silly. She laughed out loud and kept laughing as the room faded slowly into darkness.