Under other circumstances, I might have hesitated before accepting his help – after all, I’d only spoken to him on the phone before today, and I didn’t really know much about him. Since my inner radar wasn’t sending me any warning signals, I decided to take a chance and trust him. Besides, if it came down to needing to carry Emerald, I wasn’t going to say no to another set of muscles.
I’d imagined that Ronald’s van would be something you’d find on an old Grateful Dead album cover, but it was surprisingly nice and very clean. He opened the sliding door on the side and Midnight and I climbed in, holding Emerald, who was fading fast. Her head drooped as if all the muscles and bones had been removed from her neck, causing her chin to bounce against her chest. She made tiny whimpering sounds that seemed to come from deep inside and every few seconds her eyelids fluttered as if she were in REM sleep.
The hospital was only a few blocks away, but we managed to catch every red light and construction detour on the trip. My anxiety rose with each delay.
Ronald’s eyes peered at us in the rearview mirror. ‘Who do you think did that to her, Midnight?’
‘How would I know?’ Midnight snarled, her voice loaded with hostility. I raised my eyebrows at her and she answered, ‘Ronald doesn’t like Bryce and his friends either.’
My eyes shifted back and forth between them. ‘Is somebody implying that Bryce had something to do with this attack on Emerald?’ The discussion already had me thinking about the call I’d make to the police. As a licensed therapist, I had a legal requirement to report harm.
‘Nobody knows who hurt Emerald. Ronald’s just being a jerk,’ Midnight said. ‘He’s mad because Bryce chose me instead of him.’
‘I’m not the one being a jerk,’ Ronald snapped.
Wow. The negative energy is as thick as fog in here. Apparently there are more dramas in the vampire-wannabe game than I know about.
We finally arrived at the emergency room entrance and Ronald pulled the van into the ‘no parking’ zone, came around to let us out and took my spot holding Emerald, who had slipped deeper into unconsciousness during the ride over. ‘Dr Knight, you go on ahead and deal with the red tape.’
Looking as official as I could manage, I hurried to the admissions desk and enlisted the aid of a nurse. A gurney was wheeled over for Emerald and she was taken away.
Since Midnight was the only one of us who had any information about Emerald, she filled out the hospital paperwork while Ronald went back outside to move his van before it was towed. I stepped outside for a moment to use my cell phone to cancel my last client of the day.
After she answered the nurse’s questions, Midnight and I sat in the hard orange chairs in the noisy waiting area. The emergency room was filled with people in various states of crisis, and more trauma victims arrived every moment. There was that ever-present hospital smelclass="underline" a combination of antiseptic, body fluids and fear. I couldn’t imagine working in a chaotic environment such as this, where the adrenalin was constantly pumping. I could almost see the tension in the air.
It was times like these when my ‘sensitivity’ really became a problem and I experienced sensory overload as strong emotions and physical discomforts bombarded me from all sides. I began utilising all the mental tricks I’d learned to help me distract myself from the unwanted sensations and information. I closed my eyes tight and imagined myself surrounded by a circle of white light. That visualization usually did the trick, but this time it barely soothed the chaos. I still felt anxious.
I’d always been overly aware of people’s feelings and emotions, but it was usually through clairsentience – just my normal idiosyncrasy. Somehow I simply knew what was going on inside their psyches. It came in very handy in therapy sessions, where I could do a little skilful intuiting and skip ahead a few pages.
I didn’t know why exactly, but I had the notion that my discomfort had something to do with the weird experience with Devereux the other night. Maybe the suggestion he’d given me about my third eye – as if there was any such thing – had caused me to revisit yet another unwanted ability from my childhood. I had the fleeting thought that it would be helpful to speak with Devereux about this new development, that maybe he’d have some advice. Then the part of me that was already dangling outside her comfort zone slammed the door on that idea. She wasn’t fooled. She knew I only wanted to see him again. In fact, I couldn’t stop thinking about him.
Somebody help me. I’m possessed by a vampire wannabe.
I turned to Midnight. ‘Would you care to fill me in on what you and Ronald were talking about?’
She slumped down in her chair and crossed her arms over her chest. ‘I’m sorry I got mad. I’m really stressed out. I’m just so tired of everyone telling me that Bryce isn’t good for me or that he’s going to hurt me. They don’t know him like I do. He would never hurt Emerald – he knows she’s my friend. Besides, I think more than one vampire bit her.’
And we’re back to the vampire fantasy. I really hope she tires of it quickly. I made a mental note to ask her more about that later.
She relaxed her arms, sat up abruptly, and turned towards me. ‘Then there was the discussion with Dev. About you. He told me he came to see you, and he went on and on about how pretty you are, and how your eyes are so blue that they reminded him of the daytime sky he hasn’t seen in more than eight hundred years, and your dark hair this and your long legs that, blah, blah, blah. I was so pissed off that I went and spent the night with Bryce just because I needed someone to want me like Dev wants you.’
I opened my mouth to speak, but then closed it because I didn’t know what to say. It was normal for clients to transfer their feelings about their parents or some other significant childhood person onto me, but I’d never found myself in the middle of a love triangle before. Clearly this wasn’t the time or place to discuss those issues, especially with a teenage client. Apparently Devereux was clueless about the depth of Midnight’s feelings for him. Or maybe he was simply a heartless bastard who didn’t care. In the midst of my annoyance at him for his insensitivity, there was still a part of me that’d been pleased to hear Devereux thought I was pretty.
I was saved from having to figure out anything to say about it by the approach of a handsome, official-looking man dressed in scrubs with a stethoscope around his neck. A doctor, I assumed. He had shoulder-length golden hair and dark-brown eyes framed by wire-rimmed glasses, which gave him a professorial, academic look. By this time Ronald had returned and the doctor addressed the three of us.
‘Are you the ones who brought in the young woman with the neck wounds?’
We nodded.
‘Are you family?’
We shook our heads.
Midnight explained that she’d left a message for Emerald’s parents, telling them their daughter was in the hospital, but she didn’t expect them to show up because they’d given up on Emerald a long time ago.
‘Doctor—?’ I said, searching for a nametag.
‘Dr Mitchell. Lee. And you are?’
‘Dr Knight. Kismet. I’m a psychologist. Can you tell us anything about what’s wrong with Emerald? Can we see her?’
‘We’ve stabilised her, but she’s lost a lot of blood and she’s receiving a transfusion now. This is an unusual case. Emerald should be covered with blood to account for the excessive blood loss, but she isn’t. Furthermore, it appears that she has older puncture wounds on her neck and chest in addition to those we’re treating today. We’re running tests on the wounds to see what kind of animal caused them. Do you have any information about where she was when the attack occurred? Did you see anything?’
I glanced over at Midnight, encouraging her to answer.
She shook her head. ‘I thought Emerald was staying home last night and I didn’t get back ’til early this morning, so I don’t know what happened. I’m so sorry that I wasn’t there for her,’ she whimpered, tears running down her cheeks.