“We need to take him to a hospital.”
“Which one?” Jillian made it sound like there might be several hospitals that specialized in boys with wings.
Louise decided to focus on “boy” instead of “wings.” “Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital.”
Nikola took that as a plan, and the car roared as it leapt out of the parking space.
38: Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital
The automatic door opened for them as they helped Crow Boy into the emergency room. He barely seemed aware of what was happening, and it took all their strength to get him out of the low-slung car, upright and moving. There was a woman at the admittance desk intently working at a computer while fielding phone calls. She chewed gum while listening to the other side of the conversation, shaking her head and saying “No. No. No” as she stabbed computer keys. She glanced at them, focused back on her computer screen, and then, with confusion spreading across her face, looked back up. She sat there, jaw dropped, piece of gum showing, as they limped up to her desk. Her name tag read “Martha.”
The woman’s stunned expression gave Louise courage to swallow down her fear and say in Elvish, “Please, we need help. His leg is broken.”
The woman blinked rapidly. “Um, please hold.” She stabbed a button on her phone and leaned back to call, “Gerri! Gerri!”
An older woman appeared, summoned by the shouting. “Oh, that’s new.”
Louise used Elvish to plead for help and then made a show of pointing at Crow Boy’s obviously broken leg.
“They’re elves!” Martha claimed.
Gerri frowned at Crow’s black wings and then at the bug antennae that the twins were wearing. As they hoped, the wings won out for close inspection, which was good because the antennae were just wires attached to bobby pins.
“He’s not an elf.” Gerri didn’t bother to qualify the twins.
“She’s speaking Elvish.” Martha pointed at Louise.
“You understand what she’s saying?”
“I only recognize the one line from The Queen’s Puddin’ Cake. The Lemon-Lime JEL–Lo video. She’s asking for help. I’m not sure what the rest is. His leg looks broken.”
“Do you speak English?” Gerri spoke slowly and loudly. After a moment, she tried Spanish, which was easier to ignore. “Shit. Okay, we need a patient advocate. Also try to find some kind of translator; we’re going to need one.”
Louise half-expected to be told to wait in the waiting room but they were all shepherded into the examination area. It was only when she glanced at Jillian that she realized why: the twins were covered in bruises, soot, dirt, and blood. Celine might have broken Louise’s nose when she slapped her; certainly it had bled for a long time afterwards.
The staff’s focus was on Crow Boy once they determined that the girls weren’t showing any signs of shock. They hooked him up to an IV and monitors. A security guard appeared and swept them with a metal detector and collected the Swiss army knife, to Louise’s dismay.
After several intense minutes, they were left alone as various trauma nurses conferred on the other side of the curtain. They spoke in a fast mix of medical terms and possible legal ramifications. In addition to being children without parental permission for medical treatment, the nurses were debating the wording of the treaty with the elves.
“But we really don’t know if they’re elves or not,” one nurse complained.
Another one answered with, “We have to assume that their baseline might not be normal to humans and work from there.”
In the examining area’s bright light, Louise could also see Crow Boy clearly for the first time. He eyed their surroundings with confusion. He hadn’t been fully conscious throughout the whole discussion of where to go and the drive to the hospital. The IV was working and he was growing aware of where they were. Despite the fact that he was much taller than them, he looked only three or four years older. The idea that he was a ninth-grader triggered a memory, and she realized why he looked so familiar.
“What?” Jillian asked in Elvish. “You just got a ‘Oh my God’ look on your face.”
“We’ve met Crow Boy before,” Louise whispered. “The day after the explosion, he was at the. .” Elvish didn’t have a word for “museum” and she didn’t want to use any English around the hospital staff. “He was at the gift shop with the girls who were going to buy that snow ball.”
“Snow ball?” Jillian clearly wasn’t following.
“The snow thing.” Louise mimed shaking the snow globe. There might have been a word for “globe” in Elvish, but she didn’t know it. “Tianlong Hao.”
“Oh! Yeah! He was there with all the kids.”
They turned to look at him.
“But he didn’t have wings then,” Jillian pointed out.
No, he hadn’t.
“I–I-I remember you now.” Crow Boy spoke in fluent Elvish. He frowned at the twins. “You were with a beautiful black woman and you had your dog with you. I couldn’t figure out how you got the robot past security.”
They both squeaked with surprise.
“But where were your wings?” Jillian asked.
“I can dismiss them — if there’s magic. On Earth, we need to pass as human.”
“Were all those other kids tengu, too?”
“Yes, I was escorting them to Pittsburgh. We’ve been sneaking our people to Elfhome where they could live free of the oni. We started within days of the first Startup, before even the oni realized the opportunity that Pittsburgh gave them. Years and years, carefully moving our entire race across three worlds. And then everything came crumbling down this spring. Shiroikage’s spy ferreted out where the yamabushi had hidden the Chosen line.”
Shiroikage was what Crow Boy called Yves. By “spy” did he mean Tristan? The half-elf had said he’d been bird-watching in California before coming to New York. “Clever crows,” Tristan had complained. Had Tristan really been searching for tengu? “In Pasadena?”
“Yes. We thought we could hide the Chosen line among the masses in Los Angeles. I was guarding Keiko and Mickey as they attended school. I managed to get them to safety, but their parents. .” He took a deep breath, as if he were fighting off tears. “You should go. Leave me.”
That was what Tristan was doing? Or did he not know what happened after he found the tengu? He had asked Celine if Yves had captured Shoji; he’d left before the fighting started. Louise wanted to believe that Ming kept the slaughter from the half-elf. That Tristan was innocent by way of ignorance.
The curtain rustled back to admit a tall man in blue scrubs, ending all conversation. According to the ID badge clipped to his shirt pocket, he was Dr. Stefan Harmeling. He had a black Afro cropped short into stubs, dark brown skin, and tattoos tracing up his arms. “Jesús santisimo,” he whispered. He cautiously canted to the side so he could eye Crow Boy’s back. “Wings. Now I’ve seen everything.”
The children jumped slightly when the curtain rustled open again. It was only a nurse joining the doctor in the area.
“It’s okay. No one is going to harm you.” Doctor Harmeling smiled reassuringly and cautiously closed the distance between him and Crow Boy. “Let’s take a look at you and see how badly you’re hurt.”
Crow Boy scowled at him and then focused back on the twins. “Do you have someplace safe to go? You should leave now. Protect yourself.”
Jillian gave Peter Pan’s fearless laugh. “We, at least, have clothes on! You’re going to be naked when they’re done with you.”
And he’d need them to dismiss his wings, but when the hospital staff wasn’t paying close attention.