5.

It was roughly 4 AM when Kennedy finally shoved her way into her apartment. She’d had nothing but complications through-out her shift, most related to establishing the team for her two, new patients. When she finally fell into bed an hour later, the sun was just beginning to rise behind her blacked out windows. Working the night shift had forced more than a few, anti-day behaviors on her, and covering her windows with blankets was hardly the most offensive of them.

She slept roughly two hours before her cell-phone vibrated beside her bed. It buzzed loud enough to echo through the wood. She slapped a hand for it, put it to her face, “What?”

A voice sounded, “Kennedy?”

She hated that voice. Everything about it. Especially now. He’d been gone a month with his new slut. Whatever he needed could wait.

“Kevin, I worked all night. Call me when you’re dying. Maybe then we’ll talk.”

“Kennedy don’t!” he pled.

“I’m hanging up now,” she griped.

“I just wanna’ get my–”

The phone cut out. She checked her watch, realized she was still dressed for work, then moaned.

He wanted his stuff back. The problem was, it was probably somewhere in Indiana by now, shoved into a landfill by garbage trucks and bulldozers. The same place he belonged. She managed to sleep a few more hours, and as usual, dreamed of him. Or rather, dreamed about him.

They’d been together for years, a decade almost. They’d finally decided to tie the knot one night, high on something Jamaican and more naked than not. She’d been entangled in sheets, coursing with fresh ecstasy when booze or grass made him finally pop the question. It was six months before they set the date. Another year after that and here they were.

Like before, she dreamed about saying no. Somehow seeing the future, she rejected the drunk, stoned proposal. The reality was, she’d said yes, then climbed atop him to pump their brains out. At least that part was good, anyhow. The rest was a nightmare– an even worse nightmare than the near-nightly dreams about being unneeded at work, only to come home and find him pumping someone else’s brains out on the kitchen counter. He was just lucky she didn’t own a gun. For that matter, so was the slut.

She tossed and turned while various incarnations of the “no” path of life melded with everything else the human brain could concoct. When she awoke, she’d only remembered a feeling of dread. The rest would settle with the hallucination-inducing chemicals common to sleep, if that’s what she could call it, anyway. She never felt rested anymore.

The same morning routine that followed Kevin’s departure from her life began her day; a quick shower, a few tears, coffee at the table, and an open laptop to surf the latest waves sweeping social media.

The first hints that something big had happened came from forums she frequented. The posts were days old by now, but that had only given the armchair detectives more time to work. Such was the nature of the internet that anyone with even a scrap of confidence and an ISP thought themselves an expert. Most of the time, this showed up in places where arguments were most easily driven by opinion– who was the latest, most popular celebrity, who’d win the next Stanley Cup, or whether well-done steak was truly an affront to the Gods. They were innocuous, harmless things.

This was different though. It was always easy to tell the speculation from the evidence-bearing news. When it was real, a site’s admins often got involved, usually pinning the post to the site’s front page for all to see. In some cases, even live RSS feeds would be linked to act as aggregates for all information on a given topic. Mostly those were reserved for dire situations still unfolding as posted. Everything from natural disasters to terrorist attacks were covered, and now it was obvious something had recently occurred.

The pinned post and dead RSS feed at the top of one of her frequent favorites was posted as someone posing a question: “Just heard an explosion outside work. Neo-C piers. Nothing obvious yet. Anyone?” The thread had been up forty hours. She must have missed it during her last, morning net-scour, but it was one of the big ones now. Hundreds of thousands of comments, millions of views; the sort of thing referred to as viral.

To scroll through the comments, she’d have had to miss the giant blotter comprising the first, full-page of the post. Bullet points with random times from the last two days broke up the otherwise mile-long wall of text. They were cold, hard facts, corroborated by a dozens of blue, external links.

She skimmed them, then read them over in depth. Together, a picture formed that became clearer when combined with her last shift: Something had happened on a pier, somewhere in new-Chinatown. The place had been established as a shipping port, then gravitated to for its open, bazaar-like qualities. Sometime in the evening hours two nights prior, an minor tremor registered on seismographs. The lone incident was inexplicably isolated to a small part of northern Chicago, and the armchair detectives had seized it as an opportunity to jump into action. Various private and public satellite and instrumentation sites confirmed some type of explosion with thermal, seismic, and eyewitness data.

The end picture was obvious; something had exploded underwater at the “Happy Fish” imports pier. Eyewitness reports had been suppressed on-scene by police and emergency crews, but a few had made it out. It was enough to tell of rumors of a SWAT raid. Men and women in riot gear had breached a facility, covered by a sharpshooter inside a police perimeter on the water, but nothing else tangible had been concluded.

Kennedy didn’t need years of med-school training to add two and two. All she needed was her two patients and the rumors. Only she could confirm what most suspected. While no-one on the net knew for sure what had happened, Kennedy did. She thought to post, then remembered she’d been bound by the NSA and FBI’s suits to keep her mouth shut. More importantly, HIPAA ensured if she opened her mouth she’d lose her license as well as end up in jail– probably for high-treason.

There was a certain, ominous tone to that thought. She liked it even less than she admitted. Whether from intuition or pure logic, she sensed things had only begun to go sideways.

6.

Melissa Fannon, formerly Melissa Torres, was Juan Torres’ only sibling. His elderly sister by only a pair of years, she’d weathered time better than he’d managed to. She was a bombshell of Hispanic descent with something vaguely Italian mixed in. She held herself to the highest standard of beauty, spending upwards of three hours each day carefully primping, preening, and making-up her face. To any onlookers, she was Miss Universe without the plastic and a heavier head.

Which is why, when she entered to find her brother covered in bandages, her cries shattered the hearts of all those around. A feeling akin to a porcelain doll shattering on a floor swept through the ICU. There and then, the four guard-officers exchanged looks, fidgeted from the shrill cries emitting from Torres’ room.

Kennedy was already inside, standing at the bed, and watching the shattered doll’s make-up run. She swallowed acid to place a lone hand on Melissa’s shoulder as she wept. To the woman’s credit, her tears didn’t last long, but it felt like an eternity to Kennedy. She was frozen in place, too human to leave, too professional to cry. It wasn’t the worst thing she’d ever seen, but it ranked, and learning to compartmentalize work and emotions was the only thing that kept her in one piece.

Emotions were a good thing for a nurse dealing with the elderly, children, or clinical-work. In an ICU, ER, or Burn unit, emotions were a good way of killing someone. Most medical work was exact, a science of numbers requiring as much logic as clear-headedness. Emotion was its antithesis. A misplaced thought might incur a slight over-dose of a medication that turned lethal when combined with others. Anything more was a certain mistake to come. Being angry and misreading a chart could kill as easily as putting a gun to someone’s head. Kennedy didn’t like that fact, but she held herself all the more rigidly to its truth.

She retained her composure long enough to let Melissa ease out of her own grief, then pointed her toward a washroom. When she was certain the woman had gone, she exhaled a heavy sigh and choked down her emotions to keep focused. She gave herself a full minute to straighten out, then reset her face into its usual passiveness.

She and Kevin had fought about that for years; being been able to turn her emotions off and on meant she often did it without realizing it. Being in her line of work didn’t help. Perhaps it was the frequency with which she was required to do so that it so autonomous at times. Whatever the cause, he’d often insulted her as being “Robotic” and “Cold.” The truth was, when they fought, she flipped the mental switch and compartmentalized. Most times, she did become cold, logical, and right.

Kevin hated that, had never been able to accept being wrong, and was the type of person confirmation bias had been discovered from. He was always trying to find or twist facts to his point, able to turn a perfectly normal debate into a colossal argument when proven wrong. He was thick-headed, stupid to a fault, and narrow-minded. What else could he be if he expected to pound some whore in her kitchen without her finding out?

Kennedy hated him for that. She hated him for a lot of things. Most of all, she hated that he continued to creep into every facet of her mind.

She went about checking vitals as she considered it. The motions were autonomous, robotic in a way. That was the point; learn your job well, and be able to do it in your sleep. Problem was, it gave her time to think. Time to think meant revealing the roots of their relationship burrowed through-out her life as if some disgusting parasite. Its countless arms and small feelers extended and inlaid over the folds of her brain and life, attached via hooks that held on past death. She’d managed to cut away the beast itself by throwing Kevin out on his ass, but every now and then, disgorged feelers appeared, hidden in places she wasn’t even aware had existed.

I’ll still be finding ’em when he’s dead. Bastard.

The thought gave way to a check of the time as she thumbed Torres’ vitals into a charting tablet. The soft steps of heels clicked a syncopated rhythm over her thumbs as they made their way into the room. Kennedy was momentarily fascinated by Melissa’s recovery. She’d managed to reverse from nuclear fallout to bombshell with astounding quickness. Aesthetically, she looked better now than before.

Melissa sat in a chair beside the bed, held Juan’s hand in hers, “I’m sorry for my outburst.”

Kennedy feigned sympathy, an unfortunate necessity of having to compartmentalize, “I understand. Has the doctor spoken to you?”

She gave a small nod, “I know he’s being kept in a coma. You’re worried about some sort of shock?”

Kennedy was professional again, “Injuries of this nature require we keep the nervous system stable and unresponsive to the pain. At this stage, it would send him into shock and his vitals would go hay-wire. It’s safer this way.”

Melissa gave another small nod, eyes on her brother’s hand, “The doctor said as much. How long will he have to be like this?”

Kennedy’s mouth pulled into a half-grimace, “I honestly can’t say. We can keep a coma going as long as necessary. In his case, a few weeks, maybe longer. He’ll require skin grafts and other surgeries before he can be resuscitated.”

Melissa kissed Juan’s hand, then set it on the bed. She patted it, “I’ve been told to act as his legal proxy while he’s… like this. Will that be a problem?”

Kennedy considered it, “He has no spouse or other family?” Melissa shook her head. “Then no. I’ll be leading the team that sees to his needs, so if you need anything, it’s my job to help.”

She seemed to consider the question. There was a resigned look away that most would have taken for their signal to leave. Kennedy knew better. It was usually what family or patients did immediately before asking or relaying something vital.

Melissa suddenly met her eyes again, “Do you know– they won’t tell me– what happened?”

Kennedy swallowed hard. The words “National Security” came to mind. What did that mean in this instance? Melissa wouldn’t wait for her to figure it out. The longer she stayed silent, the more guilty she looked. She cleared her throat, did her best to evade saying anything specific, “The term is, “injured in the line of duty.” I can’t say more than that. I would like to, for your sake, but until I’m certain… I can’t risk my job. I’m sorry.”

Melissa frowned, “In the line of duty.” That’s more than I knew before. Thank you.”

Kennedy promised to return and offer any information Melissa might need then. She left the room, shut the door, then nearly doubled over with guilt. A stuttered breath made its way through her lips as she choked back tears.