"We want a shot at your boss, but you're standing in the way," Leiko said with an edge to her voice. She raised the knife up and Mai screamed as the blade came down and entered her shoulder with a tearing sound of her clothing. The twittering of the birdsong from overhead stopped as flapping wings stirred and the birds took flight. Blood splattered as the metallic smell of Mai's blood reached her nostrils.
Leiko reached out and slapped Mai hard across the face. "Shut up," her face tightened and her facial features twisted into a snarl and her lips curled back, as she stabbed Mai repeatedly. .
Mai squirmed as much as possible trying to wiggle either out from under Leiko, who straddled her hips or out of the grasp of the two girls holding her down. Running footsteps pounded on the nearby jogging path as she heard someone talking. In desperation, she screamed a second time.
Mai heard the voices of the joggers as they came nearer. The girls released their grip and ran. Mai managed to get to her feet and somehow made her way towards the voices of the joggers as her blood seeped from the wounds on her body. "Help," she whispered and collapsed as one of the pair caught her.
The two men looked at each other helpless.
Jessica drove towards Keiko's house and slammed on her brakes as the tires barked and breaks shrieked to avoid hitting three girls who came out of nowhere. She leaned out to yell at them, but some people caught her attention. A moment of weakness hit her as a hard to explain feeling hit her.
Her grandfather came to mind as she remembered one thing he told her often. "If something strange happens do not ignore it." Pulling her car over, she climbed out and ambled over to the growing crowd.
Seeing the subject of the attention on the ground, "Mai…" she screamed as she raced to the girls' side.
Mai opened her eyes and her body flared with spasms of pain. Jessica knelt down next to her. One of the joggers looked at the newcomer. "We've called for an ambulance. We didn't know what else to do."
"Thank you," Jessica nodded. The Japanese Native American woman drew on her grandfather's knowledge of spiritual healing. She began chanting a prayer for healing that her grandfather had taught her when she was a little girl. "Great Spirit, I come to you as one of your many children. I am small and weak and I humbly ask you to lend me your strength to help your child who is so grievously wounded."
The onlookers had no idea what the words the woman was saying but they oohed and awed as her hands began to glow bathed in bright light. She placed a hand on Mai's head and one on her chest along the breastbone. The brightness increased as Mai felt encased in the warmth that felt peaceful and the spasms racking her body eased.
The blood oozing from the many knife wounds slowed and then stopped. It was quite miraculous to the onlookers.
Jessica removed her hands and leaned back sweat beading her brow. "I've stopped the bleeding, but if I continue, I'll be too weak to help anyone else."
Mai nodded in understanding. She motioned for Jessica to come near, she whispered telling Jessica, who her attackers were, and she passed out.
A siren reached Jessica's ear and a car stopped pulling off to the side of the road behind Jessica's car. A police officer climbed out of the car and strode over to the crowd quickly examining the scene with his eyes. "I'm Officer Watanabe. Does anyone know the victim?" He motioned to the girl lying on the ground.
"I do, she's a friend."
"I need your name and her name."
"Her name is Mai Taniyama, and I'm Jessica Manyhorses."
"Do you know what happened?"
"No sir, I don't other than Mai told me the names of the people who did this before she passed out." Jessica sighed, seems like cops are the same all over. "Look, sir, I don't mean to be rude but the ambulance is coming and I refuse to allow Mai to go by herself."
He nodded and began taking witness statements from the crowd. He moved over to his car, lifted the microphone, and called for a Crime Scene unit to try to preserve any evidence. He pulled out his crime scene tape and began to mark off the area to keep anyone else from trampling the evidence.
The ambulance pulled up and the attendants jumped out pulling their stretcher. They loaded Mai into the ambulance. Jessica stared them in the eye and told them to take her to the Matsuzaki's hospital. Silently she dared them not to listen to her.
"Ma'am, that's a private hospital." One of the attendants tried to stand up to her.
"I know, now stop wasting time, and just take her there. If you know what's good for you, that is because her boyfriend will personally make your lives a living hell if you don't."
"Don't blame us if they tell us to take her to a public hospital."
Jessica hoped into her car and followed the ambulance. Pulling out her cell phone, she called the SPR office. She hated making this call, and tried to swallow past a lump that stuck in her throat, not only was she worried about her friend but Naru might do to her what she told the attendant. She heard Naru's voice answer. "Shibuya Psychic Research, Shibuya speaking."
"Kazuya, this is Jessica. I can't explain what happened but Mai was attacked and she's being taken to the Matsuzaki hospital."
Jessica heard the anger in his voice and she swore her phone became cold to the touch. "I'm on my way."
Naru replaced the receiver back into its cradle and stood up. "Lin, we need to go, Mai's been attacked." His eyes flashed in anger. To say he was livid was putting it mildly, he was furious. He closed his eyes as a thought crossed his mind that he didn't want to think about, how can I go on if I lose you. How will I be able to continue living if you leave me like Gene?
Lin flew out of his office with a black overcoat on over his suit. Wordlessly he nodded in Naru's direction, the pair quickly left the room, and they climbed into the SPR van. Lin drove like a bat out of hell.
As Lin and Naru entered the hospital's emergency entrance, their nostrils were assaulted by the sterile and antiseptic smell. A janitor mopped the floor nearby as his mop made a splashing noise when then man placed it in the bucket. He put a slippery when wet sign out hoping that visitors would notice.
They observed Jessica sitting slumped in a chair. Her long raven black hair hung down in her face.
"Jessica," Naru's voice brought her head up to look bleary-eyed at the teen.
"Hey, glad to see you made it," exhaustion was kicking in and making it hard to keep a coherent thought in her head.
He eyed her harshly, "Jessica, what happened." His cerulean blue eyes turned frosty as he towered over the woman.
"I wish I knew," Jessica threw her hands up as a tear slipped out of her eye and ran down her cheek. "I was on my way to Keiko's and there's a park near her house. These three girls came running out of nowhere and I had to slam on my breaks to keep from hitting them. Movement caught my attention over by the jogging path so I pulled my car over and went to go see. There was Mai covered in blood." She swallowed hard as another tear raced after the first. "She'd been repeatedly stabbed." She closed her eyes as she leaned back in the chair trying to keep the images at bay and trying to keep from collapsing from using her spiritual healing on the girl in question. "They took her up to surgery not long after we arrived. I've been waiting for any news."
Doctor Ayako Matsuzaki appeared on the scene as if a magician had pulled her like a rabbit out of a hat. "I figured when all I got was the answering machine at your office I'd find you and Lin here Naru. Mai's in surgery to repair the worst of her injuries. She was stabbed at least twenty times, but two things puzzle me. First of all with as many stab wounds you'd think she would have taken some damage to internal organs, but there wasn't any." She scratched the back of her head. "Second it's the darnedest thing, Naru, when she arrived all her wounds had stopped bleeding."
Jessica sat slumped by Lin, who glanced at the woman. Something about the way she held herself reminded him of something. She looked up weakly at the teen and the doctor in the white lab coat. "That would be because of me."
"What are you talking about?" Ayako asked.
"My paternal grandfather is a medicine man or some people would call him a shaman.," Jessica replied. "He taught me some of his ways of healing before my family moved here to Japan. I was able to stop the bleeding, but with so many wounds they took a lot out of me."
With a critical eye, Ayako gave the other woman a quick once over and frowned. "You're practically dead on your feet."
Spotting an orderly, she motioned the guy over. "I need a wheelchair over here, and I want her taken to…" Ayako glanced around to see what beds were open. "Take her to 3B. I'll be there shortly."
Ayako placed a comforting hand on Naru, who stiffened at the older woman's touch. "I'll let you know when Mai's in recovery or if there's any other news to report. Until then," she grabbed a passing nurse and whispered something into the woman's ear. "Until then I'll be checking out that young lady with you." She removed her hand and Naru visibly relaxed.
He nodded, and then muttered, "Thank you," to the older woman."
"By the way, who is she?"
"She's a friend of Mai's."
Ayako pointed out the nurse. "She'll take you to my office. I'll join you after checking her over and check on Mai."
He bowed his head. He and Lin followed the nurse.
She entered the examination room and found Jessica was lying on the bed. "Now let me check you out." Her eyes narrowed noticing the absence of a chart.
She stuck her red head out and pointed at a nurse who was standing around doing nothing. Saying Ayako was pissed was an understatement. She made eye contact with the nurse, "Get a chart and get your fanny in here on the double." Now I know what Naru goes through on a case-by-case basis with us. I'll have to make it up to him somehow.
The nurse entered the exam room finding a redheaded doctor glaring at her. "You've been here long enough to know the rules of the ER. If I have to remind you again …" she glanced at the nametag, "Nurse Nakamura I will be forced to let you go."
"Yes Ma'am," she swallowed hard.
Ayako turned to Jessica and bowed. "I'm sorry you had to witness that, Miss…," she laughed nervously. "I don't even know your name."
"Jessica, Jessica Manyhorses."
"Okay," she glanced at the nurse who just stood there stupefied staring at the young woman. Her eyes flashed in anger. "Get your head out of your ass and start writing this stuff down on that chart right this minute."
Nakamura nodded and began writing the information as Ayako rapid fired called out the vitals of the woman on the bed.
"I'm admitting you. In your condition, you could collapse, but I'll put you in Mai's room. I have a feeling Naru wants to speak to you about your talents."
"Is that a good thing or a bad thing?"
Ayako chuckled as she glanced at the chart that the nurse had made. "That's a good thing." Ayako made a notation on the chart. She gave the young nurse a hard stare. "Make sure she's transferred to that room, got it?"
"Yes, Ma'am."
Ayako sighed. If Takigawa were here, he'd be all over the ma'am business. "Stop calling me ma'am, it makes me feel old."