Legacy Of Blood: Act One Chapter One

It was only the pungent odours of hospital disinfectant that told Alyssia Markova that she was in the same place as she had been at least one hundred times before, as the rest of her senses had been grasped tight by disbelief. Although only young, she had always had a firm grip on reality, a grip tempered by years of helping her adopted mother nurse the sick and dying. However, she was only young, and now surprised and scared by the whole situation. Alyssia would have cried if she had not been concentrating her want to help.

As she hurried after the striding footsteps of the crowd ahead of her, she could see her mother darting in and out of the travelling congregation, trying to help the rest of the medical staff in any way possible, but this was not the reason why she pursued the crowd with such haste. Alyssia would not have been following so fast in her vain attempt to keep up down the polished ward floor if she had not seen the patient as it had been brought in: it was a baby, no more than a few weeks old. She still felt a tinge of pain from her first sight of it.

As she ran, Alyssia took the care that only someone so familiar to the Canadian hospital could take not to trip, and minded her nursing skirt with merely passing acknowledgment. She certainly did not want a broken arm for her twelfth birthday party, but ran with all the conviction that one could on a surface such as that. As she passed each bed she forgot to smile at the invalids as she usually did, such was the intensity of her emotions.

Eventually the group stopped just short of the isolation ward. Alyssia did not have time to wonder why they had not gone to the maternity ward, but instead pushed her way through the now static onlookers, ignoring all complaints. She knew she had a job to do, however small.

Alyssia eventually found herself staring into the infants' streaming eyes. It was blanketed from head to toe in crimson liquid; it had not quite registered to Alyssia that it was blood that ran from the fragile body, but she had enough awareness about her to realise that it did not originate from the baby: there were no serious cuts upon it. Noticing things like that had become second nature to her subconscious.

Alyssia immediately ran to the disinfected cloths but returned to a frustratingly more densely packed group than when she had left. She stopped dead, a dangerous action when within turmoil. The whole situation began to focus itself in her mind.

"Alyssia!" Her mother called her name, spurring her fortunately into motion once more. Again she was forced to prise her way through to the baby, and straight away began to wipe the crimson from the cringing, screaming young head. She paid little heed to the lump now forming in her throat and continued with her job in the way that her mother had taught her, almost from the day she was born. She helped to dress the wound (a small abrasion on the child's forearm) by wiping it clean and covering it with a nearby medicinal plaster. It is at times like this that it is said that there is no time to dwell on the present: when one's life could be at stake. It was just as well that the hum of the surrounding people - there were about ten in all - made little sense to her: she had to concentrate.

Eventually Alyssia did hear voices that she recognised in her native tongue. A section of the crowding had broken off and were nurses, talking in French. They sounded very upset. She herself fought back tears.

"There is another downstairs, I think we're needed."

"Is that the man with the bullet wound?"

"Yes, he was carrying the baby until..."

They were quickly cut off by the commanding voice of a man standing perhaps a few feet away from Alyssia. "He is fine. You are needed here." This was too much for Alyssia to take in, and she would not understand it until later. All that registered to her was the assertiveness of the man's speech.

It was then that Alyssia's mother spoke to her again. "I'll finish off here," she said, as the last of the blood was gleaned from the child's head. "You go and rest. You've done very well." Alyssia would have protested, but a threesome of other nurses assumed her place at the baby's side the moment she stood back from it.

Alyssia left the group of medics and walked slowly towards a nearby unoccupied bed. She pulled herself up onto it, and presently the lump in her throat seemed to dissolve into tears that began to drip from her stinging eyes. The polished hospital floor reflected her clear blue eyes and platinum blond hair back up at her, and she allowed a tear to splash onto her sobering image below. The last ten minutes ran through her mind in slow motion clarity, bringing her duly back up to speed with her situation and introducing salty tears to her face. She saw the naked baby covered in blood once more. It had been very graphic at the time, but only now was it catching up to her. Sitting on the hospital bed, Alyssia now felt very useless. This was despite the fact she knew that her mother truly needed her help but would refuse it anyway in her attempt to protect her daughter from the startling nature and sheer intensity of the whole upsetting incident.

Her assistance to her mother was the reason why the hospital board allowed Alyssia to stay; although undoubtedly an asset to the hospital, her aging guardian needed help from time to time. Alyssia thought about going downstairs to help the nurses with the bullet-wounded person, but only imagined herself being ushered out of the operating room. Spending her childhood doing so, ever since her foster mother brought her to Quebec, never deterred her from aspiring to be a nurse.

"Don't worry. Everything will be okay." It was the man who had addressed the nurses before that spoke. Alyssia turned her eyes from the glistening hospital floor to face him. He was standing tall, smiling down on Alyssia with a Chinese or Japanese complexion. The man wore a long white coat signifying that he was a doctor, but Alyssia had never seen him among the medical staff before. She noticed that the palms of his hands were stained red.

"Comment s'appelle t'il?" The question left her tear-stained lips before she realised how impertinent it sounded. However, the Asian gentleman found it amusing.

"My name is Doctor Ling," he smiled. Although obviously foreign, he elocuted French perfectly. "Your name is Alyssia, yes?"

"Yes," she replied quietly. She wondered how he knew her, because she had certainly never met Dr Ling before. He was skinny, and had a middle-aged face. Alyssia would have guessed his age at about fifty, give or take five years.

"You are the foster daughter of one of the nurses here?" He enquired as pleasantly as Alyssia expected he could with his rasping voice. He lowered himself to where she sat. Alyssia said that she was, and pointed out her mother from where they sat on the bed. "I suppose that she was a friend of your mothers?"

"Yes;" Alyssia began, "my real mother died when I was very little." It surprised Alyssia that she had stopped crying, and she wiped the drying tears from her face. She did not feel any less upset.

"Yet you carry on. You have what they call a survival instinct, Alyssia. It will be your task to name the child; I have made sure of it."

"Is his mamon dead too?" Alyssia asked after a brief pause brought about by the baby's scream, immediately making the link between the child and herself.

"Yes, or at least she will be soon. The man downstairs tried to take the baby from us, but he won't last the night." Alyssia was not sure whether she liked Dr Ling: he did not talk about life and death like any doctor she had met before.

"But you'll try to save him?"

"It is... not my place. The La-li-lu-le-lo have forbidden it." Alyssia did not understand this sentence, and she did not think that Dr Ling expected her to. She did understand this though: this man was a doctor, and yet he was doing nothing to help the man downstairs, indeed he did not seem to want to. She wished that he would go away, and her tears began to swell up again.

As though sensing her distress, Dr Ling got up to leave. "One more thing, Alyssia..." Ling turned to her again, and said before leaving, "The baby's second name is Gurlukovich. You can tell him that when he is older if you like, but always accredit his salvation to the Patriots."