XLV
WILL
Nico, you're a former death angel that's how we've met-
No, that seemed so blunt, Nico will probably consider calling people holding straight- jackets and send me off to the nearest mental institution. Will tapped the erase button on the screen of his phone.
He sat on the chair in the on-call room. A soft hue ray of sunlight passed through the window behind Will. He was biting his thumb and he was tapping his foot absentmindedly on the floor while lost in his thoughts. The desk was littered with several thick medical textbooks, his white coat was thrown haphazardly across, a coffee cup was in the corner, and his laptop was opened and the screen was paused to a video showing an actual human heart being stitched.
Will was watching a video about mitral valve replacement when Nico's texts had distracted him. Will was starting to freak out about that. Nico was bombarding him (again) with questions about them, more specifically about their past. Will couldn't answer his questions without entering the subject of Nico's former death angel life. He had successfully managed to avoid that topic before. Because until now, he still had no idea how to explain everything to Nico and not to sound like . . . insane.
If I could just present some sort of evidence. Will thought bitterly. After Will had told his friends about the existence of death angels, bizarre things started to happen. It happened first when Lou Ellen had accidentally deleted the only copy of Will and Nico's picture together holding hands on the 3rd Avenue. Then the picture frame of them together in Will's apartment had broken and the picture in it had accidentally gotten soaked on the wet surface of the counter in the kitchen. Thus, the picture had gotten destroyed.
And when Will had been absentmindedly scrolling through his camera roll, he had noticed that all of the pictures of Nico and them together had disappeared. He could swear that no one had touched his phone to simply delete it.
Will had concluded that it wasn't a mere coincidence when the last bizarre thing and the most painful one had happened. Nico's letter for Will had disappeared too. When Will had checked the letter, he had stared at a blank white sheet of paper.
As if erasing the memories wasn't enough, someone out there in the universe was deliberately trying to erase everything Nico and Will had before. Will had gotten mad about this, but it was more frustrating when he had no idea where his anger should be directed at. In addition to that frustration, the blond had felt like there was really someone out there who was strongly against him and Nico to be together. Someone was preventing him from telling Nico everything.
Whomever that was, Will was not going to let Nico out of his sight ever again. He was going to fight back even if the whole universe conspired against them. He was not going to give up anymore when they had been through a lot all this time.
Will started to type again.
The truth is, our love is forbidden-
Will briefly closed his eyes. They weren't in some sort of Romeo and Juliet era. He erased it.
Actually, Nico, you're an angel without wings-
Will rolled his eyes, couldn't he be more dramatic? Although there was some truth in it. Will needed to be at least subtle and sensible about it.
Nico, please listen to me and please believe what will I tell you, your former job was to pick souls-
Yeah, as if picking souls as a former job was subtle and sensible enough. Will started to bang his forehead on the table. He was ready to throw his phone at the wall and smashed it. At least this would give him an excuse not to reply to Nico. Could he just google it? Maybe the wikihow could give him some answers on how to explain to his boyfriend that he was a former death angel. Actually, Will had considered that for a second and he wanted to bang his head some more for considering it.
"What are you doing?"
Will looked up. Kayla stood in front of him. She seemed to be out of surgery. She was in light green scrubs. Her hair was in a ponytail and there was a scrub mask tied around her neck.
Will straightened up. "How do you tell someone that he's a former death angel?"
Kayla answered. "Oh wait let me ask my death angel friend."
Will stared at Kayla. "You don't have one."
"Exactly."
"Touché."
The bizarre things didn't stop happening. It happened again the next day on Will's shift. Yet this time, it wasn't about Nico and Will. It was probably about something more. . .
It had all started as normal night like any other night before. Will walked down the hall of JHH. Then he saw his ever-faithful resident doctor, Agatha Lawrence, walking towards his way. She was looking down at the floor. That reminded Will of something. He approached Agatha.
"Dr. Lawrence, how's your brother? Did you talk when I called you last time to tell you that he was here?" Will asked Agatha.
Agatha looked up at Will startled. As if this was the first time, she had noticed Will's presence."Oh, Dr. Solace, sorry. I was spacing out. What was it again?"
"Your brother," He repeated. "How was he? Did you two talk when he visited the hospital?"
At the mention of his brother, her expression crumpled.
"What's wrong?" Will asked.
"I haven't seen Bryce after our talk." Agatha began, eyes started to well up. "He's never come home. He's answering my calls anymore. He even resigned from the restaurant he worked at. He wasn't like that. He used to be a caring brother before but he suddenly changed last year at the start of fall. After that, it feels like I can't recognize my brother. He's always yelling at me. He's never done that before. I'm worried about my brother and I don't know what's going on with him. ."
Will rubbed her arm in sympathy.
"I think he left our apartment for good." Agatha sniffed, wiping the side of her eyes. "He's always telling me about leaving the apartment because he didn't want to live with a nuisance like me anymore. The brother I knew wouldn't do that because he promised me that he would take care of me after our parents had died. I guess people really do change huh."
Will hugged Agatha. She started to sob on Will's shoulder. After a while, when Agatha had calmed down, Will decided to let Agatha accompany him to his rounds. It would help Agatha take her mind off her brother.
They reached another hallway in the corner. Agatha held a tablet in one hand. They both saw Dr. Lee Fletcher, not from afar. He was talking to two people, their backs hunched together and one of them was a woman covering her face as if crying.
"Huh, that's Mr. Paxton's family," Agatha commented as they both neared the latter doctor. Then she became worried. "Oh, no what happened to Robert, he didn't expire, did he?"
When the family had left, Dr. Fletcher deflated like a balloon.
"Dr. Fletcher." Agatha approached him. Will was at her tail. "Is Robert all right?"
Dr. Fletcher looked at her. "He's in a coma."
Agatha looked flabbergasted. "W-what? B-but that's impossible. He was stable yesterday. He was even laughing when I talked to him."
Lee Fletcher turned his head on the glass window. Inside was a man in his fifties, unconscious. Several tubes were hooked to his body. "That's what I thought too. But earlier, he wasn't responding. He's not brain dead either." Then he sighed. "Anyway, I'll have to go to see Mr. Paxton's lab results." He gave a curt nod at Will before leaving.
Will and Agatha glanced briefly at the unconscious man before they went to their patient. Will knocked on the door just beside Mr. Paxton's room. No one responded so he opened the door. There was no one in the room beside the unconscious woman in her thirties on the bed.
"I wonder where the family went," Will said as he stepped inside together with Agatha.
"Look at her chart," Will ordered Agatha. "She was referred to me recently by another fellow surgeon. She had CABG surgery three days ago. It was successful but she's in a coma. Let's see what's wrong with her." The latter doctor nodded. She swiped the screen of the tablet she was holding. Will, on the other hand, pulled out his stethoscope and checked for the heart rate and breathing. They were normal.
"There's nothing wrong with her, with Martha Robinsons." Agatha looked up at Will
"What?" Will straightened up pulling down the earbuds of stethoscope from his ears. He hung the stethoscope around his neck.
"All the vital signs are stable. Blood tests and EKG are normal. No internal hemorrhaging so far and no formation of sepsis. Post-ops were actually good." Agatha continued to swipe on the screen of the tablet.
"Seriously?" Will approached Agatha to look at the tablet. He glanced back at the patient then back at Agatha "Then why on earth, she's in a coma? No, do a CT Scan. If she's not responding, there might be something in the head."
"Yes, doc," Agatha said. "Her case seemed similar to Robert."
Will sighed. "I'll consult Dr. Fletcher about Mr. Paxton's case, later. Let's go to the next patient."
Fortunately, they didn't have any problem with the next two patients. The doctors came up easily with a diagnosis and gave their patients the immediate medical care they needed. However, the oddities of patients appeared again when Will was back at the ER.
"Patient Justin Ambrosse' CT scan and lab results came out clean." Lou Ellen reported to Will.
Will stared at the young boy no older than twelve. He lay unconscious on the bed. The patient had slipped on the bathroom floor hitting his head. He had become unconscious ever since. Though, there were no serious injuries aside from the tenderness in his head.
"Dr. Solace!" Agatha came running to Will. "Martha Robinsons' CT scan is out. The result is normal."
Will bit his lip. His eyes remained on the twelve-year-old boy. He drummed his fingers on the footboard of the bed. "Lou, call Dr. Alistair and have him check on him." Then he turned to Agatha. "Monitor Martha Robinsons' condition first. Check for any progress."
Will was about to lose his wits as he had come to another patient. He turned to Kayla who had reported him about another strange patient.
"How could you be in a coma after removing your appendix?" Will said almost to himself.
"Her appendicitis wasn't even severe. It's been two days now going three after she had an appendectomy but she's not waking up. She wouldn't respond to any stimuli such as pain. Her pupils wouldn't even respond to light." Kayla glanced at the other unconscious teenage girl on the bed.
Will turned back to the patient. He absentmindedly held the patient's hand. He paused. The girl's hand seemed colder, like dead cold. Will looked down. That was when he noticed that he was glowing. Will tried to diffuse his glow. The patient's hand was warm again. Will glowed again and the hand's temperature turned cold.
There was another beat as Will's mind raced.
"I'll be right back," Will told Kayla. Then he ran out of the room.
"W-what? Hey!"
If there was one thing that Will had diagnosed among those four coma patients, without clear reasons so far, their temperature turned ice-cold when he glowed and touched them. This was the first time that he encountered something like this.
As if all those patients couldn't decide if they were going to side with life or death.
oo00oo
"Man, Stevens could run like a cheetah," Percy shook his head, mildly amused.
He and Reyna ran across the dark alley.
They were still in New Jersey. After days of the stakeout, Henry Stevens had finally shown up. But of course, he had made a mad dash when he realized that the cops were after him. So the chase had started.
Reyna snorted. "And where on earth is Detective Grace?"
"Oh, don't worry, he's just somewhere, taking the different route chasing Stevens," Percy answered, impressed by his fellow detective's strong stamina on long-running. She wasn't out of breath.
"And what route would he use? Is Detective Grace familiar with the streets of New Jersey?" Reyna frowned.
"No, he isn't. But he's probably familiar with the sky route." Percy said.
"What?"
"Oh look!" Percy pointed ahead. "Target's on sight."
Surely, Henry Stevens emerged not from afar. He was gaining speed again.
"Oh no. You're not getting away, you asshole." Percy said.
Far ahead, when Henry reached a corner, a water pipe suddenly burst on his side making him yelped in surprise. He stumbled forward that slowed him down. Yet he regained his balance and turned to the corner. But then, Henry stumbled back again, his back against the nearest wall. There was a flickering lamppost above him. Jason Grace emerged from that corner pointing a gun at Henry. Henry pulled out a small knife from his pocket but before he could use it. The knife flicked out from his hand.
"What the-"
"Freeze. You are surrounded." Jason declared.
"Good job bro!" Percy beamed as he and Reyna reached Jason.
"Oh great!" Henry rolled her eyes. "The great detectives of Manhattan."
"I'm flattered that you know us." Percy bowed mockingly.
"Who's your boss?" Reyna asked straightforwardly. Not seemingly interested in doing the proper interrogation at the police station.
"So, this is where you're going to interrogate me then?" Henry said. "I, at least, expected good accommodation-"
All of a sudden, Henry started to choke. Percy and Jason looked at each other wide-eyed. Henry gasped as he slid down on the floor.
"Hey! What's happening to you?" Reyna crouched down holding Henry's shoulder.
"Son of a bitch... " Henry gasped again grasping his neck. "Betrayed. . ."
"Who?" Reyna asked. "Who betrayed you?"
Henry opened his mouth. He started to turn blue.
"Syndicate... boss." Henry grasped Reyna's arm. He looked at Reyna in the eye. "Hit and run. . . "
"At 113th Street Manhattan New York, October 20th last year's hit and run case, you know who's the culprit?"
Henry was nodding. He rasped. "Syndicate. . . boss."
"Then who's the boss?" Reyna asked again clutching Henry's arm. "Answer me."
Henry tried to say something but couldn't get the words out of his mouth. Instead, his eyes flickered on the ground. A newspaper was lying beside him. He grasped it and drew his final breath.
Later, when the three detectives looked at it, there was only one picture on the front page of the newspaper. The man in the picture waved in the crowd. Above the picture, bold black letters were written.
Triumvirate Laboratories' relevant contributions to modern biological technology.
It was a picture of Nero Johansen.
"When we got back to Manhattan, don't tell anyone about this," Reyna said, "just tell them that you didn't get any info from Henry Stevens because we're too late and he already died."
Percy sighed running his fingers on his already messy jet black hair. "Yeah, we get it where you're heading with this. This wasn't the first time that a lead suspect died in the middle of an interrogation. Several leads died before Henry. One of those died while inside the interrogation room. He died due to cyanide poisoning in his drink, a drink that came inside the NYPD. So an accomplice among the police ranks isn't possible. That's probably why it was taking this long to solve this case. I'll bet 20 bucks that Henry Stevens also died from the same poison."
"A stunt like that from a big syndicate is not possible. And hypothetically speaking, if Nero Johansen is the person behind all of this." Jason shook his head. "We're dealing with big-time people. You can always have your ways when you have billions of dollars in hand."
"That's why keep your mouth shut, for the time being," Reyna said. "I have a feeling that we're dealing with something more than a suspected multi-billionaire business tycoon. . . Probably something more evil and sinister. . . "