A few people inhabited the hospital waiting room. The blue-gray floor was tracked with worried shoeprints; the view beyond the pale blue walls was growing somber. A faint rain had begun falling as Rory finished off the hors d'oeuvres from the napkins in his pockets. His mother had to be given a tranquilizer by her peers; that meant he was in the custody of Kerry and Kyle. Kyle sat restlessly trying to figure out what to do besides filling the coke machine with quarters for drinks. Kerry paced back and forth trying to call her sister on her cell phone but to no avail. Where was she? Had the blonde one gone shopping or on a date? She wanted to apologize for all the grief she had given her... and she wanted to get her to the hospital to tell her that that their dad had collapsed. She called the house again then her cell phone, growing even more frustrated before throwing her own cell phone to the floor and lowering her face into her hands crying. Their father was possibly dying and Bridget could not be found! Tommy Brady sat nearby with his head in his hands. He was holding his head in his hands distraught and ripping himself up for all the derision he had given Paul over the years. He wanted to continue being the sports writer, but not like this. Years of karma were catching up with him. He always thought of Paul as his friend, but he had never shown it or even told him, and now, it might be too late. Rory rose worriedly and wandered to the soda machine in the alcove near the entrance of the waiting room. He was tired of watching the rain outside and the surging creek off the parking lot. As he searched his tux pockets for change, Kyle whirled round with a dollar and fed it in for him. Behind them, Harry had returned to them with the news. Kerry felt his presence and jumped up trying to cover her emotions.
"What's happening? Where's my mom?"
"Bridget isn't here yet?" Paul's boss reacted not seeing Paul's oldest daughter present in the waiting room.
"I can't find her."
"Okay," Harry placed his arm around her to assure her in her sister's absence. "Kerry, your mom is all right. She's surrounded by her friends from the nursing staff. On the other hand, your father is in surgery with surgeons trying to replace his aortic valve." He paused taking a breath and tears coming from his eyes. "Last month, he was diagnosed with a weakened aortic valve near his heart; he was going in for surgery next week."
"Why weren't we told about this?!" Kerry was dumb-founded and shocked. She looked to Rory then back to Harry.
"I understand your parents didn't want to worry you about it." Harry was choking on tears and emotion. "They are trying to keep his heart beating that he can get the surgery now, but honey…" He choked again trying to stay strong. It was too hard. Way too hard. He loved Paul like a son and protege from the moment he hired him at the newspaper. "Your father is strong… he's such… he's such a good guy. You got to stay positive. You won't lose him…"
"What kind of chance does he have?" Rory looked up with tears welling in his eyes.
"You won't lose him…" Harry repeated himself. "You have to get your sister here!"
In another room of the hospital, sitting alone in the observatory above the surgery room, Bridget watched from shadowy heights as doctors and surgeons worked on her father. Nurses and orderlies swarmed around him. The anesthesiologist kept him breathing. Bridget had made a weak attempt to cover her costume by pulling stolen hospital scrubs over her costume; she listened and eavesdropped on their pessimistic hopes for success. Her father's blood pressure had fallen once; they were pouring whole blood into him as fast as they got it. Her tear-soaked eyes darted from her father's pulse rate to his belabored breathing. How long could they keep his heart beating if it was losing blood? If it weren't for her godly gifts, Bridget would be out-stretched like her mother, out cold from the sad reality of the world.
"You're not supposed to be in here." A voice calmly stated. It was from an older black man entering into the observation room. He was dressed as a custodian, but he wasn't much of an intimidating figure. He was a tall and proud figure with grandfatherly eyes and silver hair with faint stubble of beard on his chin. More welcoming than intrusive, he set his broom aside and casually strolled down the steps down near Bridget. She looked up to him once then back to the surgery.
"Your father is a very special man." He came down and posed by Bridget with his broom held furtively before him. "He has this way of lighting people up when he enters a room. In many ways, you're just like him. You have a way of shining into the lives of others yourself."
"I don't care about myself right now." Bridget's voice cracked. "I wasn't there to help him because…"
"You were off helping someone else." The janitor added. "I see and hear the same thing over and over. People embarrassed because they feel they hadn't done enough. Bridget, don't be ashamed of yourself because you weren't there. You're only human. I understand the limits of human beings better than you think. The trick is not grieving over what you can do, but being happy for what you have done. A person is measured by their deeds, not by how much they have or how they look, but then... I get the feeling you've already figured that out."
"I just want my dad back." Bridget looked away wiping tears from her eyes. Her lips tried mouthing her next words. "I'd do anything for him."
"He knows that."
"Who are you?" Bridget looked back at this man. She thought she'd seen him in a movie or something. "Do you know my father? How did you know my..."
"Oh, I'm just the custodian." The enigmatic figure turned again and took his broom. "I take care of what has to be done."
Bridget's head turned back to her father and noticed the doctors and surgeons wheeling her father out of the operating room. Surgeon Mark Sloane and Doctor John Dorian exchanged worried glances as they escorted Paul Hennessy into critical observation hoping and praying for the best and that maybe God heard their prayers. Checking his devices and machines reading his biorhythms, Sloane inquired about the family and John lead the way. The wife was under deep medication after her shock of watching her husband collapse and get carried out on the shoulders of his friends; she had been placed into deep sleep in a room of the hospital. The life of Paul Hennessy was in the hands of God or fate now. Nurse Marcy Walker signed on Paul's admission and turned the lamp on in his cold and dark hospital room. She noticed that mist outside had graduated into a full rain. It was after midnight now.
Although Marcy had left the room, she had not left it empty. A surge of air had passed her as she left Paul in post-op, and behind her, Bridget looked to the door closing on the strands of light filling in and found herself in darkness except for the one light. Alone with her father's body, she stood over him and took his hand. It took both of hers to cover it. She looked at him with deeper respect than ever before and sniffed slightly trying to be there for him.
"I love you, daddy." Her chin trembled a bit. A tear traced the shape of her face. "If it is at all possible for me to save you, let me do it now. If I can fly and move the earth, I can heal… I can bring you back. Please don't leave me. I need you." Her chin trembled again and her voice cracked. "I have the power, I have the power to heal you…" She willed him into waking up. She pictured him opening his eyes. Her memories tried turning her fathered into a young man with the vigor of a youth half his age. Once more her eyes welled up, her heart growing heavy. She needed to be by her father! She had to be! The door opened on her.
"Bridget!" Dr. Liz Masterson had stormed the room. "How did you get in here? You can't be in here!"
"Please, I can save him." Bridget looked up to her.
"Honey, I'm sorry, but this section is closed off to non-staff." She snapped her fingers for orderlies and prodded the young girl from her father. "You're going to have to give the scrubs back too, but I'll let you wear them for now."
"Don't take me from him!!" Bridget started screaming to see the two hospital workers coming for her. "I can save him!"
Cate heard the screams and woke from her sleep. She sait up in bed, noticed the hospital gown she is and wondered first if she had had another kid, then flashed back on the memory she wanted to forget. Upstairs in the waiting room, Kerry and Rory heard the screams from the floor below and looked to each other in the waiting room in confusion. Who was screaming? The two men came round to lift Bridget up by her shoulders and pull her from her father's side. Screaming hysterically, she reached to her father yelling at the top of her lungs. Her father didn't move. He didn't wake. It hadn't worked. She was going to lose him. Just doing her job, Liz checked Paul's signals, the machines keeping him alive and followed Bridget's screams into the hall.
"Bridget, stop screaming!!" Dr. Masterson told the younger girl. It was then Bridget's personality kicked in with a fury.
"Get them off me!!" Bridget had reached up and flung her human restraints in two different directions. One figure flew over the nurse's station and bounced off another counter. The other orderly sailed ten feet down the hall, cracked the wall with his back and landed on the floor. Striking out against Dr. Masterson, Bridget's fist had instead hit the wall, which now cracked through the plaster and split the hospital down the center, a resonating tremor cracking down to the basement foudation and up to the roof of the five floor structure. Dr. Liz Masterson backed to the other wall, her hand to her chest as she heard the entire residence reeling in half. She remembered what Cate had said and realized it was true!
"Oh my god… oh my god!!" Her head turned in shock to Bridget racing from the scene. The girl sent a security guard flying into the door of an examination room with little effort. She tossed a gurney out of her way by lifting it over her head. Liz shrank to the floor in shock upon realizing the power at this young lady's control. Her eyes widened in shock watching this young woman storming out of the hospital and shattering the entrance doors when they didn't open fast enough. The young blonde beauty charged out into the pouring rain.
From the second floor waiting room, Kerry heard the crash and turned her head to look out the window. Gazing down through the waiting room window to the wet and hazy parking lot, she saw the figure down below her. Was that Bridget? It looked like she was losing it. She kicked a parked car and caved in its driver's side door, sliding the whole vehicle five feet, then turned and hoisted a lost wheelchair over her head and across the block. Kerry could only watch in shock as it cleared the entire block. Near the docks, it fell from the sky, skidded off the edge of a trawler and fell off the side. Watching her sister through the rain, Kerry realized she was the only one watching this. Rory was off to the bathroom. Kyle was feeding quarters to the soda machine and Tommy's dad was still trapped in his own self-pity. She was the only one seeing this! What did this mean? Was she right all along? What about Mrs. Kent? Was there more than one person with powers in this town? Unable to look away, she watched her sister screaming and ripping her scrubs off from over her costume. That costume... she was wearing it! Kerry realized she had been right all along, but did it really matter anymore? She had her sister's secret now even with the rain and her breath on the window keeping her from seeing it clearly, and no one else in the waiting room was even watching. Bridget couldn't even be aware of it. She turned her head back just in time to see her sister spinning round in her angry fit, looking for something to exert her strength and temper on, then rising up into the air. Her hostile banshee scream disturbing everyone in the waiting room and the whole hospital. Kyle had lifted his head and looked to his father wondering what it was. Rory had returned, looked at Kerry and wondered what she was looking at outside in the parking lot outside the emergency exit.
The sky started opening up more as Bridget shot through it. Higher up in the atmosphere, the rain was worse and her presence sent off shockwaves in the form of lightning bolts cracking through her body with no effect. Her temper tantrum and fit of hostility was not good for the weather either, dragging it over Lake Erie and toward Northern Ohio. Mist and precipitation pouring over her, the blonde one cursed at everything around her and hissed at the planet itself. If her heart was going to be broken then everyone should feel it! She screamed at the world and dragged her fingernails across the top of a United Airlines flight over Toledo, rattling it enough that passengers whispered in fear and panic about the sound grazing the plane. Ground crew could figure out the mystery of the scratches later in the steel hull. Bridget dodged down to earth with her cape flapping around her once more opening up more rain over Cleveland. Meteorologists and air traffic controllers down on Earth puzzled over the Doppler read-outs from the weather. Pittsburgh was supposed to have clear skies for another few days, but then the sky opened up and they now announced thunderstorms. Bridget screamed at the gods of heaven and earth once more and cracked through the clear skies over Philadelphia before turning toward the air space over New York City. Her voice was piercing the night sky over six states and the North Atlantic seaboard. Her perfect features twisted into a angry sneer, she dipped down long enough to the torch of Lady Liberty above the entrance to New York Harbor and threatened to pound it out of her hand then veered off at the last minute for the empty ocean. Her fists clenched into angry balls of fury, the blonde one now had miles of ocean streaking ahead of her and dark clouds spreading behind her bad disposition. The ley lines crossing over England and former Eire were growing stronger and as she approached them, her speed beginning to increase as she pushed the limits of her powers. A sonic boom cracked the sky as she lifted into the planet's atmosphere, cleaving through the clouds of frozen rain and suspended ice. Approaching sub-orbital velocity, she could see the distant morning sun still at least six hours away. She dodged below once more and split the skies once more with her broken heart and temper fueling her angry conniption. Somewhere above the North Sea, the Royal Air Force picked her out on radar and followed her path into France. The skies over the Eiffel Tower cracked with lightning and Russian sailors in the Adriatic Sea glimpsed the streaking shape over the shores of Greece through the stormy skies. Bridget buzzed the slopes of Mount Olympus once and shot forward up again clenching her teeth looking for something to exert her wrath upon from earth. She stopped over the land over of the Carpathians and unconsciously perceived North. Like the children's story, she streaked toward the North Star next and charged forward until morning with the sunlight of the next day directing her way. Above the former lands of the Vikings and Saxon armies, she screamed her heart out to the stars.
"Where the hell are you?!" She clenched her teeth viciously. Her long hair was dry now, but the edges of her cape had frayed away from friction. Her costume had become tattered, its seams ill-equipped for velocities approaching the speed of light. With her pleated skirt lost somewhere over Switzerland, Bridget looked up to the sunlight breaking through the clouds in just a blue leotard, its Kryptonian symbol worn away by air pressure, and a frayed red cape. Her sleeves hanging loose from her cuffs and costume, her once proud crest nearly worn smooth from her costume, her eyes looked into the rays of the sun breaking through the skies before her. Other shapes flitted through the expanse of atmospheric matter. As the light pierced through, it blinded even Bridget and obscured the humanoid figures flitting around her. Spirit beings in attire both ancient and modern surrounded her at a distance or stood curiously from the golden stairway hidden from her vision. The bright light obscured the top of the vision she was seeing, but the figures surrounding her were much more obvious. They were both physical and ethereal with grand lights around their heads and wispy wings billowing behind them. A few of their peers and cohorts were not as angelic as themselves, but rather beings linked to both heaven and earth. Mulling at the stairs into Elysium, the former teachers of humanity looked down from the heights onto their mortal descendants and children of their worshippers. Foremost among them, Zeus Thunderstriker looked upon Alfadur Odin once, pulled his hand down over his piercing red beard and looked down upon Bridget. An annoyed yet curious mumble came from his lips as immortal met with mortal, a confrontation which had not occurred in over two thousand years since he was asked to withdraw from earth.
"You will only be allowed to call upon the Immortals three times in your lifetime…." He stood among his peers and equals. "Do you really want to waste this gathering upon this matter?"
"I'm not doing it anymore!" Bridget defied the former gods. "Why do I have to save the lives of strangers but not that of my family?" Her body hovered near the firmament of heaven and earth. "You said I could save my father's life!!"
"Once again, Bridget of the Clan Hennessey, you hear what you want to hear." Odin turned his head of snowy white hair down over her. "I believe we told you might be able to save your father from his fate." He closed his eyes and peered upon mental images invading his senses. "Even now, the Norns are weaving the tapestry of your father's life. Even when we were the gods of mankind, we had no power over the whims of fate and destiny. Not even Infinity, the father of your Messiah, can break those humanly bonds."
"I want my father back!" Bridget demanded. "I want him back or else I'm no longer helping another person. Strip me of my powers, I don't care. It's not fair!!"
"Dear Bridget," Garbed in armor of gold and charged with piercing eyes of green, St. Brigid intervened on behalf of the former gods of Eire. "Think of what you're asking!"
"Do you recall the person you once was?" Osiris, the former pharaoh and lord of the Afterlife spoke from above. "You were vain, conceited… you had no knowledge of the world. You had no heart but for what you cared about. Do you really wish to be the person you once was?"
"I want my father." Bridget shed a tear. "It's just… not fair."
"Do you think you were the only one we chose?" Blonde and pure Gabriel of the Holy Host looked down upon these proceedings wondering about the distraction. "You chose to exhibit your godly gifts as you saw fit and we never intervened. We can lose one young girl who chooses to reject her gifts. There are other mortals who would relish the gifts they would receive. That Boston heiress with the selfish heart, the brother of that singer… humanity is full of wasted lives which we can cure of their lack of altruism and avarice."
"If we rend from you of your godly gifts, mortal girl…" The lord of the Immortals looked on Brigid and folded his arms before his broad chest. "We will allow you to keep your memories. You may have your father back and then again you may not, but you forever see the results of your folly. Suffering ever day, deaths that could have been prevented, disasters that could be averted... You will witness all of it and recall you could have prevented it. Humanity does not need our help to destroy itself."
"Bridget…" Another female immortal appealed to her heart. "Reconsider… Mortals are losing more hope every day and plead to both Infinity and creation for help. We are bound from helping mortal man while it is upon themselves to solve their own problems! Do not let despair fill even your soul."
"One life for the souls of many…."
"Death is unfortunate, but hope is eternal."
"Are you truly willing to be the girl you once were?"
"Mankind is on the verge of its own destruction!"
"You and our other children on Midgard have a chance to aspire humanity to higher levels." Odin looked upon her trying to appeal to her heart. "You could live in legend with Hercules, Arthur, Moses and others…"
"It's your choice, Bridget of the Clan Hennessy." Zeus focused his gaze upon her. "The life of your father or the lives of many."