4
When Peter was woken by his alarm clock just a few hours later, at 5.45 AM, he should by all means have been bone-tired. Instead, he was pleased to find that he was wide awake. Whether this was due to Mohinder's ability, or to the kind of giddy excitement he was feeling at the prospect of being able to truly make a difference now, the sensation was not unlike Christmas morning when you were a kid. There were new toys that Peter couldn't wait to try out.
He was aware that super strength would not be making that much of a difference for most calls. It wouldn't save a patient in cardiac arrest, and he told himself to be very, very careful the next time he did CPR. But if for nothing else, it would be helpful for carrying down five-hundred-pound patients from the eleventh floor, and being able to block a drunk's swing aimed at him wouldn't hurt either. And in those rare but taxing calls like the one last night, it could mean the difference between life and death.
Humming slightly tunelessly under his breath, he dressed, made some coffee, and then saw that he had a message on his answering machine that he hadn't checked on last night.
With a sigh, he squatted down on the floor and pushed the "play" button, hearing his mother's voice, "Peter, please call me back. I know you have some problems coming to terms with the new Company, but it's nothing we can't talk about. We're all counting on your help, Peter."
Peter deleted the message and got to his feet with a displeased grunt. "When have you ever needed my help?" he asked the phone accusingly, but predictably, received no answer.
He was on his way to the hospital by 6.30, and surreptitiously looked around himself when he turned a corner into a side alley. Of all the abilities he had ever possessed and lost again, his stint with Mohinder's had probably been the shortest. A couple of bicycles lay across the sidewalk, probably upturned by juvenile delinquents the previous night, and Peter, casting another glance over his shoulder to make sure nobody was looking, took a standing jump just to see if he could, and cleared them all without any difficulty to speak of.
Well, this one certainly worked. He'd have to be careful about who was watching, and wondered how long he could keep his ability secret from Hesam, but that was something he was going to deal with later.
He arrived well in time for the first shift, got the ambulance keys and radios, and found that Hesam looked about as tired as Peter probably should have. Apparently, Hesam had noticed that, too.
"Feeling better?" he asked Peter, and today, he did sound slightly accusatory of the fact that his partner had weathered the previous shift a lot better than he had.
"Yeah," Peter replied. "You?"
"Life's gotta go on," Hesam said, rubbing his forehead and checking the list of restocks from the car's previous call. "Do better today, huh?"
"Yeah, let's," Peter answered, and he meant it.
Peter's first opportunity to try out his new ability in action came around early afternoon that day, and in an entirely different way from what he had imagined.
He and Hesam usually had lunch in the car, and having lunch was usually a lot harder than getting hold of lunch. There were enough takeaways and street vendors in New York City – and that was just counting the ones that sold edible food – to procure some sandwiches, falafel, or pizza, even if it could be difficult to actually eat. Sometimes Peter and Hesam took turns in the driver's seat just so the other one could have a go at his lunch. Today, however, some higher force kept them from even stopping at anything more elaborate than a candy machine. It was either emergencies that couldn't have waited, or traffic jams that left them stuck in the middle of nowhere. Or in the Queens Midtown Tunnel, which was even worse.
They were on their way back from a call to Queens, some three hundred feet from the tunnel entrance, and had been in the same spot for nearly half an hour. Neither of them had eaten since morning. Hesam gave a resigned sigh and jerked his head back to his jacket, which hung from the back of the driver's seat. It was a warm day, much too warm for uniform jackets. "There ought to be a packet of chips in my pocket somewhere. See if you can find it, will ya?"
Peter leant over to dig around the pockets and finally extracted a crumpled little plastic bag with even more crumpled contents. "That's marginally better than those chocolate bars from the glove compartment," he remarked. "Got a spoon?"
"Glove compartment?" Hesam said, alarmed. "Are they still in there? I thought you'd gotten rid of them ages ago."
"I did. Nicholas must have put some new ones in. Just to annoy you."
"You're kidding me. I told him to quit storing his chocolate bars in places he keeps forgetting about."
"Nope. I saw them earlier, while I was searching for a garbage bag."
"What condition are they in?"
Peter opened the glove compartment and retrieved what looked like plastic-wrapped goo. "I'd say pretty critical."
"Gah. What I wouldn't give for an Italian B.M.T. now."
Peter looked out at the congealed traffic in the tunnel ahead. "Y'know, I'll hop out and get us some."
Hesam laughed. "I'd much rather turn on the sirens. The next Subway's gotta be thirty minutes from here, on foot."
Peter cast him a sidelong glance. "Really? I bet it's no more than three."
His partner laughed again. "Whatcha gonna do, fly to 2nd Avenue?"
"Close." Peter grinned and pointed to a sign some eighty feet ahead. "I'll be back before you pass that sign."
"You better." Hesam sounded a lot less amused now. Peter knew why. If a call came while Peter wasn't in the car, there would be a lot of trouble for both of them. He couldn't know that Peter fully intended to be back in less than ten minutes.
"Chipotle Southwest, right?" he asked Hesam as he opened the door.
"You're not really, actually, going to a Subway."
Peter was still grinning as he jumped out, went back until he was sure Hesam couldn't see what he was doing, passed a recess in the tiled tunnel wall, and pulled himself up.
It was one of the more incredible things he had ever felt, and he had had a lot of incredible things happen to him in the past year. He climbed the wall effortlessly, up to the point where he hung nearly upside down, and still he knew he couldn't fall.
Thanks, Mohinder, he thought as he started speeding towards the tunnel entrance, trusting in the car drivers below not to look too closely at the tunnel walls above them. If it had worked for Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, it would work for him, too.
Once outside, he pulled himself up the embankment and ran on without attracting any attention, swerving around or just jumping over obstacles, careful to keep to the smaller alleys.
Hesam's eyes nearly popped out of his head as Peter was back in the ambulance a very short time later, with a brown and green paper bag in his hand. Hesam took the bag as Peter sat down, slightly out of breath, and strapped in again. The Iranian inspected the contents, still suspecting that Peter had pulled some sort of trick on him.
"Those are from Subway," he finally ended his inspection, his tone incredulous.
"Told you," Peter confirmed.
"What did ya do, man?" Hesam went on. "You stopped some pedestrian and told him to hand over those subs in the service of the state, or something?"
Peter laughed. "How did you guess?"
"You would, too," Hesam muttered, unwrapping one of the sandwiches. "And that pedestrian just happened to have an Italian B.M.T. with Chipotle Southwest sauce?"
"Two, actually," Peter said, helping himself to the second. "Some luck, huh?"