Sentinel Event

Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

 Dr. St. Cross, the psychiatrist, would have found it ironic that Tammy was watching the news report on the TV in the waiting room when the ambulance arrived. Chester Williams, a leading expert in Passerism, had given a speech at the anti-Passer protest in Denver earlier that morning, and choice segments were being replayed throughout the evening.

"No one can argue," he was saying with educated eloquence in a long-suffering tone, "that our lives have become more meaningful and safer with the help of the spirits, to whom we owe so much and can offer so little. Our world has made progress in leaps and bounds since the first of the Passers began visiting and speaking to us. It saddens me that so many of you believe otherwise."

The image lingered on Williams while the sound of the news anchor's reportage continued; Chester's eyes showed keen irritation. He pursed his lips and sighed deeply just before the scene cut away.

Tammy had come looking for a patient's son in this waiting room, and hadn't found him, but had paused to sit down on a chair and retie her tennis shoe while listening to the news report. When the sound of the ambulance's sirens reached her ears, the nurse broke away from the distraction and ran out into the receiving hall to help.

Two paramedics, both young and newly minted, pushed in through the doors rolling a patient on a stretcher.

"Twenty-nine-year-old male," one of the EMTs told the ER doctor who came to oversee. "Attempted suicide by hanging. Found by a neighbor in the nick of time, who initiated CPR."

Tammy moved closer to get a look at the face behind the bag attached to the intubation tube in his mouth.

"I know him," the doctor said before the nurse had a chance to. "He's in here all the time."

"Never self-inflicted injuries, though," agreed Tammy. The stretcher was swiftly wheeled into one of the critical care rooms. "Are you sure it was suicide?"

Without speaking, one of the paramedics lifted the patient's right arm by the wrist. Taped to the back of his hand was a piece of note card on which was clearly printed, They won't stop.

"'They?'" asked the other EMT.

"The Passers," answered Tammy.

"He claims it's the Passers," the doctor talked over her. "This is private information that we're not allowed to discuss. Patient confidentiality."

The paramedics scrunched their foreheads and shrugged, but left the doctor and nurses to do their work. While the former checked the patient's chest with his stethoscope and another nurse bagged the patient, Tammy paused to stroke the young man's brown hair off his forehead.

"Poor Aidriel," she murmured.

Outside the open door, the ghostly figure of a Passer peered out from behind a curtain at the end of the corridor. It turned and walked away, vanishing through a wall.

The days passed with Aidriel alive and alone, spending hours staring off into space. Doctors and the other patients alike showed little interest in him, and eventually, how many days later, he didn't know, he found himself in a familiar ward, on the 4th floor among the crazies. He didn't spend any time in the main room with the couches where the visitors were. No one came to see him, and he was ashamed of the bruises on his neck and jaw; the evidence of his failure.

Aidriel resented the fact he was alive. He had only survived as long as he had because of happy accidental discoveries or miraculous rescues. When he was unconscious, the air gone from his lungs, the pulse gone from his heart, and the life fading from his brain, the Passers would save him. Indirectly, that is. They would alert anyone nearby and he'd be brought back at the last moment. Eventually, he began to think of those visits past the threshold of death as if they were dreams. Dreams of strange visions and of what awaited him when he escaped life. If only he could escape.