Chapter 9

When I came to, I realised that we were back at the refuge, and I was in bed. Anita was by my side, holding my hand. Trish was in bed next to me. Everyone else was gathered around the bedside, concern on their faces.

“What happened?” I asked, as I went to sit up. “How long was I out?”

“Only a few hours this time,” Frank said. “Trish is OK, and so is that woman that he held. They got the gunman alive, and he’s being held in custody.”

The action took more effort than I thought, and I flopped back onto the bed. “OK,” I said. “So, what the hell was that all about?” I asked no one in particular.

Maggie answered “Remember that doctor that held you in hospital?”

“Yeah, how could I forget!”

“We have reason to believe it’s to do with him. He’s hired thugs to try and abduct you.”

“Crap!”

“We think, and it’s only a theory right now, that somehow he wants your abilities. That’s why he was drawing blood from you when he held you captive last time. He’s completely focussed on you.”

“That’s not a good sign,” I said with some concern. “That means he’s probably never going to stop.”

“No - unless we can find him, he’s going to keep trying to get at you.” Maggie said.

“We need to find some positive evidence to link him to all this,” Frank said. “Otherwise, it doesn’t matter if we find him, we won’t be able to do anything about it.”

“How did he find us?” I asked.

“It was bound to happen sooner or later,” Carol replied. “After all, once you started healing people, you start to bring attention to yourself. It’s only a matter of time then, before someone says something. Before you know it, it’s in the news or social media. He’s probably one of those crackpots who follows all the gossip mags. They’ll print all sorts of crap, but there’s always a grain of truth in it.”

I was quiet for a moment. With someone like the pyscho doctor out there, willing to pay thugs to do what it takes to get me, people were going to get hurt.

“I guess I should think about moving on then,” I said, sadly.

“No!” The others all chorused.

“Look, I don’t like this any more than you do, but I’m just putting you all at risk.” I said.

Carol put her hand on my arm. “You don’t get it - you’ve given each one of us a precious, precious gift. I wouldn’t be alive today if it wasn’t for you. Each one of us would be grieving the loss of someone dear to us if you hadn’t stepped in and helped us with your healing hands.”

“If they discover where we are living, we could be shot at again - what if I can’t get to you in time? Your death would be on my head!”

“No, we’re in this together,” Frank said. “We need to work out a plan to deal with this guy, once and for all. Only then will we all be truly safe.”

We all sat down together in the kitchen to work out a plan. We needed to somehow get a confession from the pyscho doctor, and then we could tie him in with the hired thugs. There would be enough evidence to put him away for life. The first thing we needed to do was to get back to the city, to the hospital where he worked.

Like all good plans, it made logical sense at the time - get wired with a recording device, find the doctor, get him to confess to his crimes, and then arrest him. Like all battle plans, it rarely survives first contact with the enemy.

I walked into the Accident and Emergency department, recording device taped to my chest, a bandage on my arm to make it look like I had an injury. We decided that I would go alone, because we thought he might recognise some of the others, and smell a trap. The A&E department was busy, a lot of chaos and confusion, injured people in the waiting room, with the triage nurses evaluating people as they came in. I slipped past the nurses and wandered through the examination cubicles. That was when the plan started to come unstuck.

I had no idea what the psycho doctor looked like; I only saw him briefly that first time as I was in the children’s ward before I passed out. How was I going to recognise him? Carol couldn’t come with us, because they all thought she was dead - her sudden ‘resurrection’ would cause a lot of problems and draw attention to us. I started wandering up and down the hallway, when I noticed a hospital security guard looking at me from the other end of the hallway. I knew I needed to suddenly ‘belong’ to someone in one of these examination cubicles. I picked one, and hoped I could fake my way into whatever was happening.

When I stepped inside, there was a young woman lying on the bed, her hand wrapped in a blood-stained tea towel. I quickly unwrapped my bandaged arm, and looked for something to make me look doctor-like. I saw a stethoscope on a shelf, so I picked it up and draped it over my shoulders. She looked up, with some confusion on her face.

“Who are you?” She asked, with concern on her face. I walked over to her bed, rested a hand on her arm and projected calming thoughts.

“It’s ok, I’m here to help,” I replied. “What happened to your hand?”

“I was trying to open a jar. The lid was stuck so I tried banging the jar on the bench to loosen the lid. However, the jar broke and I sliced my hand fairly badly, and it’s been bleeding a lot. The doctor said I’m going to need a lot of stitches.”

I took her hand in mine. “Let me have a look at it then.” I concentrated, and pictured the wound through the towel. It looked like she had severed a nerve and a tendon, and at least one major blood vessel. I started concentrating on the wound, and told the severed tissues to rejoin themselves. I could see the nerves reattaching themselves, the ends connecting like two hands intertwining fingers.

She started to move her arm, but I held her firm. “No, don’t move,” I said. “You did a lot of damage - you need to hold still while it all knits together.”

“It feels weird.” She said.

“That’s because the nerves are being reattached. It’s going to feel a bit funny until it has fully healed.” I said.

She looked at me, her head tilted to one side as if she was trying to figure me out. “You’re not really a doctor, are you?” She said.