I wasn’t too worried about what people thought. Everyone in the area was pretty busy. Nurses worked at their stations, and visitors visited with either a patient or each other. So I didn’t feel the need to take out my phone. Plus they weren’t allowed, so it would have done me little good.
“Your aunt Jessica is really worried about you,” I said, looking over my shoulder inside the room. “Everyone is.”
“Am I dead?” he asked.
I craned my neck and looked at his monitor. “It doesn’t look like it. Your heart’s still beating, so that’s a good sign.”
He finally looked up at me. “But I’m going to die, right?”
Damn it. I didn’t know what to tell him. I’d never been in this situation, talking to someone just before they actually passed. “I’m not sure, hon. I hope not.”
“I hope not, too. My mom is so sad.”
“I’m so sorry this happened to you.”
He lifted a small shoulder. “It’s okay. It was my fault. I was riding my bike and fell off right into the street. Stan Foyer says I’m a klutz. I guess he’s right.”
“Stan Foyer’s a doody-head.”
Dustin looked up and me and laughed. “He is, huh?”
“You know it.”
We high-fived before he grew serious again.
“Why are you so bright?” he asked.
“It’s part of my job. I help people like you.”
The blue in his irises glittered in delight. “Like an angel?”
“Well, kind of, but not really. I’m more at the other end of the spectrum.”
“Can you help my mom?” he asked. “She’s going to be really upset when I die.”
My heart constricted painfully in my chest. I felt Reyes near. He must have come in incorporeally to keep watch. I glanced around until I found him. He nodded, urging me to go inside. To see what I could do, if anything. And for this brave kid, I would.
“I’m going to step inside real quick,” I said, grabbing a nurse’s stethoscope off a workstation nearby. I wasn’t dressed for the part, but hopefully the stethoscope would serve as an all-access pass.
“Are you going to touch her? That’s what you do, right? I don’t want her to be sad. I’ll be fine.”
The backs of my eyes stung and I had to turn away. After a moment, I knelt in front of him. “I’m going to touch her. She’ll be okay.”
“So, I can go now?”
I looked at the monitor, growing worried. “Can you hang on just one minute more? Just to make sure this is going to work?”
“Okay.”
I stood and slipped inside the room, going straight for the monitor. Dustin’s loved ones stepped aside as I passed. They were sniffing, touching him, waiting for the inevitable. I fought past their grief, the weight of their sorrow like a boulder on my chest. My lungs stopped working. I tried to block their emotions, but they were too strong.
Struggling for air, I pretended to press a few buttons on the monitor, not daring to actually touch anything. Then I turned to the pale boy, so tiny and frail in the huge bed. His head had a bandage around it and his face was scratched and swollen, almost unrecognizable from the boy I talked to outside.
I reached down and touched his wrist as though taking his pulse. Surely someone in the room would realize how futile an act that would have been. They were all aware of the direness of the situation. I glanced up and saw Willa, Jessica’s sister, sobbing into her mother’s shoulder, her fingers entangled in the purple blouse her mother wore. I’d always liked Jessica’s mother.
When I thought no one was paying any particular attention to me, I closed my lids and slid my fingers around Dustin’s fragile wrist.
I didn’t do this. Healing the sick was not my job, so I had no clue what I was doing, but I did know Latin, and that seemed to be working like a charm lately. “Resarci,” I whispered, asking the Big Man upstairs to forgive me if I was crossing any of his boundaries in attempting to do what I was attempting to do.
When I’d finished, however, I felt nothing. No power coursing through me. No lightning bolts shooting from my fingertips. No seas parting before me. Not that New Mexico had many seas, but…
I’d failed.
I let the wetness gathering between my lashes spill over them. What was the point in hiding anything now? I picked up the little guy’s scraped arm and kissed the inside of his palm.
Unfortunately, that got me some attention. I put his hand back and tried to hurry out of the room, but it was packed with grieving family members. My escape proved harder than I thought it would be.
Before I got halfway to the door, the beeps on the heart monitor quickened and grew stronger. In another instant, Dustin moaned and moved his head from side to side. Even I stood in awe as he slowly opened his eyes. Just barely. The lights clearly bothered him because he squinted, then closed them again, but Willa cried out to him.
“Dustin!” she said, gently draping herself over his fragile body, petting his face with her fingertips, smoothing back a stray lock of brown hair. “Dustin, please,” she said.
He fought to open his eyes again. A nurse rushed into the room to check his vitals. Another nurse was fast on her heels, weaving through the crowd to get to him.
Dustin tried to focus on his mother, but he couldn’t quite keep his lids from drooping down before he managed it. He tried again, his irises rolling unsteadily until he found something else to focus on: me.