CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

A Visit to the Healing Gardens, Part 1

The following excerpt was taken from the Daily Herald.

MIDNIGHT RUMBLE AT THE MET

The New York City Police Department responded to a call for backup from one of their own late last night as an altercation between heroes and villains rocked the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art mere hours after an explosion caused irreparable damage to countless artworks and relics from the museum’s Greek and Roman galleries.

Police Officer Rick Nolan was one of the first to arrive on the scene and provide first-aid treatment to his fellow officers, including Officer Winston Schmidt, the policeman who had called for backup.

“Officer Schmidt was the only one who wasn’t in a critical state when we arrived,” explains Officer Nolan. “Two of our guys were already dead and the other two were barely hanging on…”

Officer Nolan then recounts how he and his sergeant, Andrew Graham, made their way to the Leon Levy and Shelby White Court gallery only to discover that it was no longer there.

“The walls and ceiling had completely caved into the sewer below,” explains Officer Nolan.

Signs of a second, more powerful explosion was discovered during their brief exploration of what remained of the gallery. As for the heroes and villain who’d faced off inside the met, no sign could be found.

“We didn’t find any bodies,” said Sergeant Andrew Graham. “And since Officer Schmidt was able to identify at least one of the heroes, we can assume Crow-Man and whoever was with him made it out safely. That guy’s got more lives than Cat-Queen.”

Crow-Man was unavailable for comment as of this writing. But we have learned that the villain’s name is the Trickster, a beta-level illusionist whose name has slowly been rising among the ranks of the city’s worst criminals. As for his companion, Officer Schmidt tells us that it was a male healer in a bronze face mask and blue hero suit that he’d never met before.

For more on the life and crime of the Trickster, read page 5.

“But he saved my life,” admits Officer Schmidt. “I knew I was dying but this guy, he healed me broken bones and poisoned wound and all… I wish I knew his name so I can thank him again…”

This is the second time in two nights that an unknown healer has been part of a major crisis within the city. Who could this mystery healer be and why hasn’t he revealed himself to the public yet?

For more on the Met situation, read page 3.

Our ideas on who this mystery healer could be? Read page 7.

“Sam?” Thunder’s voice sounded like it was coming from somewhere far away.

He didn’t mean to ignore her. He was just too focused on his task.

“Sam,” she called again, her voice sounding much closer this time.

Sweat dripped down the tip of Sam’s nose. His vision got blurry. All he could really see now was the bright teal-colored glow of his fingers as he continued to cast Healing Hand on Thunder’s own hands. It didn’t even register to him that they were holding hands, something an inexperienced guy like Sam would have normally blushed about.

WARNING: Life-force has been significantly depleted by [Healing Hand (Δ)]. Recommend that the hero refrains from using this power until Fatigue [62%] has dropped to a lower range.

As usual, he ignored Triple-A’s warning and continued to spend his life-force while hoping that even this bit could ease Thunder’s condition.

“Sam!” she yelled.

Thunder was so close now that their noses were almost touching. This nearness sent sparks of memories cascading into Sam’s brain. That time she’d pushed him into a blood oath, the moment he’d nearly sacrificed his life to heal the hole in her stomach, and that memory of him ogling her while she kicked alpha-level horror butt.

just like that, Sam lost his concentration, and his power winked out abruptly. This also meant that his vision cleared just in time for Sam to see Thunder giving him her very best smoldering glare.

“Sorry, I was in the zone,” he said, sighing afterward.

Sam would have loved nothing more than to just stay right where he was and for Thunder to stay right where she was with their faces as close as humanly possible for two people who weren’t dating. But his body refused to cooperate, forcing him to plop down on the bench behind him to stave off the fatigue he’d built up during the healing.

“What were you saying?” he asked.

“I said I feel much better now,” Thunder repeated. She flexed the fingers of her two hands for him. “See?”

Sam knew that this was a lie made for his benefit, and the thought of his failure made his brow furrow. Looks like Healing Hand at delta-level is just as useless as zeta-level when stacked up against the Blight.

When he’d arrive in her hospital room at Mount Sinai Queens earlier that day, Thunder was in the middle of another episode. It was what the doctors called it when the Blight racked her body with a heavy dose of pain. She had been sitting up on her hospital bed while her arms shuddered uncontrollably. The knuckles of her hands had gone chalk white from the strain of her tight grip on the hand-rails.

Sam had rushed in and immediately cast Healing Hand on her despite her doctor’s protests.

“I’ve got this,” he’d promised, and there was a confidence in Sam’s tone that hadn’t been there before. “I’ve got this.”

The doctor quieted down once he’d realized Sam’s touch really was helping Thunder overcome her spasms.

“Remarkable,” he’d said.

Once Thunder’s episode subsided, the doctor and his nurse left Sam with Thunder while promising to come back and check in on her later.

“I’d like to talk to you later, too,” he’d told Sam. “This hospital could use a healer like you even as a freelancer.”

Afterward, Thunder had insisted that she was okay enough to walk, and so she’d dragged Sam up with her to the outdoor healing garden at the west wing of the hospital’s fourth floor.

“I love it here,” she’d said to him as soon as they burst out of the hospital interior and stepped onto the garden’s wooden plank pathway. “It calms me down being around nature…might be the elemental in me.”

Sam wasn’t convinced by Thunder’s upbeat attitude though, and so he’d sat her on a bench by the corner of the garden—a secluded spot right behind an Apollonian healing fountain—so he could attempt to heal her some more.

That’s where they sat now, side by side and taking in the ambiance provided by the garden that was more like a forest of birches and cedars with their brown leaves swaying along with the cool fall breeze. Healing bubbles floated out of the Apollonian healing fountains found on either end of the garden, and each popping bubble gave the air a salt-like feeling that caressed the pores on one’s skin.

“Do you smell that?” Thunder asked.

Sam sniffed at the air and caught a whiff of a sweet, apple-like fragrance permeating around them. It was the scent wafting out of the many diffusers scattered around the garden’s paths.

“Chamomile, one of Apollo’s favorite scents,” Sam answered. “A good fragrance for promoting healing… works as an antibiotic and reduces acne too.”

“Nerd,” Thunder teased.

Sam shrugged in an ‘I am a nerd for this stuff’ kind of way.

Even as a zeta-healer, Sam had done his best to learn as much as he could of the healing arts and the ancient remedies that were still useful in today’s medical practice. He’d hoped this knowledge would help to supplement his work as a healer, but he never really had the chance to make use of them as there was never any time to experiment during those big, sprawling battles where mere seconds were all that separated life from death.

“Would you call me an even bigger nerd if I admitted that I carry vials of chamomile, frankincense, and lavender oils inside the medkit hanging on my utility belt?” he asked.

“Yes,” Thunder answered just before she elbowed him in the shoulder. “But it also means you’re well prepared which is good… you need to have everything ready for the fight ahead—”

“—because your equipment just might save your life,” Sam finished for her. “Lesson number seven.”

“Looks like Chiron’s training you well,” she nodded approvingly.

“Oh, he’s trying,” Sam admitted while the memory of last night’s disappointing conclusion to the Met incident flitted across the surface of his mind. “But I’m going to need a lot more training to become the kind of hero he’d approve of…”

Instead of responding to Sam’s compliment, Thunder’s gaze drifted over to one of the Apollonian bards who frequented the garden. He was a tall, thin man with long, wavy dark-brown hair and an easy smile plastered on his sun-kissed face. He wore the blue scrubs of the nursing staff, but in his hands was an acoustic guitar that he was currently using to entertain the patients gathered around him.

From what Sam knew of the Apollonian bards, their songs were said to help boost the regeneration of any who heard them.

Maybe my healing can get a power-up if I learned to sing too, Sam thought. Then he laughed inwardly because he remembered just out of tune his singing was. Ah, but what if Triple-A could teach me? It’s something I should discuss with the master later.

“His song has a nice melody to it,” Thunder commented.

“It’s not just the melody of his guitar, but the words used in his rhymes,” Sam explained. “They’re basically prayers that call on Apollo’s blessing to spread a healing aura around that area of the garden.”

“Sam, I already called you a nerd,” Thunder reminded him jokingly.

They sat there quietly while listening to the bard serenade a pale-faced, short-haired teenage girl in a wheelchair with a song of Apollo and his son, Asclepius, the Olympian god of medicine.

“Asclepius, the son of Apollo, his life was filled with such sorrow,” the bard sang in a somber tone. “Chiron taught him to heal so well that he could bring back the dead… But this angered Zeus so he killed him instead…”

Huh, I wasn’t the only healer among Chiron’s students, after all, Sam thought. How come he never mentioned Asclepius to me before?

The bard was quite good. Both his guitar playing and his singing were powerful enough that Sam could already see the greenish sheen of an aura falling across the teenage girl’s shoulders as if she was suddenly wearing a shiny gossamer coat.

It won’t do anything for her though, Sam realized.

They weren’t that far away from where Sam and Thunder sat, so he could immediately tell that the bard’s efforts were in vain. The dark-haired teenage girl with the pixie-cut hadn’t been paying attention to his song at all, and everyone knew that listening was a prerequisite to activating a bard’s power.

No, she wasn’t intentionally ignoring him, Sam knew. But it was clear from the glassy expression on her face that she couldn’t hear him. There was definitely something wrong with her.

“That’s Ashley Day,” Thunder said after she noticed where Sam was looking. “She’s been here longer than me… trapped a catatonic state on account of her power going on the fritz.”

“Damn,” Sam’s brow furrowed. “Power Incontinence... it’s one of the worst things to happen to a gifted.”

“Besides the Blight, you mean,” Thunder added jokingly.

Sam wished Thunder wouldn’t do that. Make a joke she knew would pull them both into another round of awkward silence because there really was no making light of her condition.

“Hey, Sam…” Thunder tapped on his arm after a while. “You’re pretty knowledgeable with the healing arts… so why didn’t you just go work for a hospital when you quit being a hero?”

Sam sighed exaggeratedly because this was a question he’d gotten so often that he felt like a broken record repeating the same answer to anyone who cared to hear it.

“If you worked in HR for a hospital then would you trust someone to help save lives when he ran away from a job that was all about saving lives?” Sam countered.

“Depends on how useful his powers might be,” Thunder answered.

“Well, my power was crap before,” Sam reminded her. “Just healing the small stuff drained me of too much life-force…”

“You could still have helped with minor injuries without putting your life in danger,” Thunder pointed out.

“Yeah, that’s what they all say,” Sam frowned. “But I couldn’t handle that kind of responsibility anymore. At least not back then when I considered myself the biggest failure in the universe.”

“But then why did you become a writer for the Herald?” Thunder raised an eyebrow at him. “Wouldn’t that have brought you back to the very place you’d run away from, anyway?”

Sam was quiet for another long moment. Eventually, he let out another deep sigh.

“I couldn’t stay away,” he finally admitted, not just to Thunder but to himself as well. “I knew I couldn’t help… at least not as a hero or a healer. But I couldn’t just stay home either… Something inside me just couldn’t sit still while—”

“—other heroes were risking their lives fighting the good fight,” Thunder finished for him because she obviously understood Sam’s feelings now that she’d been sidelined from doing the job that couldn’t be forsaken. “The call to rise and be counted, that’s what heroes do.”

Thunder coughed. Then she coughed some more.

“I’m fine,” she said afterward in order to wave away Sam’s concern. “Seriously, I’m good.”

But, as Sam watched her, he noticed the dark circles under her eyes had reappeared and knew she was probably faking feeling better.

Sam scratched his head because he didn’t know how to tell her that she didn’t have to pretend with him. But Sam wasn’t very good with words the way Thunder was, and he definitely didn’t know how to be inspiring like top-class heroes could be.

“So…do you want to hear about how badly I messed up last night?” he asked, finally remembering why he’d gone to visit her that morning.

Sam hoped the change of topic would help take Thunder’s mind off her sickness. Plus, he really wanted her input on his performance in last night’s mission.

And just like that, curiosity overwrote the discomfort on Thunder’s face. “Spill… what happened and leave no gory details unsaid.”

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By the way, true believers, Sam and Thunder would just like to say...