Blue Bloods

Angela leaned against a door, trying to remember why she stood in the emergency room. She remembered nothing but blur of bodies, triage, and emergency surgery. It started an hour or so after the rain of fire and still hadn't let up. She stared blearily around the room, trying to figure out where all the patients had gone. The hiss of the automatic doors pulled her gaze around toward the exterior doors; another wave of injuries coming in. The paramedic's shoulder badges told her this group came from New York City. More burns and breaks. The heart attacks, bleeders, and other hard-to-stabilize injuries already filled all the hospitals closer to the city.

Gathering herself, she pushed off the door, moving toward the first stretcher. Time seemed to slow as her feet went out from under her on the slick, dust-covered tile. Halfway to the ground strong hands grabbed at her, spinning her around so she landed on her butt instead of her nose. The pain shocked her awake, but only allowed her a momentary flash of alertness. She stared up at Steve, wondering why he had gripped her forearm so tightly. His mouth moved, but his words came from the end of a long, narrow tunnel.

"Angie! Are you hurt? Did you hit your head?"

Whatever had changed Steve's voice had stuck. The sound washed over her, smoky sweet and tingling. It finally battered her into some semblance of sense. She shook her head. The room spun. This might be worse than her state of stupidity earlier.

"'’M fine," she muttered.

"You don't look fine. You look like death. You need a doctor, doctor."

She needed eight hours of sleep, a good meal, and a shower. She might snatch a cat nap, coffee, and a candy bar once she dealt with this wave of injuries. The shower would have to wait. She had to clean her hands before she started working though.

"Sink."

Steve looked at her, shook his head, and yanked her up over his shoulder. Fireman's carry. Made sense, him being a fireman and all. The world went gray and fuzzy.

She came to laying on the sofa in the break room. The smell of warm grease and citrus tickled her nose, and she pushed herself around enough to see the fast-food bag sitting on the counter, a plastic cup of orange juice next to it. She wasn't sure how long she'd been out, but she knew she'd needed sleep, badly. Trying to do triage as close to passing out as she was would have been criminally irresponsible, and she hadn't even realized.

Making a mental note to thank Steve, no matter how much it galled her, she reached for the cup of juice. Halfway there, her hand shook like an invalid. Coppery fear washed through her mouth and settled in her gut; she wasn't a surgeon, but she still couldn't afford to lose her hands. If the dust had done something to them, she needed to find a way to fix it. Neurological disorders, allergies, chemical reactions, and anything else that might cause the shakes started scrolling through her head, sorting themselves by likelihood.

Her stomach, teased to wakefulness by the smell of food, wound itself into a knot, growling.

Or I could just be starving.

Without another thought, she tore into the food. Halfway through the bag, with two hash browns and a breakfast sandwich inside her, she started noticing her surroundings. A thin gray layer of dust covered everything in sight. She even noticed it in her food now that she ate slowly enough to actually taste anything. Coppery grit overwhelmed even the grease of cheap sausage. She spat out a half-chewed bite, then stared in horror at the bloody mess in her hand.

Adrenaline buoying her, she shoved herself toward the break room's sink. A handful of water to rinse her mouth came out even bloodier than the sandwich. Her heart raced, and she swore she felt her pupils dilating as panic gripped at her. She pushed herself to the nearest mirror. In its silvered glass she saw bloody tear tracks running down her face. She tried to wipe them away, but they’d dried; she would need soap and water. She realized she hadn't slept that long as she stared into her own bloodshot eyes.

What the hell?

Fine blood vessels traced a roadmap through the whites of her eyes. A roadmap of blue, glowing lines.

A blue gray curtain of dust, hard and unyielding as steel, slammed down between her and the world.

***

Steve prowled through the emergency room, on the lookout for any more shenanigans. So far the worst case had been Angela, falling down after working herself nearly to death. Some of the staff took Angie not being at her best as an excuse to slack. He had no idea why they listened to him, but at this point he didn't care. Every hospital closer to New York had already hit capacity, and if they had cases coming fifty miles just to find a bed, things had to be pretty bad up there. It wasn’t Steve’s day job, but Drew wasn't the only one who could keep things orderly.

He grinned at the thought of throwing down against some looters with Drew by his side. The new improved Drew, at least. She might kick his butt from here to eternity, but it would be worth it for a chance.

A candy striper glanced up from her cart, took one look at him, and promptly ran into the next bed along the aisle.

"Watch where you're going," he growled. She grabbed her cart and darted off with a squeak. Steve caught himself after taking a few steps after her. He stared at her retreating form, frozen in place until she rounded the corner and passed out of sight. A deep breath to steady himself proved a mistake as the scent of perfume, desire, and sweat momentarily overwhelmed the pervasive chemical odor of the hospital.

He made it around the corner, down the hall, and had one hand up reaching for the candy striper before he realized what he’d done and caught himself. She turned from checking to make sure the supplies on her cart were in place and leapt straight back onto the cart. Before she could fall, Steve reached out and gripped her forearm. She had smooth skin with the faintly papery feel of too much antiseptic alcohol gel. A quick sniff told him the stuff had permeated her hands and arms.

The girl stared at him sniffing her arm. Steve grinned up at her before she could call the cops on him. "Hey, sorry about that. I thought I heard you trip. Guess I was just early."

Her lips parted in a timorous smile. Despite her fear, she wanted him. He could smell it. He shook his head and turned away.

"Glad I could help you, but I've got to go talk to Doctor Merilyn."

And see if she knows what the hell is wrong with me.

***

Drew stepped away from her car, thumbed the security system, and relaxed when it beeped reassuringly. Her old Dodge sedan had seen better days, most of them when it was a police interceptor, but since the rain of fire she'd been using it for work, since she still hadn’t officially come off suspension. The records had gone up in flames on the night of the rain of fire, but she and the captain both knew she shouldn't be working.

They also both knew he couldn't keep a lid on things without her, and that was that. For the better part of the last two weeks the entire department, those who hadn't been injured in the rain of fire, had worked like madmen to keep people from taking advantage and going on a looting spree. Drew felt certain the usual suspects would get barbaric the moment the department let up, but the captain overruled her this afternoon and sent her home. With her belayed suspension hanging over her head, she didn't dare argue.

She hadn't been home in two weeks, and she'd worn out both sets of spare clothes she kept at the station already. Her own sweat wafting up from her blouse stank. For no apparent reason the duffel on her shoulder reeked like old pennies and cinnamon. She needed to get showered, changed, and then head down to the laundromat before hell broke loose again.

Halfway to her building, a young man stepped out from behind a van, one hand hidden behind his back, ominous to her jaded eyes.

"Hey, chica, you got any..." He trailed off as he got a good look at her face. His whole attitude changed. Drew reminded herself to get a good look in a mirror soon. The station's rest room mirrors were so old she could barely see herself, and she didn't carry a mirror in her purse. She also wasn't carrying a gun since her department issue revolver remained locked up at the station.

"Hey, mamacita. Why don't you come with me, we go have some fun, ah-ight?" His hand drifted from concealment, the silhouette of a gun obvious to her trained eyes.

She stifled a sigh and forced a smile. "Sure. Can you carry my bag for me?" She swung the duffel down from her shoulder.

The thug puffed his chest out. "I don't do laundry, chica."

Drew yanked the laundry bag around, and the heavy, smelly weight caught the young man in the arm, knocking him sideways. Before he could recover, she stepped up to him. Without thinking about how, she grabbed, yanked, twisted, and looked down to where he lay clutching his hand and moaning.

"Yeah, right now I ought to drag you back to the station and lock you up for assaulting a police officer, but I need a shower something fierce." She put one toe against his butt and shoved, rolling him down the sidewalk a few feet further from her door. "I'll have to take this," she waggled his gun at him, "gun that I found lying on the street to the station. Right?"

The thug took the hint and scrambled off. He muttered imprecations in Spanish, but Drew couldn't be bothered to listen. She wanted a shower and some sleep. She stumbled up the steps to her apartment on autopilot, barely making sure the building doors locked behind her. When she finally stood safe in the dingy hole that passed for her living room, she stared stupidly at the messy remains of the bathroom for a full five minutes before she remembered how it got destroyed.

At least the shower still works.

She dropped the duffel, slipped out of her shoes, and stripped as she took the three steps to the bathroom door. By the time she made it to the bathroom, she was hopping on one foot, pulling her slacks off entirely. She tossed them onto the living room floor behind her, her final one-legged hop carrying her past the destroyed sink.

Where her foot landed in a patch of soapy residue from her battle with her bathroom.

She twisted, bounced her palms off the floor, and landed in a crouch, one foot on the edge of the tub, one hand braced against the wall.

This is freaky. Really, really, freaky.

Moving carefully, she stepped down into the tub and turned the shower on full blast. Hot water sluiced away days of grime, and the smell of copper and rust filled the room along with the steam. For a while she just leaned there under the pounding hot water, letting it wash away her tension with the dirt. When the banging pipes in the wall told her the hot water was close to done, she looked down into the tub for her soap.

Crimson water filled the tub calf deep from the slow drain. Shouting in alarm, she scrabbled through a self-check, trying to find the source of the bleeding. After a few minutes of slowly subsiding panic, she finally realized the source of the blood in the water.

The world ends, and my monthly visitor takes that as a signal to bring reinforcements.

She leaned over against the sink, peering into the medicine cabinet. She’d run out of tampons, too. Then again, with the color of the water, she couldn't be bleeding much more, unless Aunt Flo planned on killing her dead from blood loss. With a sigh she shut off the water, leaned over to grab a towel, and tiptoed out of the bathroom to avoid the remains of her bathroom mirror.

I must have been really messed up if I didn't clean before I left.

Toweling herself dry, she wandered over to the phone and called her gynecologist. After an eternity of ringing, a machine picked up and informed her the doctor would be out of the state for the duration of the 'meteor crisis', and anyone with an urgent medical condition should visit the emergency room.

"Who knew my plumbing doc was a prepper?" With a shrug, she hit her speed dial for Angela, tucked the phone under her shoulder, and went to her bedroom to get dressed. All her work clothes needed to be washed; she'd planned on going to the dry cleaners the day after the asteroid. She wouldn’t be wearing skirts until she hit a drug store; a check of her thigh showed she’d stopped bleeding, but she didn't want to leave anything to chance the way her luck had run lately.

Her bra didn't fit very well, but she wouldn’t take her shirt off outside, so she wore it anyway. In the back of her closet, she found an old pair of black denim jeans, leftovers from her senior year of high school. She tugged them up, a rueful grin twisting her mouth as they slid cleanly over her hips.

At least something good came out of this disaster. I finally lost that weight I gained in college.

A plain white tee shirt and a pair of sneakers finished her outfit. When Drew finished dressing, she frowned at the phone. Unnoticed while she was dressing, someone answered, but hadn't said anything. Instead, what sounded like a kid with her mouth full sang along to old cartoons.

"Hey! Angela! Pick up your phone!"

When no one answered, she hung up and headed for her car. Along with everything else, it looked like she would have to find Angela's stolen cell phone. Hopefully it was at the hospital, because that's where she headed after a quick stop at the drug store.

At least I don't have to call out of work if I'm sick. There are benefits to being officially suspended.