Blue Bloods

Long before Steve followed Angela through the ER doors, he caught the scent of metal in the air. Walking into the room, the smell overwhelmed him, and he stood there until the door thumped against his foot.

"There's something... Someone's bleeding in here."

"It's an ER, Steve."

"I mean bleeding out. This place smells like an abattoir."

Angela stopped, glanced over her shoulder at him, and conspicuously sniffed at the air. A frown flickered across her face, quickly replaced by a carefully controlled look friendly professional curiosity.

"Are you going to be okay?"

Steve pushed himself from the doorway, keeping upright by sheer force of will.

"I'll be fine. You need a minder."

She rolled her eyes. "Please, Steve. I've been working the ER for a while now without a babysitter."

"That was before you started summoning random crap, turning yourself even stupider, and... before your patients might include someone who can rip the doors off a truck."

"What are you going to do if someone comes at me with a truck door, Steve?"

He shrugged. "Get in the way, mostly."

"Yeah, that's what I thought."

She was such a pain in the ass sometimes, especially when she knew she wasn't going to get her way. "No, moron. I meant I'll get in their way until someone can sedate them, or call the cops or something."

She stopped in her tracks again. "Careful, Steve. Keep doing that we'll all think you're a hero or something."

"Yeah, yeah. I'll go molest some eighteen year olds later to keep your expectations low. Don't you have work to do?"

She started for the nurses' station again. Halfway across the floor she slowed, and Steve stepped up beside her. "Steve, can you tell where the iron smell is coming from?"

He shook his head. "I told you, it's everywhere. This place smells like a convention for women on the rag that ran out of deodorant and water."

"Thanks for the colorful description."

"Hey, I aim to please."

They reached the nurses' station, and Angela leaned on the counter, patiently waiting for one of the nurses to look up. Most of them frantically alternated between reading information off computer screens, scribbling notes on charts, and pulling bits of equipment and bottles of medicine out of a nearly empty supply cooler. Eventually the head nurse, a heavyset woman, looked up from her computer.

"Doctor Merilyn." Steve watched several choice words race across Mercy's lips before she finally ground out, "Thank god you're here."

"I'm sorry about my absence. I'm having a reaction to the meteorite dust."

Mercy paused in the act of handing a tablet to Angela. "Are you well enough to see to patients, doctor?"

Angela twisted her lips into what might charitably be called a smile. "I'll be fine. I've had some fainting spells. That's why Steve's here; if I fall over, he'll keep me from adding to your workload."

"Does he mind being pressed into service as an orderly?"

Steve shrugged. "I've done it before. I just don't want to get too far from her. She'll work until she drops. Literally."

Mercy stared at him, then at her, before nodding and handing over the tablet. "Over the past few hours, we've had eighty people coming into the ER complaining of fatigue. Those are the worst cases. Tell me what you notice about them."

The screen on the tablet flickered as Angela paged through the reports. At one point she sat there tapping her toe while the screen showed a 'loading' animation. The whole time Mercy frowned at her. When Angela handed her the tablet, the nurse exploded.

"I spent the past four hours putting those together, and you barely even looked at them!"

Angela blinked, shocked at the outburst. "I read them."

"Don't try lying to me. I was watching you the whole time. You didn't even look at most of..."

"Pick a file."

Mercy stopped, her mouth hanging open. "What are you talking about?"

"Pick a patient. Quiz me. Yeah, you were watching me. I read each and every one."

She stared at the nurse until she relented and tapped the tablet again. After a few screen flicks, she said, "Okay, doctor. Barrios."

"Susan or Miguel?"

Now it was Mercy's turn to blink. "Susan."

Angela closed her eyes and tilted her head back until her nose pointed at the ceiling. "Susan Barrios. Age fifty. Complaining of lethargy and blood in her urine. Temperature low, but nothing dangerous. Low blood pressure, pushing into dangerous levels. Blood tests indicate red blood count and glucose are within norms, but iron is dangerously low. Anemia due to low iron. Dietary consultation indicates patient has normal iron intake in her diet, she picked up the habit when she was pregnant thirty years ago and never stopped."

Mercy stared at the screen, her jaw hanging open. Half dazed, she muttered, "Her patient ID number?"

Angela rolled her eyes again. "One, four, four, six, nine, one."

"I'm sorry, doctor. I... I've never seen anyone read a patient's records that quickly." Half to herself, Mercy muttered, "and no one reads the ID numbers."

"I read everything you hand me. I noticed three things; over ninety percent of today's patients are here for fatigue, all of the patients complaining of loss of energy have low iron, and all of the patients here for injuries were due to accidents caused by metal fatigue."

Mercy's eyes shot wide at the last comment, and she started flicking through records, finally lighting on one and going through it in detail.

"How did you... Never mind. There's no single case we can't handle, even the injuries, but this is an epidemic."

"Have you started giving the patients iron supplements?"

"We did, but we've run out. The pharmacy says the big container they had open went bad, so we've been stuck with the smaller individually wrapped packages."

Angela froze, staring at the ceiling. "Wait... have you," she waved her hands, and Steve motioned for Mercy to wait. After a few moments of muttering too low for even Steve to pick out individual words, she looked straight at Steve. "Do you still have that crowbar you used to keep in the break room?"

He nodded. "Unless somebody moved it."

"Still in the same spot?"

"Yeah."

"You two wait here."

With that Angela darted through the ER waiting room, dodging around a few children playing while their parents waited. She disappeared through the break room curtain, emerging a few seconds later with his crowbar cradled under one arm. She darted back just as quickly, her lips moving in an endless mutter the entire time.

"Okay, you two. Steve, when did you get this?"

"Um... two years ago?"

"Right. Do me a favor and pry the nurses' station free of the floor?"

"What the..." Mercy started, but Angela lay a hand on her arm. The nurse looked at her, glanced at the file on her tablet, and subsided.

Steve walked over to the nurses' station, bent down, and jammed the flat end of the crowbar under the edge of the station. It went in with a curious crunch, like he'd hit a patch of wood infested with dry rot. He shoved down, seating the bar, and pulled up as hard as he could.

The bar snapped, the hooked end slamming into the bottom of his jaw. Teeth crunched, and blood filled his mouth. Before he could do anything, Angela pulled the bar away, brushing flecks of flaking metal out of the cut on the underside of his chin. He turned away, spat a mouthful of blood on the floor, and then pushed himself to his feet.

Angela held both parts of the bar in her hands. Fingerprints marred the curved end, and the flat end wasn't flat any more. "Look at this. Iron, just like all the failed metal parts. Just like hemoglobin." She stared at the ceiling again. "Something's destroying anything made of iron."

Mercy interrupted her musing. "No it's not."

"What do you mean?"

"Our syringes. The needles are steel. That's made of iron. We haven't had any fail."

"Have you used any... wait, no, stupid question. You took blood samples, of course you used them. Iron is messed up, but not steel? No, the car frame that put Mr. Saxon in traction must have been steel, they don't make them out of pot metal."

"Might have been aluminum."

"SUV."

"Make?"

"GM."

"Okay, steel then."

"Thank you, Steven. I appreciate you confirming things I already know."

"No problem, bitch queen. I love verbal abuse when I'm trying to help."

Angela shook her head, frowning. "Damn. You're right. I'm sorry, it's just... I'm so close. I think I can..." She turned to Mercy. "You haven't re-used any needles, have you?"

The nurse shot her a look of absolute, disgusted horror, "What do you think we are, an ER or a crack house? Of course we don't re-use needles."

"Weren't we low before I went under?"

"Yeah, but we found another case just after you passed out."

Angela cocked her head, "Are you sure? I scoured everyplace I could think of. Where did you find them?"

Mercy shrugged at her. "Under one of the seats in the waiting room, actually. The shipping labels were all in Spanish. I asked the patients if anyone had seen who left them, but no one knew. I figured either one of our delivery guys dropped them there or somebody decided to leave us a bit of charity."

Angela's jaw dropped open, and she stared at the wall. "You thought they were safe to use why?"

"We checked, no one had tampered with the safety seals. I still didn't let anyone use them until we'd run out of everything else, but..." She shrugged again. "Our vendors haven't shipped us any in weeks. I guess they're having staffing problems, what with the Rain."

Angela's gaze shot back to Mercy, pinning her in place. "No. They're having material problems. I'll bet every one of their shipments of steel is as messed up as this." She waved the crowbar around, and Mercy backed away. "The packaging, Mercy. You're a genius!"

Mercy blinked, obviously confused by Angela's rapid fire mood changes. Steve just stared. He'd seen Angela like this before, back in med school. She wasn't mood swinging, she was reacting to the stuff running through her head, and she usually didn't share it because her mouth couldn't keep up with her brain. He'd never seen her flopping around this fast before, though. She took a step toward the waiting room, stumbled, and he moved in to catch her. Before he could, she straightened.

"The dust! Holy crap, the dust! It's the only thing that's changed. The dust is doing something to anything made of iron. It's given everyone anemia, except a few of us, who..."

"A few of you who what?" asked Mercy.

"A few of us who are having a reaction to the dust. It's... some kind of a syndrome comorbid with the anemia. Do we have enough syringes to get samples from all of the staff?"

"Normally we would, but... Actually, most of the staff are gone too. We might, but..." Mercy stopped herself in mid-sentence. "You're right. We need to make sure none of the staff are about to pass out. Is that what happened to you?"

"Something similar. Get samples from everyone as soon as you can. If anyone displays obvious visual discrepancies in their samples, set them aside and get them to me as soon as you can."

"What kind of 'visual discrepancies'?"

"Trust me, you won't believe me until you see it, and you won't miss it if you do."

Mercy shrugged and turned toward the ER waiting room. "I'll make sure everyone gets back to work, as well. Let me know when you've got something more for us, okay?"

"Sure. Send a candy striper out to scour the local drug stores for individually wrapped iron supplements."

"Why?"

"We're going to need them, and anything not individually wrapped is going to go bad before we use it."

"Okay."

"Steve, what happened to that meteorite. The one that hit the hospital?"

He searched his memory, not for what happened, but for the name of the guy involved. "A fed picked them up. FEMA guy. Named Johnson. Not sure what they did with it."

She just shook her head once, then tilted it back, closed her eyes, and started muttering. Steve leaned back against the wall and watched as Angela shifted into high gear. Her lips moved, but no words came out. From the ones he lip read every now and then, she wasn't saying everything she thought, just the highlights. Mercy had forgotten him, and Angela didn't need him, so he leaned over to the nearest container of wet wipes, pulled out a few, and cleaned off his chin.

He still had his hands full of damp disposable cloth when four words focused every bit of his attention on Angela.

"I wish I had," he almost dove for cover before he heard the rest of her sentence, "one of those meteorites, an undamaged one."

The entire room wobbled. Steve wanted to run, but Angela stood right next to the center of the wobble. "Dammit, moron!"

He leapt, catching her waist with his shoulder and carrying them both through the doorway into the waiting room. They rolled, and he twisted to come up on top, rising to his feet before Angela stopped moving. A single clap of thunder filled the air, followed by a thump and the crackle of ice.

Steve jumped back through the swinging door. Steam rose from a medicine ball made of rock sitting in the middle of the floor. Steam so cold it misted his breath. When the mist from his breath hit the rock, it crackled. Lists of accelerants and ignition points, all memorized years ago, raced through Steve's head. He leapt for the nurses' station, grabbed the two wheeled chairs, and shoved them toward the waiting room doors. The nurses seated in the chairs squawked, and Angela shouted when the nurses burst through the swinging doors into her face.

Steve didn't have time to deal with that. He yanked open the supply cooler and slammed one hand up through the shelves, knocking them all out of place. Bottles flew as he pulled the shelves out of the cooler, tossing them on the floor out of the way. He swept the last few bottles out and dove for the crackling meteorite.

Fierce flames burst out from the edges of his palms when he picked it up. He didn't have time for that, either. He raced back to the cooler, shoved the door shut, and spun the controls to the lowest temperature the machine could produce. Bits of skin stuck to the handles, and his hands screamed at him, but he still didn't have time. Careful not to dislodge the plug, he spun the cooler so the glass door faced the wall, shoved it tight, and leaned against the back of the thing.

His hands insisted. He gave up looking for something heavy to brace the cooler and huddled around them instead, never letting up on the pressure where he leaned against the mini-fridge. Angela found him that way when she finally made it back to the nurse's station. By then he was lost in the exquisite agony of years of healing burns all happening over the course of a few minutes.

"Steve? What the hell's going on?"

"You wished for a meteorite. Dumb bitch."

He had the satisfaction of watching as her eyes went wide. Of course, the next moment she forgot her surprise as intellectual greed overwhelmed her.

"Where is it?"

"Cooler. Don't!"

She froze, both hands gripping the door. He wasn't sure she could pull it away from the wall with him leaning on it, but if Mega-Moppet showed up, she could probably throw him across the room trying.

"Why?"

"Because it's coated in accelerant. Lithium or sodium based, I'm guessing. Not too damn sure. Low ignition point. Explodes when exposed to water."

"So I'll try not to drool on it."

"Or water vapor. Moron."

She stopped again. When she looked at him this time, she focused on his hands. "Or sweat?"

"Yeah."

Gently, yet with irresistible insistence, she took his hands, turned them over, and stretched them out. They burned as she worked each joint, brushing away flaking ash as she did. After a minute or so she started talking, all the while looking at his hands.

"The ones during the rain of fire burned their accelerant off setting themselves on fire, didn't they?"

"Don't know. Didn't see those. Something about a helicopter blade. Good guess though."

"That thing would have set the ER on fire, wouldn't it?"

"Probably."

"And now?"

"Too cold. Ice shouldn't react with it. Not too much frost in this thing, anyhow."

She looked around her feet at the mess of crushed bottles, mangled shelves, and wasted medicine. After a while she finally met his gaze.

"God, Steve. How did you know what to do?"

"It was on fire. That's kinda my thing."

She snorted, holding back laughter by the slimmest of margins. "And the medicine on the floor?"

He shrugged. "There's a fire, I'm not playing janitor at the moment. Besides, medicine's kinda your thing."

She burst into laughter, stopping Mercy's incoming wrath the moment the head nurse walked through the doors. When she had control of herself, she punched him square on the shoulder. After the burns, the breaks, and a blade through his chest, her punch wasn't worth mentioning. Apparently Mega-Moppet wasn't in the building.

"Steve, you are a complete and utter ass hat."

He nodded. "Yep. Guilty as charged."

She rested the same hand she'd hit him with on his shoulder. "Promise me you'll never change."