Taking a closer look.

-Panacea-

Suppressing a tired sigh I unlocked the hospital’s roof access -rather than having lunch at Arcadia’s cafeteria-, a little after noon. If only I had gone to eat with Vicky and her friends when the bell rang, but instead, on a whim I had made a brief detour to send a text to Saul. Regaining cell service outside the school’s builtin faraday cage, my phone gave me a notice for a dozen missed calls and a curt message that read, “found girl looked in filth meet mercy hospital rm435 ASAP”.

That- that was the last thing I wanted to see. School and my time with Saul (and Vicky) were the last bastions of relief between homelife, Vicky’s patrols and volunteering at hospitals. Using Saul as a willing guinea pig was one thing; there was no pressure or crushing expectations, it was even mildly liberating to see what I could do, but that didn’t mean I was willing to jump to his beck and call. I didn’t want to relinquish what little freedom I still had just to prevent accidental pregnancies if he forgot to sterilize his sperm or giving random women a genetic tune up!

But... he was my first and only true friend besides Vicky -and wow, wasn’t that a depressing thought- could I really afford to turn him away like that?

No, no I couldn’t, especially not when I was secretly exploiting our friendship myself. I was too far down the rabbit hole to turn back so easily. So, resigned to yet another trip to the hospital, I pulled Vicky away from her friends as she showed off her new necklace (which helped to lift my mood), asking them to explain our absence while Vicky gave me a lift.

Flying with Vicky’s arms cradling me protectively with my shoulder nestled delightfully against her perfect breasts helped to ease my doubts. I could have done without her teasing insinuations about how eager I was to see our mutual friend and sexual partner. Oh well, at least she had stopped trying to set me up on dates with random guys I had no interest in, so I put up with it.

Once inside, I immediately checked in with the on-call staff, signing in and settling in for an early round of treatments.

“Saul says he’s just finished giving a statement to the police.” Vicky said, busy typing away at her phone. “You go and do your thing Ames. I’m gonna go find the big lug and get the full story from him.” Already floating away on the trail of a fresh gossip-worthy scandal.

-Room 435-

The patient laying in bed was a tall bespeckled girl roughly my age, dressed in scrubs and spotted with blotches of topical salve. She seemed to be having having some sort of fit; eyes clenched as tightly as the bed rail she was gripping like a lifeline, helping to keep her steady her as she staggered, as if gravity had flipped around on her.

Photosensitivity and vertigo. ****? She wouldn’t have been the first kid I’d had to treat after Merchant scum forcefully addicted them to their products. Those were always the worst. Relapse was common and I would just apologize and say I couldn’t help, because lying was easier than people believing that I COULD…

“Excuse me. Can I help you?” Someone asked me with **** politeness.

Anxiously hovering by her bedside was a tall balding man, likely the girl’s father. The question baffled me slightly. Did he not recognize- Oh right!

“Sorry, I forgot that I wasn’t in uniform. My name is Amy Dallon, but you might also know me as Panacea, from New Wave.” I introduced myself, watching as dawning realization and honest surprise took away some of the tension in the man’s shoulders as he recognized my face. “A, friend, of mine called me this morning about an emergency? He didn’t give me many details but I understand that he gave a statement to the police.”

That seemed to throw him for a loop. “The Anderson boy? He asked you to help Taylor?” he asked absently. I nodded. “Yes. He,” a swallow, “He saved my little girl from those” a bubble of rage, “from those- those- “girls”.” He spat, clearly with another, more vulgar, word on his mind. “

Biting his tongue, I could feel the raw anger and frustration roil off of him as he struggled to contain himself, rather impressively.

Then the girl, Taylor, gave a pained whimper and his wrath was extinguished under a tide of concern.

I moved over to her side, my hand hovering above hers, I asked, “Do I have your permission to heal you?” for the millionth time.

She nodded and winced. “Yes, pleease.” I looked to her father and he gave me an pleading nod of his own.

Touching her hand, I felt my power wash in and back out of the bedridden girl’s body, mapping out every cell, chromosome and organic molecule contained therein with absolute clarity. Minor infections, venoms and the medications administered to fight them were broken down on a molecular level into innocuous sugars and proteins. Abrasions and blisters that littered her exposed skin had the damaged cells cannibalized by the surrounding tissue as fuel to divide into new healthy cells.

Drudgery I had done so many times I could practically do it in my sleep, it wasn’t like I was moving tissue to safely eject embedded shrapnel or regrowing a lost organ from scratch. Lucky for her, because inside I was privately reeling from what I was seeing clear as day inside of her head.

A Corona Pollentia and Gemma.

She was a parahuman. Likely having just triggered this morning if the amount of adrenaline and cortisol still in her bloodstream was any indication. I felt my earlier agitation with Saul soothe as I began to understand how harrowing their morning must have been for her parahuman abilities to manifest.

Her temporal and occipital lobes were bursting with activity, with irregular pulses in her piriform and gustatory cortices, indicating some form of enhanced senses; a Thinker most likely. Yet the corresponding nerves and organs weren’t sending the impulses so where was she-?

Then a mosquito landed on my nose and I KNEW. “Looking” through the tiny bloodsucker’s cellular structure, into its simple brain and “seeing” a synaptic echo of something far more complex than should be possible and a receptiveness more akin to the gestalt presence of a hive of ants or bees moving at the direction of the queen. Fascinated, I “watched” transfixed as it bit into my skin for a sip of blood in synch with a new impulse travelling from the girl’s Corona Gemma into her gustatory cortex.

Did she just taste my blood through the mosquito? How would that even translate between… Oh. No wonder she’s so disoriented, with however many inhuman perspectives equipped with compound eyes, infrared vision, a sense of smell that put dogs to shame, pheromones and an appetite for wood, to name a few oddities, broadcasting without censure.

She deserved, no, she needed to know what had happened to her! Even if the feedback wasn’t causing her such distress, she needed to get a hold of her abilities before she hurt someone. Oh sure, bug control might not sound all that impressive, but anaphylactic shock was no laughing matter! One bad reaction, one bee sting with the wrong person was all it took to tumble down the wrong path with no way back. Vicky herself had dangerously toed that line on several occasions, but she always had her to fix her messes in the past.-

‘Enabling her bad behavior.’ scolded my conscience.

-This girl would only have the one chance.

But do I have the right to reveal that to anyone else? Even her own father? Carroll never gave Vicky or I a choice in how we could use our powers. Would he do the same? Push her into the Wards and a life of heroics and public relations? Give her to the Empire for protection and money?

“Is something wrong?” Mr. Hebert asked me with a tremble of apprehension in his voice, breaking my trance of staring intently at his daughter. Oops.

“Ah, n-no! She just has a minor concussion,” I lied, “which I can’t do much about,” Another lie, “but she should be fine after a few days of bedrest.” That, at least, I hoped to be true. Thinker headaches were notoriously painful but the treatment and recovery should be the same. With a thought I scrambled roughly 2,000 fat cells together with a droplet of uric acid and rearranged the atoms into a milligram of beta-Endorphins, dulling her migraine without the dangers of opioids.

The man visibly sagged with relief. He looked ready to hug me in gratitude, but restrained himself to giving me a firm double-handed handshake (in the process confirming that he was almost definitely her father, with no Corona Gemma or Pollentia of his own) and a heartfelt declaration of gratitude before turning to kiss his calmer, if still disoriented, daughter on the forehead, earning an embarrassed groan of protest.

I meanwhile was searching for a way to handle all of this. I wanted to talk with her sooner rather than later but for the life of me I couldn’t think up a reason to get him out of the room without seeming suspicio-

"And what the fuck?!” Vicky’s voice echoed from the hallway, a little too loudly than was appropriate for a hospital. “I knew Winslow was bad with all the gangs and whatnot but that's fucked up. Seriously."

Huh, one convenient distraction incoming.