new target. First, kill all the Israelis. Then, kill all the Jews. Then, kill all the gays, the Christians, the Hindus, the Buddhists, the gypsies and, eventually, even the gentler practitioners of their own religion. This was not a matter of dueling philosophies; to the Society for Humanity, this was all-out war.
Gradually, Susan became aware of more presences waiting patiently at the open door to her room. She glanced past her father to see Kendall Stevens standing at the entryway, the bare hint of a smile creeping onto his battered face despite two black eyes and multiple bruises. Beside him stood a middle-aged man Susan did not recognize.
Releasing Susan, John Calvin also turned to see the newcomers. “Ah, there you are. Did you get my signal?” He tipped his head toward the Vox on his wrist, and Susan remembered he had tapped a button when he first came to her bedside.
“I did.” Kendall stepped fully into the room, gesturing for the other man to follow him.
Susan sat up in her bed. She knew she must look a fright. Besides having survived an explosion, she had spent what seemed like a lifetime crying. Her eyes felt swollen and sore. “Hi, Kendall. Hi . . .” She paused. Now that he stood closer, the man at Kendall’s side did look familiar. “I’m sorry. I’m still a bit muddled. I can’t remember your name.”
“Ronnie,” the man inserted in a cheerful voice. “Ronnie Bogart.”
The name cued an image of his back, his body curled into a fetal position. Susan had injected Ronnie Bogart with nanorobots, but he little resembled the pitiful man who had come to her in desperation after seventeen suicide attempts. He seemed to have grown several inches, and he projected an aura of confidence wholly lacking the first time she had met him. His hair was still thinning, but now it was neatly combed and tended. “Ronnie Bogart?” Susan repeated incredulously. “You . . . you . . .” She did not know how to say it without sounding offensive. “You look wonderful!”
“I feel wonderful,” Ronnie said, sounding wonderful. “After the docs analyzed the data from the nanorobots, they found an unusual chemical imbalance. I started on my new meds, and voila!”
Susan could not help laughing. She turned her father a look that she hoped said,
John Calvin pursed his lips and nodded.
Ronnie continued. “And you know that fellow, Fontaina? The one always on the unit whenever I got admitted? I used to sit and talk to him for hours, like I would a dog. I mean, he never spoke, never moved. Great sounding board, right?”
Susan wanted to rush him to the punch line. “Don’t tell me he’s walking around.”
“Not yet,” Ronnie admitted, “but he’s sitting up and looking at people.”
“The issues the nanorobots found are a bit more complicated,” Kendall explained, clearly trying to maintain whatever confidentiality remained to Neal Fontaina. “And it’s only been a couple of days.”
“I can’t remember the last time I had this much energy.” Ronnie scooted back into a normal position. “I can’t remember if I ever before felt . . . happy.”
“Congratulations,” Susan said. The nanorobots might just turn out to be the miracle treatment they had hoped for, at least for some refractory patients. She tried not to wonder if they might have helped Sharicka or if the Ansons were celebrating or mourning the loss of this particular child. Knowing them, she suspected they cried as hard as for her as Susan did for Remington. They truly had loved her, even after mental illness had turned their special child into something horrific and monstrous.
The conversations seemed to have come to a natural conclusion. Kendall scuffed his feet. “So, when do you think you’ll be back at work?”
Susan looked at her father.
“The doctors say her wounds will heal in a couple of weeks.” John Calvin made no real attempt to answer the question. They all knew shock and grief had more to do with her return than physical injuries.
“Sooner than later,” Susan promised. She was not the type to wallow in sadness. She harbored no illusions she would handle the loss of Remington any better than her father had her mother’s death. He had gone back to work, though, remained competent at it, resumed a mostly normal life with just a few quirks to prove he had become a different man. She suspected she would prefer leaping back into her residency rather than filling her days with nothing but thoughts of her loss and attempting to distract herself with inane movies and television shows. “I’ll be back in time for our next rotation.”
Kendall bobbed his head. “Well, it’s not as if you left us a bunch of patients to clean up for you.” He brightened. “By the way, I’m discharging . . . the teenager you helped me break through to.” Confidentiality stopped him from speaking the name.
“Oh yeah?” Susan knew he meant Connor Marchik. No happy ending existed for the teen with refractory liver cancer; but, at least, he could spend his final months with friends and family in an environment more pleasant than the PIPU.
John Calvin took the hint. “You two look like you want to talk shop. Why don’t I walk Mr. Bogart back to the unit, if that’s okay with him?”
“I’m fine with that,” Ronnie answered. “It’s only a matter of days till discharge.”
As the other men left the room, Kendall’s smile faded. Even without the black eyes, the bruises, and abrasions, he would have looked more serious than she had ever seen him before. He paced the floor. Twice.
Barely recognizing him, Susan tried to break the silence. “So, what is our next rotation? The Violent Care Unit?”
Kendall resisted the joke, which surprised Susan in and of itself. “Outpatient psych,” he answered distractedly. His smile returned, but it seemed forced. “You’re already scheduled to see some old friends.”
“Diesel,” Susan guessed. “And Monterey. Maybe even Starling.”
“Yup.”
“And I imagine you’ll see Connor.”
“Almost certainly.” Kendall dodged her stare.
Susan could not stand it any longer. Clearly, he was not going to raise the issue that bothered him on his own. “What’s bugging you, Kendall? You look like a shark’s eating you from the feet up.”
“Susan?” Kendall attempted to look at her; then his gaze flitted away. “When I was up on the roof. With the gun. I had a perfect shot at . . . her.”
Susan blinked, trying to understand the implications of what Kendall had just revealed.
“I could have prevented the explosion, Susan. Remy would still be alive.” Kendall’s eyes blurred behind pools of salt water. “No one would have gotten hurt. Not you. Not anyone.”
Susan did not know how to feel. “Come here,” she commanded.
As if in a trance, Kendall moved to her side. An uncharacteristic stiffness to his gait betrayed his own injuries, ones that ought to keep him out of residency, too, for at least a week or two. Susan caught him into an embrace. “It’s not your fault, Kendall.” She spoke the truth the instant it came to her mind. “I couldn’t have pulled the trigger, either.”
“Remy could have. To save us. He —” Kendall choked on the words.
Susan did not know how he had intended to finish, so she used her own words. “He was a rare type of person. A true hero.” It occurred to her the word was thrown about too casually, applied to inappropriate things. She had heard parents call their children heroes for winning a difficult race, had heard newscasters refer to random survivors of catastrophes as heroes, had heard hero bandied about the hospital to apply to patients who did nothing more than survive a dangerous procedure or let a dying loved one go. Surely, those things took courage and fortitude, but she wondered when hero had lost its meaning, when it had ceased to refer to someone who risked or sacrificed his own life to save the lives of others. Susan thought she had cried out all her tears, but new ones stung her eyes.
Kendall clung.
“We can’t all be like that. If we were, it would take all the specialness, all the greatness from men and women like Remy.” Susan clutched him tightly. He felt warm and comfortable in her arms. She had never seen him confront vulnerability with anything other than humor, and she liked this strange and different side of him. She whispered, “I couldn’t have shot her, either.”
Kendall pulled away far enough to look at her.
Susan explained. “That was why I refused to take the gun. Even knowing what she was. Even knowing she
