Blessed Assurance. That was what the hymn was called. Mildly satisfied with having put a name to it, Lily followed the nurse to the last cubicle on the right.
The small space held two men. The one in the bed was white, unshaven, and scrawny, with a potbelly and mouse-colored hair. His eyes had the yellow tinge of a failing liver. The one standing beside the bed was over six feet tall and gaunt, though muscle lingered on his wide shoulders. His skin was unusually dark, the kind that takes on a bluish tinge under fluorescent lights, and his hair was grizzled. He wore a faded flannel shirt and baggy gray pants. He, too, could have used a shave.
“This is Agent Yu,” Denise announced. “She’s with the FBI.”
“The FBI,” the man in the bed said in a marveling way. “Imagine that, Hardy. That pretty girl is with the FBI.”
The other man lowered his harmonica to look at her in delighted surprise, as if they were old friends but he hadn’t expected to run into her here. “‘I’ll be calling you . . . ooo,’” he sang. “‘You will answer true . . . ooo.’” His voice was deep and true, but rough. Maybe the beating that damaged his brain had included a blow to his voice box.
“It’s mostly songs with Hardy, see,” Denise said. “Sometimes rhymes, but songs are easiest for him. Music is stored differently in our brains than language, see? He makes himself understood pretty well. Right, Hardy?”
The broken man smiled at Denise with the sweetness usually reserved for very young children, then held out both hands to Lily, still smiling.
Lily didn’t pass up a chance to get a reading on people. She moved closer and learned that he probably lacked the chance to bathe often. She put her hand in his. Not a trace of magic. His dark eyes were filmed at the edges with cataracts. “You’re Mr. Hardy?”
He shook his head.
“He likes to be called Hardy,” the man on the bed put in helpfully. “No ‘mister.’”
Hardy nodded, but his smile faded. There was something odd about his eyes, the intent way he looked at her . . . suddenly uncomfortable, Lily thought about her third grade teacher and felt a pang of sympathy for the other nurse. Mrs. Hawkins had been kind of creepy, too.
Hardy frowned. “H-h-hard road, heavy load. You true, you blue.” He still held her hand in one of his, but reached up to pat her cheek with the other. He started humming—a pop song this time, one she knew, though the words eluded her. It wasn’t recent.
“Hey, Hardy, you aren’t the only one who wants to hold hands with the pretty girl,” the man in the bed said. The crooked smile he gave her might have been charming many years before, when he still had all his teeth. “I’m Festus Liddel, miss, and I guess you’ve come to see me.”
“I guess I have,” Lily said, disentangling her hand from Hardy’s. “And I’d be happy to shake your hand, too, Mr. Liddel.”
“Well, I got to go check on my patients,” Denise said, smiling at all of them, “but you come talk to me later, Agent Yu.”
Festus Liddel had dry, cracked skin, a deep scratch on the back of his hand, and he smelled worse than Hardy. A lot worse. He also had a trace of an empathic Gift. It was weak, but it was wide open. “How can you stand it here?” Lily exclaimed before she thought.
Liddel flinched. “What do you mean?”
Lily cursed herself for introducing the subject of her Gift—and his—so poorly. She must be more tired than she’d realized. “I apologize for giving away information you might not want revealed. I’m a touch sensitive, and—”
“Get away! Get away! I don’t have anything to do with magic!”
Liddel, it turned out, had been raised in a fundamentalist sect that hated magic even more than they did gay sex. It took time to find that out—time, and Hardy crooning country music lyrics about how he believed in love, music, magic, and you. By which he meant Yu, Lily supposed, since he put his hand on Lily’s shoulder when he sang that part. He seemed to want Liddel to relax and trust her.
Amazingly, it worked. Liddel did calm down and let Lily explain and apologize for speaking about his Gift. “I understand that many people don’t want others to know, and I deeply regret mentioning it out loud. I was concerned. A hospital is a miserable place for someone with . . .” She paused, hunting for a way of referring to empathy without using the word in front of Hardy so she wouldn’t give away even more than she already had. And realized Hardy wasn’t there. “Where did he go?”
Liddel shrugged. “Guess he was called elsewhere.”
Lily was used to noticing things. Her job depended on it; sometimes her life did, too. It bothered her that the big man had slipped out without her noticing. “You’ve known him a long time?”
“So they say. To me, I just met him tonight. Guess I must have met him after 1998. That’s what year it is for me.”
Startled, she said, “But you trust him. You seemed to be relying on him.”
“He’s a man of God, isn’t he? Doesn’t matter if he doesn’t have a church of his own. I’ve never been around anyone who felt like . . . like he’s true, all the way down, the way Hardy is.”
Lily had a sinking sensation. “Almost like a saint.”
“Well, the Brethren don’t hold with all that papist stuff, so that’s not a word I’d use. But I guess if you were Catholic, you’d call him a saint. You Catholic?”
“Ah—no. But the subject of saints has been on my mind recently. You seem very calm about losing a large part of your life, Mr. Liddel.”
“I was upset at first, but after Hardy reminded me how God has a plan for each of us. Besides, it looks like what I lost was the worst part.” He chuckled. “I probably wouldn’t remember much of those years anyway.”
EMPATHS are not all alcoholics, nor are all alcoholics empaths, but Liddel wasn’t the only person who started drinking to drown out an empathic Gift. Alcohol, Lily had been told, didn’t so much shut down empathy as numb the brain to it. Unfortunately, it required larger and larger doses to work. Lily wondered how many of the homeless were empaths who’d never developed the sort of unconscious block their more functional brethren did. Shields were the best solution, but most people didn’t have access to the kind of training that would let them learn how to shield. Besides, many low-level empaths didn’t realize they were Gifted. If you don’t know what the problem is, you don’t look for solutions in the right places.
Festus Liddel had passed out a fifty-some-year-old drunk. He’d come to with years missing from his life and a body ravaged by alcohol. And he was happy about it. The way he saw it, God was giving him a chance to do things differently. He’d have to detox—blood tests showed he still had a lot of alcohol in his system, which Lily supposed was why he wasn’t swamped by the pain and anxiety of the patients around him. Detox would be bad, he figured, but if he could get through that, he had a second chance.
Lily needed to talk to Liddel’s doctor. She needed to leave so she could check out the next report on her list. But after she asked the usual questions, looking for some connection to any of the others who’d been stricken, and getting the usual answer—he didn’t remember any of them—she talked to Liddel about his Gift. Detox was going to be extremely difficult for him. His Gift would awaken as the alcohol left his system, and he’d be around others experiencing the pain and confusion of detox. He had to tell his doctor about being an empath. She could put him in touch with people who could teach him how to shield, but he had to get sober first.