His voice started to change back as he spoke, the words rasping and flexing like a rusty saw. But when Lauryn tried to go to him, the man with the sword beat her to it, stepping in front of Lenny as he reached into his coat yet again to pull out—not a sword this time, but a plastic bottle of water, which he proceeded to upend over Lenny’s bowed head.
“What are you—”
“You are cleansed,” he said, his voice taking on a chanting tone. “‘He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain.’ With this, you are washed clean, Lenny. Be at peace all the days of your life.”
The words lingered like fading lights in the dark, and then Lenny toppled to the ground. He changed as he went, his transformed body crumbling like ash that scattered when he hit the pavement. When it was over, Lenny was all that remained, lying still as a corpse on the pavement.
Lauryn was at his side a heartbeat later, shoving her fingers under his torn shirt collar to check his pulse. Her own heart leaped for joy when she felt it fluttering, faint but clear. She was rolling him onto his back to take the pressure off his airways when the stranger sheathed his sword and knelt down beside her.
“Are you hurt?”
“No,” Lauryn said, but only out of habit. Between her bruised ribs and the scrapes on her hands from the struggle on the pavement, she was actually pretty roughed up, but it was nothing life-threatening. Lenny was in a far more precarious situation. Though the most extreme changes seemed to have faded, his eyes were still blind with blood, and his face remained the color of old ash. She still had no idea what was going on, but an injured man she could handle, and after all the chaos, Lauryn was determined to make this one thing right at least.
“I can save him,” she said firmly. “I’m a doctor.”
“So I gathered,” the stranger replied, looking at her like he was seeing Lauryn for the first time. “He listened to you.”
“Of course he did,” she said smugly, turning her attention back to Lenny. “He’s my patient.”
“That’s not what I meant,” the man said as he slid the water bottle back into his coat. Which reminded her.
“What did you do back there?” Lauryn asked, glancing pointedly at the water bottle. “What is that stuff?” When he didn’t answer immediately, she added, “You were quoting Revelations, right?”
The man nodded, looking impressed she’d recognized the passage, but didn’t explain. He was too busy staring at her hands, which she’d just moved to Lenny’s abdomen. “What’s that?”
“I’m palpating his organs to check for internal bleeding,” she explained as she began to press her fingers into the soft flesh below the old man’s ribcage. “His pallor’s anemic, but there’s no visible blood loss, so I’m feeling around to see if I can—hey!”
The man had grabbed her wrists, turning her hands palms up. “What’s that?” he asked again, nodding at a long discolored mark across the fingers of her right hand that stood out clearly from the rest of her minor scrapes and bruises.
Lauryn frowned, unsure. Then she remembered. “Oh, that’s from when I first arrived. I touched Lenny to try and wake him up, but he had this glop on him that burned my…”
She trailed off, frustrated. Halfway through her story, the man had stopped listening. He grabbed his bottle of water again and yanked off the cap, upending what was left over Lauryn’s fingers.
“Hey!” she cried. “What are you—OW!”
She tried to jerk away, but he held her fast, which was a problem because whatever he was pouring over her hands, it wasn’t water. The clear liquid had no scent, but it burned like fire everywhere it fell, making her gasp in pain.
“Stop!”
“No,” the man replied calmly, gripping her squirming fingers. “That burn is dangerous. You need to be cleansed. Remember what was written—‘I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean.’”
Lauryn bared her teeth at him. “You’re using Ezekiel as an excuse for burning my damn hands?”
“Language,” the man chided, though once again, he looked impressed. “You know your scripture,” he said as he released her.
Hazard of being a preacher’s daughter, Lauryn thought bitterly, clutching her fingers, which were now burned and blistered. “And you don’t know what ‘stop’ means—that was assault!”
“No, it was necessary,” the man replied in that infuriatingly calm way of his, placing the now empty bottle back inside his coat once more. “If my hunch is correct, the stuff you touched is the same substance that caused Lenny’s troubles. Not the sort of thing you want on your skin.”
Lauryn went silent, her anger forgotten. In hindsight, it was obvious, but in the panic and chaos of the fight, she hadn’t had much chance to consider that the strange green slime on Lenny’s coat might have caused whatever had just happened to him. Now that the stranger had pointed it out, though, Lauryn couldn’t dismiss the worry that the stuff might also have gotten to her. After all, she had been the one who’d seen Lenny double in size and grow claws. Two observations she would have dismissed as hallucinations if she’d heard them from one of her patients.
That was a thought that could bring you down fast, and Lauryn closed her eyes with a shaky breath. But terrifying as it was to realize she might have come in contact with some kind of mind-altering psychotropic, now was not the time to panic. She still had a patient to take care of, and it wasn’t like she was alone in her delusion. The man with the sword had seen it, too. He could help her figure out what was real and what wasn’t.
And then we can all panic.
The thought was ridiculous enough to help her focus. But the idea of the man helping her wasn’t. He was her proof that this craziness wasn’t just, well, craziness. But when Lauryn opened her eyes again to tell the stranger that she’d need him to stick around for a statement, she discovered she was alone by Lenny’s side.
Lauryn shot to her feet, turning in a confused circle, but the dark alley was empty.
There’d been no footsteps, no noise at all, and now there was no strange man with a sword, either. Her dropped cell phone, however, was sitting right in front of her, the screen displaying a text from emergency services saying they’d be right there. Sure enough, sirens were already blaring in the distance. Half a minute later, an ambulance screeched to a halt in front of the alley entrance, the flashing red lights filling the alley with chaotic motion as Lenny woke up screaming.
2
Physician, Heal Thyself
Ye will surely say unto me this proverb, “Physician, heal thyself.”
By the time they got Lenny loaded into the ambulance, Lauryn was more worried than ever.
He had woken up screaming when the ambulance arrived, having clearly slipped further into his delusions, yelling about flying castles and demons and armies of monsters pouring out of the sky. This would have been creepy under any circumstances, but everything was made infinitely worse by the wounds to his corneas, which caused him to weep blood. Given the extent of the damage, Lauryn wasn’t sure his eyes would recover, and there was still the matter of the strange necrotic discoloration that covered his skin, particularly his face, neck, and hands. At this point, the best she could say was that at least Lenny wasn’t violent anymore, though she didn’t have much hope as the paramedics lashed him to the gurney in the back of the ambulance.