The Blind Diviner

Cosima hadn’t remembered getting to where she was currently sitting, against a wall on the floor halfway across her shop. She looked around, groggily stretching her legs out in front of her. Taking her phone out of her pocket, looking at the time. It was half past four and she saw nothing moved from its place. She knew she had dozed off accidentally but she was not awake to moved to where she was. Neither her baton or taser were next to her and she moved get up to retrieve them.

With a large resounding sound of the Earth moving below her feet, her shop shook and then boom. She was blown back against the wall, shards of glass showering over her crumpled position. Her vision was hazy and she struggled to see the fire clearly, engulfing everything opposite of her. She scrambled for her phone, calling 911. The line rang once before an operator picked up.

“911, what’s your emergency?” The operator’s voice was cool and pleasant, like they probably were trained to sound.

“Fire,” Cosima coughed. “There was an explosion in my shop.”

“I’m dispatching help to your location. What is your name?” Cosima sat up to answer, trying to get to her feet to get the hell out of there.

She was thrown back again with another explosion, this one was small and more contained. Chunk and splinters of wood pelted against her. Her phone was lost from her hands and she searched the ground for it. Her position froze when she her little pings of sounds and then an object implanting itself right above her head. She looked up to and saw a broken stool leg sticking out from the wall. A hand brushed against only briefly before a force was holding her back against the wall. She tried to move but couldn't. She struggled, her feet grappling against the floor.

Smoke wafted in front of her face. Her shop windows had been blown out luckily but each inhale made her head more heavy. A force moved from her torso and back to her neck and head. Her eyes could only widen with fear as she screamed for help. The force trickled down her arms and she struggled against it. Her arms stretched out with all the width they would manage. Her fingers and palms spread wide. She was still and filled with fear, her head searching for the source. She lost her voice, her screams for help cutoff with a shriek of pain. Glass pierced through her hands, holding them to the wall. Tears filled her eyes, having to suffer in silence. Other shards of glass stabbed through her forearms and then her shoulders.

She watched her blood run down the wall and the fire tickle the bottom of her shoes. She moved her feet away and her voice returned with the force let go of her arms, their weight being supported momentarily by what was keeping them up. She wept as her legs were forced down, the rubber soles starting to melt from the heat. Everything was getting dark when she saw the lights arrive outside, the trucks screeching to a stop. Her feet were getting hot and wanted more than anything to recoil away from the heat of the fire.

She put everything into letting them know where she was but was put out of it when her throat became constricted and all her breath escaped her lungs. Her face shook as she tried her damnedest to get a whiff of air but the burn in her chest spread and the instinct to breath was unbearable. She was fading when she heard a low, violent, and disturbingly blood thirsty voice in her head that held the same octave as her own. ‘This is your only warning.’ After the warning disappeared, so did her consciousness.

Reed was awoken with his cell phone going off or the second time. Turning over in his bed, he answered his phone barely awake. “What?”

“We need you at St. Ann’s hospital immediately.” His sergeant seemed winded as the order had Reed climbing from under his covers to get dressed.

“Me specifically or because Bronson isn’t answering his phone again?” Reed hopped on one leg as he tried to get his pants on.

“Because of a case that I told you to close. With Cosima Hearst, Reed.” He paused at the mention of her, tugging a shirt on.

“What about her?” Reed had a vision of her being found dead or injured, why else would he be called to the hospital?

“She’s fighting for her life, and if she makes it out alive, you need to be there to get her statement.” Reed heard other voices in the background. “I’ll fill you in on the details when you get here.”

The line went dead and he blew out a strained breath. He never liked this part of the job, seeing a person you talked to be reduced down to a mess of injuries or even a corpse. He would wonder what he could’ve of done differently but this time he knew what he had done wrong, he hadn’t listened.

He jumped in his car, flipping the patrol lights on as he sped to the hospital in a heavy downpour. It didn’t make sense to him. A few petty break in’s going from moving items around to escalate to possible arson and an attempt on her life? Reed didn’t halfass his job, no matter how ridiculous things could have seemed. This case was dead from the beginning. There was nothing to go off of and no witnesses. The only thing was Cosima’s word and who know’s what she would have to say if she woke up.

He parked illegally, showing his badge to a security guard as he loped through the automatic doors. He stopped at the help desk to get her room number, saying he was with the police. Cosima’s room was in the ICU, towards the back of the hall. He saw his sergeant talking to a nurse and a few police officers hanging around the hall.

“What’s the word?” Reed asked as he looked around to see if she was in any of the rooms.

Sergeant Scads caught Reed by the shoulder, leading him through some double doors. “We have the fire department looking for signs of arson as we speak. So far, we don’t have much of anything to go off of. The operator she called said that the line went dead after she heard the explosion. The first respondents said that she was unconscious when they found her.”

“Alright.” Reed jotted some stuff down for notes to keep going off of.

“But,” Scads started up again, looking through the glass on the doors, “I’ve emailed a friend over at OVW to take a look at what we find. What was done to her, it seemed retaliatory or maybe to signify something. I need you to ask to see if anyone has been following her, see any common denominators. For now though, I want you stay around. I’m going to go to the scene, see what I can gather.”

“Why am I not going? This is my case,” he defended, wanting to see her shop for himself.

“Not anymore. I’m taking the lead on this.” Reed scoffed, running a hand through his damp hair. “It’s nothing against you, Hunter. I just want this to be at the top, it isn’t a case of crying wolf anymore like we had thought. And now as head of this division, I feel a responsibility to this woman to get her case under a microscope to see what was overlooked.”

Scads patted him on the back before he left him back through the double doors. Reed looked after him furiously, but mostly at himself. He knew not to blame things on himself, to keep a distance from getting involved with cases beyond what he was required. He had missed something though and he felt like this was on him, that she’d be asleep in her bed right now if he had caught whoever had done this.

He composed his anger before going back through the doors. He was stopped to sign in before entering her room. He quietly opened the shut door, leaning into it as it shut behind him. He looked at her lying unconscious, the monitor beating evenly. Reed went to her bedside to get a look and saw scratches on her face and fingers. Her neck, arms, and legs were wrapped tightly with gauze. She was so lifeless looking compared to the intrusive and honestly intimidating woman he disliked most if not all of the time. He didn’t let himself feel guilty though over not liking her. How she was before was how she was, it was that simple. Pity would be the motivator to correct his feelings but he remembered what she had rubbed his face in, those memories he won’t let himself think about.

He went and looked at her hospital file at the end of the bed, looking through the pages of medical blurb that was beyond his knowledge. Reed left the room, going down the hall to the nurse’s station.

“How may I help you?” A nurse looked up from under glasses as she typed away on the computer in front of her.

“I’ll need copies of all the hospital notes and files on Cosima Hearst. I also want to get statements from the doctor’s and nurse’s who attended to her so far tonight.” She complied willingly, which was a relief to Reed who had gotten into one to many arguments with nurses or doctors with attitudes. That could still happen though when he went for statements.

He drummed his fingers against the desk as he heard a copier whirring to life. An alarm went off down the hall and he saw an officer coming from Cosima’s room pale and panicking. Reed left the nurse’s station in a sprint, hearing a voice overhead repeating ‘code blue’.

Reed was pushed aside by a nurse and a crash cart being rolled into the room. He entered behind them, watching with wide eyes as they tried to charge Cosima’s limp body to life. Her monitor paused but continued to deadline. A nurse came in but halted to a stop when she saw Reed peering with baited breath.

“You can’t be in here!” Reed was tugged into motion and shoved out of the room, the door slamming behind him.

He fought the impulse to charge back in there but he cooled himself off with the thought that his temper was not more important than the efforts to get Cosima’s heart going again. Instead, he focused on the officer that had been in his room.

“What the fuck happened?” He demanded and the still pale officer looked like a rookie to him.

“I-I don’t know!” His voice shook as he just denied not knowing what happened again. “You had left the door open and I went to shut it when I heard her gasp and I thought she was awake so I went in closer to see and then she just started to seizure and I--god she was gasping for breath.”

Reed watched the young officer lose his wits about him. It was probably the first time he had seen something like that, someone seize. It was disarming to see, that was for sure. He heard the alarm stop and expected the door to open but it didn’t and not for minutes. When it did, a nurse rolled out the crash cart, the doctor following behind her.

“Is she alive? What happened?” Reed cornered the doctor as he sanitized his hands.

“She was in cardiac arrest, we don’t know why she started to seize though or if that was even what could have caused her to go into that event. We have her under sedation though for now and intubated her. She’s touch and go, expect it to be a long night.”

The doctor got away from him before he could ask anymore questions. Reed took a seat in one of the chairs throughout the hallway, letting his head relax into his hands. How had this all been shot to hell so quickly? Nothing had escalated in front of him so quickly and Reed was wary to admit that it scared him. For the next few hours, through the statements and paperwork, one question plagued his mind. What the hell happened to Cosima?