Page 25 of Booked for Kidnapping

“Like you did with that woman at the rally.”

“Yeah. I was running that show, although that was due to having to keep several people alive at one time. I was in pretty deep and couldn’t do anything except work with the other victims.”

“While you were also a victim.”

I shrugged. “I gave my foot token treatment first. I can’t help them if I bleed out, but it was trivial to mitigate the bleeding and use some magic to route the blood where it needed to go. As far as injuries went, mine was the easiest to deal with. It took a few seconds to make sure I wouldn’t bleed out before I went to work making sure the others survived. Those few seconds could have cost that woman her life, though.”

“But it didn’t.”

“She was very, very lucky. I don’t know if this will comfort you or not, but Senator Maybelle didn’t suffer. She didn’t even have a chance to realize she’d been shot before she died. It’s not much, but it’s something.”

“I appreciate that. I’d been told as much, but it’s comforting to hear it from someone who was there. I can understand why she was assassinated.”

“I can’t.”

The senator’s chuckle, sad and bitter, drew my attention away from the traffic to him. He drove with a tight grip on the wheel, his gaze monitoring the streets. “That bill is a monstrosity.”

My mouth dropped open. “Then why support it?”

“Because I know what the alternative is.”

The idea there might be a worse alternative hadn’t really crossed my mind. “Is that why you wanted a dinner meeting? So you could tell someone about the alternative?”

“A librarian who put others over herself is the interest of all politicians right now, no matter which side of the aisle we’re on. Most of the more ethical of us are discussing charitable donations for your library, and there are more than a few planning on reaching out to make those plans into a reality. I’ve vocalized that intent, and there has been enough hearsay and general gossip to support a general feel you prefer quieter affairs. I wasn’t the only one planning such a venture, accommodating your injuries as necessary for a meeting. Everyone also knows I offered a gift of a trip to the bookstore. Knowledge is power in political circles, and I’ve been wielding that power for a long time. Nobody will think anything more of it than a genuine expression of gratitude. Curiosity as well, but at the heart of it, gratitude. You turned Samantha’s death into something more. In a way, she lives on in the woman you saved, and we all know that. Some of us were flabbergasted that the Maybelle family would protest the use of her blood, but we took steps on that front.”

My eyes widened. “I thought the campaign had done that.”

“Oh, they helped—but there were more than a few senators and representatives who made quite the fuss over Samantha’s legacy. Organ donation terrified her. She genuinely believed doctors would kill her for organs.”

I scowled. “I hate that ignorant belief so much. Doctors, nurses, and everyone in the medical field, makes an oath to save as many as they can. They don’t butcher people who could survive for their organs. The only real difference in organ donation cases is they keep the body alive for as long as humanely possible to allow for the donation, as there is a short window of opportunity upon the death of the donor. I can extend that window.” I’d done just that once, too, buying a child’s heart time for the donor to be prepped for surgery. “I can keep an organ alive for at least six to eight hours. I did it once for a heart of a child with a rare blood and genetic type. I also helped the body integrate the heart. That was hard.”

The little girl who’d received the heart had survived for far longer than expected, in part because of my work.

“I hadn’t heard about that.”

“Nobody has heard about it. I did the work anonymously. In some circumstances, I can also help control the risk of organ rejection during the donation, but I usually only do those when it’s happening because of a trauma situation and the victim got lucky.”

I wondered what had happened to that little girl, who wouldn’t have lived longer than six more months without that all-important heart. I also wondered what had happened to the others I’d help survive through their organ donations.

“But why? Why anonymously?”

“Because people hear what I am, and the first thing they experience is fear. Sometimes, if the victims or patients ask, I’m identified, but they often don’t ask. They assume the ER staff worked some form of miracle.”

“It takes a special person to do the work with none of the glory.”

“I have no use for glory, Senator. It doesn’t pay the bills, feed my cat, or cover the costs of my medical care. I don’t need someone to boost my ego. I know what I can do, I know what I’ve done, and that is enough. The only boost to my ego I need is the knowledge I made a difference. I can’t make a difference to everybody, but I made a difference to somebody. All I did was sit in an emergency room and wait for patients to arrive. And then I helped because I could.” If others did the same, I wondered how much the world would change.

Wishes wouldn’t do any good, and hoping for a brighter future accomplished nothing. If I wanted things to change, I needed to find a way to change them.

The how part of the equation continued to elude me.

“Many people say if they could help, they would, but when the time comes and they could, they don’t. This is something I have seen time and time again. People are willing to talk, but very few are willing to do. You didn’t talk, but you did. You didn’t have to talk, though. Everyone saw you as you are in a moment of truth. You saved lives for the world to see, doing so when any sane and reasonable person would have been more worried about saving their own life. I respect and admire that.”

While aware the senator’s assassination had been captured on video, I hadn’t put much thought into the ramifications of her death having been recorded—or that people were aware of my identity, magic, and role in the aftermath. I still didn’t understand how—or why—I’d been shot first. “How much of it was recorded? I haven’t watched,” I confessed.

“Someone caught your entire exchange with her, although the audio is patchy in sections.”

“Were the other victims caught on camera?”