Part 9: A moment of clarity

The doctors at the hospital told Molly to go home and sleep, but as she lay on her couch her eyes stayed open. For the first time since the ice blocks began, she’d seen exactly how someone was going to die, which should have made Irene’s death easy to prevent. Yet she felt as powerless as ever to stop it.

It wasn’t that Irene couldn’t survive a heart attack. As long as she got help in time, Irene could be up and walking within a few days. But that ice block Molly felt after her vision made her doubt help would come until it was too late. So Molly needed to change that somehow.

The biggest barrier to helping was not knowing when it would happen. It could be days from now for all she knew. Months. Years. Her jaw clenched. If it took that long, how would it even be possible to keep constant watch?

Molly imagined herself setting up a nanny cam in Irene’s office that allowed her to sound an alarm the moment Irene went down. She shook her head. Even if she could figure out how to hook it up and monitor it while working, sleeping, and otherwise living her life, explaining how she knew to send someone to Irene’s aid would lead to some very uncomfortable questions.

No, what she needed was more information. A date and time. If she could get that, then she could create a plan that would allow her to be there without doing anything sketchy.

She squeezed her eyes shut and replayed the vision of the heart attack in her mind, trying to remember all the blurry details. At the time, it had come as such a shock that she hadn’t tried to look around and gather information. But she could remember a few things.

Like the manila file on the floor in front of Irene. The file had lain open and the papers inside it had spilled out. What had they said? She vaguely remembered black ink on white paper, the hospital’s logo in the heading, the layout of a letter. Which meant there must have been a date there. But it had been too granular for her to process.

Her eyes had also flicked briefly to the clock on Irene’s wall. If she remembered correctly, the small hand had been near the eight, and the large hand around the four. That gave her an approximate time.

And then there had been the screaming in the hall. It had seemed too close to come from the grieving family member of a dead patient in trauma, and too frantic to be someone complaining about waiting for treatment. So probably a drunk or a drug addict in the hallway fighting with hospital personnel. Which made it more likely to be evening. She couldn’t say for sure, but mornings tended to be quiet. If someone came through with substances intoxicating their system, they were usually in the recovery stage by eight in the morning.

Blinking her eyes open, she sighed. That only got her so far. She needed to see the papers in the file once more. Or a calendar or phone. Somewhere in Irene’s office there had to be a date. So she needed to have a second vision. Ideally a longer one so she would have time to find what she needed.

Molly bit her lip. Could she trigger a second vision? She didn’t see any reason why not. The ice blocks and ice shards only came once, presumably, because the patient immediately died or lived. At the very least she should be able to trigger the same vision if a longer one wasn’t possible.

Now she just had to figure out how to trigger the vision. Another sigh escaped her lips. She’d never called up any of her abilities on demand before. They’d always just happened. And of course, she had to see the vision and figure out the date and time before Irene collapsed in her office. If it could happen years from now, it could also happen hours from now. She needed to figure all this out sooner rather than later, otherwise it might all be for naught.

Getting up off the couch, Molly paced the room and wracked her brain for a place to start. When the ice gathered in her chest, it was triggered by a dying patient. She didn’t have control over it, but the catalyst was clear. Something had to trigger the visions too.

She brought a hand to her mouth, going over the start of her visions again. Dancing with the man. Talking in the hospital bed with Irene. What had they both had in common?

At the edges of her gaze she found her answer. Her hand. She’d been touching both of them when the visions started. She pulled it away from her face and stared at it. That couldn’t be all of it, but it was a place to start.

Beyond that, she would have to experiment until she got another vision. She thought she knew the perfect way to do that, too. She just needed to go back to work.

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