Instead, I find it thrilling.
***
A month after my first visit to Sins & Spirits, I begin noticing the changes. It begins small. A paper cut from a patient’s chart that should take days to heal is gone by the next morning. No scab, no scar, just smooth skin as though it never happened.
I chalk it up to being young and healthy.
Then I burn my hand on a hot pot of coffee at work. Second-degree burn, blistering, and painful. I wrap it, take some ibuprofen, and by the end of my shift, eight hours later, it’s healed.Completely.Not even red anymore.
That’s when I start to worry.
But it’s the blood that really freaks me out.
I’m drawing samples in the Emergency Room one night, the needle sliding into a patient’s vein, when I feel it. A warmth spreads up my arm from where my gloved hand steadies the patient’s elbow. Not physical warmth, it’s something else. Emotion bleeds through the barrier of skin and latex.
Fear. Pain. Desperation.
I jerk back, nearly dropping the vial.
“You okay?” the patient asks, an elderly woman with pneumonia.
“Fine. Just a cramped hand.” I finish the draw on autopilot, my mind racing.
It happens again the next day.
And the day after that.
Every time I touch blood, in vials, on gauze, soaking through bandages, I feel something.
Emotions.
Memories.
Echoes of the person it came from.
Am I losing my damn mind?
It’s the only explanation.
Stress-induced psychosis. Hallucinations brought on by too many trauma cases and not enough sleep. I’ve seen it happen to other nurses. The ones who work themselves into breakdowns because they can’t turn off empathy, can’t stop absorbing everyone else’s pain.
I’m not special.
I’m just cracking under pressure.
But why do my hands burn constantly? Heat coils beneath my skin, a contained blaze that never cools, banked and restless, always waiting for air.
Why do I wake up at three a.m. with my palms glowing faintly in the dark?
Why does it only get worse when I’m around Crave?
Six Days Later
Sins & Spirits seems to be my safe haven.
I’m back here again on a Friday night, and it’s my fourth visit this week. I’m sitting at the bar instead of Crave’s booth tonight. He’s in a meeting with some of his club members in the back room, and Eden is keeping me company, mixing drinks and making conversation that skirts a little too close to home for comfort.
“You’re becoming a regular,” she observes, her purple eyes glinting in the low light.
