Read The Trouble With Heroes.... for Free Online

mostly injuries. Disease is part of
nature, like death. I can't fix nature."
    He was angry. At the limits of his powers, or
at her?
    "I'll look at the baby," he said, "but I
doubt it's fixable." He turned and headed out of the room.
    Jenny followed, wincing. How arrogant to drag
him here as if she knew better than the hospital. She ached for
Polly, for Assam, and for Dan who must want to make their baby
healthy as much as she did.
    At the intensive care nursery he was given a
gray coverall and cap. She didn't want to face this, but she had
forced him here.
    She walked through the steriline into a
gently lit room where soft music played that was surely to the
rhythm of an adult human heart.
    It was so peaceful. Surely it couldn’t be a
place of death.
    Thank heavens Gaia accepted the latest
medical technology. Jenny counted four inhabited red incubators.
Two nurses moved between them, checking monitors.
    Dan paused at each incubator, then stopped at
one. He signaled a nurse and she hurried over. Jenny saw the sudden
light in the nurse's eyes, and tears pricked at her own. Dan had
found something he could fix. The name card, however, said
Smithers. It wasn't Polly's baby.
    She went over anyway, and saw a tiny baby
under a multicolored mesh. It’s chest labored, and it seemed gray
instead of pink. Dan pushed his hand through the membrane and
touched the child.
    The baby clutched Dan's finger as babies do,
but to Jenny it looked as if the mite recognized a lifeline. The
little chest still rose and fell, but less desperately, and the
fingers and toes began to turn pink. The mesh slowly retracted.
    "Heart." A nurse had come up beside Jenny.
"Valve. I was hoping it would be fixable when Dan came around. I'm
glad he's early. It's always special to see him work."
    "He comes every day?"
    "Or when we call. We wait if we can. He has
to have a life."
    Yes he did, and Jenny was ashamed that she
didn't know his real life at all. Some friend she was.
    He eased his finger out of the baby's clutch
then touched the round cheek, smiling a little. But the smile faded
as he moved on to the last incubator.
    "He won't be able to help there," the nurse
said, obviously surprised.
    Jenny trailed after to see the flaccid,
laboring baby. It already looked ancient and withered. Dan put his
hands on the shell and leaned there. Jenny tried to believe that he
was doing something, something miraculous, but she knew it was
simple grief.
    She wanted to say, "Sorry, sorry,
sorry...."
    He turned and walked out. She hurried
after.
    "Since I'm here I might as well do my rounds.
You'll want to be with Polly and Assam." It was dismissal, but he
added, "If they ask, tell them I'm sorry."
    Then he was gone, and Jenny fought tears, for
him as much as for the baby, as she worked her way out of the
hospital gear.

    ^^^^^^^^^^

    After that, things only got worse. On top of
the overcrowding and the blighters, Polly and Assam had been the
first of Jenny's friends to choose pregnancy and the disaster
appalled them all. Pregnancy was supposed to lead smoothly to a
beautiful, healthy baby. That's the way it was. The other babies in
the ICU had shown that problems happened, that perhaps disaster was
natural, but it felt all wrong on top of so many other all wrongs.
She couldn’t help thinking that it was blight, carried on the
wind.
    Polly and Assam didn't blame Dan, but they
avoided him. Jenny was tempted to tell them that he'd visited the
nursery, but would it make it better or worse? Two weeks after the
birth they decided to visit Assam’s family in Araby, even though it
was further south. The goodbye party was subdued. Dan attended, but
briefly.
    Jenny looked at him and thought his flame was
dying. Was it drowning by the blighters growing power? Or was he as
sick as she was of the bitter catch at the back of the throat, the
amorphic taste of ashes on the wind?
    Or was it simply the dead baby?
    She couldn't fight off strange thoughts about
that.
    Had Dan struggled for a