Touch: Saving Ai | ✓

8

One vision. One death. If the death I'd seen in the vision was prevented, then I got a new premonition instead.  That was how things were supposed to work. That was how they always had.

I sat in the hallway outside the emergency surgery room – on the floor rather than on a chair. Part of it was because I was curled into a ball with knees against my chest, covering my head with my hands to separate myself from the world and it would have been rude to sit this way on a chair. The other was because I felt like I didn't deserve to be comfortable while I waited for a doctor to tell me that Ryo's surgery was complete.

He was going to live, I knew that already; his fate had changed from bleeding out in the alley to dying from lung cancer again the moment the paramedics had arrived. What I didn't understand was why.

A familiar voice broke through my brooding. 'Evelyn?'

I looked up and the craggy, shaven face of a forty-something, blond Caucasian man in a police uniform was staring back at me. His green eyes were disgustingly full of pity – a look I'd fortunately never seen on his daughter's face.

Trust him to be the one to be assigned to this case.

Swallowing my apprehension, I returned the greeting. 'Hello, Mr Leganne.'

'Senior Constable Leganne,' interjected another voice.

Behind Gwen's father stood a much younger, uniformed woman of what I guessed was Middle Eastern descent. Her lips were pursed and every strand of her dark hair had been pulled back against her skull into an immaculately tight bun beneath her cap.

Mr Leganne's look of pity immediately dissolved into one of annoyance. Ignore her, said his face.

'New partner?' I asked him.

'Just for the week. She's –'

'Constable Edri,' said the woman.

' – just finished the academy.'

The two of them exchanged glances – his cynical, hers embarrassed. Clearly, they weren't on the same page.

Mr Leganne cleared his throat and continued, 'The paramedics checked you out, right?'

'Yeah. Banged up a bit but it'll all go away in a week or so.' Which was far better than what I deserved. 'They said I was fine to leave but...' I glanced at the light above the operating room's door.

'And that?' He gestured to my cast.

Of course he'd notice. 'That's from something else.'

'Something else?'

Guess that meant he hadn't heard about the train incident from Gwen. 'I fell on my way home from school.'

He raised an eyebrow but didn't enquire any further. 'Well, if you're feeling up to it, Evelyn, then we – '

'We would like to ask you some questions about the events that occurred tonight.' Seemingly sick of standing on the sideline, Edri jumped right back into the conversation with a notebook and pen in hand. Without waiting for an answer, she pulled out some polaroids. Grabbing the first one on the pile, she waved it in front of my face. 'Did you see this person at all tonight?'

A slightly grainy image of a boy slightly older than myself stared back at me. Blue eyes. Dark hair. Black hoodie. He looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn't quite place where I'd seen him before. The picture had been taken on an angle, through a crowd, but his gaze was aimed directly down the barrel of the camera, as if he had known it had been pointed at him. And if I wasn't mistaken... the corner of his mouth was tugged up into a smile.