My Kind of Town
Touched by an angel
>> Honolulu Iron Works
Lt. Col. Chuck Ryan was about to become a grandpa, but his job required him to be strong and fit, and Ryan took his job very seriously. But he would be glad when these two young women, Lily and Shauny, finished their workouts.Ryan had already completed his regular workout half an hour ago just as Lily showed up steaming mad at something, and Ryan had joked with her, gotten her to smile, and then Shauny showed up.
Ryan was hanging around, doing one more light circuit, not just because Lily and Shauny were fun to look at, but because they kept making little jokes about getting drunk for lunch. Ryan was looking for some companionship. And in his line of work, he was always recruiting.
Ryan felt a presence behind him before he saw her. He was doing one more sets of curls, focusing on technique because he was tired and that's when it's easy to injure yourself with bad form, when the air-conditioned room suddenly felt warm. And then Ryan saw her in the full-wall mirror, another tall, beautiful Asian woman dressed all in white, with a bearing so serene, so pure, she seemed angelic.
"Hi, Fawn!" Lily called.
Ryan finished the set, placed the 25-pound dumbbells back on the rack, and tried not to stare as he toweled his forehead. And it wasn't until Shauny called "Hi, Sis!" that Ryan realized Shauny and Fawn were identical twins.
Until that moment Ryan never believed in auras. But how else to explain identical twins who are so obviously different? And how could a young woman, young enough to be his daughter, make Ryan instantly want to take her in his arms and love her and protect her and never let go? And how could he at the same moment see her as a potential recruit?
>> Queen's Medical Center
ER physician Dr. Laurie Tang had been so focused on removing the shattered glass fragments from the face of the female patient who had driven Sen. Donovan Matsuda-Yee-Dela Cruz-Bishop-Kamaka's car off the Keeaumoku Overpass that she hadn't even noticed the frenetic activity outside of ER Bay 1 -- the result of a 50-car pileup on the H-1.Dr. Tang was about to ask ER boss Susan Orr where she was needed most when they heard another siren. This patient, Lance Ah Sun, would be their most critical of the day. He had suffered a traumatic blow to the back of the head during the hate crimes bill rally at the Capitol.
"Here we go," she said as paramedics wheeled in the young man. That's when he quit breathing.
Don Chapman is editor of MidWeek.
His serialized novel runs daily in the Star-Bulletin.
He can be emailed at dchapman@midweek.com