My Kind of Town
Calling all Druids
>> Queen's Medical Center
The elevator door closed behind them, and again HPD Sgt. Mits Ah Sun sniffed the faint aroma of eucalyptus, ginger and sea brine. Such an unhospital aroma, so anti-antiseptic and full of life. His brother Sheets didn't seem to notice.
"So what's up?" Mits said. The first words he'd spoken to his older brother face-to-face in 21 years. "What did you mean, 'it's all over'?"
Those had been Sheet's first words. So much for nice-to-see-you-agains. Sheets held up a hand. "Outside."
The smell of fear overpowered the lingering eucalyptus, ginger and sea brine in the elevator. Mits was sorry to see it go because when it faded away he was filled with his brother's fear and dread as if it was his own. Which, Mits began to sense, it was.
>> Sharing Quinn's hospital bed, Lily Ah Sun snuggled closer to her cousin, who had just zonked out from a painkiller pill. She lay a hand over his chest, felt the curvature of well-defined pecs, and rested her head on his muscular shoulder, a point from which she had a really good view of his nose hairs -- the cutest she had ever seen!
If this wasn't love, Lily didn't know what was.
>> Grace Ah Sun watched carefully as Dr. Aeschylus Wong checked the various monitors connected to the tubes and wires running into and out of her unconscious son Lance's head, looking for any clue to what the doctor was seeing and thinking. Dr. Wong gently pinched Lance's thumb and the young man twitched.
She was fearfully anxious but anxiously hopeful, and it was all Grace could do not to scream, "Well?! Tell me what you think?!"
Dr. Wong carefully lifted Lance's right eye lid, pointed a pen light in the eye, studied what he saw, then repeated the procedure on the left. "Hmm."
What could that mean?!
"We're not out of the woods yet," Dr. Wong said. "But we're definitely going in the right direction, and that's good."
As the doctor turned to leave, Grace said mahalo to Akua and Ho'ola, and Jesus and Buddha and Mohammed and Shiva. Oh, and the Druid wood spirits too. If anybody could get Lance out of the woods, it was them.
Aeschylus Wong paused at the door. "By the way, if you don't mind my asking, is that your perfume?" He sniffed the air. "Kind of like eucalyptus and ginger and sea brine."
"Excuse me?" Grace said.
"Maybe it's just me. Sorry."
When he was gone, Grace smiled. That was a good sign, the doc being aware of the healing aroma that Ho'ola the goddess of life left behind.
Don Chapman is editor of MidWeek.
His serialized novel runs daily in the Star-Bulletin
with weekly summaries on Sunday.
He can be emailed at dchapman@midweek.com