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“I’m callin’ it- she’s gone,” he resigned, as he wiped a gloved hand across his sweating brow.

The young woman remained motionless on the wet-rugged floor. Despite their combined expertise, the EMTs littered about the room could do nothing to restart her heart. The nodes attached to her chest indicated not a single change in its rate. One technician lingered over her body. 

“Do we know her name,” they asked in despair. 

Helping others is often a thankless and demanding calling- this week had been a particularly tough one for the team. The heatwave’s continued pressure had lingered over the city for weeks. The rise in temperature usually heralded an uptick in crime rates. This one had proved no different.

“Temanna,” another technician half heartedly responded as they flipped through the young woman’s wallet.

As exhausted and burdened as the team was, they still worked efficiently and in superior method. It was only three minutes before they were packed up and ready to prep the body for removal. Leila, the newest member of the team respectfully rolled out a bag next to the young girl’s body and with a sigh moved to unzip it. It was at that moment she saw the fingers of the deceased move. Leila closed her eyes tightly and inhaled a deep breath. The whole team had been running themselves ragged and she especially was not used to this pace and lack of sleep. She opened her eyes again and to her disbelief the fingers were now arched and the hand looked like a tarantula readying itself.  

“Huhhhh,” came a violent rasp from the body as its fingers dug even further into the floor. Its torso shot straight upright at a supernatural rate. 

“She’s alive,” Leila yelled toward the doorway, beckoning her coworkers back. The team, rejuvenated by this news, rushed back up the stairs as a man in a black suit effortlessly passed between them in descension. 

Temanna, the previously deceased girl, looked about in terror and confusion, before settling her wide-eyed gaze on a beaming white light. There was a shape in the light she couldn’t quite understand. Then it moved. Something seeming like wings flapped. She breathlessly pointed toward the light as the EMTs returned through the doorway and the avian shape followed the suited man down the stairs.

~

The man in the black suit sat centered in moon light shining through the circular window of the dusty old library. His clothing, once made of fine materials, seemed to shift in and out of shadow, as did his jet black hair. He was intently and silently pouring over the Latin text in a large, old book. Shadow briefly interrupted the moon’s luminosity. 

“Caladrius,” he quietly stated.

The bright light Temanna had seen flutter was indeed a bird; it came to rest on the peak of a leather wingback chair positioned in a dark corner of the moonlit room. Damien Daktari, or so as he had once been known, was cross- legged and hunched over in the one place the moon’s beam made it possible to read. The beams refracted against and through his hair and shape, illuminating the ancient text. 

“Not much time left, have we,” he inquired of his winged companion. Caladrius tilted its head ever so slightly in agreement. “Ah, yes,” he nodded. These brief awakenings, he had learned, came with just enough time afterward. Just enough time to find some quiet place and take part in his second favorite vocation- learning. The library he now sat in, lit only by the night sky, belonged to a wealthy father and son. Their collection of books sat atop a spiral staircase and upon this night provided just enough resources for Damien.

In life, he had been a doctor. A forerunner in the surgical arts, he had a voracious appetite for knowledge which had survived to now, even if he hadn’t. His last living breath had been in defense of a patient. He had shielded them from the collapse of a fiery beam, an effort that had succeeded in preserving life, just not his own. The next time he woke was to a dull green hue. He could not tell if his eyes were open or closed. But then, just as the girl witnessed, and as countless others he’d come to visit witness, a great white light appeared. It enveloped him, evoking sensation of both cold and warmth. He felt at extreme ease. The light had formed itself into a bird, the bird that now sat perched atop the wingback chair behind him. Caladrius, a bird of myth, thought to be capable of taking the illness and malady of others into itself, thereby curing the afflicted, came to him. It had been by his side since. 

Damien poured through books in hopes of the slightest answer as to how long he must hold up this mantle. This place somewhere between life and death, between magic and science. With impermanent rest he lives on, pulling those from darkness who are taken too soon. Caladrius, his guide and only companion, wakes him. From unconsciousness, from slumber, he rises in aid to heed the call.