Andrea scrolled through tumblr
- hashtag supervillains - looking for a cosplayer who would fit the bill.
It was heartbreaking working
with the Dreams Come True program at the pediatric hospital. Sure, it was
wonderful when she could help the kids make a dream come true, but sometimes...
sometimes it was all too much. Everett Jones was a special one. His parents had
been in a car wreck when he was four months old and an improperly fitted car
seat had thrown him from the wreckage. It had saved his life - the semitruck
behind their car hadn't been able to stop in time - but it had left Everett
broken and orphaned. He'd been in and out of the foster care system until his
aunt graduated from college.
At seven, he should have been
okay. But a little cold turned into bronchitis, and then they'd found abnormal
growths along the bone. And then the doctors at Merriton Pediatric Hospital,
the premiere children's hospital in the Yukon Territory, found out that the
donor from Everett's last surgery hadn't been screened correctly. The bone
cancer was sinking in.
Everett was seven and suicidal.
His adoptive mother was a wreck.
Andrea wanted to do nothing
more than make sure Everett had one dream come true. She'd gone to his hospital
room with binders, folders, and brochures. Disneyland. Cruises. The Stanley Cup
playoffs. She would make sure he got what he wanted.
And then Everett asked for the
absolutely impossible: a day with The Polar Terror, the only supervillain north
of the 66th Parallel.
She glanced at the clock. It
was already two in the morning and she had her first meeting tomorrow at eight.
Tanya Nothstien from the third floor (burn victims) was meeting with the
Whitehorse Huskies and going to three days of hockey training camp, a reward
for finally hitting her physical therapy milestone and being able to walk.
Tanya had a long road ahead, and at least one more surgery to repair her arm,
but she could be a hockey goalie as she was.
The Huskies had even invited
her to come play goalie at one of their home games once the season was in full
swing.
In the afternoon she had to
meet with the Jenwa family. Three-year-old Doug was terminal. Dreams Come True
was getting the whole family together -grandmas and grandpas too - and flying
them to Hawaii to celebrate what was expected to be Doug's last birthday.
Unthinking, she grabbed a
kleenex and wiped away the tears.
Tomorrow was going to be rough.
She needed sleep. But...
Blurry-eyed, she hit the pencil
icon on Tumblr and wrote a post...
WANTED: The Polar Terror for a day of fun and crime with 7yo Everett at
the Merriton Pediatric Hospital.
Everett is a sweet boy who has had a bad run of luck. He wants to
conquer the mountains with his favorite villains, and maybe rob a candy store.
If you're available, please email me at:
andrea@canada.dreamcometrue.org
She posted it with a sigh and
turned the computer off. Yukon Territory was not a geek hub with ten thousand
cosplayers. But, who knew? Maybe she'd get lucky and some rich American who
could afford his own batmobile would feel like dressing up in a traditional
Yukon furs and flying up here.
***
The next day didn't dawn so
much as slink in well after Andrea was at work. Winter mornings were an
illusion more than a reality. By ten the hospital was sending home
non-essential staff because of an incoming blizzard. Andrea shut her door,
turned off the overhead light, and worked with the street light outside.
No one could send her home if
they didn't know she was there.
Lunch was a bag of pretzels
nabbed from the vending machine while the hospital director dealt with a car collision
in the parking garage. And at two she went up to see Doug's family.
His room was filled with red
toy robots, red balloons, and red stuff dog that was bigger than he was. Andrea
confirmed all the details, checked with Dr. Harper to ensure that Doug was up
for travel, checked with Doug's nursing staff to make sure all their paperwork
was in order, and - worn out and ready to cry - she limped back to her office.
It was cold.
Bone-freezing cold.
She was Yukon born and bred,
but negative 10 Celsius with snow swirling around her desk as she opened the
door was too much. Her lips puckered as she sucked in a sob.
Someone - some utter bastard -
had broken her window.
She closed her office door
quietly behind her. There was no need to be rude, she told herself. There was
cardboard behind the filing cabinet and the Good Lord had given her duct tape
and common sense, more than enough to fix anything, as her grand-mère had
always said.
Andrea turned to reach for the
down coat hanging on the back of her door and screamed. There was a person
standing there.
A huge, fur-covered aberration
with a spear in one hand a rabbit-fur pouch at his hip. All the emotions of the
day came pouring out in an ear-piercing wail that was swallowed by the howling
wind outside. The bowl of tiny, polished rocks on her desk jumped and rattled
as the despair and rage rolled off her. And then it finally stopped; her throat
was swelling and scratching.
The snow stopped swirling and
her window slammed shut.
"Sorry about the
entrance?" the menace offered.
Andrea stalked behind her desk,
sat down in her creaking, broken chair in a huff, and grabbed a kleenex. Then a
throat lozenge. She glared at the face hidden by a black balaclava.
"You, um, asked for me on
Tumblr." The voice was deep. Definitely masculine. Almost apologetic.
She opened the bottom drawer
and pulled out a fresh bottle of water. It was against her policy to drink
bottled water unless the pipes froze, but this was an emergency. Sometimes her carbon footprint had to take a
back seat to panic.
The person shuffled and took a
seat in the stiff-backed client chair.
After several minutes, and half
a bottle of water, Andrea sighed. "All right. That didn't go well. I try
not to scream at anyone." She glanced at the window. "Who are you? And
why is there snow melting on my desk?"
"It can't stay snow in
this heat."
Andrea glared. "What I
meant is; why didn't you come through the front door? We have a receptionist."
"They went home early. A
security guard told me everyone had, so I came up here to leave a note."
"Through my window."
The masked face turned to
consider the now-unbroken glass. "Eh... it made sense at the time?"
He lifted his shoulder and dropped it. There was a slight twang in his voice.
Almost...
"Are you from
Newfoundland?"
He turned faster than she
expected. "How'd you- "
"It's the accent. I dated
a guy from there once. It didn't end well." Andrea realized her hand had
tightened around her limited-edition Glamdring letter opener and dropped it.
She wasn't going to risk getting blood on a collectible. At least, not a
limited-edition one. She had a Toronto Maple Leafs hockey stick, signed by Leo
Komarov.
She could part with that.
"You did want to see me,
didn't you?" With gloved hands the man reached into his rabbit-skin pouch and
pulled out a folded piece of paper that he held out for her.
Andrea stood just enough to
reach out and take the paper between her pointer and middle finger, then
plopped back down. Glaring at him, she unfolded it with great ceremony. It was
a screen capture of her desperate Tumblr post.
She shut her eyes.
This was the problem with the
geek community, when cosplayers got into something, they really went all out.
She was willing to bet that later - much later - when she wasn't so worn out
she'd find the string this guy had used to tug the window closed so it looked
like he was using the wind.
"You don't look
happy," the man said. "I thought, children's hospital and all, it
might be time sensitive. And I was in town."
"Of course." Andrea
closed her eyes and rubbed the bridge of her nose. "I'm sorry. I've had a
very... rough... afternoon. I was expecting an email. There's paperwork to be
done. If you cosplay for a living you can use your time as a tax write-off. We
also have security checks and things like that."
"I won't pass those,"
he said. "I'm a supervillain. An ecoterrorist or a planet defender,
depends on who you ask."
Andrea opened one eye to glare
at him. "I appreciate your dedication to the role, mister...?" She
held out her hand as invitation for him to fill in the blank.
"Terror. Polar Terror.
Rhymes with bear."
She looked at her water bottle
and willed it to become a Chilkoot Larger from Yukon Brewing Co. The color
didn't blush the deep amber of ripening wheat, so she figured she still hadn't
come up with the ability to spontaneously make alcohol appear.
"Do you want colder
water?" the man asked.
"No. I want beer, but I
can't have it during working hours and usually only drink on my birthday,
Canada Day, and New Year's Eve. This is not a job where I need more depressants
in my life."
"I thought bringing good
cheer to kids would make for happy work."
Her sour smile was enough to
make him lean back. "It's great when you actually can help. Some of our
kids will recover. But they don't all walk out of here healthy and alive."
She lifted her shoulder and dropped it. "This afternoon I had to talk to a
family whose little boy probably won't live to see four."
"Oh." His head tilted
to the floor. "Is that Everett?"
"No. Everett is seven, he
was in a car accident and had several surgeries to fix broken bones. One the
bone grafts left him with bone cancer."
There was a moment of silence,
a place for grief.
"His parents must be
devastated," the man said, quietly.
"They're dead."
Andrea hated how callous she sounded, but she was out of emotion. "His
aunt has custody. She's a very nice woman, but totally overwhelmed. Her sister,
Everett's mother, was the only family she had. She's been working hard to raise
Everett and be supportive through everything, but she really doesn't have
anyone else to lean on." Andrea picked up Glamdring and spun the miniature
sword around. "They have your comic books."
The man nodded. "All the
proceeds go to college funds for kids from the Yukon Territory, you know. I
don't get paid for that. I didn't license it either, but..." He shrugged,
and Andrea thought she heard a hint of a smile when he said, "I had a word
with the duo drawing the comics and we worked things out."
"They donate all the
money, and you don't kill them with your freeze-ray?"
"See, the way you say it
sounds so mean. And it's not a freeze-ray. That's something only fake
supervillains need. I have superpowers."
PART 2 (coming soon!)
