Interlude: Vivian

Vera was inducted into the increasingly massive "knows who I am" club at the end of the day, since I figured at this point, it would be too much of a hassle trying to keep my identity a secret from an actual medical professional. Since we were all there anyway, I threw a little get-together for everyone to hang out without the costumes. Oddly enough, Vera and Emily clicked immediately. They both have pretty strong personalities, and I expected them to clash. But no, they spent a solid three minutes after they first met doing nothing but complaining about me. I'm fairly confident Vera said more words about me to Emily than I'd ever spoken to her at that point.

Ishfaq had taken up ASL recently, I noticed, despite not really needing to thanks to Emily's inventions. Maybe its a respect thing, or maybe just for practical purposes if he and Michiko are without the translation devices. They've been spending time together outside of work as well, but I don't want to assume.

It's genuinely nice seeing everyone getting along as we shoot the shit.

I start cooking a meal for the five of us: simple frozen burgers. I like cooking, even though I never used to. It feels like something a human being would do. Like something Vivian would do. I don't want to bring it up with Emily again, but I feel like I'm actually losing myself in the persona. When I looked in the mirror a few days ago, I reflexively flinched that there wasn't a beaked mask looking back.

That's the real reason for hiring Vera. Sure, saving more lives is great, but it was the burnout that was going to start killing people. I wasn't thinking as clearly as I should have today. I was about to take the expedient option instead of the right one. I'm better than that.

Burnout affects people in different ways. Before I got my empowerment, I was fortunate enough that I was a surgeon with a relatively low workload, an exceptional assistant, and honest to God hobbies. Multiple hobbies. I didn't really get burned out the same way the frontline workers did. I was never the one cleaning up pools of blood, and was barely ever the one comforting families when their children died.

I've seen burnout though. Surgeons getting the yips. Nurses falling asleep mid-shift, being woken up to be told they need to work a double. Hearing the phrase "I'll eat tomorrow after work" twice. One girl nearly went postal, screaming at someone in the ER who was complaining about a wait. She said if he wanted to get in there sooner, she'd be happy to slit his throat open. That outburst was followed by leaving and never returning. She was just weeks before finishing her residency, and no one's heard from her since.

Burnout can kill people, too. I've seen it. Either patients from mistakes that a healthy and well-rested healthcare worker wouldn't make, or just straight up kill the healthcare worker themselves. Having knowledge of what drugs would rapidly and relatively painlessly kill someone is dangerous knowledge for the mentally unwell.

Like I said before, I'm done taking needless risks.

I watch the burgers sizzle in the pan, intentionally trying to avoid the thoughts that would come to mind, focusing on another thought instead. One I've stewed on for a long time.

Empowerment is a still mystery, but we know more and more every day. We even have a general understanding of the cause, now. Empowerments usually come from one of five sources, or more often, a mix of them.

The first is genetics. It seems to run along family lines, matrilineally foremost, but along the dad's side too. Fathers give it to daughters more than sons, and mothers do the inverse. Not always, but usually. Strong powers usually beget strong powers, too. This isn't to say that its always or even usually genetic, but there's an undeniable trend.

The second is personality. People who really don't want a power never seem to get them. The people who do have a higher rate. Passive personalities are less likely to end up with an empowerment than more forceful and demanding personalities, unless that passiveness was a shield for the third cause.

Trauma and stress are a big one. Big and flashy inciting incidents aren't as big a thing as the media presents, one really crappy event making you able to read minds or something, but compounded stress and trauma over time seems to play a very big factor. Of course, compounded stress and trauma over time plus a really bad day makes it much more likely.

Fourth is proximity and need. Firefighters often get flame or water based powers, actors get shapeshifting powers more often, engineers get tech-based powers, fast food workers get the ability to kill people who annoy them. Powers that the user would find valuable.

Fifth is crucial, and the only absolutely mandatory component. You need to be having an off day. Off your game, particularly unlucky, slept badly, in an inexplicably bad mood, anything that you can't quite describe but is throwing you off balance. There's competing theories on if the off day is caused by a power ready to emerge, or if the off day is a catalyst of some kind for the power to appear.

I had a very fun mix of all five at once. My dad had recently passed in a car accident, maybe four or five months back. My mother was a nurse at the hospital they took him to, and by chance, she was part of the team assigned to take care of that particular John Doe. She never really got over it, kept pushing herself harder, blaming herself that maybe if she didn't crack at seeing her husband on the table that she could have done something. She was always the kind of person who worked through problems by sinking further and further into her job. Obviously, she was getting burnt out. Badly.

She called me on a morning I was incredibly pissy about something I don't remember. I was late to work and sitting in traffic, and she was waiting for a train. She said she really needed to talk to me. I said I would call her back once I got to work, and to give me fifteen minutes or so.

I got stuck in traffic for an hour, which only made me more pissy, and evidently forget to call my mom back.

Looking back, for my mom, I'm fairly certain that was her big and flashy inciting incident. Her daughter driving, saying she'd call her back, and never did. She wanted to know what was happening. If her daughter was okay. If she was okay. So she started seeing the future, proclaiming it randomly to everyone in the train station. She always talked with her hands, just a little quirk of hers.

I thought I was picking up the phone to answer my mom when I was just getting into work. I started by apologizing and saying it was traffic, only to hear it was someone else, who wasn't very tactful in their explanation. My future-telling mom proclaimed I would cure the incurable while smiling through tears, and then exploded like a grenade.

In fairness, my mom was right. Maybe not in the way she expected, though. Fortunately for me, everyone assumed she just went crazy after getting some kind of power to see alternate realities or something completely unrelated. To them, she was babbling gibberish that happened to be true. Who would be president, what the weather would be a month from now, the kind of thing anyone could guess with a bit of luck.

That's when my empowerment happened. Because of a long, long series of bad events that snowballed into me not taking the time to talk to my mom while in traffic.

I stare down at the burgers in front of me, now black lumps of carbon inside a growing flame. Emily and a fire extinguisher swing in to save the day.

Burnout can kill. It does kill, and I intend to not let it take a second person from my family. For me, I have a nagging feeling that it might kill Vivian.

Beaker, though...