Cirque du Sorrow

Another person I've never met before was shot tonight.
Picture a circus where the tents are made of police tape, the 'entertainment' is a dying man and all of the good cheer's been replaced with an oppressive atmosphere of squad lights, anguished wails and a crowd that can't hide its own revulsed interest in the scene playing out in front of it. I remember rounding the corner with no illusion that the flashing red and blue hues were the byproduct of any gaudy neon signs. Wishful thinking like that can kill you as easily as any bullet to the chest ever could.
The circus gets wilder with every second that ticks by. New people show up in the crowd every time I blink my eyes. Cops stand around the scene of the crime, keeping the onlookers from getting too close like they're protecting some sort of celebrity. Emergency uniforms from the Oakland Fire Department gather around the man on the ground with a bunch of equipment I'm not fluent enough in "weekend doctor" to make sense of, trying to talk the man into believing he's fine while they figure out how the hell they're supposed to keep a man with three chest wounds from bleeding out. I can tell they're not doing such a good job; the nearby police lights reflect off the man's blood, calling attention to just how much of it he's lost already.
A group of people who I can only assume are the guy's friends, family or both panic off to the side, held back by police tape and a trio of the Oakland P.D.'s finest. The group is bigger than most; four men, three younger women, an older woman, and three youngbloods who can't be more or less than middle-schooler's age. The kids are all crying their eyes out. Half of the adults are doing the same.
Everyone means something to somebody. I can't be the only one who needs the occasional reminder.
If you've never seen the aftermath of a shooting, you're probably wondering why the guy on the ground isn't in an ambulance already. That's because the ambulance hasn't arrived yet. The police and emergency firetrucks show up first. The ambulance doesn't appear until minutes after.
Assuming, of course, that any of them show up at all. This guy's luckier than you think; he got shot in one of the better parts of town, where the city's so-called protectors and saviors actually give a shit about the people they're called to save. If he'd been gunned down somewhere in Hawthorne or Eastmont, we wouldn't be seeing the cops and emergency people for another couple of hours.
Reality jerks me back out of my own thoughts when another yelling voice joins in with the rest. Looks like Cirque du Sorrow has a new front-row audience member. He's a Latino, a college-aged kid from the looks of him, and the tone of emotion in his voice tells me he's pretty damned close to the unfortunate vick who's spread-eagled on the pavement. Tears are already in his eyes, and his voice is rapidly devolving into a quavering wreck.
It's not until he screams "SAVE HIM!!" in a long and drawn out way that I realize why he's chosen now to make his voice known. The man on the ground has stopped moving. The subtle rise and fall of his chest tells me he's still alive, but it's not going to be for long. There's no other movement in his body. His consciousness has left the neighborhood, and if a miracle doesn't happen soon, his life is about to go next.
As soon as that realization hits me, and the emergency dolts standing over his body start working furiously to try and bring him back to planet Earth, I can't stop my mind from straying towards the ways I could try and save him.
I know spells that could force the bullets back out of his chest without doing any more damage along the way. I know enchantments that can numb the pain and others that could slow the bleeding. I'm capable of quick and dirty magic that can close up the wounds, and extended rituals that can harden the flesh against future attacks. If I'm feeling really generous, I have ways to find whoever pulled the trigger and ruin their night in a major way.
But I can't do any of that. Because that's just not how this shit works.
Coming along and pulling a Save a Hoe on this man would bring trouble to my doorstep like rats to a sewer. I'd be on the TV as that long-haired, tattooed junkie who restored a half-dead nobody to full health in front of a watching crowd. There'd be questions from more places than I could name, asking me what I did, how I did it and why I was capable of doing it when nobody else was. All of Oakland would learn firsthand that magic and sorcery exist in the same city as them, and that the world has drug addicts who can play Merin better than half the sober people you'll ever meet. My name and face would be everywhere, and with that exposure would come attention, some of it good, most of it bad.
People would love me for my one good deed, right until they realize the full implications of what I can do and what my existence -means- to the rest of the world. Then they'd turn on me, maybe even go all medieval on my ass like I'd been out setting their towns on fire and cursing their children in the womb. And that's the last thing I need in my life.
So I don't do anything. I stand there and watch, just long enough to witness the rest of Cirque du Sorrow's final act. I stay until the ambulance arrives about half a minute later, bearing EMTs who actually know what they're doing.
Then I turn around and go back the way I came before anyone realizes I was ever there.