by Sky Winters
I took advantage of the situation and crawled along the floor. I knew I could get to the stairwell if I could only stand up, but I could not get my legs to work. I kept looking backwards to make sure that nothing was following me. The looter made up for his size and strength disadvantages with a healthy dose of lunacy. He was swinging the knife wildly.
The bear was up on his back legs and hanging back from the blade. I was almost to the stairwell when a missed swing of the knife took the man by surprise and he went down to the ground hard. He spun onto his back as the bear dropped down on top of him and sunk his teeth into his throat.
“Grrrrrrowwww!” The great bear moaned. I watched as the fur began to recede. The bear itself was shrinking too. It was hard to tell what was going on. I got back to my feet and started running over to the spot where the combatants lay. The laughing man was missing his windpipe. It looked as though he was trying to say something to me, but all that was coming out was a bunch of gurgles and blood bubbles. I was barely paying attention to him as the crazed laughter drained out of his eyes.
On the end of his knife was no longer a bear. It was a naked man. He was alive, but not for long. I looked around. I was still in a hospital. There had to be something that I could do. I ran through the lobby and into the emergency department. I found a gurney and wheeled it out to him. I couldn’t roll it when it was down and I couldn’t raise it by myself. Truth be told, I have never liked working with gurneys, it’s a paramedics job as far as I am concerned. It was one of the main reasons that I had never worked in the emergency room.
I had spent my entire nursing career working on a post-surgical floor. I knew how to heal and treat wounds. I just had to get this guy to stand up. It was going to be tough. The naked man was not responding at all to my voice. I shook him and that seemed to get his attention. His eyes went wide and he grabbed for the knife.
“Gahhhhhh!” He shouted as he stood up and ripped the knife out of his abdomen. He was big, even when not a bear. About 6’5” and at least 250 lbs of solid muscle. I guided him onto the stretcher. As soon as the rush of energy had passed he just kind of followed where my hands were taking him. He laid back on the stretcher and I wheeled him into the emergency room.
The cupboards had been raided for drugs and supplies. They had taken almost everything. I got a lot of gauze and started to pack the wound. I knew that he was going to need stitches so I started looking for a kit to help me get the wound closed off. It was frustrating to open so many doors and see the same empty shelves staring back at me.
In the end I had to use steri-strips to close the wound. I had found a supply closet with saline in it. I already knew that there were really no options for blood or plasma. I had gotten to him fast enough that I was hoping he wouldn’t need anything like that. The rolling black outs had been a killer for medical supplies in this hospital. Anything that needed to be kept at a constant temperature was useless by now.
I knew that I was going to need more than just a couple fancy bandages to get this wound to heal properly. I waited until he seemed stable enough and I moved up a floor and started poking through the drawers, carts, and supply closets. The hardest floor was the second. My father’s corpse was still rotting in bed 2034-A. I could smell him as I walked out of the stairwell. I checked the floor for a suture kit, but I already knew that there was nothing. I had helped the people who were trying to leave pick the floor clean.
I had originally told my father and myself that I was just going to leave with the group. I was going to head out and leave him to die on his own. I thought that I could do it, but it is just not who I am. It was the seventh floor that finally yielded some results. I had some morphine, saline and a suture kit. I was pretty good at sewing and I had always believed that I could do surgery. I had seen so many of them done on TV and in person, I was actually excited to get the opportunity.
I was getting more and more worried as I got closer to the emergency room. What if this man had already turned back into a bear and he was gone? What if he was just waiting downstairs to eat me? I left the stairwell cautiously. It had been a nerve wracking day. I didn’t hear anything except for the thrashing of the patient. He had been having small fits whenever he came to. He was in an incredible amount of pain. I put the morphine in through his saline and waited for the thrashing to stop altogether for an extended period of time. I wanted my first surgery to be a success.
I found a nice quiet place to wash my hands. I was only going to seal off a wound. It really seemed as though the organs and intestines had all been missed by the blade. It was only the skin that had been broken. There had been a very significant loss of blood, but other than that the young man stood a really good chance of making it through.
I could feel the needle shaking as I got closer to the cut. I still had the steri-strips in place to hold the wound, which liked to move in place. I was going to take them off one by one as I moved down the gash. His stomach was hard with muscles, but the skin still moved very freely back and forth. I was trying to keep everything under control, but I could not get my hand to settle down.
It wasn’t until I passed the needle through the skin and pulled the thread through for the first time that my nerves started to settle. With each passing stitch my confidence grew. By the end I was sad to be finished with the sewing. I was starting to really get the hang of it and I knew that it might be my last opportunity to stitch somebody up. I had found another kit as well. It was secretly hoping that I would have to go in and try to find a bleeder or something.
I walked outside to bath in the moonlight for a moment. It probably wasn’t a great idea, but I knew that I needed some fresh air. It was like my victory cigar. I looked around, none of the stores nearby looked like they would sell cigars. The convenience store seemed too small to offer the finer things in life.
The patient seemed stable and I had gotten the bleeding to stop. I knew that he would be up soon. I had a really good feeling about surgery. I went back and washed the blood off of my hands. I wasn’t sure what I was going to say as I walked back into the room and found the patient was still asleep. I had probably given him too much morphine.
It was a horrible thought. Morphine was a terrible pain killer for surgery anyways. It always made people so itchy. He is going to wake up and scratch the stitches off immediately, I thought to myself as I watched him sleep.
What do you say to the man who risked his life to save you, but was clearly a bear at the time? I had so many questions, but I wasn’t sure what kind of answers I was ready to hear. There were all sorts of weird mutations that were popping up all over the place. When the TV was still working there was a news story that all of the nurses from A2 had come together to watch about a circus of freaks that were not in any way put on. It was a real life freak show that the virus had made possible.
The TV stations had stopped broadcasting after the first month. That was when everything had become pointless. The second month was when the realizations started to set in. We were no longer going to be, “Getting back to the way things were.” The president’s phrase had become a popular source of mockery as the days and weeks wore on. How could we go back?
There was no way to un-see things and no way to undo them. I had watched too many people give up their humanity to ever have faith in the human race again. I saw a nurse that I had known for years stab a man over an armful of pudding cups. I did nothing to save the man as my friends threw him out into the streets to die. I watched as the people I had lived with for a month all left me and my dying father behind.
So why should genetic mutations frighten me when the regular people that I knew had already changed so much. The TV circus had had a wolf family. They were all were werewolves that could shift without the help of the moon. They had run around under the big top and they had an amazing act that they had put together. Even that hadn’t prepared her for what she had seen today. The strength and power of the bear, and the frailty of the human body. It was all just a bit too
much.
The naked man was all just a bit too much all on his own. He had a sleeve of tattoos running down his left arm. The symbols looked mainly Celtic and clearly they were trying to tell a story. It all started with a tree of life on the top of his shoulder. The rest of the sleeve was tied together by the roots of the tree as they ran down his arm. It was an amazing design. There were bears and claws, an old raven and Celtic knot made of thorny roots.
It was hard to ignore the muscle tone. He only seemed to have body hair as a bear, it didn’t look like he shaved, but there was no hair on his body. It was hard not to stare at the rippling muscles that ran from one end of his body to the next. His muscles looked as if he was always flexing. Some of that might have been the morphine too, but he was in amazing shape. I ran my fingers along his stomach as I went to examine the wound. As soon as I touched his skin I could feel a rush of energy flow through me. It was impossible to resist trying it again. I ran my fingers down his thigh and up along his stomach and chest only to see his eyes were now open.
“Can I help you?” He said to me and I almost fell over. I had gotten lost in the moment and the angry snarl on his face brought me right back to reality.
I grabbed a chart that sat at the edge of the gurney. “Good neurological response to outside stimuli.” I said loudly as if I was charting it. I was hoping that he wouldn’t notice that I didn’t have a pen. There was also no paper on this chart. I just needed to have an explanation for what I was doing. I was finding it difficult to just admit that spending the last several weeks here essentially by myself had turned me into a bit of a perve.
It was a very sad truth that I had been having trouble even before I met the sexy bear man. I had been in a relationship all through university. Mark was great, but he was going through med school and I was in nursing. I got lost in his shadow. As soon as I found the courage to end it I promised myself I would never let that happen again. I was going to live for me. It meant that I always pulled myself back when I felt any feelings starting to stir. It also meant that I spent a lot of time on my own. As soon as the virus hit that became completely alone.
“I am leaving,” the bear man said as he stood up. His knees buckled under him. I rushed in and grabbed him. He had already pretty much stopped himself with his hands against the bed.
“You lost a lot of blood.” I almost whispered. I was pressed right up against him and looking him right in the eyes.
“I just need to…” He stopped and looked at me. He wasn’t sure if had seen him earlier.
“Turn into a bear?” I thought I knew the answer, but I wasn’t one hundred percent sure. I knew that he was a shifter, but I didn’t know if that was it, or if something even weirder was going to come out of his mouth.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” There was a fire in his eyes that made me jump. I backed away and pushed himself up to standing.
“I was just guessing,” I was talking way too fast, “You know because there were those guys, and you came as a bear and fought them and then the nutty guy stabbed you. Anyways, so the knife went in and you got smaller and naked, smaller for a bear, is what I mean, you are still very big…” my eyes went too low on the word big.
That was when I realized that I hadn’t even found the poor man a sheet. He should have been freezing, but his skin was warm to the touch. I was really hoping that he would start talking. After that long rant that I just did, I was absolutely sure that I shouldn’t try talking again for a while. He was studying my face. I could literally feel his eyes. It was like he was looking into my soul. I looked at the ground.
“Alright, yes, I am going to turn into a bear. I just need you to stand back.” He moved me back forcefully and started making horrible faces. His skin was almost swimming as it started to grow and change. I could feel myself backing up. I wanted to see the transformation, but it was horrifying to watch. Thick brown hair was covering his body. It moved up from his legs and as it moved across his sculpted abs the cut ripped open and blood shot out across the room.
“Awww!” He yelled as he broke the stretcher with a single low from his half-bear arm. I rushed to his side as he crumpled onto the ground. “Back off!” He threw me to the side as he pushed himself back to his feet. The fur had completely disappeared and his skin has stopped rippling. He was holding the flaps of skin in place as he started to pace the room. “What is going on?!”
“You have a very deep cut,” I looked down as his eyes cut. I could feel the seething hatred coming from his stare. “I have another suture kit. I can fix it,” I said to the floor.
“Alright, fine, let’s just do this,” He walked over and sat down on the next bed. I walked around the wreckage of the broken gurney. I could feel myself shaking again as I got closer to him.
“I just need you to lie down and I will hook up the IV again.” He didn’t say a thing, but I could tell he wasn’t going to let me fix the IV. “I just need to give you a painkiller.”
“I don’t need a painkiller,” He growled the words through closed teeth. I wasn’t going to argue with him, but it wasn’t helping with my nerves. I opened the kit and got ready to start stitching.
“Take a deep breath,” I said, mainly to myself. He held himself remarkably still. I heard only a few gasps as the needle passed through his skin. It seemed like I was having a harder time with it. I just kept apologizing to him and he got madder with every sorry.
The skin was already starting to heal as I closed it up. I could tell that his skin was far from that of a regular human being. I wanted to ask him about it, but he didn’t seem very talkative. The feeling of the needle pressing through the skin was oddly very exciting. I was trying to keep myself under control. As a nurse I had always been fascinated by surgery and the human body. I could feel the color rushing to my cheeks.
When I finished I looked up at his face for the first time in I don’t know how long. “Jade Roberts,” I blurted out. It was met with the same level of enthusiasm I had been receiving all day. “It’s my name, I thought you could tell me yours too,” he just turned away. “Ok, then I guess I will just call you bear-man, or man-bear,” I could tell that I was upsetting him, but at this point I didn’t care. He was being rude to the woman who just saved his life twice.
“Dallas,” his tone was begrudging at best. “Dallas Blackwood, bear-man is fine though.” He was asleep in seconds on the tiny hospital bed. It looked small when I laid in one, but his legs were literally dangling off the edge. I found another stretcher and lifted his feet onto it. The beds were at slightly different heights, but I was sure it had to be better than just letting them dangle. There was not even a thank you.
My father had been nearly as ornery when he was my patient. Most of the fight in him had been taken away by the virus. It wasn’t until he was on death’s doorstep that he even thought to say thank you for all that I had done for him. It wasn’t until after he passed that I realized exactly what I had given up. Staying behind meant that I had nobody with me at all. There was no way to stay here for more than a couple days longer. I was not exactly a fighter. I was going to have to fall in with a group of looters, or the far more likely get killed by a group of looters. If the experience of the morning had been any indication it was even dangerous for me to step outside the doors of the hospital now that I was all alone.
I had one hope of not being all alone and he was clearly not interested in being my apocalyptic plus one. It was hard to understand his aggression. He had gotten hurt trying to save me, I was sure that wasn’t part of his plan, but I had been trying to make up for it ever since. I left him to sleep for a while as I got the rest of the supplies gathered together. The hospital had been rummaged through by several groups of looters and former employees, but there were still treasures to be found.
I walked all the way up to the eighth floor to start my search. I was checking every closet, cart, and cupboard as I made my way down through the hospital. I was filling backpacks that we had found during our
first week living in the hospital. They had been stuffed away in a storage room on the seventh floor. “St. Bonneville’s Hospital loves Nurses!” The message was printed in bold white letters on pink, brown, orange, and white backpacks. It was a part of an employee appreciation initiative, but the dust on the boxes made it look like they had been ordered at least ten years ago.
There had to have been thousands of them. Each group had taken several backpacks with them when they decided to leave the hospital. I had the last seven with me as I loaded them down with supplies. Of course most of the leftover bags were brown. It had been the least popular choice. I had grabbed an orange one when we first found them and then there were two white. I was packing the white ones with bandages and medical kits. The brown ones were being packed with linens and clothing, which was mostly scrubs, but I had only been wearing scrubs for months now anyway.
My orange bag was for food. The bags were a good size and they could hold quite a bit. There was still a bit of food left in the cafeteria. I had started squirreling it away when I made the decision to wait until dad died to leave. I knew that the others were not going to wait for me. Even my best friend Becky. We went through nursing school together. We got hired onto the floor at the same time. We had been through so many things together, but I knew what I was asking her to do was impossible. There was safety in numbers, but those numbers had to be higher than two.
The food was mainly pudding. I had a feeling I was turning into pudding. I had been living on a mainly pudding diet or the past month. It was mainly tapioca now. I had eaten all of the chocolate. I had granola bars saved as well, and a ton of the fruit cups that I hated. I forced myself to eat two a day, because according to the label there was real fruit inside. I was sure they were lying. Fruit didn’t taste that bad for any reason.
I had to bring the bags down one at a time they were so heavy. I wasn’t sure how I was going to take them with me. It was not as if I had a car. Even a car wouldn’t do you any good as there were no gas stations. I tried to look out the windows to see what was available, but I wasn’t even sure what to look for. There weren’t many ox carts around these days. I put all the bags onto a stretcher and went to go check on the patient.
