by SA Magnusson
Worse, I didn’t have any tracking spell I could place. If I knew something like that, maybe I could place it on her so that I could find her later, but without it…
“We’re going to have let her go,” I said.
“She was willing to attack once already.”
“And she probably will attack again,” I said.
“She knows of our involvement.”
“Which is even more reason to let her go. She would be less likely to attack now that she knows you and your shifter pack are involved. Let her think the shifters and the mage council are working together.”
Ariel regarded me for a long moment before nodding once. “You can release her whenever you choose, but be prepared for her to attack.”
I took a step back, still holding onto the barrier. Ariel’s claws elongated, her snout stretching out, jaws ready.
Changing my connection to the barrier, I pulled it away from the vampire, wrapping around myself instead.
She stretched, seemingly suddenly aware that she was freed, and lunged toward me however briefly. She slammed into my barrier and a dangerous glint crossed her face. “You are a fool for letting me go. It won’t take much for me to keep track of you, and the others. All of you will fall. All of you will suffer and—”
Ariel lunged at her, ripping claws through her and carving her in half.
The vampire disappeared in a cloud of dust.
I gasped. “What was that about?”
“I changed my mind. She wasn’t going to leave us alone, and I wasn’t about to allow her to cause trouble for us. Come on. We need to get you back to your home, and I’m going to look into the vampire connection.”
“Not home,” I said, looking at the pile of ash on the ground.
“You don’t want to get some rest?”
“If only I could, but I don’t know that I have that luxury. I need to go to work.”
“The same work you said isn’t that great right now?”
I flashed a smile. “The same one.” Only a few more days of this rotation and then I could return to the ER. I had to power through, even if I wasn’t sure that I could.
As we started up the slope street leading back to the bluff, the sun crept up over the horizon. It was possible the vampire wouldn’t have been able to escape anyway. With the sunrise, she would’ve had to have moved quickly to have gotten to safety, and I wasn’t sure that she would have been able to do so. Maybe Ariel had been the compassionate one, though that was strange to consider.
I closed my eyes, drifting off to sleep as we drove toward the hospital. When we pulled up in front of it, I realized we still had Jen’s car. “My friend is going to need her car back.”
“And she will have it.”
“You can leave it here in the garage beneath the hospital.”
Ariel arched a brow at me. “Do I take you as some sort of chauffeur?”
“I don’t know. You were driving me around.”
Ariel growled and I was too tired to do anything but ignore it.
“Kate Michaels.” I turned back to her, my hand still on the outside of the car. “You can be both. You don’t have to choose between this calling and that of our world.”
I was too tired to answer. Ariel might think it possible, but I wasn’t sure. I was trying to balance the two, but I didn’t feel as if I did either justice.
14
I staggered into the room. The day had been long and my eyes were heavy. The rest of my body throbbed, leaving me with a sort of emptiness. When they described the feeling as punch drunk, it described sleep deprivation quite well. It was almost as if I’d had a few drinks. My reactions were a little slow, my mind just a beat or two off, and everything around me was a little hazy. Somehow I had to power through this and make it to the end of the shift. After that, all I wanted to do was sleep, but even then, I wasn’t sure if I would have time to get caught up. I needed answers about the vampires, and they weren’t going to come to me while I slept.
“I’m Dr. Michaels,” I started, heading into the room. It was my third consult in a row, and while I was exhausted, it was far easier to be doing these consultations in the emergency room rather than trying to scrub into a case. At least this way, there was something familiar about it. I could spend my time in the emergency room, around staff that I knew, and the familiar setting made it just a little bit easier to get through the day. “Can you tell me about what happened?”
I took a seat on the stool, looking over at the young woman. Her face was ashen and both eyes were already bruised. I’d taken a moment to glance at her chart and knew that she had been in a car accident and had been complaining of abdominal pain, but nothing else. It wouldn’t take much to slap an ultrasound probe onto her belly and see if there was any injury, but that involved more effort than what I had in me right now.
“I… I…”
“Can you tell me about the accident?” I asked.
She swallowed, and I glanced over at the monitor. Her blood pressure looked stable, as did her heart rate, but there was nothing else about her that appeared stable. If I didn’t act quickly, this would devolve into a code situation.
Damn.
This wasn’t what I needed. Not as tired as I was.
I grabbed for her hand and pushed out with a faint surge of magic. I didn’t have the energy to reach for the ultrasound probe, but I could use my own magical probe to figure out her injury.
Magic swept through her, and as it did, I recognized the contusions to her liver and her spleen. She must have taken a significant blow to the belly for such injuries, but she didn’t look injured otherwise.
“Were you wearing a seatbelt?” I asked.
She nodded.
“What about the shoulder strap?”
She blinked and then shook her head.
That was it. She had shifted the shoulder strap off to the side. I had seen that before, and when drivers would do that, they would get jerked forward and the belt strap would jerk into their belly and could cause internal organ damage.
I didn’t need an ultrasound probe to know that she was bleeding internally. If I didn’t stop the bleeding somehow, she would bleed out before we had a chance to do anything.
This was a trauma situation. The only problem was the trauma team was already tied up with another case. There wouldn’t be the time needed to help her.
“My. Kids?”
Damn. She had kids?
“Were they with you?”
She nodded.
“I’ll look and see what I can find out, but we need to focus on you right now. You have some internal bleeding, and I’m worried that if we don’t do anything, you might not pull through this.
“My. Kids?”
Her eyes fluttered and rolled back in her head.
Dammit.
I reached into my well of magic and pushed it through her.
I was no surgeon. I couldn’t cut to cure, but even a surgeon might not be able to save her in time. Would I be able to do so with magic?
I had failed when it came to Aron, but she wasn’t Aron. This wasn’t a bullet to the chest. This was something simple. Fixable.
Then again, I had thought the same about Mr. Jimenez.
He had been saved, however briefly. I might not have been able to keep him alive, but I had saved him, at least at first.
I wouldn’t allow this woman to die. Not with kids involved. I’d grown up without a mother. I knew what it was like not to have that person who should have been there with me, who should have watched out over me be missing from my life. This woman and her kids didn’t deserve that.
I had been lucky. My grandparents cared about me, they had taken me in after my mother went missing—likely dead from everything I’d learned in the years following—and raising me as if I were their own and sacrificing so very much on my behalf. They could have been something much more within the council had they not, but they had been willing to take me in, to support me, to raise me, showing me the wa
ys of magic, so that I could understand what I was, even if it was a dark mage.
Would this woman’s kids be so lucky?
They probably had a father involved, something I didn’t, but they deserved their mother. Just because my father was some deranged magic user who had never wanted to be a part of my life didn’t mean the same for these kids.
Power flowed out of me, rolling into the woman. I felt the surge of emptiness, the start of the void, and as I did, cold began to creep along my spine.
I had known she was dying before feeling the start of death.
Hopefully that was simply because of my understanding of medicine and not because I was becoming much more attuned to death, but either way, I had enough notice to be able to try something to save her.
Knowing the nature of her injuries—however they were caused—gave me something to focus on. My magic required visualization and willpower and in this case, it involved wrapping around areas of injury. It had been the same with the gunshot wound and probably would’ve been the same with Aron, though I hadn’t been able to help him in time.
Urgency forced me to work quickly. Eventually her monitor would start beeping and would draw the attention of nurses who would rush in, and it would change the dynamic of this evaluation.
Was I making a mistake? I was relying upon my magic in order to practice medicine, but if I didn’t, I knew what would happen.
The magic wrapped around the injury. I could feel it seal off, and I could feel the way that her injuries stabilized.
I glanced up as the blood pressure cuff began to fill.
If the pressure dropped now, it would trigger the alarm. Once it did, I probably had a few moments at best before one of the nurses came running in.
I squeezed more and more magic out of me, letting it roll over her.
As it did, the emptiness—the void that was growing within her—began to ease.
The cold along my spine eased with it.
The blood pressure reading came back. 74/36.
The monitor started beeping.
I pushed magic through her once more, double-checking that she was going to be able to pull through. I was rewarded by knowing that the cold grip of death had retreated.
I released her hand and stepped back, and as I did, the door opened and Val ran in. She looked over at me, the expression in her eyes showing relief at seeing me. “Dr. Michaels. I didn’t know you were back on our service.”
“Trauma,” I said. “I came in to evaluate her. Why don’t we get another liter of fluids going and bring the ultrasound machine for me if you would, Val.”
Val nodded and raced out.
It bought me another moment with the woman, but I wasn’t sure that I needed it. I could feel that I had helped her.
Would it last? Last time I had tried to do something similar, the magic had failed, though I didn’t know how much of that was because of what I had done versus what was the natural progression of the illness, but either way, I had lost that patient. Maybe if I had recognized the illness sooner, I might have been able to reverse it and save him, and hopefully with enough supportive care, I wouldn’t have to worry about that with this woman.
Then again, the gunshot victim had been much farther along in the dying process when I had restored him. This one had been rescued almost before she had even started the dying process.
That had to matter, didn’t it?
Besides, this was the kind of thing that medicine could save if given enough notice, not like the last patient. He would have died had I not used my magic.
Val returned carrying a bag of saline and dragging the ultrasound cart. She started hanging the IV fluids and I started working with the ultrasound, working the probe over the woman’s belly. I saw the collection of blood, but there didn’t appear to be any active bleeding.
I set the probe down. “I’m going to talk to my attending, and we still may need to operate,” I said to Val.
I doubted it would come to that, but who knew what Dr. Darnold might say when I presented the patient to him. If he thought she was actively bleeding, he might want to take her to the operating room anyway.
If her blood pressure stabilized before then, he wouldn’t have to. Observation would be the best option.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Val said.
“I’m glad I was too,” I said.
“It’s not quite the same when you’re not around,” Val said.
“Thanks?”
She smiled. “We like having you around, Dr. Michaels. You’re one of the good ones.”
With as tired as I was, a comment like that felt nice. It was the kind of comment that I needed but hadn’t known I needed.
“I only have a few more days of this trauma rotation and then I get to be back in the ER.”
“Well, I only have a few more days before I get to take a vacation.”
“Oh yeah? What’s that like?”
“Vacation?” Val asked.
I nodded. “We don’t get much time off.”
“Not yet, but once you are an attending, you’ll get lots of time off. Think about how often Dr. Locks isn’t here.”
It was one thing to look forward to when I reached attending level. Not only would I have fewer shifts to work, but I would actually have real vacation time, depending on where I worked.
“I’m going to go call the team and fill them in on this case. Will you let me know if her condition changes at all?”
“I will,” Val said.
I breathed out, feeling relief with my small victory. I didn’t need big victories, not like stopping a vampire from attacking, not when it came to saving a life and ensuring that these kids wouldn’t grow up without a mother. This was a different kind of victory. This might even be more meaningful.
I stopped at the nursing station and sat at one of the computers to document. It gave me a chance to observe and know whether anything changed with the patient. While typing, I could feel someone come up behind me.
“Michaels. I didn’t think you were around these days.”
I glanced over my shoulder. “Roberts. You’re looking particularly tan.”
“Just getting ready for some time off. You know I don’t want to burn when I head to the Dominican Republic for my vacation.”
“Vacation? Your fellowship just started.”
“I get four weeks off. Figured I’d take a week now, head down to the DR, sit on the beach, sip a mai tai, and get back for a week. I’m staying at an all-inclusive.”
“Good for you. I’ll have to call ahead and warn the resort that they need to stock up on penicillin for all the gonorrhea you’re going to be spreading around.”
“Nice, Michaels. You know, you should be a little more respectful to your attendings.”
“Roberts, you’re a fellow, not an attending. And while I might have to listen to you, let’s not pretend that’s anything more than what it is.”
He stared at me before turning away and heading off.
“That might have been a little harsher than you needed to be,” Dr. Allen said.
I turned around slowly, not realizing he had been there. A flush started to work through me, starting with the burning in my neck and heading up to my forehead. I’d had enough issues with Allen in the past to not want to upset him any more. He had been the one who had warned me of the precarious nature of my residency when I had started to slip before. I’d been careful, especially around him, not wanting to make it seem as if I weren’t putting forth the necessary effort, but if it looked as if I weren’t a team player, that might be just as bad.
“I’m sorry. That was unprofessional.” Maybe if I acknowledged it now, it wouldn’t build into something else.
Dr. Allen pulled the chair out and plopped down before logging onto the computer and starting to type. “I know what it’s like when you have residents you don’t get along with.”
“I’m sorry that I spoke the way I did. He’s not a resident anymore, and I need to be more c
areful,” I said.
I hated that I was apologizing for snapping at Roberts. It was the kind of thing I shouldn’t have to do, and the kind of thing that normally took place behind closed doors, the typical banter of residents. That might’ve been harsher than usual, but mostly that came from my frustration with Roberts.
And my fatigue.
Then again, maybe it was nothing else. I was still dealing with the loss of someone I cared about, and it might be that had influenced me more than I realized.
“You don’t have to apologize to me. Maybe to Roberts, though I’m not sure he even really cares. Just make sure you treat him with respect around the staff. We all need to be on the same page. We’re all part of the same team.”
I nodded.
“Have you given much thought to your plans for next year?” Allen asked.
I blinked, my note forgotten, and the fact that Val hadn’t popped back out of the room letting me know that the patient must still be stable. I did need to call Darnold and update him on the status of the patient, and the longer I lingered here, the later I would be forced to stay.
“I haven’t given it a whole lot of thought yet,” I said.
“If you intend to do any fellowship, you really should begin to apply soon.”
“I don’t know that I want to do any fellowships,” I said.
“No? I thought for sure you would want to apply for the trauma fellowship.”
“Everybody assumes that,” I said.
“Only because you have such an interest in traumas,” he said.
“It’s not so much an interest as it is being in the right place at the right time,” I said.
Allen grinned at me. “Sometimes, but I’ve seen you heading straight toward cases, especially when they’re more severe. It’s almost like you have a sixth sense for them.”
It was as close as anyone could come to basically saying I could feel traumas coming in, and I wondered what Allen would say if I told him that I absolutely did have a sixth sense for such things, especially when it dealt with someone near death. Would he believe me?
