They rolled backwards down her driveway and as he put it into drive, he bent over to her, planting a thick kiss on her lips for the briefest of moments. And then they were off, tires kicking up plumes of dirty snow behind them. The car sputtered even more, but kept rolling. She could only imagine the trail of vital fluids her car was leaking behind them.
“I'm going to need your help when we get there,” Russ said, eyes blazing. “If it's as bad as they say, it's much more than I can handle alone.”
“Russ,” said Zoe. “I don't do this kind of stuff. I work in a hospital. I do everything by the books. Exact dosages, knowing my patient's allergies, their situation – I wasn't trained for this!”
“Zoe, listen to me. You can do this. You're going to have to do this. People will die if you can't.”
She nodded, realizing she was crying. Despite Russ's words of encouragement, she knew she couldn't. Sure, she'd ran into bad situations in the hospital, but they were nothing like what she thought they were walking into.
Twenty minutes later, they turned down a street of rundown buildings, and her car gave a final heave. An explosive boom! shook the car and black smoke started billowing out of the engine, flooding through the cracked windshield. Russ was out of the car before it even stopped moving, grabbing the three bags in his hands and sprinting down the road. Zoe was right behind him.
“It's not far! It's just right up here!” Russ yelled, a few steps ahead of her. She didn't need Russ to tell her where they were going, though. A chain link gate was smashed through by a car, the car a flaming ball of wreckage. Ahead of her was a courtyard, bodies strewn across it, some already covered in a light dusting of snow. Bright red blood was splashed everywhere she could see. Naked bodies lay everywhere, but she didn't see any bears, remembering that when a shifter died, he reverted back to his human form.
Running through the gate, Russ stopped as he stepped over a body. Looking down, he winced. “I'm sorry I couldn't be here for you, Austin.”
Zoe looked down at the body. The man was young, probably not even out of college yet. Ahead, a snowy body moaned at hearing Russ's voice. He dropped the bags, running to the person and dropping to his knees. He wiped snow off of them. Zoe grabbed the three bags as best she could and came close.
“Oh, shit, Judge,” Russ said. “We have to get him inside.”
“You're not supposed to move bodies like this,” Zoe said, softly.
“I don't care. He's going to die if we can't get him inside, get him warm, and patch him up,” Russ yelled, sliding his hands under the dark skinned man's body. He moaned in pain, but said nothing, as Russ moved towards the building.
When they reached it, Russ kicked at the door, yelling for someone to let him in. The door opened, a man saying, “We thought he was dead.”
“Get my tools out of my room, Jace,” Russ ordered. Zoe followed inside, carnage laid out before her. Jace ran past her down a hallway to her right. Bodies were lain across a bar to her right and two were on the floor, bar stools pushed away in a heap. To her left was a recreation area, strewn with bodies. Men and women sat on couches, covered in blood or holding their wounds. Two pool tables were covered in bodies. Everything was awful. Zoe felt sick.
Russ moved towards a couch, ushering a couple of shaken up women to move. They complied, Russ setting Judge down, yelling, “Get this man some blankets! Has anyone called the hospital?”
Someone yelled, “Yeah, they're on their way!”
“We have to keep these people alive and stabilize them before the ambulances get here,” Russ said to Zoe.
He came towards her then, grabbing two of the bags and yelling for Jace to hurry up.
“I can't do this,” Zoe said, feeling herself nearly faint on the spot. Things in the hospital had been bad… but never this bad. This was a whole new level of violence, sadness, and death. She felt it overwhelming her, an almost real feeling of the room smothering her.
Russ grabbed her by her arms, pulling her close to him and bending down. “Zoe. Zoe, listen to me. You can do this. You're trained for this kind of stuff. If there's any doctor in this city I would want by my side during a time like this, it would be you. People are relying on you. I'm relying on you. We can do this. We can save these people. But only if we work together. Together.”
He kissed her on her forehead, moving off to start working. Jace ran up, carrying a massive bag, twice the size of hers. Another shifter ran up, thick dark hair sweat slick, tears flowing down his face. “You've got to help them, Russ. I can't lose my brother and Beth!”
“Where are they at, Clive?”
Clive lead Russ over to a pool table.
“I'm sorry, Clive. He's hurt too badly. I have to save others that I can save first,” Russ said, visible weight settling over his shoulders. He moved to another woman on another table, going to work immediately, digging through bags. Zoe felt helpless, overwhelmed.
“Help!” a woman screamed, stumbling through the front door. “They came after me at my house!”
She came straight towards Zoe, who took two steps back. “I can't.”
“Please,” the woman said, holding her arm. The wound was a thick gash, blood pumping to the floor, but it wasn't life threatening. She could do this much, at least.
“You!” she yelled at the shifter called Jace. He raised his eyes at her. “Come over here and give me a hand!”
“I don't know anything about this kind of stuff!” he said, frozen solid.
“You do exactly what she says, Jace!” Russ yelled over his shoulder. “She's going to help save everyone here!”
That pushed Jace into motion. He came close, holding out his outstretched hands as Zoe piled huge butterfly bandages and medical glue into his hands. “That wound isn't life threatening. Use the glue to close it up and then cover it with these bandages, then get her out of the way. Who's hurt the worst?”
She moved off to one of the men on the bar that Jace pointed to. She yelled orders at another shifter sitting behind the bar to get up and help her. He looked dazed and she noticed half of his face was red, burned, though he appeared to be in otherwise good condition. He was young, what little golden hair he had left that hadn't been burned away a striking match to his golden eyes.
“What's your name?” she asked the golden haired shifter, inspecting the man on the bar top. His throat had been ripped out, probably by a rival shifter. Blood was pooling all around him.
“It's Rick,” he said, shaking. “Rick.”
“Okay, Rick. We're going to save this man's life. I'll need you to hand me what I need.”
“I don't know anything in this bag.”
“I'll give you descriptions. We're going to do fine. Are you ready?”
Rick nodded. “Give me my scissors,” was Zoe's first command.
They'd stopped the bleeding pretty quickly. The man on the table might never talk again, but he wouldn't die here. If they couldn't get him to a hospital soon, though, all bets were off. She ordered another man to keep a watch on him and ordered Rick to follow her. The other man on the bar was already dead. “Cover this man up!” she yelled, moving on. A frightened woman pulled a table cloth from a table and covered him.
The next man was missing almost his entire leg below the knee. It was bloody, brutal work, cutting away the dead skin and cleaning his leg. Halfway through, he jolted awake, adrenaline coursing through his body, screaming. She'd told Rick, “Give him a dose of that!” and had pointed towards a syringe. He looked as if he was going to question what it was, but instead he plunged the needle into the man. He stilled almost immediately.
“This guy is in bad shape,” she said. “Those ambulances need to hurry. He's stable for now. Who's next?”
She found herself standing over the woman called Beth. She was laid on the same pool table as Derrick, their bodies close and a tangle of limbs. Not her ideal working conditions, but she had to work with what she had.
“You're doing great, Zoe,” Russ offered. He bent clo
se to Derrick's chest and she could tell that he had been crushed under something heavy. Zoe knew that shifters were resilient to damage, but this looked like too much. She knew that Russ was torn up about having to leave Derrick for last, but she understood why. He was in bad shape. She didn't think he would survive even a few minutes longer.
“So you are a real doctor, after all,” she teased, trying to bring a little levity to the situation, reverting to operating room banter.
“Real as you can be without going to school for it,” he said, his laugh making her smile.
The woman underneath her was hurt, badly. Claws had torn her stomach nearly wide open. Zoe peered in, noticing that none of her organs had been damage. The cuts looked clean, though she'd lost a lot of blood.
“Can you save her?” Clive asked, hovering over her shoulder.
“I can if you give me some room!” she yelled, Clive shrinking back. She hated that she had had to yell at him, but things were serious. Beth didn't have much time left.
“Remember what you said last night about shifters always wanting the biggest, strongest kids?” Zoe asked, getting to work, calling out other tools she needed to Rick.
“Yeah. You mean the truth?”
“It may be the truth. But if you weren't as smart as you are, everyone here would be dead. Every single person would die. You're the reason these people will live.”
He didn't say anything, but she could tell she had gotten through to him. He renewed his focus, working on Derrick with everything he had. She wasn't sure if it would be enough, but at least there was hope now. At the same time, Zoe was just finishing up on Beth. She was another who would live, as long as there were no more serious complications and the ambulances were close.
Russ dropped his tools, wiping sweat from his forehead. They were done, as well as they could be, anyway. There had been a few of the shifters neither could save. Zoe looked around. She leaned against the table, hearing ambulance sirens nearing in the distance. She could finally relax.
“Russ!” an older, rugged looking man yelled from the back of the room, twin doors swinging open. “I need you in here. Bring the doctor. Grab your tools.”
Unsure of what was going on, Zoe grabbed a bag of tools and followed Russ into the room. The man swung the doors shut behind them. Inside, Zoe saw a gigantic table, surrounded by nice looking chairs. Somehow, she knew this was where the Clan made all of their important decisions.
Laying on the table was an older man, completely naked. Two even older men sat on one side of the table, smoking cigars. Despite the chaos that had just happened, they seemed completely at ease. As if this was something that happened all of the time.
“This is one of the leaders of the Clan that orchestrated the attacks on us and our clients,” the old man grated.
“Joe, this is one of the men that attacked us at the hospital,” Russ said, anger flaring across his body like a wave. Zoe leaned closer, really inspecting the man for the first time, and she gasped when she saw he was right. This was the man that had fired on her and Russ, destroying her car.
“He's hurt pretty badly, Joe,” Russ said, inspecting him. “What do you want us to do?”
“Save him. We have to get to the bottom of this. There's more to this than just an orchestrated attack on us and everyone we care about.”
The man coughed on the table, turning two black eyes onto Joe. “You!” he growled, but before he could say more, he coughed again.
“Let's get to work, Zoe.”
She hesitated. This was a man that had almost killed her and Russ. A man that had killed all of the men and women in the room outside. A man that had ruined lives. If they just left him alone for only a few more moments…
“I don't like him, either, Zoe. But it's our duty as doctors to save everyone we can.”
She nodded at him, grabbing the tools needed to save this man. This killer.
“He can tell us what else is planned. Who all is involved. If we save him, we can save more lives. It's the right move,” Russ said.
“He's right,” Joe interjected.
“Fine,” Zoe said, still unsure. It was her duty as a doctor to save every life possible, no matter who her patient was. Still, this man was a killer. He would have killed her if given the chance. If their positions were switched, he would have let her bleed out. She looked down at him, disgust flooding her. She grabbed the scalpel, raised it high…
And she got to work.
Zoe stood in her room, holding a skirt in each hand. She held one up over her body, shaking her head and tossing it onto her bed. She held up the other one. Better, she thought. She pulled it on, going into her master bathroom and making sure she looked okay. Satisfied, she walked downstairs, just as the doorbell rang. She ran over to the door, smoothing her skirt and looking at herself one last time in the mirror.
She opened the door, Russ waiting patiently outside. It was bitterly cold and snow was on the forecast, but for now, the skies were clear. Sunlight ringed his body. She looked him over, realizing just how good he looked when he wasn't wearing oversized sweatpants and T shirts. Despite being a shifter, his nice slacks, black dress shoes, and nice suit jacket somehow fit his personality perfectly.
“You do look much better when you are wearing clothes that fit,” she teased, jumping into his arms. He held her tight, their lips meeting as he twirled her around. He let her down, both of them smiling.
“Ready, Doc?” he teased back. Zoe raised one finger at him and he laughed, and then she was laughing, shutting her front door and heading down to the driveway. Instead of his car sitting there, however, she saw her old beat up car.
“What?” was all she managed to say.
“I had some of the guys take a look at it. Fixed the windshield, the engine, even the seats I broke! It's better than new.”
Russ walked over to the driver's side door, holding it open for her. She eagerly hopped into the driver's seat and he closed the door after her. Once he was settled into the passenger seat, Zoe turned the key over in the ignition, feeling the car purr to life without her having to stomp on the gas a few times.
“Some of the guys said I should just buy you a new car altogether, but I know how much you love this old thing. For some reason.”
“Thank you! Thank you!” Zoe said, kissing Russ on the cheek. They drove off. Russ had actually agreed to a dinner at the nicest restaurant in the city. She was giddy with excitement. She couldn't wait to drive up to the front of the restaurant, valets confused at her beat up little car pulling up the driveway, before two doctors got out for dinner. She could see it now.
“So how is everyone doing?” she asked. After they'd saved the man who had attempted to kill them, Zoe had retreated to Russ's room to catch her breath. By the time she'd come out, the situation was over. The ambulances were gone. By chance, the injured had been taken to her hospital, but her boss had forced her to take a few days off and steer clear after learning of her involvement in the situation. She'd fought against him, wanting to get back to the hospital and finish what she'd started, but it had been pointless. Russ had been busy with Clan business and hadn't been able to see her, but had promised her the dinner she had so desired once things blew over.
“Everyone is going to be okay, thanks to you,” Russ said. “Every woman and shifter that you operated on is going to survive. Charles lost his leg, of course. Sev might not be able to talk again, but they're not sure yet. Beth and Derrick both are going to make a full recovery.”
Winston (BBW Bear Shifter Wedding Romance) (Grizzly Groomsmen Book 3) Page 117
