Moonshifted es-2

by Cassie Alexander

  “Oh, my God, it’s a wolf puppy!” Its eyes opened up and focused on me.

  “It’s a wolf person,” Lynn corrected me. She and Gina finished their chart checks, and the P.M. shift nurses exited the floor.

  I waited until they left and set down my supply bag. I crouched down to see it better, without touching. “It’s the cutest thing ever, Gina.”

  “The cutest thing that can bite your face off.” She looked down at the small wolf. “No offense.”

  The wolf closed its eyes again. Gina had enough experience to treat the wolf like a person. I didn’t. I’d have to get over that. But the cute was making it hard. I looked over to Gina and opened my mouth.

  “Don’t ask to pet it. That’s rude,” she said, without looking up from Winter’s flowsheet.

  “Damn you and your telepathy.”

  Gina made a face at me. “Get ready to go in.”

  * * *

  We suited up. I felt weird having a wolf puppy watch me from the doorway while I kept a rifle with tranquilizer darts aimed at its relative inside. Now that it was standing, I could tell that it was a little taller than knee height.

  “How’s things?” I asked Gina while the wolf’s ears tracked us both.

  Gina didn’t answer, but she gave me a thumbs-down, hidden from the wolf’s line of sight.

  I walked closer to the pumps—I could see we’d gone up on his blood pressure medications—and that a new one had been added, because the old ones weren’t working well enough. His sedation was much lighter too.

  “Mr. Winter, can you hear me?” Gina said loudly, right to the side of the bed. She shook him a bit, then did a sternal rub, checking for response to pain. He didn’t move. “Mr. Winter?” She looked to me, gave a half shrug, and went on with her assessment. The wolf in the doorway watched with intelligent eyes, sitting on its haunches. I wanted to talk to it, and bit my tongue. Having a wolf out here was a brilliant ploy. We—or at least I—would say all sorts of things in front of it, treating it like a pet or an animal, not a person. And wolves were probably better at reading people—I was sure it’d known from Gina’s stance how poorly Winter was doing, even before she’d said anything. A relative might rationalize away a nurse’s actions, desperate for good news, but a wolf would know better, I figured.

  “Junior! What are you doing here?”

  The hoodie-wearing were whom I’d already met twice today rounded the corner, looking sternly at the wolf puppy. The puppy startled up to all fours, seemed excited for a second, then tucked head and tail down at his approach.

  “Did your mother say you could stay like this?” he asked.

  The wolf puppy looked to the note, taped on the door.

  “I am calling her to come get you.” The puppy made a whining sound. “You’re not in trouble. She should know better.” He stepped away to make his call.

  The wolf looked to Gina and me. Gina shrugged. “Sorry, kid.”

  He came back around the corner. “Your mother’s on her way. Do you have any clothing to wear?” The wolf lowered its head. “Well, hopefully she’ll remember.”

  “We have scrubs,” Gina offered.

  “Can you take him and go get some?”

  Gina looked from me, to Winter, inside the room. “Sure. Edie, stay here.”

  “Aye-aye, Cap’n.”

  Gina left the hall, the wolf pup padding beside her. Now would have been a perfect blood-getting chance, only the other were was still out here, in the way. He sat down in Gina’s vacant chair and set his elbows on his knees. “I guess you know I know he’s here now, right?”

  I gave him a weak smile. “Yeah.”

  “I’m Lucas.” He put his hand out, and I shook it.

  “I’m Edie.” I wanted to look through things and do some work, but I didn’t want to do anything wrong in front of him. Visitor-guards made me self-conscious. “Are you going to be here all night? Guarding him?”

  He half smiled. “Is that what they’re calling it? We call it a vigil.”

  “Ahh. Sorry.” There was silence filled by the hissing of pumps, the inflation and deflation of the sequential compression device on his one good leg.

  “Do you think he’ll get better?” Lucas asked, after a time.

  I inhaled, then paused before speaking. Breaking people into bad news was a process, like drawing a new swimmer out into the deep end of the pool. Sometimes people had to be confronted with it repeatedly before it sank in.

  “Your silence says it all.” Lucas snorted.

  “I’m not a vet,” I explained. “I’m only a nurse.”

  “He’s a man now, not a wolf.”

  “I think what will happen soon is you all will have to decide what kind of life he wanted for himself—and what kind you all want for him now,” I said, choosing my words carefully, showing him the deep end.

  Lucas stared into the room. “How tactful of you.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be.” Lucas inhaled and exhaled deeply, as if waking himself from a dream. “He just needs to make it to the full moon. And the moon needs to heal him. It has to.”

  “Why?”

  Lucas made a face I couldn’t completely read. “His pack needs him.”

  I would have asked more questions, only Gina came back around the corner with a barefoot boy in tow. “Here we go.” The boy was in extra-small scrubs; the sleeves hung down low, and Gina’d had to cuff the legs. The boy had bone-straight black hair with uneven bangs. The copper-yellow eyes that had looked fine on the wolf were now out of place—downright creepy. He seemed timid, hiding behind Gina’s leg. “Edie, meet Fenris Jr. Fenris Jr, meet Edie.”

  “Hi, Edie,” Junior said, then to Lucas, “Was Mommy mad?”

  “Not at you.” Lucas stood up and pointed to the chair. Junior sat down in it, and Lucas wheeled him away, so he couldn’t see in the door. “Let’s see if we can find another one of these. I bet they won’t mind if we run some chair races in that hall outside.”

  Fenris Jr.’s face brightened at this. Lucas was driving him off in Gina’s chair when Jorgen came around the bend. He eyed us and Lucas darkly.

  “What’s the meaning of this? I just got a call from Helen.”

  “You left Junior here, alone.”

  “I had some phone calls I needed to make in private. He was only alone for a bit.”

  “It’s not that he was alone—it’s that he was here at all. Even as a wolf, he’s too young for this, Jorgen.”

  “He’s his mother’s child,” he said. Lucas’s lips straightened into a line.

  Gina cleared her throat to get their attention. “We strongly discourage child visitors.”

  The bald man glanced at her, then back to Lucas. “We need to transfer Winter to a better facility. He’s not getting the best care here.”

  I blinked. That was the first I’d heard of it. And to think, I hadn’t even bled him yet. Beside me, Gina stiffened in anger. Lucas stood straighter, letting go of Junior’s chair.

  As if by magic, Meaty came around the corner to join us. “Is there a problem?”

  Jorgen looked from one to the other of us. “She consorts with were-bears, and she’s employed by vampires. Neither of them is acceptable. They both should be replaced.”

  Meaty appeared unfazed. “I would let either one of them care for me, myself.”

  “You have poor taste then.”

  “Jorgen, you forget your place,” Lucas said. “I know your loyalty to my uncle runs deep, but now is not the time.”

  Jorgen looked at Lucas, and I remembered what Lucas had said that morning, leaning on my car, about bitten versus born. God, that seemed a long time ago. Jorgen looked like he was going to take a step nearer Lucas, then exhaled roughly, deflating.

  “This nurse was one of the ones who found him. She saw the accident herself,” Meaty continued, as if nothing had gone on. “She’s been involved in his care since he first came here, isn’t that right?”

  I nodded, because I knew Meaty exp
ected it of me.

  “Nurses found him?” Jorgen asked.

  “Why do you think he’s still alive?” Meaty said.

  “Did you see who hit him?” Junior asked.

  “No,” I said to the boy. “I just saw the truck. I gave a report to the police at the time.”

  “They need to get back to work, Jorgen. Take Junior upstairs to wait for Helen.” Lucas nudged the boy to Jorgen’s side.

  Jorgen was still eyeing daggers at us, but I got the sense that he couldn’t disobey a direct command.

  Junior peeked into Winter’s room one last time. “Bye, Grandpa Winter,” and then he looked up and to us. “Bye, Gina, bye, Edie. Sorry you didn’t get to pet me.”

  I gave him a smile. “Me too.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Without the boy and Jorgen radiating disapproval, the climate outside Winter’s room warmed again. Gina’s shoulders slumped, and she sighed. “I’m gonna go to the bathroom. Anyone want coffee?”

  “Yes, please,” Lucas said.

  “I’ll be right back.” She pushed away from her desk and stood.

  “Anything I can do while you’re gone?” I asked.

  Gina glanced at her chart and shrugged. “You can do a fingerstick.”

  I nodded. “Sounds good.”

  * * *

  I turned to the isolation cart as soon as I could to hide my smile. A fingerstick was perfect. I’d go in alone, get a blood sugar on him, and keep the test strip afterward for Dren’s blood. I couldn’t have planned it any better.

  Lucas came to stand beside me, startling me from my nefarious thoughts.

  “He’s that bad, eh?”

  “How do you mean?” I tried to sound innocent.

  “He’s gone down from two nurses, one with a trank gun, to one nurse without a trank gun.” His eyes searched mine. “You all don’t think he’s getting up again, do you.”

  “Um.” I inhaled, and exhaled, glad my expression was hidden by my mask.

  “Let me guess. You can’t tell me.”

  “It’s not that I can’t tell you, it’s just not my place. I might do it wrong. Hell, I might be wrong. I don’t know how the moon works on your kind.”

  “Can I come in with you?”

  Dammit to hell. I didn’t have a good excuse to keep him outside. “Sure. Why not?”

  * * *

  I got my supplies together at the edge of the room. Lucas walked in without gear on—what could happen to him if he got bitten, he’d become more were?—but being alone in the room with two werewolves made my cotton isolation smock feel a lot like a hooded red cape.

  “So who was he to you?” I asked as I approached the bed.

  “Frightening mostly.” Lucas stood on Winter’s right side, and I joined him there. “One Halloween as a kid I asked my mom if I could dress up as him.”

  “That bad?”

  “Worse, really.” Lucas looked down at Winter’s still form and shook his head. “He was willing to do anything to get his way.”

  I didn’t know what to say. “I’m … sorry?” I guessed.

  “He was the perfect pack leader,” Lucas said, going on like I wasn’t there. “He didn’t give a shit about anything else, anyone else—his life was the pack. Anything for the pack. He had to be tough. Cruel, even.” Lucas reached out to touch Winter’s face hesitantly. We hadn’t shaved him since his arrival, and his five o’clock shadow was becoming a low beard. “Goddammit—he lived this long. He wasn’t supposed to die.”

  I uncovered one of Winter’s hands. I’d lance his finger and get blood while Lucas was distracted by his grief and—“Oh, no.”

  “What?” Lucas’s attention spun to me. “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s probably in the chart already. I just didn’t know—” Winter’s fingertips were turning black. It was due to the blood pressure medication we gave people. At the volume he was getting it here, we were saving his vital organs at the expense of the rest of him. If we couldn’t turn down his meds soon—if the moon didn’t heal him, if he didn’t wake up and the processes in him that regulated blood pressure begin to work again—his hands would go. His remaining foot too.

  Lucas’s eyes narrowed. “That’s bad, isn’t it.”

  “Yeah. I’m sorry.”

  Lucas leaned over the bed so that his face was over Winter’s. “You’re not supposed to die. Do you hear me? You’re not supposed to die.”

  There was a small cough from the room’s doorway. “Did I come at a bad time?”

  Lucas and I both looked up. A man I hadn’t met yet stood in the doorway, shadowed by the light outside. Lucas’s hands clenched on the bed’s side rail, so hard the bed shook. “Viktor.”

  “I take it now’s a bad time?” The other man—were, I was guessing—stepped into the room.

  It was my job as nurse to make them calm down—but this was the only window I’d have to get blood for Dren. I was torn for half a second, and then I jabbed the lancet into the edge of Winter’s intact palm.

  “How did you do this, Viktor?” Lucas released the bed, making it rattle. He rounded toward the door. “You couldn’t just wait for him to keel over on his own?”

  “Me? I know nothing.” The visitor, Viktor, clutched an innocent hand to his chest. “I only just found out about the great one’s condition.”

  I squeezed Winter’s hand hard to milk blood out. I just needed one drop. One stinking drop—

  “He was my leader too,” Viktor continued. “I have as much right to pay respects as you.”

  “Get out,” Lucas said, his voice no more than a growl. “You did this. I don’t know how, but you orchestrated this somehow—”

  I didn’t have to be supernatural to feel the tension filling the room, flowing out from whatever history the two weres shared. I could hit the CODE button on the wall and summon twenty other medical personnel here, but then I wouldn’t get my blood—

  One thick drop welled out of the lancet-made hole. I swiped the test strip across it. It was all I needed—and it’d better be all Dren needed—to keep my brother safe.

  I slid it into the glucometer and looked up at the two men. “Lucas—sir—you—”

  “This is shameful! I have rights! I am a member of the pack!”

  “You also own a black truck. I’m not stupid, Viktor,” Lucas said. Lucas crouched to jump—when Charles appeared in the hallway holding a trank gun behind both of them.

  “No transformations on hospital grounds!” he shouted with a low voice. “Don’t think for a second I won’t shoot you both.” He waved the gun between them to prove his point.

  Lucas slowly relaxed, coming back to standing. “Viktor here was leaving.”

  “As a pack member, I have every right to pay respects,” Viktor complained.

  I moved around the bed to be out of the way of Charles’s possible shots. Viktor was a young man—same age as Lucas, probably—but he dressed older, in a three-piece suit. He held a fedora over his chest, seemingly to calm his injured pride, and without the hat I could see one lock of white hair against the rest of his natural black.

  “Family makes the rules here, not packs,” Charles informed everyone, with the gun still held high.

  Viktor sighed then and bowed elaborately—to Winter, not to Lucas, I realized—and reset his hat on his head. “Until full moon then?” he asked of Lucas.

  “Oh yes,” Lucas said, with a dangerous tone.

  * * *

  Viktor left, Charles stepping backward to follow him with the barrel of his gun. “You all right, Edie?” he called back to me.

  “Yeah.”

  “Maybe your other friend in there better leave too,” Charles said.

  Lucas muttered something to himself. I wanted to stand up for his right to be there, but after their altercation I questioned the wisdom of it.

  “Okay, now you, Edie,” Charles said. I exited the room. It was just Charles and me in the hall. He set down the gun.

  “That’s bigger than a flush, Cha
rles—” I tried to tease. My voice was too high, too tense.

  Charles shook his head. “Don’t do that again, Edie. I don’t care how safe they seem. Never be alone with one of them.”

  “Okay.” After that little show, I had to agree. I took a deep breath in and let it out slowly.

  “Glad you’re good,” Charles said, and clapped my arm. “What’s his blood sugar at?”

  I hadn’t realized I was still carrying the glucometer around. I looked down at its screen. “Two eighty-three.”

  * * *

  Charles and I changed the insulin drip together since it was a medication you needed a co-sign for, and when Gina returned I explained what had happened and took Lucas’s coffee in his stead. I wasn’t about to go find him. The test strip with Winter’s blood was safely in my pocket. That was all that mattered to me.

  I had to go to the bathroom near shift change. I told Gina and waved at Meaty and Charles on my way out the door, and exited to find Lucas, sitting with his head between his knees outside in the hall.

  I couldn’t exactly avoid him. The door to Y4 slammed shut behind me. He didn’t look up. He wasn’t asleep, was he?

  “Pretend I’m not here,” he suggested without looking up.

  I snorted. He’d been so frightening in the room, but now he just looked depressed. Winter was my patient … but that was the problem with visitors. Sometimes they needed nursing too. I walked over to him and knelt down. “Want to tell me what that was about?”

  Lucas looked up at me, eyes full of sadness. “I’m next in line to lead the pack.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  “Oh.” I didn’t know how to react. In my world, promotions were positive things.

  “I never wanted this day to come.” Lucas leaned forward and put his head back into his hands. “I’m not like Winter was.”

  At a loss for words, I continued the conversation the only way I knew how. “How do you mean?”

  He looked up at me. “Winter would have killed Viktor back there. Hell, he would have killed Viktor the second he heard anyone got hit with a black truck.”