by Cheree Alsop
“I am,” the ifrit woman answered. She drew her daughter close and hugged her despite how it must have pulled on her healing wounds. Her red wings opened and she wrapped them around her daughter before she turned her gaze to Aleric. “How can I ever repay you? We’ve heard about you, Dr. Wolf.” She nodded at Dartan. “And you as well, and though I never would have believed I would see a werewolf and vampire working together, I’m grateful for it.”
Dartan looked shocked at the fact that word of his help in Edge City would have spread back to Blays. Aleric knew exactly how he felt.
The ifrit woman swallowed, then continued with, “Can I ask how my husband is doing?”
Aleric couldn’t bring himself to meet the hope and fear that warred in her eyes. “I’m not sure. I know Dr. Worthen’s been doing everything he can to save your husband. He’s experienced some head trauma. Things have been touch and go.”
Tears rolled down the ifrit woman’s face, scorching holes through the mattress of her bed. “Rumors of the Rift are all over Blays. Everyone’s afraid of falling through. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to it. We’ve heard about trolls and demons vanishing. There are others missing.”
“What happened to you?” Aleric asked gently.
The ifrit woman sniffed. “We were walking through the Market District and I stopped to look at a shawl of basilisk skin. I held it up for Danjin to see and when he and Starija walked toward me, I went to meet them. As soon as we reached each other, I had this falling sensation in my stomach.” The terror of the memory made her voice waver. “When I opened my eyes, we were in a street I had never seen before. A truck was rushing toward us. There wasn’t time to get out of the way.”
She closed her eyes and fresh tears rolled down her cheeks.
Dartan gave the magma tears a pointed look as if to tell Aleric to stop asking her questions. He answered the vampire with an apologetic shrug.
“We’re doing whatever we can to help your husband, Miss…,” the vampire hesitated.
“Maes,” she said. “Please call me Maes.”
“We’ll help Danjin,” Dartan promised. “Dr. Wolf is our finest fae doctor in the hospital. I know he’ll—”
The door flew open, cutting off whatever the vampire was going to say.
Relief filled Gregory’s face when he saw Aleric. “Dr. Wolf, come quick! Dr. Worthen needs your help.”
“With whom?” Aleric asked. He hurried toward the orderly.
“With the ifrit,” Gregory replied. “We’re losing him!”
Aleric looked over his shoulder and met Maes’ gaze.
“Please save my husband,” she begged. The little ifrit girl nodded as she clung to her mother.
“I’ll save him,” Aleric replied.
He shoved through the door and ran up the hall after Gregory.
Chapter Seven
Aleric burst through the door of Operating Room Four. Nurse Talia, Dr. Brooks, and Dr. Worthen surrounded the operating table. A quick glance showed plummeting numbers on the monitors around Danjin. The ifrit’s body had burned away any clothes he wore with the heat of the fever raging through his body. Scorch marks showed on the table and half-melted instruments lay where they had been thrown to the floor.
Dr. Worthen turned. “We don’t know what to do,” he said with despair in his voice. “He has massive hemorrhaging on the brain, but we can’t operate.”
Dr. Brooks nodded from the other side of the table. “Anything we try either melts or stops working. If we can’t alleviate the pressure, blood flow to the brain tissue will be restricted and his brain cells will start to die.”
“You need to use water,” Aleric replied. He looked at Talia. “We need syringes and a bowl of clean water right away.”
“I thought you said ifrits are allergic to water,” Dr. Worthen replied as his nurse reluctantly obeyed Aleric’s order.
“Water will kill an ifrit the same way fire kills humans,” Aleric replied. “But it might be the only thing that will open the ifrit’s skull to let out the pressure.”
“It’s worth a try,” Dr. Brooks said.
Aleric gave the older surgeon a worried look. “I’ve never attempted anything like this before.”
“That puts us in the same boat,” the surgeon replied. “But it might be the only shot this man gets.”
The heat from the ifrit’s skin was so intense Aleric felt as if his arms were burning just from standing near the table. He had to give the doctors credit for still trying. Singe marks showed on their scrubs and Dr. Brooks’ gloves appeared partially melted when he pointed to the images on a panel that was lit up on the wall.
“Those are the scans we got before the MRI machine stopped working due to the heat,” the doctor said. “You can see the hemorrhaging here.” He pointed to a spot on the images. “Normally with a hematoma this big, we’d remove a portion of the skull and perform open surgery to drain the hematoma. But we haven’t been able to get close.”
Nurse Talia returned with a tray of empty syringes and a bowl of water.
“This is beyond your scope, Doctor Wolf,” she said. She glared at Aleric as she emphasized the word.
“This is beyond anyone’s scope,” Dr. Worthen replied. “We’ve got to try or we’ll lose him regardless.”
“We need to have the blow torch ready to close up the wound as soon as the blood is drained,” Aleric said. He held up his bandaged palms. “You’ll have to be my hands.”
“We’ve got this,” Dr. Brooks replied.
Under Aleric’s tense directions, both doctors picked up syringes and filled them with water. He felt Nurse Talia’s glare when he walked to the patient’s head. He looked at the MRI results, but the images meant nothing to him. He could see the bruising along the ifrit’s bare skull that was rounded and red-scaled in contrast to the long black hair both his wife and daughter bore.
“Is this the area you would start?” Aleric asked with uncertainty.
Dr. Brooks and Dr. Worthen looked from the MRIs to the ifrit’s head.
“A little higher,” the surgeon said. “We want to go from the top down so blood flows away from the area of insertion. Nurse Talia, prepare the suction. You’re going to have to get it as close to the wound as you can without melting the tip.”
“Yes, Doctor,” she replied.
Dr. Brooks positioned his syringe. “Ready?”
Aleric and Dr. Worthen watched as he carefully squirted the water onto the ifrit’s skull.
In the same way human flesh melted in the face of flames, the ifrit’s skin dissolved beneath the touch of the water. Steam sizzled into the air, clouding the room as Dr. Brooks cleared a path through the ifrit’s skin to the skull beneath.
Aleric fought down the urge to clench his hands beneath the bandages. He wanted to help, to leave, to do anything but watch the water drill through the skull with the doctor’s careful, precise movements. The scent of melted flesh turned his stomach and made his hands throb with empathy.
A thick tray caught the drops of molten blood that trickled from the wound. The blood had burned a hole through the operating table. The sound of it falling to the metal tray was loud in the room. The further the doctor cut, the more blood ran down.
“It’s burning through the tray,” Nurse Talia said quietly.
“Get another one,” Dr. Worthen ordered.
The head physician stood ready with the blow torch for the moment Dr. Brooks was finished. His forehead was tight, his jaw clenched, and his breathing was shallow as he watched the surgery. Aleric knew the same strain showed on his face.
“There we go,” Dr. Brooks breathed.
He took the suction and carefully worked at the edges of the wound. The doctor sucked in a breath.
“What?” Dr. Worthen asked.
“I got too close,” Dr. Brooks replied. “And he’s getting hotter. I can tell. The tip of the suction is melting. I don’t have much time. Maybe if I use a little more water, I can burn it out.”
Eve
ryone held their breaths as the surgeon carefully guided more water into the wound. “If I can get it just right,” he whispered more to himself than any of them. “There it is.”
There was a pause as if even the heartbeat of time hesitated in hopeful silence.
Blood rushed down.
“That’s it!” Dr. Brooks exclaimed. “That’s what we’re looking for!”
Nurse Talia pushed another tray underneath to keep the blood from melting through the floor.
“Now as soon as the blood slows, we can close it up; he just might have a chance,” the surgeon said.
Dr. Worthen turned on the blow torch.
“It’s not slowing.” Dr. Brooks said a moment later. “It needs to slow or he’ll bleed out before we can get this closed.”
“What do we do?” Aleric asked.
“Try the torch,” Dr. Brooks said. “We need to close it, fast.”
Aleric glanced at the monitors. Their screens were blank. The diodes used to track the ifrit’s vitals had melted. They were out of time.
“I can’t keep the skin together,” Dr. Worthen said. “The torch isn’t working!”
Aleric knew what he had to do. He took the ifrit’s burning head in both of his hands and eased the edges of skin together. He heard a gasp from Nurse Talia. The heat melted through his gauze in record time. He clenched his teeth. It was all he could do to keep from crying out as the heat destroyed whatever had started to heal on his hands. Aleric blinked quickly as tears of pain threatened to break free.
Dr. Worthen worked quickly, guiding the blowtorch with a precision worthy of his title. The flesh closed and puckered in a thick mass along the top of the ifrit’s skull.
“That’s it,” Dr. Brooks said. “Dr. Wolf, you’re done.”
Aleric tried to move, but he felt frozen, his limbs unresponsive. Dr. Brooks grabbed his shoulders and pulled him back.
Aleric lowered his hands. His arms shook. Sweat stood out on his forehead. He felt it running down his back beneath his scrubs.
“Get new diodes,” Dr. Worthen instructed.
Aleric watched the head physician reposition the monitoring equipment. The screens flickered on. They all stared breathlessly, waiting for the numbers to appear; but when they did, even Aleric knew the numbers they showed were poor.
“It didn’t work,” Nurse Talia said. There was true sorrow in her voice.
Aleric’s heart fell.
Dr. Brooks let out a breath of defeat. “They’re lower than before. A human couldn’t survive with vitals like that.”
“There’s nothing else we can do,” Dr. Worthen said, his voice heavy with remorse.
Aleric shook his head. He paced to the table and stared down at the still form of the ifrit. In his mind, he could see the ifrit’s wife and child, their eyes filled with despair as they begged him to save the man who was so important to them.
“We can’t lose him like this,” Aleric said. “There has to be something we can do.”
“There’s massive hemorrhaging,” Dr. Brooks replied.
Aleric clenched his hands into fists. He glared down at the ifrit, willing him to open his eyes, to recover, to return to the woman and child as the werewolf had promised he would.
“There has to be a way,” Aleric said.
But he knew from his time in the Emergency Room what the numbers meant. They dropped steadily, echoing the lessening heat from the ifrit’s skin and shallow rise and fall of his chest. The heart skipped a beat, then another. The chest stopped rising. A soft exhalation left the ifrit’s mouth.
A low tone sounded from the closest monitor.
“No!” Aleric shouted. He slammed a fist on the ifrit’s chest, willing the man’s heartbeat to return. “We’ve got to save him!” he said. He hit the chest again.
“Dr. Wolf!” Dr. Worthen called out.
Both doctors grabbed him by the arms. Aleric yanked free and pummeled the ifrit’s chest again. The pain to his hands was intense, yet he could feel the lessening of the ifrit’s temperature already. The ifrit was already gone. Tears streamed down the werewolf’s face. His arms dropped to his sides.
“I promised them I’d save him!” he said in a sob. “I told them I’d bring him back.”
“Come on,” Dr. Brooks said. “Come sit down.”
Aleric allowed himself to be led away from the form on the operating table. He took a seat where Dr. Brooks indicated. He hung his head, his thoughts numb, his arms quivering, and every impulse in his body demanding for him to go back to the table and try again, to bring the ifrit back from the dead, to battle Death if he had to.
Aleric listened to the doctors summon the orderlies. He heard the discussion as to what they should do with the body. He listened to the squeaky wheels of the bed used to carry to ifrit away.
“Dr. Wolf?” Dr. Worthen’s voice was hesitant. He put a hand on Aleric’s shoulder. “I think you should talk with Dr. Manors. Her services are available to all of the hospital staff. Losing a patient isn’t easy, and I know that’s something you haven’t had to deal with before.” He paused, then said, “You’re always welcome to talk with me as well. It never gets easier, seeing someone you fight for slip away like that. I just think that a psychiatrist might be better—”
“I’ll talk with her,” Aleric said. He kept his head bowed, his gaze on his ruined hands. “I just need some time.”
“I could have her come here if—”
Aleric shook his head. He had to remind himself that Dr. Worthen was his friend, that the head physician had his best interest in mind. Yet he wanted to lay into the man, to take out his frustrations with rage because he hadn’t been able to save the ifrit. The tension in his shoulders tightened his muscles for a reason other than pain. He let out a slow breath, willing his urge to fight to subside.
He met the doctor’s gaze and kept his voice carefully level when he said, “Thank you for your consideration, Doctor. I know arrangements need to be made for the proper care of the body. If you don’t mind, I would like to be the one to tell his wife and daughter.”
Surprised showed on Dr. Worthen’s face at the request. “Are you sure?”
Aleric nodded. “I owe them that much.”
The doctor was quiet for a moment. When he nodded, it was obvious he wasn’t certain he was making the right decision. “You don’t have to do that.”
“I need to,” Aleric replied. He lowered his gaze to the floor. “I just need some time to collect myself.”
Dr. Worthen nodded. A moment later, he turned on his heels and Aleric listened to him leave the room.
Aleric’s shoulders slumped and tears filled his eyes again. A sob shook his entire body and the tears broke free, flowing down his cheeks. He leaned forward and brought a hand up to squeeze his closed eyes. The pain filled him with anguish. He had done everything he could, even damaged his own flesh, to save the ifrit, but it hadn’t mattered. He had promised Maes and Starija he would bring Danjin back; he had lied. Danjin would never be a part of their lives again.
Another sob shook Aleric’s shoulders. He heard the door to the Operating Room open, but he couldn’t bring himself to look up.
“Dr. Wolf?”
He shook his head at Nurse Talia’s voice and attempted to slow the flow of tears with the back of his ruined gauzed hand, but they wouldn’t stop.
The nurse crouched in front of him. Aleric tipped his head to the side and gave her an apologetic look through the tears.
“I tried to save him,” he said. His words ended with another sob. He bowed his head, his control gone, his heart broken, and his agony bare and raw to the woman who had hated him the moment he had been brought to the hospital.
Soft fingers took his one of his hands. Aleric jerked back in surprise, but she held his arm, her grip surprisingly strong. She turned his hand over, surveying the charred flesh visible through the melted gauze.
Nurse Talia rose and went to one of the cupboards. She returned a moment later with a tray of supplies t
hat she set carefully on a chair next to her. She knelt on the floor and took Aleric’s hand again.
He couldn’t do more than watch her. Even the urge to fight had left him. He felt numb, exhausted, and as though his hands were no longer a part of his body.
Nurse Talia unwrapped the gauze with careful movements. She started at his forearm and rolled the gauze as she pulled it free. When she reached his palm where the gauze had become melted and stuck to his flesh, she took a pair of angled scissors from the tray and carefully cut from the base of his thumb up toward his fingers. She eased the gauze away from the raw flesh.
Aleric winced at one particularly painful spot.
“Sorry,” she breathed without looking at him.
With gentle, steady movements, she was finally able to pull the gauze free.
Aleric studied the mutilated skin as though it didn’t belong to him. Yellowed, melted flesh curled at the edges away from the raw, charred muscle of his palm. In places, he could see the bones of his fingers. The detached portion of his mind noted that if he was human, both of his hands would be a loss. As a werewolf, only time would tell.
Nurse Talia spread cooling salve with her gloved fingers. The sensation made Aleric’s breath catch in his throat. It soothed the skin and took away the harshest edge of the pain. Aleric’s tense muscles eased.
“That’s it,” the nurse said quietly. Aleric wasn’t sure if she was talking to him or just to herself.
She set several layers of gauze padding on his palm, then proceeded to wrap it again. Her quick, easy movements told of years of wrapping wounds, and when she secured the gauze near his forearm, she tucked the ends beneath so they wouldn’t snag.
She held her hand open. Aleric realized what she was waiting for. He set his left hand on her palm. She eased it onto his knee and started unwrapping the other side.
“This is different,” she said when she pulled the last of the gauze clear. She looked down at the long laceration that crossed Aleric’ palm; its puckered skin was still visible amid the melted flesh of his hand.
“That was from the Archdemon,” Aleric replied. “He fought with silver spikes. Werewolves are allergic to silver.”
