We wheeled her
into the only empty trauma room.
“On three,” I
said, as we rolled her up to the bed to transfer her over from
their gurney. “One, two, three.” The team picked her up and set her
onto the table.
Once I had
control, the two EMTs left, taking their stretcher probably to head
off to another call.
They had
already inserted an IV in her arm so I changed the fluid bag and
hooked her up to the monitors. Her blood pressure was low, and her
heart rate erratic. By the looks of her wounds, and the blood
soaking through the gauze holding her stomach together, she was in
really bad shape.
I checked her
arms and saw long jagged rivets in her flesh. The marks did indeed
look like claw marks. Her legs looked the same. I peeled back the
blood-soaked gauze a bit to see how bad the primary wound was. I
saw a mass of red and purple and smelled the putrid stench of open
bowels, her intestines had been shredded. Oh damn. My gut churned
over in response. I slapped two more abdominal gauze pads on her
belly, adding more pressure.
“Hey, can I get
a hand in here?” I yelled. The doc was on her way, but she needed
to hurry her ass up.
Another nurse,
Heather, burst through the door, rushing to help. She came up to
the side of the bed and helped me press on the bleeding wound.
The doctor
rolled in, her face stoic, her manner all business. She snapped on
some latex gloves and approached the gurney. The patient was lucky
tonight was Dr. Diana Cole’s night on rotation. She was the best
trauma specialist on staff.
“Nina, tell me
something,” she said as she prepared to peek under the bloody
dressing.
“BP is
dropping. Eighty over fifty. Heart rate is erratic. Blood ox level
is ninety and on its way down.”
Diana peeled
back the bandages.
For the first
time in six years of working emergency, I wanted to puke. The
woman’s gut had been torn open, not cut like with a knife; I’d seen
that plenty, but ripped and torn every which way with something
jagged. Looking at the extent of the injury, I knew she didn’t have
a chance.
I looked up
into Diana’s face and saw the same grim look in her eyes.
“We need bags
of O neg, stat. Let’s get some blood back into her.”
Heather and I
stuck IVs in her other hand and in her feet to get in the blood,
but it was too late. Diana attempted to stitch up her insides, but
her blood pressure dropped hard. We were losing her. The machines
beeped like crazy, Diana worked on the woman’s heart but her
efforts weren’t enough. The woman flatlined with a long drawn out
beep which never failed to make my throat tighten with emotion. We
got out the paddles and zapped her several times, but she never
even regained consciousness, thank goodness.
Diana looked at
her watch. “I’m calling it at eleven twenty p.m.”
Heather wrote
it down on the patient’s chart.
I turned and
pressed the off button on the machine, then looked back to
Diana.
She nodded to
me, then peeling off her gloves, she left the trauma room.
I nodded to the
other nurses. “Clean her up.” Then stripping off my own gloves, I
followed the doctor.
I wanted to
catch up with her and get her take on the wounds, but before I
could, I was ambushed by two police officers. Unfortunately, I knew
them both. Officers Coates and Stettler of the Supernatural Event
Monitoring Agency—SEMA. Or as I liked to call them Tweedle Dum and
Tweedle
if-you-grab-my-ass-one-more-time-I’m-going-to-snap-your-wrist.
The agency had
been formed by the Canadian government in response to the
werewolves declaring themselves and coming out into the open. But
from what I’d seen of them, they were all just a bunch of
prejudiced bastards, just waiting to shoot a silver bullet into
someone thick and hairy.
“We heard
there’s a werewolf attack vic in there,” Officer Coates said.
“Can we talk to
her?” Stettler asked.
“She’s dead so,
no, I don’t think so.”
Stettler
cursed. “We were hoping for an eye witness. Catch one of these
bastards red handed or red clawed.” He made a claw shape with his
fingers and swiped them at me.
If he had come
any closer to my face, I would’ve grabbed his hand and twisted it
off.
“What about all
those coyote attacks I’ve been hearing about? Maybe it was a
coyote.”
“I knew it was
just a matter of time before one of them did something like this.
They should all be locked up in a zoo if you ask me,” Coates
said.
He conveniently
ignored my comment. “Well, thank the Lord, no one is asking you,
asshole.” I brushed past him.
“What’s up your
ass, Decker?” Stettler smirked.
I didn’t
dignify that with an answer and continued to make my way down the
corridor away from the trauma room and from ignorant jerks. But I
didn’t get far before I heard Coates remark.
“Maybe she’s
got the hots for that head wolf guy, Saint Morgan. Even my sister
thinks he’s good looking.”
“That’s just
sick. Like bestiality.”
I pushed
through the door to the nurse’s staff room and blocked out the rest
of their conversation. I found my locker and leaned my forehead
against the cool metal breathing deep
I didn’t
normally let these things get to me, but I’d been feeling on edge
for a while. Ever since werewolves came out, stood up and declared
themselves real and here to stay, to be exact. I knew it was just
the beginning.
Most people had
no real clue what was out there lurking in the shadows. Lurking
inside people. If any of them truly knew what lay in wait inside of
me, they’d run the other way. Or turn around and shoot me between
the eyes. Except I didn’t think silver would work on me.
I had a secret.
The kind of secret that ruined lives. I would never reveal it
because I’d seen how prejudiced people were. How ignorant and cruel
they could be. And I valued my job. I liked helping people, and I
knew I could lose it all.
I was, shall we
say, a reluctant member of the supernatural community. Half human
and half fae, I was just the type of creature that people like
Officer Coates and Officer Stettler, and thousands of others in
this city, loved to hate, and I wasn’t about to come out of the
closet any time soon. I liked my job and my life too much to
destroy them with an act of conscience.
The door to the
room opened and I straightened as Diana came in. The heels of her
rubber-soled shoes squeaked on the linoleum floor as she approached
me.
“Something you
want to talk about?”
We weren’t
friends exactly but we had a sort of symbiotic sympathetic
relationship. We were there to lean on, if needed.
I shook my head
and opened my locker, to grab a bottle of Advil as if that had been
the reason I came in here in the first place. I opened the top,
shook out three and popped them into my mouth dry swallowing them
down. The pills weren’t actually Advil but herbs. I didn’t use
normal medicines. My metabolism was different and I reacted
strangely to human-made medications.
“You looked
like you were about to puke back there. You haven’t been a rookie
for years.
“Caught me by
surprise, that’s all.”
“And the fact
that those two imbeciles are imbeciles caught you off guard too?”
She lifted one dark bushy eyebrow.
“No. I just
hate hearing all that crap.”
“We both know
if it’s not werewolves they’re hating, it would be Sikhs, or
Chinese or whatever race was currently in the news. They are both
ignorant rednecks.”
“I know. I’m
just tired and cranky. It’s been a long shift.”
She glanced at
her watch. “Almost over, isn’t it?”
I nodded.
“Then go home.
You’ve been looking really pale lately.”
I was surprised
she hadn’t realized by now that my skin was always this pale.
She eyed me
carefully. “Are you getting enough iron?”
I couldn’t tell
her that I was allergic to iron in a way, so I just nodded
complacently.
“All right.
Good night, then.” She turned to go.
“Night.”
She paused with
her hand on the door. “Hey, do you know if we have to watch this
woman that died?”
“Watch her for
what?”
“I don’t know,
to see if she turns all hairy.”
I shook my
head. Ignorance abounded. “I don’t think that’s how it works. As
far as I’ve heard, werewolves are born not made.”
“Right.” She
nodded then pushed through the door and left me blissfully
alone.
I took off my
stethoscope, hung it up in my locker then grabbed my jacket, my bag
and my bike helmet. Time to go home. I needed the rest.
After nodding
my goodbyes to some of the staff, I went out the front doors, made
my way across the small parking lot to the street where I parked my
motorcycle. Fall was fast approaching, making it almost too cool to
ride my bike, especially at midnight. The thought of being inside
two tons of metal for hours at a time nearly brought tears to my
eyes. I hated driving in vehicles and had the worst case of car
sickness. Same thing with airplanes. Hated them. Couldn’t go in
one.
Iron had a
sickening effect on the fae. Although I wasn’t full blooded, I
still felt the ions of the metal seeping into my skin through my
pores and destabilizing my immune system. I wasn’t absolutely
positive why this happened. Something to do with the Bronze Age and
the Iron Age. During the Bronze Age, the fae lived out in the open,
free to live their lives as they’d been doing for centuries. But
when the Iron Age came, so did prejudice and persecution. Many fae
died by tortuous hands. Since then iron had become like a disease
and the once mental aversion became a physical one hereditarily
passed down through the generations.
Despite the
story being true or not, the effects were the same. Iron didn’t sit
well with anyone with fae blood. Although I wasn’t full-blooded, I
still belonged to that small group of unfortunates. Lucky me.
But a girl had
to get around, so I rode a motorcycle, a really cool one at
that—candy apple red and white painted tank and fenders, the rest
in shiny chrome. I wore a matching helmet and with my white leather
jacket, I was vain enough to think I looked pretty cool. To me,
there was nothing like having the wind in my face and hair. I
likened it to flying. Not that I truly knew what that felt like.
Enough to know that if I could do it, I knew I’d never want to do
anything else.
After taking
out the elastic from my hair, I settled my helmet over my head.
Before mounting the bike, I thought about the poor woman that had
been savaged by something. I wasn’t yet prepared to say it had been
a werewolf attack, but I definitely was leaning that way.
I didn’t want
werewolves to be the big bad creatures depicted in bad horror
films. Because if they turned out to be monsters, then I was sure I
wasn’t that far behind them.
My thoughts
strayed to Officer Stettler’s claim that I had the hots for one of
them. Severin Saint Morgan in particular.
Emigrated from
Australia years ago, Severin appeared to be a mild-mannered
associate professor at the University of British Columbia. He was
the poster boy so to speak for the werewolf community. He’d been on
TV several times talking about how werewolf packs operated, trying
I was sure to calm the public. I had to admit they chose him well.
How could anyone think werewolves were monsters when one of their
own was packaged so well?
Swinging my leg
over the bike, I nestled into the leather seat, and kicked the bike
over. But I didn’t pull away from the curb. The hair on the back of
my neck prickled. I felt uneasy, almost like I was being
watched.
I was pretty
much alone on the street except for a couple of homeless people,
both of whom I knew by name. I glanced across the street to see if
someone lurked in the doorways or first floor windows of the pawn
shop. As far as I could see, there was no one there.
I wasn’t
usually paranoid but the feeling would not vanish. I shivered
inside my jacket but not from the cool night air.
Resigned to
just move on, I turned back around, but that was when something on
the rooftop of the building opposite me caught my eye. Startled, I
stared up at the top of the brick building. There were dark
shadows, but some of them seemed to be moving. Then a black shape
sprang from one rooftop to the next.
I shook my
head, thinking my eyes were playing tricks. No way could a person
could jump that far. But maybe it wasn’t exactly a person up there
lurking in the night. Maybe it was something else. Something not
quite human.
Shivering
again, I kicked up the stand and decided to get the hell out of
there. Quickly. I pulled away from the curb, intending to race away
from the ominous feeling that had taken hold.
Because of the
late hour, I decided to take a short cut home. The roads I chose
weren’t in the best areas of town but I didn’t have any fear. It
took a lot more than a few homeless people and young gang members
shooting off their mouths to frighten me. When I was on my bike,
especially at night, I felt completely untouchable.
I raced through
the Eastside. As I made the next turn, I might have been over the
speed limit. That could’ve been why I had trouble stopping as I
came upon a giant brown wolf standing in the middle of the
street.
Chapter
Two
After sliding
with the bike for about twelve feet, I came to a complete stop. The
wolf seemed to watch me struggle underneath the weight of the bike
then bounded off into the shadows. Thankfully, I wasn’t injured. My
knee-high riding boots protected my lower leg from road-rash.
Once I righted
the bike and kicked the stand, I tore off my helmet, hung it on the
handlebar, and walked down the street, searching the shadows for
the wolf. As I was sure it had been one. Which meant a werewolf was
nearby.