“I still don’t get why you can’t get to Y4 on your own,” I said as the elevator arrived.
“Me either,” she said and stepped inside.
We went through the warren of hallways that led to Y4, and reached the final elevator bank. “This is the one that wouldn’t work for me,” she said, pointing. I waved my badge in front of the door. It arrived, and we stepped in.
“The Shadows control our access. You’d have to ask them.” I looked up, toward the recesses behind the lights set above. “Maybe they didn’t want you to come down?”
“But now it’s fine?” Sike frowned. “What’s changed?”
“I’m here?” I guessed. The Shadows never did anything the easy way, not when the hard way involved more pain for them to feed on. Shit. “Sike—why are you here?”
“There’s been a small accident.”
The elevator doors opened, releasing us onto Y4.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
My home floor was chaos. The P.M. shift charge nurse spotted me from behind her desk. “Did they call you to come in early?”
“I’m on break from trauma. What’s going on?”
“New admit. If you want to keep your dinner down, stay outside.” I didn’t think I had that as an option. “Who’s she?” the charge nurse asked as Sike came forward. Sike opened her stolen lab coat, pulling some paperwork out of the breast pocket.
“I have visitation rights for any members of the Rose Throne on this floor.”
The charge nurse snorted. “Figures. Room four.”
Sike put her forms away and walked across the floor. I could leave now, my escorting job done, but my stupid, foolish curiosity wouldn’t let me. I followed her in.
* * *
Doctors barked orders and nurses swarmed the room like ants: finding IV sites, hanging meds, setting up sterile surgical trays.
“Did anyone find the fingers?” a doctor asked aloud. “Any of them?” he went on, his voice rising. No one answered.
The patient sat on the bed in the middle of everything, arms exposed, face bound up in gauze, seeping bright red blood. A nurse stood beside the bed, clamping her gloved hands over the gauze where his ears would be, to apply pressure.
“And not a drop to drink,” Sike murmured, then strode into the room. “The Rose Throne demands recursion.”
The doctor stopped where he was, Betadine staining his gloves and his patient’s hand orange-brown. The doctor was willowy, too tall, folded over the bed like a number 3. When he looked over at Sike, his face was stern. “You can’t take him—he needs profound medical care.”
Sike took off her lab coat and folded it over her arm. “Gideon Strand is the Rose Throne’s property.”
I blinked. The man underneath all the gauze was Gideon? The daytimer from my kitchen, with Anna? I couldn’t tell. With all the gauze, I couldn’t see much of anything.
“We demand recursion. I’m here on behalf of Anna Arsov, the near-ascended.”
“I don’t care who you are, lady. You’re not taking him.”
“Gideon,” Sike said, addressing their patient. The gauzed man groaned in response. “Come with me.” She snapped her fingers.
And like King Kong on the Empire State Building, he started to swat staff away like tiny planes.
“Restraints!” the doctor ordered, and a nurse ran off to get them. Technically—I should have. Or could have. But I didn’t know whose side I was on just then—“Ten milligrams of Haldol stat! And get me a trank gun!”
There was an isolation cart right outside the door. I took a step back outside and made my choice—I put the code into the isolation cart and hauled open the top drawer. It unlocked, freeing the trank gun. I grabbed and loaded two of the sedative darts.
I went back into the room with the trank gun ready, even if I wasn’t sure whom I was going to shoot. Sike and the doctor were in each other’s faces.
“I have every right to take him. He belongs to my Throne. We are responsible for his care.”
“You can’t possibly care for him. He’s staying here.”
Gideon was wrestling with the nurses beyond. One of my P.M. shift co-workers yelped as he made contact with her ribs.
“Nobody get injured!” said the doctor, and the nurses stopped trying. Gideon pulled himself out of bed and stumbled, unable to see where he was at or where he was going.
“I promise he will be better off once relinquished into my care,” Sike said. “I have all the official paperwork.” She presented her papers again, folded neatly in two. “It’s signed in triplicate, in her blood. You have to comply.”
“He’s covered in wounds. Infection is a given—”
“He’ll get blood.”
We all knew she didn’t mean merely human. “Do it here then,” the doctor challenged her.
Sike frowned. “Fine. Leave the room. Now.” Sike turned toward me and handed me her lab coat, then pushed Gideon back to sitting. I made to follow my co-workers but she called after me. “Edie—stay.”
My curiosity had curdled to guilt and horror, but I did as I was told.
* * *
Sike sat beside him on the bed and blotted away the Betadine distastefully with the corner of a sheet. Then she reached into her pocket and pulled out a makeup compact, flipping it open to reveal what appeared to be a crème blush.
“Gideon, give me your hand.”
She smeared her right thumb in the substance, then ran it along the edges of his wounds. One knuckle at a time began to seal. Only the first knuckles remained on that hand. I wondered with a sick fascination what was left of the other one.
“Sike—what happened?” I didn’t want to see what was under the bandages covering his face. “And why?”
“Becoming a member of the Sanguine is not without trials.” She continued to paint what was clearly a vampire-blood-based substance onto Gideon’s hand, like a salve.
The enormity of his situation settled in. He had no fingers. Lord only knew what the gauze around his face was concealing. “Who did this?”
“If I knew that, I’d be killing them right now. Anna was asleep when he was damaged, and he did not see his attackers.” Finishing with his nearest hand, she reached up to unwrap his face. “He was her first daytimer. Her eyes, her ears,” she said, as his face was uncovered—his eye sockets were empty, hollow, and the shells of his ears were gone. “And now he is as helpless as a baby bird.”
“But why?”
“Because she chose him.”
“I thought they revered Anna?”
“Our kind buys reverence with fear.” She loaded up her thumb with the salve again and pressed it into the moist concavity of his eye sockets. I breathed deeply to keep my stomach straight.
“So the Rose Throne isn’t all one big happy vampire family?”
“The words happy and family do not belong in the same sentence as vampire.” She traced the outlines of his mutilated ears. “But this wasn’t us. The Rose Throne is pleased about Anna’s ascension. This was someone else.”
“Who? And why?”
“I’ll be trying to figure that out as soon as I leave here.”
I swallowed. I didn’t want to think of myself just now, but—“Whoever did this—could they come for me?”
Sike paused in her ministrations. “I suspect that this was done for show. Harming a daytimer’s much more of an affront than killing a mere human. No offense.”
“None taken,” I said. “Somehow, your explanation doesn’t make me feel any more safe.”
“You don’t understand, Edie. Even without your badge, you wouldn’t. She can hear him inside her mind, crying.” Sike unwound his other hand and started to treat it. “Not killing him is worse than death, in this case.”
“Make him into a vampire then—” I prodded. It was what he’d wanted—what all daytimers did.
“With a human, vampire blood can only heal so much. And there are some things that becoming a vampire will not heal. You cannot regrow lost flesh—thing
s lost in life, unhealed, stay gone. Would you want to live forever, like he is now?”
And I remembered Dren, eternally pissed at me for the loss of his hand, and his task for me tonight. I shook my head, and she nodded. “You see my point.”
Sike flipped her compact closed and pocketed it. Then she rewound the gauze around him, still bloody from the first time through.
“I can get you clean gauze, at least.”
“It doesn’t matter now.” She stood. “Gideon, follow me.”
Gideon stood and hobbled forward, like a stiff but obedient dog.
“Where will you take him?” I asked her, stepping out of their way.
She smiled cruelly. “Home.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Even if I had wanted to eat on my break, I didn’t have any time. The rest of Y4’s P.M. shift looked at me like I was some sort of traitor, which I supposed I was now. I put the trank gun away after taking out the darts, tossed Sike’s stolen lab coat into my locker, and went to wait for the elevator to head back up to trauma.
The doors opened and I heard steps from Y4 behind me. I hit the elevator’s CLOSE button and held it. I didn’t want to hear it from anyone else on my floor. At the last moment, a jacketed hand jabbed between the closing doors, sending them open again.
“Hey—” It was the were from this morning, the one who’d been leaning on my car. He shouldered his way into the elevator. I ran to the rear, putting my back into the corner. “No—look,” he said, then saw me and stopped where he was. “This is pretty threatening, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” My hands were up, pushing him away, even though I knew there’d be no way I could win a fight with him. He backed up, keeping his hands spread wide to hold the doors open.
“I’m sorry about this morning,” he said. I stood straighter and put my hands down. “I just didn’t expect for anything to ever happen to my uncle.”
I had no idea if Winter’s status had changed—I hadn’t looked at any charts on my way out the door. “I’m afraid I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know that you know.” He gave me an exhausted smile. “Thanks for keeping him alive, last night.”
“You’re welcome,” I said, unsure precisely what I was taking credit for when Gina’d done most of the work. He stepped back, then doors of the elevator closed, and the elevator rose up to the ground floor.
How lovely it was to sound honorable when I was 99 percent I sure would be bleeding his uncle tonight.
* * *
I would have sat down in the elevator to think, if it didn’t stink of were-piss from all the visitors that’d marked their territory as they rode up and down. A curl of gauze rode with me, Gideon’s, from his exit. It was half covered in blood and stuck to the floor. I’d probably stepped on it on my way inside.
I had no doubt that Dren would make good on his promise to drain Jake if I didn’t comply. Vampires were only honor-bound where other vampires were concerned—humans and daytimers were replaceable, as Gideon had found out.
It wasn’t the getting blood, so much as the not knowing what it’d be used for. Winter probably had enough blood now to spare—I knew we’d tanked him up with transfusions, ever since he’d been hit. But what would Dren do with the blood once I gave it to him? Dren was a Husker, a kind of vampire bounty hunter, which gave him some mandate to go around messing with people’s lives. I spent the duration of the elevator ride up pondering what Winter’s blood could possibly mean to him.
In the end, I supposed it didn’t matter—because what it meant to me was that Jake would be all right. I’d saved Jake from himself too many times for me to let him down now.
* * *
I walked into trauma past the charge nurse’s desk.
“You’re late,” said the charge nurse. “Again.”
“Sorry.”
“Just because it’s a holiday doesn’t mean you can break the rules,” she said. Are you stupid?
“Yeah.”
I made my way back to my assigned room. Luz saw me and glared. I sighed and proceeded to ignore her through my next assessment of Javier. He’d only lost a quarter of a centimeter of feeling this time. Maybe the swelling in his spine was going down. The dots down his side hadn’t always been regular up to this point. Who knew.
I bided my time until shift change. Luz tried to get the next nurse to let her spend the night, like I thought she would, and was refused, much to both their chagrin: my replacement’s, that Luz was still there to ask, and Luz’s because she hadn’t gotten her way.
I listened to their heated argument as I co-signed the chart. Tonight was going to be long for everyone.
* * *
The thought of holiday pay was no longer enough to sustain me as I walked back down to Y4. Between being tired, being hungry, and being disgusted with myself over Gideon, Dren, and Jake, I had no strength left to hold up my head.
I slouched into the locker room and changed my scrubs quickly, so I wouldn’t bring strange germs back down. As if anything I’d seen in trauma could be stranger than my job here.
Gina came in, all coats and cold from the outdoors. I was surprised to see her. “You do realize there’s no holiday pay after midnight?” I asked.
“Yeah, I know.”
“Um. So how was the thing with the thing?”
Gina hissed out air through pursed lips, hauling off her outdoor gear. “Spent Christmas with my folks. Avoided Brandon entirely. I got called into work, and here I am.”
“If I didn’t know better I’d say you were exhibiting classic avoidance behavior. Or oppositional defiance disorder. I always get those two confused.”
Gina snorted as she opened her locker. “It’s a good thing you don’t know better then.” I headed toward the door of the locker room. “Hey, Edie.” Gina called after me. “Thanks for asking.”
“Sure.”
* * *
I went out to Y4. Meaty was nowhere to be seen, but there was a ton of talking from the were-corral side of the room, around the bend. I found my name on the assignment board—I was with Gina again, and Winter, same as last night.
Meaty came back from the corral side of the floor just as Gina came up behind me. “Spence, Martin—break room consult now,” Meaty said and lumbered off the floor.
“Marteen?” I said, pronouncing Gina’s name with the same accent Meaty had given it. “I always thought it was just Martin.”
“Yeah, because you’re white.”
“Why didn’t you ever correct me?”
“Because I’m lazy.”
“Which is clearly why you’ve gone through more schooling than I have, Ms. Doctor of Veterinary Medicine.”
Gina rolled her eyes. “All those extra letters mean is I get to be the one standing nearer the teeth.”
We reached the break room door together. Meaty already occupied the far side of the table, waiting for us.
“We all need to be on the same page here,” he began. “First thing—we’re trying to set boundaries on visitors, but day shift was a freaking circus. Between family members, gawkers, and people paying their respects—” Meaty made a disgusted sound. Each of us knew gawkers/family/respectors were often the same thing. “We’ve told them visitors have to leave for the night, but I expect it’ll start up early this morning again. Second thing—they’ve started posting guards at the door.”
“They don’t trust us?” Gina asked.
“Deepest Snow doesn’t trust anyone. Don’t take it personally. Just know they’re going to look at your paperwork and watch you with the eyes of a hawk.”
Gina hissed in disappointment. “I knew I should have ignored that call tonight.”
“Do we have to talk to them?” I asked.
“Only to answer their questions. Don’t go looking for additional topics of conversation.” Meaty looked from one to the other of us. “Last but not least, the family’s produced a DNR.”
“Oh, fuck,” Gina cursed, and I groaned.
“Does everyone agree?” I asked. The other thing about DNRs was that anyone could tell you to ignore them—from a wife or firstborn, right on down to a distant cousin. Anyone who had any need for closure could say stop, and pull the brakes on the death train.
“The nephew is recusing himself. The daughter is undecided. We’re having a family conference tomorrow. I suspect they’ll want to hold off until the full moon.”
“Shitty way to spend the day after Christmas,” I said.
“Shitty way to spend the next eight hours,” Gina said, giving me a glare.
She was right. We would spend the night keeping him keeping on, but not have much room for error. If he crashed and we did extraordinary things to save him—all our good work might be undone tomorrow. And who knew how long he’d hang on afterward? We would drive his body right past death’s station, and who knew when the next stop would be? I’d seen people with DNRs continue living for weeks, not just days.
Or if he did die, and the family hadn’t come to a resolution yet, they’d be looking at us firmly. People experiencing sudden tragedy usually wanted someone to blame. Couldn’t punish death or fate, but you could definitely punish staff.
“This is the latest MRI from this morning.” Meaty flipped open a folder on the table, revealing a brain scan. I didn’t need to be a neurologist to know that it wasn’t right. A huge white spot took up space where normal brain matter should be. “After the accident and bleed, there’s no room in his skull for anybody to be left home inside there. But not everyone in the family is ready to hear that. Got it?”
“Guards at the door. Shaky DNR, bad bleed. Got it,” I said.
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