Shapeshifted es-3

by Cassie Alexander

  * * *

  I followed him back into the waiting room, where the old woman sat. She clutched her black blanket around her, despite the heat, and I could only imagine how badly the seat she was on would need to be disinfected on Monday.

  “Are we done here?” Olympio said, looking back and forth from Hector to me.

  “Yes. Thank you.” Hector pulled out his wallet and handed Olympio a ten-dollar bill. Then Olympio came over and looked at me. I found a ten and gave it to him. He looked me up and down, and hmmphed. I fished in my pocket and gave him the rest of my flashlight change.

  “You want to know how I knew we wouldn’t die?” he asked me as he pocketed my money.

  “How?”

  “La Llorona couldn’t be a grandmother since she killed all her kids.”

  “Ha.” I grinned at him. And then our shared moment was broken by the sound of water dripping—from the woman’s chair onto the floor. She was peeing herself.

  Olympio blanched. “You don’t pay me enough for that, though.” He sprinted for the door.

  * * *

  The paramedics lifted her onto the gurney. She fought, clawing at them like a wildcat. Without the black blanket, she was naked—they covered her up with a sheet from their ambulance. I knew they were driving her over to County, the only facility that would take someone like her. Even now that health insurance was becoming more common, hospitals weren’t exactly going out of their way to open up their doors. And old habits died hard. Ambulance drivers who’d driven the sickest or meanest people to County for half their careers weren’t going to change overnight.

  Once she was gone, Hector threw her blanket away. I felt bad watching him trash what was probably her only possession in the whole wide world, but there was no way we could keep the thing; it was a petri dish. I promised myself I’d buy her another one, if I ever saw her again—but I bet she was going to stay a few weeks someplace with IV antibiotics, sedatives, and possibly restraints.

  Then we closed the place, and Hector locked the doors behind him.

  He walked me back to the station. “You should put some Neosporin on that. And change the bandage frequently.”

  “I am a nurse, remember?” I said. He gave me a look that made it clear that this afternoon, I’d crossed the line. “Okay, okay, I will. And I’ll wash your shirt, and bring it back to you.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Just get better. You should call me if anything changes.” He patted himself down and found a business card inside one pocket. He handed it to me.

  I’d gotten phone numbers in less romantic ways, barely. I grimaced and took it from him.

  * * *

  It was only five by the time I got home, but I was exhausted. Between two days of painting, and then my hunchbacked trip through the storm drains, I had more problems than just my neck.

  I took a long shower, and every drop of water that hit or trailed down my neck wound stung. I fought to stand there, scrubbing away the rest of the grime, going through what felt like half a bar of soap.

  After that I slathered Neosporin on my neck, gauzed it up with supplies swiped from my last job, and crawled back into bed to take a short nap. I set my alarm clock and everything.

  When I woke up Minnie was purring by my side. I petted her while I woke up, like always—and realized it was dark. I could have kicked myself. All that effort to get on a day schedule, and here I would be up all night.

  Worse yet—I’d missed dinner with Mom. Shit. Shit shit shit.

  I looked at my phone. It was ten o’clock. Too late to call. Of course, she’d called me, and sent a worried text message. I checked the volume on my phone. It was up. I’d slept right through her calls too. Should I text? Text Peter? Or what? Shit!

  I sent an email, hoping one of them would check it in the morning. They’d be up for church; maybe they’d check their emails before that, or after? I could call at nine. I didn’t think my mom was in any shape to leave the house, but I knew if she couldn’t leave she’d watch one of those sermons on TV.

  I had limited mother–daughter time left in my life, unless I managed to shake down a vampire—one that didn’t want to kill me, which meant Dren was out. Fuck.

  And my neck still hurt. Goddammit. I got up and stumbled over to the bathroom. I tripped and stubbed my toes.

  Fucking fuck fuck!

  Maybe if I stopped cursing at God, he’d treat me better. Then again, a fair God wouldn’t be offing my mother with breast cancer, now would he?

  I sighed and sank down onto the floor of my bathroom rather than face myself in the mirror again. My neck burned—and so did my pride. What was I doing? I was chasing the hope of healing my mother like it was some kind of frantic butterfly. Anytime I thought I got close enough to try to catch an answer, my hands wound up empty again—or worse yet, my dreams were smashed inside.

  Maybe I should just quit the job at the clinic and spend what little time was left with her. No one could blame me if I did. I could move back in for a little bit. She and Peter had turned my old room into a guest bedroom. I knew they still had my old bed.

  I hauled myself up by the edge of my sink.

  I leaned on my sink and tugged the tape off my neck dressing with my free hand. The gauze slid away, colored with the yellow of purulent drainage, and the claw marks were red and oozing. “Ugh.” And now that I was standing—I did not feel well. Or look well, by the dim bathroom light. I was still sore from earlier today, I’d slept wrong, and now I was fighting off this infection too.

  I had faith in my nurse’s immune system—I couldn’t count how many times I’d picked up something at the hospital and felt sick going home, only to wake up the next morning well. Plus, the only emergency room I could think to go to in the middle of the night would be County, and damned if I’d end up there. I tied up my hair, hissing as raising my arms above my head made my neck hurt, and got back into the shower.

  I couldn’t rinse my neck off directly—it hurt too badly for that—but I held my head so that it’d catch all the water running down, and tried to dab at myself with a soapy washcloth. I dried myself off, regauzed my wound, and stumbled back to bed, where I dry-swallowed an Ambien. My last memory was of it being bitter on my tongue as it made its way down.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Thump thump thump.

  What what what?

  I blinked in bed. If Jorgen was back here to eat Minnie, I was going to punch him.

  All my covers were tossed off the bed. I sat up as the thumping continued. Who did that? Why? Who unmade my bed? Jerks.

  Thump.

  “Go away!”

  Thump-more-thump.

  Shit.

  “I have neighbors, you know. I’ll call the police.”

  I scrabbled for my phone, watched the numbers on the screen flicker and dance. Stupid numbers. Always betraying me.

  The thumping kept going on. Was it coming from inside me? I looked down at myself, and oh-my-God my neck burned. Maybe it was my neck knocking. Telling me something. I sat on the edge of my bed.

  “What? Go!”

  I heard talking, outside, as though someone was answering me.

  Not Jorgen then. Unless he’d learned how to talk. Had he learned how to talk? I tried to imagine him talking, and saw a comical dog in my mind, one with a tweed coat and a smoking pipe. I snickered at this, and the thumping began again.

  “Whatever!” I stood up, naked, and picked up my robe off the floor. I walked down the hall to my front door and swung it open.

  Hector was standing outside.

  “Why’re you here?” I asked him.

  “The more I thought about it, the more I was worried about you. No telling what diseases that old woman had.”

  I squinted at him, choosing the version of him I thought was really him, and not the shadows the porch light made him shoot off to either side. It was hard; there were a lot of him to choose from. “How do you know where I live?”

  “You did fill out some forms when I hir
ed you. Can I come inside?”

  Nervous laughter spilled out of my mouth like a river. “No. I mean yes. Wait. No.”

  Who was this person talking? Not me. I pressed my hand against my hallway wall. The cross there, it was cold, it felt so good. I took it off the wall and held it against my chest.

  “Are you okay, Edie?”

  “I’m fine. I’ve always been fine, and I’m going to always keep being fine.”

  He looked doubtful. “You don’t look so fine. Can I come in?”

  I leaned forward and put a finger on his chest. “Are you a vampire?” I had seen him in the daylight, but who knew?

  “No. I wish you’d get over your vampire delusions.”

  “You would be deluded too if you were me!” My voice rose, and I realized I was shouting. Neighbors, dammit, neighbors! I lowered my voice to hiss, “You’d be looking for a lot of excuses to delude yourself, if you were me.”

  He took my hand, and pushed me gently back. More like he was holding me upright. “I thought you said you were fine?”

  “Dammit.” I took a step back, and the hallway tilted, sending me spilling to the side. I hit the wall with my shoulder. It reverberated up to my neck, and I hurt so bad I wanted to cry. “Here, hold this.” I handed the cross to him, this one made of real silver. If he touched it, I’d be safe.

  He took it, and took a step inside. “Edie—you look really bad.” He reached his hand out and touched my forehead. His hand was nice and cool. Maybe it’d taken all the chill from the cross and channeled it into me. I reached up and pressed his hand tighter against my forehead.

  “You’re hot. You should sit down.” Fully inside my house now, he took my shoulders and directed me toward my couch.

  “I’m totally, utterly okay,” I said, letting him push me down. “Can I have your hand again?” Looking at me strangely, he offered it over, and I pressed it to my face again. “This is a good hand. I like this hand.”

  “Okay. Edie. You need to calm down. Wait here, okay?” He freed himself, closed my door, and went down my hall. I was there for an hour or twelve, but then he came back and handed me a wet washcloth.

  “What were you doing with my cat?”

  “Edie. You’re sick.”

  “No I’m not.” I would totally shake my head to tell him no, only my neck hurt so so bad.

  “Yeah, you are.” He reached into his phone for a pocket. Or the other way around. “We need to get you some help.”

  “Fine.” I was tired. Now that I was sitting down again, the sleepiness was taking me.

  He smiled at me, a warm light in his eyes. “See? You’re still fine.”

  “I’m not sick.” I looked up, petulant as any child fighting sleep. “I hate you.”

  “You are sick. I know you don’t hate me.” He held his pocket to his ear.

  I remember saying, “Don’t tell Olympio anything,” and then I thought I was going to pass out.

  I’m pretty sure I did.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Wherever I was when I woke up, it smelled like smoke—not like cigarette smoke, but like hippie smoke, herbal stuff, and pipe tobacco. A dim lightbulb hung overhead. The ceiling was dingy, stained yellow with smoke and neglect, the walls mostly hidden by colorful banners with phrases in Spanish. I recognized the names of a few saints, and there were posters for soccer tournaments from 1973. There were statues on a cheap table at the back of the room, skeletons wrapped in robes and holding scales and scythes, like the background of a pretentious metal album. Something crinkled beneath me as I moved my head—and sitting up, I realized I’d been lying on tinfoil.

  “What the—where—” I patted at my pockets, looking for my phone. My mom. I had to call my mom—but the last things I remembered didn’t involve putting on pants.

  “El durmiente despierta,” said a voice in Spanish. A man I didn’t recognize was watching me. He was smoking a pipe, sitting among the statues, and the light in here was so dim I’d thought he was one. He had one whole leg and one that jutted out and ended, amputated at the knee; a crutch leaned on either side of his chair.

  “Where am I?” I skittered backward from him, wrinkling the foil.

  “Edie—” A familiar voice from behind me. I turned around and saw Hector at the door.

  “What is this?”

  “You were sick. So I brought you here.”

  Olympio peeked in behind him. Suddenly I knew where I was at. “Oh, God. Take me to a real hospital.”

  “You don’t need a real hospital now! My grandfather cured you!” Olympio pointed at the strange man behind me. I looked back, and he tapped out his pipe into a wastebasket by his good knee.

  There were no windows in this room. “What time is it? Tell me.”

  Hector found his phone inside his coat pocket. “Three A.M.”

  I’d taken an Ambien at ten P.M. No way I was awake now. Oh, shit. “How long was I out for?” I stood, unsteady, my feet slipping against the tinfoil I’d been lying on. Now that I was standing, I could see it was in the shape of a cross.

  “A whole day. You were very sick.”

  My mother had probably been freaking out for almost two days. She already had one derelict child—she didn’t need two. “I need to get home. Right now.”

  “It’s only been a day. I’m sure your cat’s fine. And I’m your boss, it’s not like I’m going to fire you. You were really ill.”

  There was a wetness on my neck. I reached up and found a poultice there. I pulled it off, and it crumbled in my hand. It smelled like tobacco. “Jesus Christ!” I flung the remnants of it down. “If I was really ill, why the hell did you bring me here?”

  Hector’s face darkened, but it was Olympio who spoke first. “Hey! I told my grandfather that you were cool! Worth saving!”

  There were still pieces of what looked like wet spinach stuck to my hand. I looked back at Olympio’s grandfather, who was stoically contemplating what an asshole I was. I took in a few huge gulps of air to calm down. “It isn’t—I’m sorry.” I made sure to look at his grandfather. “I’m really sorry. Thanks for healing me. I think. But I’ve got some other things I need to be doing with my time.”

  He leaned forward and held out an egg to me.

  “Don’t touch it,” Olympio said. “He’s just showing it to you.”

  I thought it was stone, black marble in the shape of an egg, until Olympio went on. “The egg holds what my grandfather took from you. The badness, muy malo, very bad. He put it into the egg to protect you. And when you leave, he’ll take care of it, so it’ll never attack you again.”

  Olympio’s grandfather spoke, and Olympio translated. “But he won’t be able to stop you from putting new bad stuff back inside yourself.”

  “Thank you,” I said, as sincerely as I could, then turned to push my way through the door.

  * * *

  Hector followed me down the hallway and stairs as I raced my way out. I didn’t know where I was going, I just needed to get home.

  Halfway down the hall I realized that those had been statues of Santa Muerte in his room. I should have asked him about her. Of course. If anyone had a direct line to obscure supernatural entities, it was a man who took badness out of people and put it into gothic Easter eggs.

  I made it out of the building, hitting the street almost at a run. “Hey—slow down!” Hector called after me. I darted through a group of people standing, and they laughed, either at some joke or to see a lost white girl on the lam. Hector caught up to me.

  “Where are we? I need to go. I have to get home.” He reached out to feel my forehead, and I ducked away. “I’m fine. I just have to go.”

  “What is wrong with you?”

  “Me? Why did you take me to him? What was that about?”

  We were underneath a sputtering streetlight, and Hector’s face was full of concern. “He was the best doctor for the kind of illness you had.”

  “Does he cure cancer?”

  “No.” He pulled back as if I
’d hit him. “Do you have cancer?”

  “No. My mom does. I was supposed to go see her the other night.” I went through my pockets, looking for my phone or anything at all, but then realized that when Hector had gotten me out of my house, he probably hadn’t thought to bring my purse along. “I’m sure she’s worried sick. Sicker. You know?” I laughed at my own poor joke.

  “Edie—I didn’t know. I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s why I started working at your place. I couldn’t bear to be at the sleep clinic one more night, once I knew. I couldn’t just sit there, not doing anything. It’d drive me insane.” I looked around, trying to figure out where I was, where the nearest train station would be, only I didn’t have any money on me. I whirled on him. “I need to go home now. I have to call her tonight, even if it wakes her up.”

  “Or you could just ask me for my phone?” He held it out to me.

  He was right. I’d had my mother’s phone number memorized since we’d moved in second grade. I stuck out my hand without saying anything. Hector dropped his phone into it, and I dialed.

  “Mom? Peter—Peter, yeah, I’m fine. I’m sorry. I was really sick. No, I’m better now, thanks. Really sick. This is actually a doctor friend of mine’s phone.” I glared at Hector. In case my parents called back to check on me, he’d better cover for me. “Yeah. Tell her I love her, and not to worry, okay? Okay. Thanks.”

  I hung up, a small portion of my guilt lifted, and gave Hector back his phone.

  “If I’d known, Edie—” he said, his voice heavy with apology. “What about just taking it easy for a week? Letting the news settle in?”

  “Because. I suck at being alone with myself. And I’m the most alone person I know.”

  He looked down at me. “I find that hard to believe.” His arms were open, palms facing up. I could step into them, just for human contact, for human warmth.

  I took a step back so I wouldn’t do anything foolish. “Believe what you want. It’s true.” I couldn’t let him hug me, so I hugged myself. Now that we were outside, it was cooler, and the shirt Hector had picked out for me was thin. Oh, God, he’d put my bra on me. Yes, he was a doctor and all—I knew that for me penises were a dime a dozen, I’d seen so many at work—but he was still my boss. Ugh. “What happened to me?” I touched my neck, where the claw marks had been. They were still there now, but fainter, and they didn’t hurt to touch.