Willow Run: Boxed Set (Books 1-6)

by Hart, Melissa F.

  “Last time I checked, we didn’t have grizzlies in Vermont.”

  Willow was dimly aware of a beeping sound and what seemed like a crowd of people around her and that someone was shredding her clothes. What on earth was making that annoying noise?

  “Hang another unit of whole blood. We’re not staying ahead of the bleeding.”

  She wasn’t cold anymore, but the beeping seemed faster, and it urged her to go farther and farther into the darkness. The voices finally melted away. She seemed to be free of her body, and the pain had completely vanished.

  “Shit, she’s crashing.”

  “Asystole.”

  “Start compressions…push one mg epinephrine…”

  The blackness pulled at Willow, inviting her to dive into that inky pool and disappear. Then she thought of the life she had yet to live, the love she had not yet found. It was too soon, too soon to go. She swam back, following the beeping until she could again see the bright light over her head.

  “Oh my god, she’s back.”

  “What the…”

  “That, my friends, is some kind of a miracle.”

  “I’ll take it.”

  “Okay, folks, we’ve still got a lot to clean up here…”

  ***

  The first thing Willow saw when she regained consciousness was the face of a very handsome man in a white lab coat with a stethoscope wrapped around his neck. He had soft brown eyes, a beautiful olive complexion, a short, close-cropped beard, and a mouth made to kiss. Willow blinked slowly, trying to clear the fuzz from her brain. She tried to say something but nothing would come out but a wordless croak.

  The doctor stopped writing on his clipboard when he realized she was awake. He put a reassuring hand on her arm and gave her a gentle smile that only served to reinforce the impression that she had died and he was an angel. “Shh. Don’t try to talk—you’ve had some trauma to your larynx. It’s going to take some days for it to heal.”

  Willow nodded to indicate that she understood. She made a writing motion in the air with her right hand; the left had an IV line in it.

  The doctor pulled out a blank sheet of paper and put it on top of his clipboard so that Willow could write. She scrawled out, What happened to me? and after a moment’s thought added, What's your name?

  The doctor nodded. “I’m Christovao Amara, chief of trauma here at Mountainview. From what we can tell, we think a big cat, maybe a bobcat or a lynx attacked you, although your injuries look like they could have been made by something bigger—like a catamount—although none of the wildlife authorities know of any cougars in Vermont. Do you remember anything?”

  Willow shook her head, before writing out, Surprised—hit me from the back. She followed up with, How bad am I?

  Dr. Amara gave her a mischievous smile. “I don’t know. How bad are you?” There was a playfully lascivious tone to his voice.

  Willow tried to smack him with the clipboard, but a smile curved her lips as she did.

  “I’d say if you can take me to task, you’re doing okay.” He cleared his throat a little. “Seriously, your jugular vein was punctured and you nearly bled out. Another inch deeper in your back, and you would have been looking at having your spleen removed. If your friend hadn’t found you when they did, you would have died.”

  Willow’s brow knit in puzzlement, she wrote out, Who found me?

  Dr. Amara’s scratched at his beard. “I—I don’t know. Someone told me that an EMT said you were found by a friend.” He shrugged a little. “I can try to find out if you like.” Something caught Dr. Amara’s eye, and he turned away to adjust the machine delivering fluids and painkillers through Willow’s IV. “By the way,” he added, as he fiddled with the device. “We had to do some work on your neck, and you have fifty-three stitches in your back. You need to stay on your side and get some rest now.”

  When Doctor Amara turned back to adjust her bed, fear caught in Willow’s throat and she started trying to scream. She tried to push herself away from him, scrabbling in the bed until she was completely tangled in the sheets and the IV line pulled out. The doctor pushed the call button to get help, but the more he tried to calm Willow, the more panicked and anxious she became. Willow squeezed her eyes shut, trying to force herself to believe that what she was seeing was some kind of hallucination induced by the pain medications, but the image was too vivid, too real. Dr. Amara’s handsome face had been replaced by the head of a stag. When he turned back to Willow, he seemed to have the same soft brown eyes, but the muzzle of a deer, velvety pointed ears, and a magnificent twelve-point rack of antlers.

  A nurse came careening into the room at full tilt, and Dr. Amara called for a sedative as he tried to keep Willow from ripping open her stitches.

  “What happened?” the nurse asked as she passed him the hypodermic.

  “Hospital psychosis, I guess.” He skillfully plunged the needle into Willow’s arm. “Or maybe a reaction to the steroid we gave her, but one moment we were having a completely normal conversation, and the next she went bat shit crazy. I’m sure she was having some kind of hallucination.”

  Willow slumped as the sedative took effect, and Dr. Amara’s strong arms eased her onto her side. He carefully propped up pillows around her to keep her from rolling onto her back.

  “Keep a close eye on her. If this doesn’t resolve, I’m going to have to rethink the treatment plan.” The nurse nodded in assent as Dr. Amara gazed thoughtfully at Willow while she reinserted a new IV line. As he left the room, though, he murmured to himself, “I wonder what it was that she saw….”

  ***

  When Willow roused again, a kindly looking older nurse was wheeling in a machine to check her blood pressure and other vital signs. She pushed her eyes open.

  “Welcome back.” The nurse smiled.

  Willow motioned for something to write on. This time they were prepared and the nurse positioned a pad of paper for her.

  How long was I out? Willow wrote.

  “Last night, and the better part of today. It’s two in the afternoon. Are you feeling hungry?”

  Willow rolled her head non-committedly.

  “I think maybe we should try a milkshake—you’re going to be on liquids for a few days. Strawberry, vanilla or chocolate?”

  She swallowed, and she realized that her throat felt much better than what she remembered. A big “S” appeared on the pad.

  “Strawberry it is then, but first I need to look at your back.” The nurse helped Willow roll onto her stomach. “This might be a little uncomfortable.”

  Willow could feel the nurse’s deft fingers untying the strings that held her hospital gown closed, and then easing it back. Then she heard the woman let out an involuntary gasp before quickly covering her up. There was a strange tone in her voice when she spoke again, “I’ll be right back, dear. I want Dr. Amara to have a look.”

  Alarm filled Willow.

  The nurse tried to steady herself and patted Willow’s foot. “Oh no, not to worry, I just want to check a couple of things with him.”

  A few minutes later, the nurse returned with Dr. Amara in tow. Even face down, Willow recognized the silky tones of his voice. She wasn’t sure how she felt about him getting a view of her bare ass, but decided he was a medical professional.

  The nurse was whispering, but Willow heard her say, “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “Are you feeling better, Dr. Ryersen?” Dr. Amara asked cheerfully. Willow gave him a ‘thumbs up’. The fact was, she realized, that she wasn’t in much discomfort at all.

  “I’m going to take a look at your stitches, if that’s okay.”

  Willow gave him another thumbs up, and the nurse pulled back her gown, and then folded a sheet over her bare behind. Okay, Willow thought, not so undignified.

  “Holy…” Dr. Amara sucked in a breath. “Give me some gloves, please.” Willow could hear the snap of latex, and then felt gentle fingers examining her wounds. He turned to the nurse, “I need to get t
hese stitches out stat.”

  The nurse bustled out, presumably to retrieve some things needed for the procedure.

  “Dr. Ryersen, your wounds…they are healing…well, unusually quickly. Given the nature of what I saw two nights ago when you came in, I would have thought the stitches would be in for a week to ten days. Do you have a history of cuts closing very fast?”

  Willow shook her head.

  “Anything unusual in your medical history?”

  Coughing a little, Willow suddenly found her voice. It was dry and froggy, but it didn’t hurt to speak. “No…I’m…disgustingly normal.”

  Dr. Amara took a step back in surprise. “Holy crap, you shouldn’t be speaking for at least a week.”

  “Sorry to blow your prognosis, doc.”

  Dr. Amara’s voice took on a stern quality, one that Willow recognized from her own experience when talking to the owners of pets with suspicious injuries. “Dr. Ryersen, are you taking any kind of illicit drugs, or abusing prescription medication?”

  Willow frowned. “No, of course….” She lifted her eyes to look toward the door as the nurse came hustling back in with a sterile tray. Freezing in mid-sentence, Willow tried to not completely freak out over the fact that the nurse had the face of a raccoon. Dark circles around her bright eyes, a toothy mouth, and plush fur with dark stripes covering her face and head. She set the tray down and scratched behind one pointed ear with a hand that looked more like a paw.

  Shutting her eyes, Willow slowly counted to ten, trying to keep her composure.

  “What is it? Are you in pain?” Dr. Amara asked.

  Willow opened her eyes. The nurse looked like the same kindly woman who had first appeared to take her blood pressure.

  “Dr. Amara,” Willow paused, not sure what to say. “I think I’m having some kind of reaction. I’m seeing things that aren’t really there.” She swallowed. “Do you think my head got hit in the attack? Did you guys make sure I don’t have some kind of brain injury?”

  “We did an MRI, your brain looked fine.” Dr. Amara took a small flashlight from the pocket of his lab coat and looked in Willow’s eyes. “You’re pupils are responding normally. We can do a full neuro work up after we get these stitches out, if this continues. What exactly are you seeing? Lights? Colors?”

  Willow cleared her throat. “Uh…animals. I’m seeing animals, I mean, people who look like animals, or maybe animals that look like people.”

  The doctor quirked a smile. “Animals wearing clothes? What—like Mickey Mouse and Daffy Duck?”

  “No, like…” At that moment, a housekeeper came in the room to empty the garbage can. Willow lowered her voice to a whisper, “She looks like an opossum to me.”

  For a split second, Dr. Amara’s eyes widened in what seemed like alarm, then he forced a chuckle. “An opossum? That’s certainly a novel hallucination.”

  Willow continued in a whisper, “The nurse? She’s a raccoon, and well, earlier, you were a really good-looking buck. It’s not often I get to tell a guy, ‘Nice rack.’”

  There wasn’t any humor in Dr. Amara’s voice when he spoke again. “Yes…we need to schedule a full neurological work up. You may have some kind of brain trauma we didn’t see in the MRI.”

  He sounded flustered. What had happened to shake his confidence? The fact that he was rattled bothered her a bit; he had seemed like such a competent physician— and moreover, entirely date-worthy material. She had already noted that he wasn’t wearing a ring, but the chitchat was over. He bent his head to the task of removing her stitches, cutting and pulling, which was mildly unpleasant but not overly painful. Willow sighed. Why were all the good looking, thirty-something guys in the Kingdom completely inscrutable?

  After some minutes, the sutures were out, and Dr. Amara straightened up and pulled off his gloves with a quick snap. “All done, Dr. Ryersen. You’re going to be back at work in no time as long as you don’t have any more visions of enchanted creatures. Sometimes the disorientation of a major trauma just temporarily scrambles the signals in your brain. The fact that you’re aware that it’s a little crazy is really a good sign that it’s nothing serious.”

  The nurse tied up Willow’s gown and eased her back to her side. A moment later, someone from the dining staff came to deliver her milkshake, and Willow was relieved to see that she was a completely normal-looking person: no fur, whiskers, tails, or horns.

  “I’ll be back to check on you in the morning,” Dr. Amara said brightly, returning to his earlier sense of ease. “I’m glad you’re feeling better. You’re not seeing anything unusual right now, are you?”

  “No, not at all.” Willow smiled, and shook her head a little. “I guess being mauled by some unknown creature is enough to shake a few screws loose in anyone’s head.”

  “Get some rest.”

  When he smiled at her, Willow allowed herself a moment of fantasy as she wondered what it would be like to kiss that beautiful mouth of his. For an instant, she felt sure he was having a similarly lustful thought, and then, she saw the head of a deer superimposed over his face—as if they both co-existed, as if Dr. Christavao Amara, Chief of Trauma at Mountainview Hospital was both human…and beast.

  That night, Willow tossed and turned; it wasn’t from pain but from a mind that was too busy. She kept playing the last minutes she remembered before the attack over and over in her head, but no further clues about the nature of the attack were revealed. And she puzzled over who had found her—she was sure if it had been the Wetherwells they would have stayed with her, or at least been by to visit. The only person left was Katie, but why would Katie hide her role? Maybe her bizarre interactions with Guy or Mace had led to one of them stopping by her place, as she didn’t really know anyone else; the people who owned her apartment had been out of town on vacation since she moved in. Who was it that saved her life and why hadn’t they made themselves known?

  Finally, exhaustion overcame Willow, and she drifted off after a nurse checked her vitals at 1:00 am. Out of the blackness of her sleeping mind, a parade of animals appeared: an opossum and a raccoon, who scampered away, and then a stately buck. The buck pawed the ground and snorted a little, seemingly agitated by another presence, then she heard the sound of big cat’s roar. A huge sleek cougar padded in and faced off with the stag, pawing and tossing his head as the cougar uttered more threatening sounds. Then another sound caught Willow’s attention: the coughing sound of a smaller cat who was equally agitated. A handsome bobcat with a ruff of fur around his face stepped into the light, turning his head back and forth, as if carefully examining his competition. Willow felt a swell of panic rise up. What were these animals going to do? Was she going to be attacked?

  In the dream, Willow started to run, but when she did, a hand caught hers and tried to pull her away. She turned to see Dr. Amara, his gentle brown eyes entreating her to come with him. Then a hand wrapped around her other wrist, and Mace Leland was tugging her in the opposite direction, his sensuous face filled with desire. Willow turned from one to the other, frightened by the tug of war going on. Then the bobcat growled and sprang toward the trio, and in mid-air he transformed into Guy Beaugrand. Willow woke up in a sweat.

  Her breath was coming in pants, and Willow felt that if she didn’t get out of the hospital at that moment, she would continue going crazy and perhaps even die there. Other than the lingering effects of her dream, Willow realized that she really felt quite normal. She pulled the IV line from her hand, and leaping from the bed, pulled off the hospital gown so she could look at her wounds in the mirror. She gasped. Her skin was smooth and unbroken, red lines traced her back, but they had the look of recent scars, not fresh injuries. She tilted her head back so she could see her throat, and when she peeled back the bandage, the effect was similar. Her face tightened in confusion.

  Had Dr. Amara exaggerated the extent of her injuries? But she had felt him removing each and every one of the fifty-three stitches—how was it possible that everything was now healed? S
he shook her head, trying to get a grip on what was happening with her body, but realized she had no clothes to go anywhere, and no transportation. She threw the gown back on over her head and picked up the phone to call Katie.

  ***

  “Geez Willow, are you sure you should be busting out of the hospital?” Katie tapped the steering wheel of her car nervously while Willow pulled on a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt that Katie had brought with her.

  “They can’t hold you against your will, and I think if I stay here any longer my mental state is only going to deteriorate. There’s something weird going on in there.”

  “I can’t believe the news of your attack isn’t all over town. When you didn’t pop by the diner yesterday, I thought maybe you were shacked up with Mace.”

  “Mace—now that’s another story.” Willow shook her head. “The whole evening was like a fairytale until suddenly a cloud came over him, and he acted like I wasn’t sympathetic enough to a fictional character. You would have thought I had intentionally insulted him.”

  “So now we know: sex god—and damaged eccentric.” Katie sighed. “But really Willow—sneaking out in the middle of the night?”

  “They have my insurance information and know where to send the bill,” Willow countered sarcastically. “Come on, get me out of here.”

  On the thirty-minute drive back to East Lindenbury, Willow tried to explain to Katie what had happened at the hospital.

  “Let me get this straight,” Katie tried to summarize. “A super sexy doctor got a gander at your bare butt, you had fifty-three stitches and a messed up neck and throat magically heal up, and everyone who works in the hospital is some kind of animal…literally.”

  “Well, no, not everyone and not literally, but yeah, that’s basically it.”

  Katie shook her head as she pulled up at Willow’s apartment. “If I were you, I’d go back to the hospital and check out the hot doc. Slim pickings here in East Lindenbury now that we know Mace is damaged goods.”