"Spend holidays with his zombie family?" Asher guessed, the note of sarcasm in his voice unmistakable. "Is he going to come back soon? You shouldn"t really be alone-"
"I don"t know. He didn"t say." Without meeting his eyes, I finally found my car key and unlocked my door.
"What? Edie-"
"He said he had to leave town, okay? He didn"t make any promises as to when he"d be back. Or if he"d be back. At all." I shook my head, remembering the night when he"d left me-it still hurt. "Too many people saw him save me. So he had to go."
Asher"s voice was soft. "That"s not right, Edie. You"re not the kind of girl-"
"How can I get Dren off my back?" I interrupted. I didn"t want to pull off any more scabs just now.
This version of Asher made a disappointed face at my predicament, then answered me. "You"ll have to find something that Dren really wants and give it to him."
Like my life, or someone else"s. "There"s just no way."
"You could get the Shadows involved again-"
I shook my head. "I hate those things."
Asher shrugged. "All right. I"d offer you my people"s protection, but I think I know how you feel about that already. Can"t you just get that killer vampire friend of yours to take care of him?" He held his hand low to indicate how tall Anna used to be.
"I suppose I could. Maybe. Hey, have you ever heard of the phrase Amba.s.sador of the Sun?"
"What is that, a s.h.i.tty metal band?"
I snorted. "No. My vampire friend has her vampire debutante ball soon. She"d like me to have a position in her court. I wasn"t going to take it seriously, but-"
"If it"ll get Dren off your back." Asher finished my thought as I ducked into my car. "I"ve never heard of it before, but I"ll look into it and get back to you."
"Thanks, Asher."
He performed a hand-twirling bow. "What kind of Grinch would I be if I didn"t escort lovely ladies safely to their cars?"
I gave him a wan smile and closed the door.
CHAPTER EIGHT.
Most roads were empty, so hopefully the hospital would be slow. I"d noticed before my transfer to Y4 that on holidays our workloads seemed to go down. Even truly sick people would rather be at home than here.
I parked in the visitor lot and went in. Our Charlie Brown tree was slumped in the lobby, but there were some gift donations stacked beneath it, and somebody had thoughtfully added a pine-scented car freshener to its cheap ornaments and tinsel. I walked by and wound my way down to Y4.
There was a note from our nurse manager on my locker. You didn"t complete attendance of your mandatory safety cla.s.s. Your new cla.s.s is scheduled January 10. The date was underlined in red. I could feel the disappointment in her cursive. "I was only helping to save some guy"s life, and then covered in were-blood. Sheesh," I said to no one as I pulled the note off my locker and shoved it into my bag. Maybe Charles and I would be rescheduled together. That would be nice. I took the knife out and settled it onto the top shelf of my locker just as Gina came into the room. She smiled as soon as she saw me.
"Merry Christmas!" She rummaged in a large red gift bag and pulled out a smaller one to give me. It said EDIE RN on the card.
I grinned for a second as I took it from her-and then realized I hadn"t even thought about getting my co-workers gifts. I should have. I"d been in denial about this entire holiday season, and now I felt like a heel. "Gina, I can"t take-"
"It"s nothing big." Her voice was m.u.f.fled by her locker. She began humming "Up on the Rooftop."
I peeked inside the bag. Saran-wrapped cookies, oatmeal and chocolate chip. "Awww, Gina-"
"See? You"re welcome."
I teased the edge of the wrap up, and the scent of homemade cookies wafted out. "You"re awesome, Gina."
"I know." She pulled off her dirty scrubs and began pulling new ones on. "See you on the floor!" she sang after me as I left the locker room. I ducked into the bathroom to pull my hair into a ponytail in front of the mirror, my heart swelling a little bit with the spirit of the holiday.
Y4 wasn"t decorated for Christmas, but someone had found a small boom box and carols were playing.
Meaty"s head rose up as I came through the doors. "Edie! Happy holidays!" My charge nurse was a ma.s.sive human being with an androgynous face and an indeterminate gender. As far as I was concerned, it didn"t matter-he/she/it had saved my life twice now, and I was pleased to see them.
"Merry Christmas yourself," I said with a grin. I sidled up to see the a.s.signment sheet. "Room one? I"m not a vet-"
"He"s two to one. You"re spotting Gina. Winter is strong as h.e.l.l-and he"s important. The Consortium will be watching this one."
The Consortium was the insurance group in charge of us, some sort of HMO for the supernatural. I"d never seen any of their representatives, but I figured that was because I didn"t work day shift. I glanced back at the doctors" charts behind Meaty. Room one still said NO INFO. "We know his name now?"
"Unofficially. He"s been here before. I recognize him." Meaty"s voice sounded unhappy about that fact. "Gina"s already getting report. Tell her he"s Karl Winter-but we"re not allowed to tell anyone else that yet."
"He"s seasonally appropriate at least," I said.
Meaty snorted. "Get down the hall."
I hovered outside room one. Gina was getting a report from the prior shift"s vet-RN, and their spotter was inside the room, holding a tranquilizer gun. I knew what my job would be for the rest of the night.
"Psst, Lynn-" I whispered, and the gun-holding nurse looked back at me. Her back slumped in relief.
"Thank G.o.d, and it"s about time." She backed out of the room as I rummaged through the isolation cart outside the door, pulling on all my gear-a thin cotton smock, hair bonnet, gloves, and mask. Heat billowed out of the room, and I started sweating. It was going to be a long night.
I took the gun from her. She stretched and her back popped twice. I waved the rifle a bit into the interior of the room. "Is this really necessary?"
"Do you want to find out?" She stripped out of her gown and tossed it into the soiled linen cart. "The Domitor slows the change, but it"s not perfect. And every minute of the day the full moon gets nearer."
"True."
She caught me looking at her, instead of the patient. "Eyes on the prize there, Spence," she said, pointing at her eyes then back into the room with two fingers. "Always keep him line-of-sight."
I nodded quickly, and did what I was told.
From my position near the door, gun at my shoulder but barrel pointed down, I could hear the end of Gina"s report. In a way, I was relived to be holding the rifle-despite my poor track record in shooting things on Y4 and at the range, it was easier than managing eight separate IV drips. We were supporting him in every way possible, keeping his blood pressure up but not too high, tracking his insulin every hour, running in antibiotics that I didn"t even recognize the names of. It sounded like Winter had a lot more wrong with him than just a straight trauma.
And at the end of it, I heard the term LKA. I blinked, and looked harder at Winter. Sure enough, under the sheets, his left lower leg was gone, amputated below the knee. The accident had turned Karl Winter into a three-legged dog. It sounded like it ought to be the punch line of some joke, but I doubted Winter would find it funny when and if he woke.
There was the rustling of paper and the chart check behind me, and then the drawers of the metal isolation cart slamming as Gina pulled on her gear.
"I don"t suppose you got any range time in between now and the last time we did this." Gina"s voice didn"t sound like she was kidding. She was in nurse mode now, and although we were something that almost pa.s.sed for friends, I wouldn"t press things tonight.
"I was a little too busy to go through my allotment of bullets this month," I admitted. Our jobs at Y4 came with access to ammo and free time at the range. We both knew I was an awful shot. "I"ll make up for it by standing close."
"Sounds good," Gina said, though I noticed the first thing she did was dial Winter"s sedation up.
I watched her check the lines and then check her patient. It was strange watching another nurse do her job while I was hampered by the gun. The nearer she got to him, the tighter my finger felt around the trigger.
"How is he?"
"Rough." She shone a bright light into each of his eyes. "There"s some brain function-he"s initiating some breaths on his own, but the ventilator"s doing most of the work of breathing. It"s hard to say if there"s anybody home."
"When will we know?"
Gina shrugged. "Full moon?"
"Oy." I tried to imagine myself standing here, a rifle halfway up my shoulder, on and off for the next six nights. I"d wind up having a hunchback.
"They think the bleeding in his brain"s stopped at least."
"Why"d they have to take his leg?"
"Were-limbs are hard as h.e.l.l to reattach. Their stupid healing powers-it"s like working with superglue, and gluing your fingers together instead of your project. You stick the limb on, it adheres, but none of the blood vessels talk to one another on the inside, and then it gets infected and just falls off..." Gina"s voice drifted off as she leaned in, listening to him breathe. "It"s one thing if the patient"s awake and can control himself, slow it down. Entirely another if he"s out and he"s in shock."
I waited till she took the stethoscope out of her ears to ask my questions. "Wait. I"m confused. Why didn"t he just heal himself up at the scene?"
"The brain injury stuff-I think that prevented him. The surprise, then the damage-who can say?" She gestured to her own head, then looped the stethoscope over one of the IV poles. "Plus, he"s old."
"He doesn"t look that old." Sure, he looked sixty, but that wasn"t that old nowadays. h.e.l.l, there were whole wings of County that were filled with people over seventy-two.
"Edie, he"s the oldest were I"ve ever seen alive." She stripped off her gear and stepped outside. I walked backward and set my back against the doorjamb. My left arm was already aching from holding the rifle at half-mast.
"How old is he?"
"Fifty-eight."
"My mom is fifty-eight. Fifty-eight is the new twenty."
Gina snorted, which was nice because it let me know she still had a sense of humor. "Werewolves run down as they age. The metabolic processes their transformations require of them-it"s not easy running like that, always overhot. They live in dog years. Our No Info is way older than they usually get to be."
"Oh! That reminds me-Meaty told me to tell you his name is Karl Winter."
Behind me, I heard Gina suck air through her teeth. "No wonder he looks familiar. s.h.i.t."
"Why? What?"
"He"s the werewolf king."
CHAPTER NINE.
"And I"m the Nutcracker," I said. There was silence from behind me. "h.e.l.lo, Gina, that was funny-"
Gina groaned. "He"s not only a werewolf pack leader-he"s the only pack leader in town. He calls it a coalition, but they"re not exactly a democracy." She pulled out the doctor"s charts from his admit the day before.
"How do you know?"
"I"m the were-vet. Of course I know. Now I"ve got to double-check everything." She flipped wildly through the charts, reading notes.
I"d taken care of someone who was related to a senator in my former nursing life, a fact that that patient managed to work into each and every conversation. Nothing like the threat of being sued by someone who actually knew lawyers to strike fear into the hearts of hospital employees. "But this guy"s No Info, right? So no one will know."
"I give it forty-eight hours. The Deepest Snow pack leader doesn"t just go missing-"
"Okay then, you"ve only been his nurse for forty-five minutes. I think you"re safe so far."
"You"d think, but I really like my license. Hang on."
I was quiet while Gina reviewed her work, watching Winter breathe, his chest lift matching the corresponding line on the ventilator.
"Okay. I think we"re all up to date," Gina said at last. "I don"t need to make any changes."
"Good. Can I come out now?"
"Yeah, I think that"s best." She looked up from her charting, and squinted into the room and our future. "I"d bet money that within a day there"ll be guards on his door."
"Too bad for you I"m too smart to bet against you. Plus I"m poor." I came out of the room, and she sealed the door, turning on the camera feeds. We could still look up at what was happening in the room-and hear things, as it turned out, when a pump beeped to warn it was running dry-while remaining safely outside the room.
"I"m looking forward to the end of tonight," Gina said around three A.M.
"I"m going to be a cripple tomorrow." I held up my right arm. "This is my mashed-potato-whipping hand."
Gina snorted. "I keep forgetting that it"s Christmas."
"Me too. I"m in denial."