“I have to answer this.”
“Just pull the curtain. You can talk in the room.” There were NO CELL PHONE signs up all over, but nurses and doctors talked on them all the time—I hadn’t seen an iPhone make anyone’s pacemaker give out yet.
“No. I have to go.”
I stood in her way. My break was starting in fifteen minutes. Sike needed me, for some likely unpleasant reason, and I needed Sike for some guidance. But if Luz left now and there was a break relief nurse sitting out here when she tried to come back who wasn’t a softie like me, chances were she wouldn’t get to come back at all.
She must have read my thoughts on my face. “You know what it’s like to have obligations?” she said, the last word like it was an anchor.
I inhaled and exhaled. “I do. You wouldn’t know it to look at me, but I do.”
She nodded. “Then you understand. I’ll be back.” She chugged the last of her coffee, and walked out.
I spent five minutes leaning on the doorjamb. Javier couldn’t see me from the bed. He was my only patient, which was something of a miracle for a trauma float shift. He shouldn’t be alone, and I didn’t have any honest excuses to leave. I took Luz’s spot by the head of the bed, hauling up a chair.
“Anything you want to talk about?” I asked him.
“Not with you.” A pause. “Nothing personal.”
There was a fine line between joyriding someone else’s pain, and trying to maintain an open channel of communication. Even I wasn’t always sure which side of it I was on. But I sat there to show I cared, just in case it mattered to him.
The second hand clicked away. Sike would come looking for me soon. I hoped she stayed tactful, or her definition thereof.
I could use this time here to read the article the charge nurse had given me. Would it change anything, knowing who else had gotten hurt, or why they’d died? Not really. I had a job to do here, no matter the circumstances beyond. But sometimes I did wonder where that job ended. Did I ever really throw my scrubs into the linen cart and get to just go home?
I hunched over and set my elbows on my knees, deep in thought, as Javier dozed beside me.
Luz’s return startled us both. She eyed me with suspicion as she entered the room, coming to stand by my side.
“Did anything change?” she asked.
“No. I’m afraid whatever they already told you still stands.” I looked up slowly and realized she was shaking. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” she said.
I wondered if she was in denial, or if she was so used to being strong that she couldn’t stop, not even now.
“Tomorrow, he won’t be able to feel me?” she asked. I nodded.
“I’m so sorry.” I couldn’t even begin to comprehend her loss. Her anger was so palpable, so strong, it was like I could feel her very atoms vibrating—if pushed wrong, there was a chance she might fly apart.
“It’s not fair,” she said.
“No, it isn’t,” I agreed, because she was right. I turned to walk out of the room.
I made it three steps before she caught my arm and pulled me back, toward the half of the room hidden by curtains, and I let her.
“What do you think will happen if I give him these?” she asked in a whisper, holding out her other hand. She held four small glass vials, with a clear fluid inside.
“Depends on what that is.” I tapped one, and watched it slosh.
“Luna Lobos.”
I knew enough Spanish to parse that. “Wolf Moon?” I said, and she nodded.
“That still doesn’t tell me what it is.” I picked one up. “You can’t give him drugs, Luz. You don’t know what they’ll do to him—”
“It’s not drugs.” I stared at her, and she went on. “I swear it. It’s a booster. Like—the Red Bull with vodka. It’s not the Red Bull’s fault that the vodka is alcohol.”
“Even if that’s true, it’s not a good idea. He can’t sit up to swallow right now. You give him that, and he’ll choke,” I said, trying to sound stern, setting the vial back down. Truth was, the sum total in those vials was maybe two tablespoons of fluid combined. Hard to see him aspirating on that.
“You don’t know what I’ve seen. This stuff,” she said, rolling the vials around in her palm. “Sometimes it’s better than the high.” She closed his hand suddenly, making all the vials clatter. “It might make him better.”
“You can’t bargain his injury away.”
“I’m his
I didn’t know what a
“Sorry.” I put my hand out. “Give it here.”
“Awww, no—”
I shook my head. “Give it here, or I’ll kick you out of the room.” I hated being a hardass, but there was no way I was going to let her give him medication, vitamin supplements, anything that wasn’t by the books tonight.
She squinted at me in anger and dropped the vials into my hand. I popped them into the sharps container on the wall and stepped outside.
“I’m going on break now,” I told the charge nurse. Hopefully Luz would be less pissed off at me by the time I got back.
“Come back in fifteen,” the charge nurse said as I pushed through the doors into the waiting lobby.
“Finally.” Sike stood when she saw me. She walked ahead of me to the elevators and pushed the DOWN button.
“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.”
