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The word fatal bounces around the inside of my skull and makes me press the gas pedal down to the floor.
“Lauren?” my dad prompts when neither of us answer. “How long since you were bitten?”
Lauren is starting to shake. “Um…I’m not sure.”
I take off my seatbelt and whip my t-shirt off over my head while still driving seventy miles an hour down the road.
“Abe! What are you doing?” my dad barks.
I drape my t-shirt over Lauren. “She’s cold, Dad. She’s going into shock or something.” I turn the heater on full blast even though it’s probably still seventy degrees out. “How long were you there before I got to you?” I ask Lauren.
“I don’t know–it felt like forever, but it probably wasn’t that long. Fifteen or twenty minutes.”
“Okay, so let’s say twenty minutes until I got there and another twenty until you gave her the antivenom. Will she be okay?” I try to keep the panic from my voice.
“Yes. She’ll be all right. It’s serious, though. She’ll be in ICU. The venom causes all the organs to shut down.”
Intensive care. Fuck!
I hate that this happened on my watch. She was coming to see me. My instincts are to protect her, but I led her into danger. I want to punch my own face.
I reach over to rub her knee, and I find her skin is ice cold. “Lauren?”
The beautiful human is slumped against the car door.
“Dad–dad! She passed out cold. What should I do?”
Chapter Nineteen
Lauren
Ugh.
I open my eyes to a ceiling of rectangle fluorescents.
I try to move, but there’s an IV hooked up to my arm, and the pain in my foot and ankle is unbearable.
I groan into an oxygen mask.
How long has it been since I got bit? I remember pieces of arriving here, and being moved around and poked and prodded. Has it been one day? Three? Where’s my family–Lincoln or my dad. Where’s Abe?
“Good. You’re awake.” I blink as an extremely large doctor steps through the open door. The white coat looks too small for his broad shoulders. Bushy white eyebrows frame his eyes.
I pull down the oxygen mask. “How long have I been here?” I croak.
“It’s been thirty hours since you were brought in.”
“Is my dad here? Or my brother?”
“It’s late. They went home to sleep. How are you feeling?”
“Awful. My whole leg is throbbing.”
“Any extreme heat? Tingling? Achy bones? Gnawing hunger?”
“I-I don’t know.”
He produces a mason jar filled with a brown liquid. “I need you to drink this whole thing down.”
