She’s walking and coherent when I drag her through the sliding glass doors. The lights flicker off before I manage to concentrate hard enough to turn them back on and keep them on. By then, all eyes have turned to us.
The nurse behind the triage desk is standing and pointing. “Did she come from the ports?”
I nod.
Instead of asking us to sit and wait—which we wouldn’t have anyway—she shouts across the space, “Code four-oh-eight! We have another burn victim!”
Two human doctors come flying through the double doors to our left a moment later, a stretcher between them. “Where was she hit?” the man doctor asks me, moving around Monika while she just stands there.
“Her shoulder,” I answer.
The woman doctor shakes her head, her short braids tied tight at the nape of her neck. “The dart wound isn’t what we’re concerned about. We’re concerned about the acid.”
“Oh, that,” Monika says, like she’s speaking to us from somewhere else. “My legs mostly. Maybe my back? It feels hot.” She shrugs.
I almost pass out. Right there, in the center of the triage, where regular human folk with regular human ailments sit and watch as they wait, the doctors draw enormous metal scissors from their scrubs and begin cutting Monika out of her clothing, starting with her pant legs.
Fuck.Fuck!
The tops of Monika’s thighs are completely torn up, shredded by what looks like claws. Even that is not enough to move the doctors. Instead, they make panicky sounds when they see the backs of Monika’s calves covered in gooey pustules and scattered red blisters. It’s revolting. They keep going, carefully pulling Monika out of her vest and then cutting off her shirt, working carefully around the dart. They even cut off her sports bra.
“She’s okay to lie flat,” the female doctor says after examining her front. “There are first- and second-degree burns on her back from where her vest overheated, but nothing on the front.”
“Acid?” the man doctor asks.
“Nothing on her front. Only her thighs have visible wounds and abrasions.”
“Agreed. We’re safe to proceed.” The male nods his agreement, and together they lift Monika off her feet and place her face down on the stretcher. The male takes her camera away from her and hands it to me absently. Without a word, they start to push her down the hall, talking about her legs. It’s only when they’re ten paces away from me that I realize they were wearing thick black gloves I’ve never seen doctors wear.
I take a step to follow them, but the hospital doors slide open behind me.
“Please, help him!” The watery voice belongs to a woman. A woman who looks absolutely tiny standing next to the monster beside her—the pink monster who was just sitting in my apartment.
I turn and watch as the entire process repeats itself as if in slow-motion. The Wyvern is grunting, sounding much more coherentthan Monika did. “She okay?” I hear him ask me as if through water. My brain ain’t working right.
I shake my head, nod, shake my head a second time. “No. Acid.”
“Yeah,” he says as he tries to lie on a stretcher. His legs hang off the end. “That’s why I’m here too. The darts and the water, I could deal with, but the acid ...” He roars and I see he has the same blisters and sores on his chest that Monika does on her legs. He coughs, bloody spittle wetting his lips.
Fingers grab hold of my arm and just as quickly release. Vanessa charges after the stretcher, but two new doctors block her path as she tries to follow her fiancé. “Did you touch the acid?” one of them asks her.
She shakes her head, and with a simple cursory sweep of Vanessa’s body with his gaze, the doctor nods once. “We’re going into surgery. We’ll come get you when he’s out.” The doctor looks over her head at me. “Do you intend to wait for the woman you brought in, or is there another contact we can notify for her?”
“I’m her contact,” I say, voice so soft.The only name she gave us to call was Darius.
“We’ll let you know when she’s out.” He must see something on my face that gives him pause. He hesitates instead of following the stretcher past the double doors down the hall to the unknown. “She’s going to be all right. They both are.” His gaze strays to Vanessa before quickly returning to mine. “Just try to stay calm. Have patience. The acid is ...” A voice shouts at him from behind the swinging double doors. He turns. “Please stay in the waiting room!”
Vanessa wavers on her feet long after the doctor disappears. Finally, after far too long, she turns. She’s sobbing, and when she comes to me, her arms are outstretched, leaving me no choice but to catch her. And I surprise myself. I hold her in my arms and let her sob all over me, leaking her disgusting human fluids all over my tee. My white T-shirt makes the inky red blood look so much more gruesome. It’s Monika’s blood, and it’s smeared across my hands too, turning the tips of my fingers purple.
I let Vanessa grab my T-shirt and twist the hell out of it as I escort her to the waiting room and find us two seats, far enough in the back that we won’t be stared at but still in a position where I can see the waiting room doors. I want to know the second there’s information.
I let Vanessa lean her temple on my arm and squeeze my wrist so tight her little nails leave marks. I let Vanessa whisper to me about how they’re going to be okay and ask me if I have any idea what the fuck happened and just ... chat to me even though Ihatehumans. I let her do all these things because I need it. I need it so fucking much.
“You heard the doctors. They’re going to be okay,” I say, my voice strangling on the final word.
Vanessa tips her face to look up at me. She blinks, her eyes big and brown and red and watery. She bites her lips. “You really do care about her, don’t you?”
I hesitate, consider lying—it’s none of her fucking business. Except I don’t. “Yes.”
