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I smiled at him before glancing at Marley. I didn’t know when it happened, but she had shrunken into herself a little bit. I reached between us and took her hand, rubbing my thumb over her knuckles.
“You okay?” I murmured.
She was about to speak when someone cleared their throat from the living room. It was the doctor.
“I don’t want to interrupt,” the aging man said, “but we have everything sanitized and ready for whenever Travis wants the injection.”
I looked at the doctor and then back at Marley again. She smiled a little tightly and nodded. “We’ll talk about it later,” she said quietly.
I nodded. “Well then. Travis, that means the rest of the evening goes by your tempo.”
Travis took a deep breath and downed the rest of his beer before growling lightly. “Fuck it,” he said. “Let’s rip the damn band-aid off, shall we?”
The doctor smiled and nodded, gesturing to one of the recliners in my living room, where a small intravenous drip had been set up. One of the two nurses was seated on a folding stool, ready to do her phlebotomy.
Travis pushed up from his seat and walked to sit in the recliner. We all surrounded him, offering words of encouragement and support. Jack requested a few moments to set up his film equipment. Travis and the medical team obliged him, though Travis was getting more and more frustrated the longer it took.
“Jack, just fucking film the thing on your fucking phone if you have to,” Travis barked. “If I don’t do this now, I’m never going to fucking do it.”
“Fine, I’ll just hold the camera, we’ll stabilize in post, and—”
“No one fucking cares, Jack!” he growled.
“Easy, Trav,” I said, sitting on the couch next to him. “You’re going to be all right. You have me here, plus practically every other shifter you know, and a really great medical team. No one is going to let anything bad happen to you. Just breathe.”
Travis forced a breath in through his nostrils and gave a tense nod.
“There ya go. Keep going just like that,” I said.
“I’m going to be fine,” he repeated a little breathlessly. “Lana?”
“I’m here,” she said, taking a seat on the floor next to the recliner. Travis reached for her, and she took his hand, smiling up at him encouragingly.
I watched as the tension drained out of him, as if just looking at her face righted every wrong, took away every worry. I knew that feeling. Marley had the same effect on me.
Lana modeled some slow breathing for him, and Travis followed along with her. The nurse sat by patiently, waiting for her cue. The doctor did the same.
Finally, after a few more tense minutes, Travis took a steady breath and looked at the doctor. “Let’s do this.”
The doctor nodded, and the nurse got to work. She swabbed Travis’s skin with an alcohol wipe, gently palpated the fold of his arm, then placed the needle inside. Travis closed his eyes and let his head drop against the back of the chair. He took a deep breath, and I saw his grip tighten on Lana’s hand. I could feel the weight of the moment, the anticipation and nerves of everyone in the room. This was a crucial step for Travis.
The doctor approached with a reassuring smile. “Travis, are you ready?”
Travis’s voice was steady when he said, “Yeah, I’m ready.”
The nurse placed the IV cannula into Travis’s vein with unnerving ease, then withdrew the needle and fastened the tube to his arm with medical tape.
The doctor stepped up to Travis’s side. “I’m going to hook up the IV now on a very slow drip. It will take about an hour.”
“Got it, Doc.”
“You remember what we discussed as normal and abnormal for the experience?” the doctor asked.
“Yep,” Travis said. “Let’s fucking do it, man.”
The doctor carefully administered the serum, and we all watched Travis’s body closely. We held our breath, waiting for any sign of change. Minutes felt like hours, and the tension in the room was palpable. Travis kept his eyes closed as the serum started to work its way into his system.
Around the ten-minute mark, Travis grimaced and clenched his jaw. “Fuck, that burns like hell,” he muttered.
