(fic) The Hunted - Chapter 3/? - PSoH
Dec. 2nd, 2007 01:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yellowhordeDisclaimer: I don’t own Petshop of Horrors and I make no money from this or any other fanfic I write.
Pairing: Leon x D
Category: Supernatural/Alternate Universe
Rating: R
Warning: Violence, Language, Sexual situations, Hermaphrodite!D
Title: The Hunted
Author: yellowhorde
Notes: This was written for NaNoWriMo 2007
“Sorry,” Vesca mumbled when he opened his eyes and saw that he had a visitor, “but I’m not into flowers. Especially not funeral ones.”
John Orcot stood in the open doorway and stared at his friend, then turned his attention to the bouquet of flowers in his hands. The bright smile that had been on his face had been replaced by a small frown, but it cleared quickly, for he was pleased to see that Vesca was conscious and being his usual cranky self, which, under the circumstances was understandable. He was hooked up to an IV tube connected to a bag of clear liquid suspended from a metal rack with wheels near the bottom for mobility, but that wasn’t the worst of it.
Vesca’s face was almost chalky pale, but that could have been because of the ugly green hospital gown that opened in the front instead of the back. Honestly, that color didn’t seem to flatter anyone. His chest and lower torso were heavily covered in gauze bandages and John suspected that they covered too many stitches to count. After all, he had had to undergo eleven hours of surgery in order to get patched up.
“What the hell are you talking about, Vesca?” He asked, trying to keep the conversation light, “These flowers aren’t for you.”
He crossed over to the hospital bed, unceremoniously dumped his coat on the nearby chair and carefully placed the cut glass vase with its burden of orange and red flowers on the bed tray. “They’re for a lady I met.”
“Is she dead?” Vesca asked and his weak voice still managed to hold sarcasm.
“What?” John turned and glared at Vesca. “No, she isn’t dead, asshole. Why would I be giving flowers to a dead woman?”
Vesca scrutinized the flower bouquet carefully, taking his sweet time in answering. Finally, he turned to John and gave him a teasing, if tired, smile. “You did a pretty good job when you picked the orange lilies, kid. They traditionally mean 'I burn for you'. But you royally fucked up with the red frangipani.”
“The red… What? Is that what they’re called?” John looked bewildered, and then shrugged. “The florist at Arena’s Florist on East Avenue said something about them, but it was all Greek to me.”
“That’s just wonderful,” Vesca replied, rolling his eyes toward heaven as if asking God, Can you believe this shit? “You didn’t even know what kind of flowers you were picking out? You should be ashamed of yourself, you pathetic ignoramus.”
He tsk tsk’ed the other man and shook his head slowly in mock disgust.
“What?” John huffed defensively and lowered himself into the chair with a sigh. “I thought they looked rather pretty arranged together like that.”
Vesca eyed the bouquet and he had to agree that it was rather striking with the red and orange sitting in front of a blue swatch of sky seen from the window. “Yeah, it is a rather pretty combination, kid, but you mixed your messages up something fierce.”
“And what message is that supposed to be?”
“The red frangipani is a funeral flower, kid, or at least it has that connotation in India.”
“But we aren’t in India, are we?”
“No, but women pick up on this sort of stuff, John. You don’t want to be sending this mystery lady the wrong message now, do you?”
“No, I guess not. But they’re still kind of pretty. Besides, I paid a lot of money for these puppies, I’m not about to toss them now.”
The two fell silent for a few moments, each lost in their thoughts. Vesca closed his eyes wearily and sighed. Shortly before John had arrived the nurse had been in to see him and asked if he needed her to administer a shot of pain killer, but he had said that he wanted to wait until he had a chance to speak with his partner. Now he was beginning to regret his decision.
Whatever drug they were using - he thought it was morphine, though he wasn’t one hundred percent certain - it was some pretty powerful stuff that stopped the pain dead in its tracks. That was a damned good thing considering how much pain he was in after the surgery. Lying here in the bed without moving was almost bearable, but if he so much as shifted his body a fraction of an inch, and the pain made itself violently known. Needless to say, he avoided moving as much as possible.
The only problem was that the shots made him feel fuzzy headed and sleepy. And the last thing he wanted do was fall asleep because while the drugs stopped the pain, they didn’t stop him from dreaming.
He didn’t remember much about the attack itself because it had been dark and he hadn’t seen much. But he clearly remembered the pain and a wild frenzy of slashing teeth and claws. Every time his mind flashed back to it, a wave of unaccustomed fear would wash over him and the green, spiking lines on the screen of the bedside heart rate monitor the doctors had him hooked up to showed his distress to the world. It was humiliating.
His eyes snapped open and he noticed that John leaning toward him, a look of concern on his clean shaven face. The heart rate monitor showed that his heart rate had nearly doubled in the last few minutes. Damn.
“Should I get a nurse, Vesca?”
“No, no. I’m fine.” He swallowed and wiped at the sheen of perspiration on his forehead with one cold hand. “Why in God’s name do they have to keep it so cold in here?” he mumbled irritably.
“I could arrange to get you another blanket, if you want.”
“No, damn it, I said I was fine.” Immediately Vesca was sorry for snapping at his friend. After all, he was just trying to help, and if it hadn’t been for him, he would have died out there at Timberline Lake.
“John… the werewolf…” Vesca tried to swallow again, but his mouth was as dry as a desert. “You bagged him, didn’t you?”
“Yeah,” John said, unsmiling, “I got him. In fact, I blew his fucking brains out.”
Vesca nodded slowly, reassured somewhat, but his heart rate did not slow. “And it, it didn’t bite me, did it? Just cut me up with its claws? Is that right?”
John leaned forward and spoke slowly and earnestly, “It did not infect you, Vesca, I promise. It only clawed the hell out of your guts.” He offered a wan smile. “Don’t worry. You won’t go furry at the next full moon.”
“I had better not, or the first person I’m going to go after is you.” Vesca solemnly vowed.
“That’s fair enough.”
“But you’ll stand with me for a moonlight vigil when the time comes, won’t you?”
John hesitated. As werewolf hunters, they had talked about the possibility that someday one or both of them might become infected if a hunt went sour. God knows, it had happened before to other hunters. It was a risk that they had to be willing to take. Those men that simply couldn’t stomach the risk eventually found themselves drifting over to hunt other, less infectious supernatural predators – zombies, ghouls, trolls, you name it.
By asking him to stand with him for a moonlight vigil, Vesca was asking if he would stay with him during the next full moon to make sure he didn’t Change into a werewolf. More importantly, he was asking if John would be able and willing to put a silver bullet in his heart if he had indeed contracted Lycanthrope Disorder from the werewolf that had attacked him.
To Vesca, there could be no worse fate than that. And he would rather die than become a werewolf.
“Yes,” John promised, “I will stand the moonlight vigil with you when the time comes. But, as I told you, things won’t come to that. That son of a bitch never laid a single tooth on you.”
“Yeah, well, it’s better to be safe than sorry.”
John nodded in silent agreement.
“So, who’s this lady you bought flowers for, John? Is she one of the fine looking nurses I keep seeing running back and forth outside of my door?” Vesca tried to work up a lecherous grin, but the effect was ghastly.
John ducked his head and chuckled. One of Vesca’s current kinks was dressing his various sexual partners up in nurses’ uniforms complete with short, puffy skirts and those stupid white hats. No white nurses’ shoes, though, no sir, only black patent leather stiletto heels for Vesca and his crew of misfits.
“So, spit it out already, John. Who’s the unlucky lady?”
“Well, her name is Mary Anderson and I technically met her here at the hospital.”
And that was the truth, sort of. They hadn’t formally introduced themselves until after Mary had spoken with Dr. Petersons. But for some reason, John found himself reluctant to tell Vesca all the details of how they met. It wasn’t that he thought the other man would try to steal her away. It was just that he didn’t think Vesca would necessarily approve of their budding relationship.
“I don’t understand. How did you ‘technically’ meet her here? Does she work her in some position? Is she a secretary or something?”
Definitely ‘or something’, John thought a little wildly.
“No. She doesn’t work here at the hospital, at least not that I know of. We had previously met under some… unfortunate circumstances, but we didn’t actually learn each other’s names until we were here at the hospital.” John knew he was being evasive, but he desperately didn’t want to discus the matter any further. Things were just too complicated right now as it was. “So, I should probably get going. You know, I have some flowers to deliver and all that.”
Moving quickly, John gathered up his coat and the flowers and headed for the door. But before he could make clean his get away, Vesca’s voice barked out in unmistakable command.
“Wait just a minute there, John.”
John stopped in mid-stride, his shoulders hunching at the sharp disapproval in Vesca’s voice. Shit, he thought, he’s figured it out, hasn’t he?
“Anderson, you said?”
“Yeah, that’s right.” John turned to face the man lying on the hospital bed. “Her name is Anderson. Mary Anderson.”
Vesca’s once pale face was now red and blotched, a sure sign of his outrage. “Does this Mary Anderson have a son who underwent surgery last night after being attacked by a werewolf?”
“But… how did you know?”
“It was all the nurses have been talking about since I regained consciousness. Imagine, a little boy actually surviving a real live werewolf attack. Hell, most adults that are attacked don’t even manage that.”
“He was lucky that an ambulance was already en route, otherwise, there was no way he would have made it.” John said, softly. “His luck would have been a lot better if I had actually killed that motherfucker when I had the chance.”
‘Now, John, don’t go blaming yourself-“
“Why the hell shouldn’t I blame myself?” John interrupted furiously. “It was my damn fault. I had that monster in my sights, Vesca, right in my fucking sights, and I hesitated because I didn’t want to hit you. But if I had pulled the trigger sooner, that poor kid would never have been attacked and he wouldn’t be lying in some hospital room, dying.”
“Maybe it would be for the best if he did,” Vesca muttered. He glanced over at John who looked like he had just been slapped in the face. “Die, I mean. In fact, I’m sure it would be for the best if he didn’t make it.”
“How in God’s name could you even say something like that?” John yelled, outraged. “That boy was an innocent bystander who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. He doesn’t deserve to die anymore than you or I or anyone else does. Jesus fucking Christ!”
“Do you have any idea what’s going to happen to that child if the doctors find out that he’s contracted Lycanthropy Disorder? Do you?”
“No, I don’t but-“
“They will lock him up in an institution, John, for the rest of his fucking life. That is if the Change doesn’t kill him first.”
“But he’s only a little boy-“ John began but was savagely cut off.
“It doesn’t make any difference!” Vesca tried to sit up, but the pain in his abdomen forced him back again. “If he has contracted the disorder from that werewolf, they’ll lock him up and he’ll never be free ever again. There’s no way in God’s green earth that the doctors or the local authorities can risk letting him go because he’ll be contagious! One bite, John, one bite is all it takes to infect a man and change his life forever.”
John ran his fingers through his hair angrily and began to pace the room in long, jerky strides. “They don’t know yet if he’s contracted the disease. And if he did catch it, he might get lucky and it will never develop at all.”
“They’re not going to take that chance, John.” Vesca spoke slowly, choosing his words carefully. “The odds were against that child from the get go. Listen to me, less than ten percent of the humans that are attacked by werewolves actually live. You know that. And over half of them die from their injuries or from the Change. Fewer still survive their first transformation. What chance does this kid have, really?”
“Is there a problem here, gentlemen?” A tall nurse with brunette hair pulled back into a severe bun stuck her head into the door. She saw John near the door and frowned mightily at him.
Her eyes were blue, but cold as ice and the brass nametag on her overly ample bosom proclaimed her name to be Christina Chapel. It took more effort than was pretty to keep a straight face after reading that. The poor woman must have been teased about her name on more than one occasion. That’s the only reason he could thing of why she was scowling at him so fiercely. Either that or the nurses at the station had heard their raised voices and had sent someone to investigate if there was a problem.
“No, there’s no problem, Nurse.” Vesca answered. “Thank you.” He smiled at her and it must have been a damned good smile for the nurse smiled back and turned as if to go. “Oh, wait, Nurse?”
“Yes?”
“I think I’d like my pain medication now.”
“Of course, Mr. Howell, right away.” She bestowed the ailing patient with a rather warm smile, then turned and disappeared out the door and down the hall, her white shoes squeaking faintly on the polished tiles until she was out of earshot.
Nurse Chapel with squeaky shoes and a bad attitude, John thought uncharitably. No wonder Star Trek was cancelled.
John crossed the room so that he stood next to the man who had been his hunting partner for almost five years and looked down at him and suddenly realized that he didn’t know this man as well as he thought he did. When he spoke, he pitched his voice low so that he wouldn’t bring any more nurses running.
“And we’re supposed to, what? Watch on the sidelines as he either dies or is taken to an institution?”
“The best thing you could do for him, John, him and his mother, would be to put a silver bullet in his heart.”
“I can’t do that!”
Vesca waved his hand in the air impatiently. “Christ, John, I’m not an idiot. I know you can’t do that, not legally anyway. That would be manslaughter. But just the same, it would be better for everyone if that child was allowed to just… slip away.”
“I am not hearing this.” John scrubbed his face with his hand. “I just cannot fucking believe that I’m hearing this.” He turned so sharply on his heel that he almost ran into another nurse - thankfully not Nurse Chapel- who had just returned with a syringe full of what he assumed was pain medication for Vesca.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said, holding his hands up and out of the way, “Nurse Shultz.” He had read it off her name tag and she smiled at him as if they were old friends. Also, he was pleased to note, though older, plumper, and grayer than Chapel, this nurse had a much better bedside manner.
“That’s perfectly alright, dear.” The nurse replied and moved over to the side of the bed. “No harm done.”
She inserted the needle into one of the clear plastic tubes that was attached to Vesca’s left hand. With something akin to fascination, he watched her depress the plunger and inject the medicine into the tube. Normally, watching someone get a shot made him squirm, but this was so clinical, so detached and so not being stuck into someone’s actual flesh, that it didn’t have any effect on him whatsoever.
“There you go, young man,” The nurse smiled reassuringly down at Howell. “Is there anything else you need? Some water, a snack? Some help getting up so you can use the restroom?”
“No,” Vesca replied somewhat curtly. He caught himself, and continued in a much more cordial tone, “No, thank you, Nurse Shultz.”
“Okay, then. Just push the call button should you need anything.” She smiled faintly at John, but it also held a touch of reproach for his disturbing her patient. Then she was gone leaving the two men alone together.
An angry silence stretched out between the two men, but it was Vesca who broke it first.
“I’m just telling you this for your own good, John.” He said softly. “Look, I know what your feeling-“
“Bullshit. How in hell could you possibly have any idea how I feel about this or anything else?”
“I know. Trust me, I know. When my brother and his family were attacked by a werewolf, their son, Isaac, somehow survived.” Vesca’s voice was thick and raw and it took a moment for John to realize that his eyes were bright with unshed tears. John blamed it on his recent traumatic experiences and the pain medication they had him hopped up on because it was easier to blame those things for this than it was to face the fact that the man who appeared so solid, so brave and stoic, could hurt just as easily as any normal human being could.
“You never said anything about this before.”
“That’s because I don’t much like talking about it.” Vesca wiped one calloused hand over his face, obliterating all trace of tears, if indeed that was what they had been. He cleared his throat harshly. “This was back in, oh, I don’t know, 1974 or so. I had just turned nineteen three weeks before they died. You see, I was supposed to go with them to their cabin up in the mountains of Colorado, but I had an interview at S.U.N.Y Albany. It was about my medical scholarship. I couldn’t miss that interview, so I begged off from the trip.”
“So I wasn’t there for the attack.” Vesca’s words were coming slower, becoming thick as the medication began to take effect. He blinked his eyes owlishly. “I was a pretty damned good hunter, even in my youth. My dad took me out hunting every winter, without fail. I think I might have been able to save them, had I been there. I really do.”
His eyes closed and for a moment, and John thought he had fallen asleep. But he continued speaking, his story still not told. “They took him to the California State Hospital for Werewolves, in Rosamond. Isaac, I mean. It was the first such institute of its kind. But for all the fancy names, it was nothing more than a prison made just for werewolves. A prison they would never escape from.”
“Isaac killed himself two years later. Hung himself with his own sheets.”
Vesca opened his eyes and stared solemnly at John. “He was only twelve years old when he died.”
“So, believe me when I tell you that you do not want to fall in love with this woman, John. In the end, it will only bring you heartache and problems.”
****
John stood in the doorway, his bouquet of flowers in one hand behind his back and a goofy grin on his face as he watched Mary as she sat in a chair next to her son, Leon. She was reading a children’s book aloud to her son. It was a Sesame Street Little Gold Book entitled Cookie Monster and the Cookie Tree.
Leon lay pale and still on his bed, buried in a confusion of wires and tubing. He was hooked up to a heart rate monitor and some sort of plastic breathing tube had been inserted into his windpipe through his mouth. The tubing had been secured in place by tape that extended around his neck to form a circle of tape. It was this circle that kept the tube securely in position.
The other end of the machine was connected to some sort of breathing machine. John couldn’t remember what the machine was called at the moment, but he knew what its function was, more or less. The breathing tube, John knew from years of medical sitcoms and dramatic television series, provided an airway so that air and oxygen from the breathing machine could reach the lungs.
The boy had dark circles under his eyes and, just like Vesca, there was heavy gauze covering his thin chest. Unlike Vesca, his left shoulder and arm were in a plaster cast because the werewolf had severed the flesh and pulverized the bones when it had shaken him like a terrier with a rat. After stabilizing his condition, Dr. Petersons had gone in and repaired the bones to the best of his abilities, but it was still too early to know if Leon would ever again have proper use of his arm.
Mary seemed oblivious to all this as she read, she used different voices for each character. And she was doing a darned good job, too. Her witch voice was properly high-pitched and cackling, and her Cookie Monster impersonation, as far as he could tell, was spot on. John smirked at the idea of the infamous blue Cookie Monster coming anywhere near a cookie tree, but managed to hold off on his laughter.
“’Oh, I’m the witch with the cookie tree and all of these cookies are just for me.’” Mary trilled, reading the line and John lost his composure and succumbed to his laughter.
Mary jumped, startled, and shut the book carefully and placed it on the chair next to her. “Wow, I didn’t know I had an audience.” She mumbled, embarrassed.
Smiling broadly, John crossed the room and presented her the orange lilies and red frangipani with a flourish that would have done an armature magician proud.
Mary jumped to her feet, practically squealing in delight, and threw her arms around him. He could feel the soft press of her breasts through the soft blue fabric of her turtleneck and it was maddening. Making an effort to control himself, he carefully disengaged her arms from around his neck and stepped back to take her all in with his eyes. She was beautiful, simply beautiful.
Mary held the bouquet under her nose and breathed deeply of its scents. “Why, thank you, John. That was so sweet of you.”
“Nothing to it,” he replied with a lecherous wink. “It was the least I could do after last night.”
“Oh, you!” Mary swatted him lightly on the arm and then, still smiling, turned and walked over to the bed tray.
“Look, Leon,” she said, holding out the bouquet of orange and red flowers and smiling as if the boy could actually hear and see her, “Mr. Orcot has brought us some flowers! Aren’t they beautiful?” She glanced at John from under her lashes. “I think, if I’m not mistaken, that they are orange lilies and, let me see… red frangipani?” She glanced over to him as if asking for confirmation.
“That’s right.” John sounded mildly shocked at her knowledge. Did everyone but him know about these flowers? “You have a good eye for detail.”
Mary laughed shortly. “Not really, but it’s nice of you to say so. My mother ran a flower shop when I was a kid and I guess I kind of just picked up some stuff.” She held her hand to her face as if blocking her words from being overheard, “To be honest, I take more after my dad. I swear I have a brown thumb. Every single plant I’ve ever tried to grow has withered away and died. Pathetic, isn’t it?”
She gestured toward the two chairs by the bed. John took the one farthest away from the bed, not because seeing Mary’s child in such a tragic state made him uncomfortable, but because he knew she would want to sit as close as possible to him.
“No, I wouldn’t say that it’s pathetic,” John admitted. “Different strokes for different folks, as they say. I’m the same way, but with fish. I never did get the hang of taking care of them. But I wasn’t allowed to have cats or dogs when I was growing up because I was an Army brat and we were constantly moving every two or three years. So I kept gold fish… and every few weeks I’d flush them down the toilet.”
He smiled a little at the memory.
Mary chuckled and reached over the bed and took hold of one of her son’s hands. She squeezed it gently, stroking the thumb along his skin absently. For several seconds she gazed at his pale face.
As was standard procedure, Leon’s hands were lightly restrained using a set of medical limb holders that were attached to the bed frame using quick-release ties that secured using hooks, loops and buckles. A slide harness on each cuff allowed the limbs to be rotated without chafing the skin. Restraining a patient’s hands prevented them from attempting to remove the endotracheal tube once they had regained consciousness, a common occurrence since most patients complained about the breathing tube feeling uncomfortable. And it often caused patients cough or gag, at least until the initial discomfort faded over time.
“Leon always wanted a dog.” She finally whispered and her voice was thick with tears that she refused to let fall. Instead, she held her eyes a little bit wider and blinked rapidly until she had managed to regain some semblance of control over her emotions. “He begged and pleaded, but I always said no. I didn’t think he was old enough, responsible enough to take care of a dog. I figured that if I gave in, I would be the one feeding and walking it.”
“One day two years ago, right before a large snowstorm that knocked out the power to over half the city, Leon came home from school, looking guilty and excited all at once. He looked me straight in the eye and said he had something he wanted me to see.”
John smiled knowingly. “He brought a puppy home, didn’t he?”
“Yeah,” She grinned over at him. “The little shit found a six week old puppy on the street. Some heartless bastard had abandoned it in a cardboard box. He tucked it into his coat and snuck it home. Man, you should have seen his face, how it lit up when I said he could keep her.”
Mary sniffled and rubbed a hand over her eyes. “Guido died protecting him, didn’t she?”
“Yes,” John replied honestly. “I believe she did.”
She nodded her head sadly and her face began to crumple as she struggled against her turbulent emotions. “Oh, God,” she moaned, “I’m going to really miss that brave, stupid, wonderful dog.”
Suddenly, she started, and gave a small, shocked cry. “Did you see that?” she demanded. “Leon’s hand, it moved. He squeezed my hand!”
“Are you sure?” John stood and crossed over to the bed and stared down at the boy. “Maybe it was just a reflex or something? He shouldn’t be able to move due to the sedatives the doctor would have prescribed to keep him from removing his breathing tube.”
“No,” Mary was excited, her face lit up with a manic sort of joy. “It was real. He’s waking up. The sedatives must be wearing off and he’s waking up!”
With barley contained excitement, Mary and John watched Leon as he lay in the hospital bed for several minutes but the boy gave no signs of waking and the hand squeeze, if that’s what it had been, was not repeated.
“Oh, baby,” Mary whispered, her voice trembling on the verge of tears. “Please come back to me.”
Uncertain on what to do, John did the only thing he could think of and draped his arm around the distraught woman and held her. “He’ll come out of it, I know it,” he murmured with a reassuring squeeze. “He’s strong.” He placed a kiss on the top of her head. “He’s a fighter, just like his mother…”
John trailed off and his eyes were drawn to Mary’s hand wrapped protectively over her child’s. Something had caught his attention and he leaned closer for a better look. Before his eyes, the small fingers twitched under his mother’s hand, then, slowly, almost imperceptibly, they contracted. The movement was weak, but it was without a doubt movement and not some sort of reflexive action. But as he wasn’t a doctor, he couldn’t be sure. Was it a reflex action or was it really a sign that he was struggling toward consciousness?
Mary’s free hand flew to her mouth. “His eyes, John,” she breathed, “They’re starting to open.”
Indeed they were. Slowly, as if they weighed a ton, Leon’s eyelids began to open. And for the first John saw that those eyes were a bright blue, like his mother’s. His eyes seemed cloudy and unfocused, but whether that was from his recovery from the anesthesia or some other reason, he couldn’t say.
Leon squeezed his mother’s hand again and then tried to move his arm, but his movement was arrested by the limb restraints. His eyes, clearer now and full of equal doses of confusion and fear, widened and he slid his head to the side, making an uncomfortable sound somewhere between a gag and a cough.
“He doesn’t like the breathing tube,” John observed. “And I don’t blame him one bit. I wouldn’t like have a plastic tube shoved down my throat, either. Maybe we should ring a nurse and ask if it’s too early to have it removed.”
Leon’s fingers twitched in Mary’s hand, and then twitched again. Each one was progressively stronger than the last, the movements jerking and random.
“Leon,” Mary whispered hoarsely, sensing something was wrong, but not knowing what it was exactly, “What’s wrong, honey?”
His eyes flew open, wide and frightened, and then rolled back into his head, showing only the whites. The twitches rapidly spread throughout his body, becoming shudders, then shakes. His body convulsed wildly, and his back bowed, and his entire body went rigid. He arched up from the hospital bed like a trout fighting a hook, and all the while, the green, zigzagging blips on the heartbeat monitor spiked like a seismometer.
“Call the doctor! Quick!” Mary yelled, stepping to the head of the bed and trying to wrapping her arms around her son’s shoulders in a futile effort to calm his convulsions. The heat that was now radiating from Leon’s small body was incredible, horrible. Trying to hold his thrashing body was like trying to hold a living oven. “Oh, God, he’s burning up!”
John pressed the button that would call the nurses, but didn’t wait to see if they were responding. He bolted out into the hall, determined to make the nurse’s station, when he almost bowled into Nurse Chapel.
“Watch where the fuck you’re going!” She snarled and pushed her way past him, followed by another nurse, this one young with red hair and a galaxy of freckles on her face.
John followed them into the room, but stayed clear, not wanting to get in the way. Freckle Girl, pushed her way between Mary and her son, with a brusque, “Sorry, ma’am, but you’re going to have to go stand by the door, or out in the hall. We need some room here.”
She quickly released the restraints and removed the tape keeping the breathing tube in place. Froth and foam spilled from the boy’s mouth, disturbingly similar to the slobber of a rabid animal. With Nurse Chapel’s help, she rolled Leon onto his side, presumably to keep him from choking on his tongue.
Trembling and biting her lower lip, she crossed over to John, her face red and blotchy with tears. John wrapped his arms around her and she turned her face to his chest and away from her suffering child.
“Make it stop, John,” She moaned, “please make it stop.”
“His temperature is still climbing,” Freckle Girl announced as she worked. Another nurse, Nurse Shultz, entered the small room with Dr. Petersons in tow. “He’s at 105 degrees Fahrenheit, no make that 106.”
Dr. Petersons barked an order at Nurse Shultz, “Get some tepid water and some rags. Now! We need to bring his temperature down.”
The nurse moved to obey and caught John’s eye as she passed, offering a silent apology by way of her concerned expression.
For what felt like an eternity, but was actually only a few minutes, John and Mary held each other near the door as they helplessly watched the medical team work on her son. The air was heavy with the stench of urine for Leon had become incontinent at one point during his seizures. Slowly the convulsions lessoned, and then finally stopped. Freckle Girl and Nurse Shultz began making preparations to bathe the still, small body and to change his soiled hospital Johnny, while Chapel went to get fresh bedding from the linen closet.
Dr. Petersons approached Mary and John, and his face was solemn. “Please follow me, Miss Anderson. There are some things that I need to discuss with you.” Mary’s eyes flew to John and the doctor, seeing this, amended kindly, “Mr. Orcot may accompany us if you wish.”
Mary gave John a squeeze before releasing him and moving toward the door. “I do.”
Silently and with great trepidation, Mary and John followed Dr. Petersons through the polished tile maze of the hospital until they arrived at, what they assumed to be his office, or at least an office of some sort. The doctor motioned toward two comfortably padded chairs sitting in front the walnut desk in silent invitation, and then moved behind the desk to take his own, much grander, seat with black leather padding.
“Miss Anderson, Mr. Orcot,” he began, inclining his head as he addressed them each in turn. “As you are no doubt well aware, we are having some small difficulties with our patient.” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the top of his desk and pressing the tips of his fingers together. The expression on his face was equal parts reluctance and thoughtfulness.
“Dr. Petersons,” Mary interrupted suddenly, “Let’s get down to the nitty-gritty, shall we? What just happened to my son in that room?”
The good doctor looked down and his hands, now folded neatly on the top of the desk. Then he glanced at first John, then Mary, and studying their facial expressions as if in an attempt to gauge their potential reactions to whatever news he was about to give them.
“There may be any number of things that could have brought on such a critical reaction, but there are three that come more clearly to mind. The first is that he suffered from what we call a febrile seizure, or fever convulsions. Children Leon’s age or even younger are more likely to have such reactions to high fevers. Usually, they grow out of them.”
“About that, Doctor,” Mary interrupted again. “I was holding my son’s hand right before he went into these ‘convulsions’ and his skin didn’t feel particularly hot to me.”
“My dear, I should let you know that feeling a child's body is not always the most reliable way to judge a child’s fever or even if he has a fever at all.”
“That doesn’t make any sense, Doc,” John said, puzzled by this information.
“It’s like this,” Dr. Petersons began and easily slipped into lecture mode, “when a child's temperature is on the rise, the body conserves heat by decreasing the circulation to the skin.” He turned his gaze to Mary and smiled reassuringly, “If you feel a child at that point in his fever he might very well feel relatively cool to the touch even though the fever may be rather significant, as it was in your son’s case.”
“If a child is extremely ill, or has been severely injured as your son has been, or if that child was dehydrated, his body could also have decreased circulation to the skin, which would have cause the skin to feel cool to the touch.”
“On the other hand, when the temperature starts to come down, circulation to the skin may increase to allow heat to escape, which would cause the child to appear to be flushed and cause them to feel hot the touch.”
“But the temperature came on so suddenly,” Mary fretted, wringing her hands.
“Indeed,” Dr. Petersons agreed. “A child’s temperature often seems to hit hard and fast. But that isn’t anything unusual.”
“You said there were other possible reasons,” John asked, wanting the conversation to continue moving forward.
“Yes, indeed. Another potential cause could be that he suffered from either an epileptic or non-epileptic seizure. But we couldn’t determine epilepsy without doing several tests including blood tests to determine if the seizures had a physical cause, like diabetes.”
At that point, Mary reached her hand out to John, who took it and gave it a reassuring squeeze. She didn’t even want to begin to think that her only child could be suffering from a potentially serious disease like diabetes.
“Another common testing procedure in cases like this would be an Electroencephalogram, or EEG. An EEG is a painless test that records the activity, or electric signals of the brain. This activity is picked up by electrodes attached to the patient’s head. The EEG then records the brain activity that happens during the test. An epileptic seizure would be caused by changes in brain activity.”
“Non-epileptic seizures, on the other hand, are not usually caused by changes in the brain’s activity and therefore no changes would show up in an EEG recording. Non-epileptic seizures are often a reaction to very stressful events or situations, such as the one your son so recently experienced.”
“The attack…” Mary whispered.
“Yes. However, I am almost convinced that it was not epilepsy that triggered the attack because he did spike a rather high fever just before the seizures started, and that generally is not the way epileptic seizures work. More tests would be needed before I could professionally make such a diagnosis.”
“And what is the third possibility, Doctor?”
The doctor caught Mary’s gaze with his own, and here he hesitated. He opened his mouth, and then shut it again and no sound escaped his throat.
“The third possibility, Doctor,” John prompted impatiently.
Dr. Petersons cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Miss Anderson, last night your son was mauled by a lycanthrope, a werewolf. The third possibility, the one I feel is both the most likely and the most dangerous, is that your son has contracted Lycanthrope Disorder.”
Mary’s hands flew to cover her mouth as a soft keening wail escaped her lips. “You mean my son could become a… a… monster?”
“A werewolf, yes, there is a strong possibility. That would explain the spike in temperature and the convulsions.”
Seeing their confused and horrified expressions, Dr. Petersons began to explain carefully.
“Becoming a werewolf isn’t as simple as the folklore makes it out to be – you are bitten and then the next full moon you become a werewolf. No, it is far more complicated than that. The victim’s body undergoes what is often referred to as the Change. Now, the Change can refer to either the actual transformation from human to werewolf that all lycanthrope experience, or it can be the physical metamorphosis that occurs on the cellular level.
“To avoid confusion, I will refer to the Change as the cellular metamorphosis that all victims suffer through and the Transformation as the change initiated by the light of the full moon.”
“Fair enough,” Mary agreed, faintly. Her voice trembled, but she took a deep, calming breath that was more than a little shaky, but showed no other outward expression of her feelings, though both John and the doctor had no trouble guessing how hard this must be for her.
Many humans simply do not survive werewolf attacks and those that do will invariable suffer through the Change, a period of time during which their body begin to change, to mutate. They undergo radical physical alteration at the cellular level. Unfortunately, most attack survivors do not make it through this phase.”
“According to my recent reading on the subject, I’ve found that your son, if he has indeed contracted Lycanthrope Disorder, will begin to go through this transformation. That is if he hasn’t already. He will suffer multiple seizures or convulsions as his body is basically reprogrammed from the cells up. It is this change that will eventually allow him to transform into an actual werewolf.”
“What are the chances that he’ll survive the Change?” John asked hoarsely, though he already knew the answer. Still, part of him couldn’t help but hope that Vesca was wrong.
“In his current state, you mean?”
“Yeah, that’s what I mean.”
Dr. Petersons took a slow, deep breath. “His chances or survival in his current condition are very slim indeed, I’m afraid. He’s being heavily sedated to suppress his body’s natural efforts to fight off this invading mutation, but his body will eventually rip itself apart in its effort to protect him.”
“Oh, God,” Mary whimpered.
“I’m sorry, Miss Anderson, but, as I said in the waiting room the other day, it will take a miracle to save your son’s life.”
“And what if he does live? If he has Lycanthrope Disorder, what are you going to do with him?” John didn’t ask for himself, but he thought that Mary ought to have some idea of what Fate had in store for her only child if by some miracle he actually lived through this hellish nightmare.
“Then he will be removed to an institution specially designed for lycanthrope. Force would be used if necessary.”
“But he’s my son!” Mary cried, “He’s just a little boy!”
“I’m sorry, but that’s standard procedure, Miss Anderson. I’ll have blood work drawn up tomorrow. If the test comes back negative, you and your son can be released from the hospital once he has made a full recovery.”
He spread his hands in a helpless gesture.
“If he tests positive, I will have no choice but to contact the local authorities and they will institutionalize your son as soon as he becomes stable enough to be transferred to the proper facilities.”
TO BE CONTINUED…
CHAPTER 04
Pairing: Leon x D
Category: Supernatural/Alternate Universe
Rating: R
Warning: Violence, Language, Sexual situations, Hermaphrodite!D
Title: The Hunted
Author: yellowhorde
Notes: This was written for NaNoWriMo 2007
“Sorry,” Vesca mumbled when he opened his eyes and saw that he had a visitor, “but I’m not into flowers. Especially not funeral ones.”
John Orcot stood in the open doorway and stared at his friend, then turned his attention to the bouquet of flowers in his hands. The bright smile that had been on his face had been replaced by a small frown, but it cleared quickly, for he was pleased to see that Vesca was conscious and being his usual cranky self, which, under the circumstances was understandable. He was hooked up to an IV tube connected to a bag of clear liquid suspended from a metal rack with wheels near the bottom for mobility, but that wasn’t the worst of it.
Vesca’s face was almost chalky pale, but that could have been because of the ugly green hospital gown that opened in the front instead of the back. Honestly, that color didn’t seem to flatter anyone. His chest and lower torso were heavily covered in gauze bandages and John suspected that they covered too many stitches to count. After all, he had had to undergo eleven hours of surgery in order to get patched up.
“What the hell are you talking about, Vesca?” He asked, trying to keep the conversation light, “These flowers aren’t for you.”
He crossed over to the hospital bed, unceremoniously dumped his coat on the nearby chair and carefully placed the cut glass vase with its burden of orange and red flowers on the bed tray. “They’re for a lady I met.”
“Is she dead?” Vesca asked and his weak voice still managed to hold sarcasm.
“What?” John turned and glared at Vesca. “No, she isn’t dead, asshole. Why would I be giving flowers to a dead woman?”
Vesca scrutinized the flower bouquet carefully, taking his sweet time in answering. Finally, he turned to John and gave him a teasing, if tired, smile. “You did a pretty good job when you picked the orange lilies, kid. They traditionally mean 'I burn for you'. But you royally fucked up with the red frangipani.”
“The red… What? Is that what they’re called?” John looked bewildered, and then shrugged. “The florist at Arena’s Florist on East Avenue said something about them, but it was all Greek to me.”
“That’s just wonderful,” Vesca replied, rolling his eyes toward heaven as if asking God, Can you believe this shit? “You didn’t even know what kind of flowers you were picking out? You should be ashamed of yourself, you pathetic ignoramus.”
He tsk tsk’ed the other man and shook his head slowly in mock disgust.
“What?” John huffed defensively and lowered himself into the chair with a sigh. “I thought they looked rather pretty arranged together like that.”
Vesca eyed the bouquet and he had to agree that it was rather striking with the red and orange sitting in front of a blue swatch of sky seen from the window. “Yeah, it is a rather pretty combination, kid, but you mixed your messages up something fierce.”
“And what message is that supposed to be?”
“The red frangipani is a funeral flower, kid, or at least it has that connotation in India.”
“But we aren’t in India, are we?”
“No, but women pick up on this sort of stuff, John. You don’t want to be sending this mystery lady the wrong message now, do you?”
“No, I guess not. But they’re still kind of pretty. Besides, I paid a lot of money for these puppies, I’m not about to toss them now.”
The two fell silent for a few moments, each lost in their thoughts. Vesca closed his eyes wearily and sighed. Shortly before John had arrived the nurse had been in to see him and asked if he needed her to administer a shot of pain killer, but he had said that he wanted to wait until he had a chance to speak with his partner. Now he was beginning to regret his decision.
Whatever drug they were using - he thought it was morphine, though he wasn’t one hundred percent certain - it was some pretty powerful stuff that stopped the pain dead in its tracks. That was a damned good thing considering how much pain he was in after the surgery. Lying here in the bed without moving was almost bearable, but if he so much as shifted his body a fraction of an inch, and the pain made itself violently known. Needless to say, he avoided moving as much as possible.
The only problem was that the shots made him feel fuzzy headed and sleepy. And the last thing he wanted do was fall asleep because while the drugs stopped the pain, they didn’t stop him from dreaming.
He didn’t remember much about the attack itself because it had been dark and he hadn’t seen much. But he clearly remembered the pain and a wild frenzy of slashing teeth and claws. Every time his mind flashed back to it, a wave of unaccustomed fear would wash over him and the green, spiking lines on the screen of the bedside heart rate monitor the doctors had him hooked up to showed his distress to the world. It was humiliating.
His eyes snapped open and he noticed that John leaning toward him, a look of concern on his clean shaven face. The heart rate monitor showed that his heart rate had nearly doubled in the last few minutes. Damn.
“Should I get a nurse, Vesca?”
“No, no. I’m fine.” He swallowed and wiped at the sheen of perspiration on his forehead with one cold hand. “Why in God’s name do they have to keep it so cold in here?” he mumbled irritably.
“I could arrange to get you another blanket, if you want.”
“No, damn it, I said I was fine.” Immediately Vesca was sorry for snapping at his friend. After all, he was just trying to help, and if it hadn’t been for him, he would have died out there at Timberline Lake.
“John… the werewolf…” Vesca tried to swallow again, but his mouth was as dry as a desert. “You bagged him, didn’t you?”
“Yeah,” John said, unsmiling, “I got him. In fact, I blew his fucking brains out.”
Vesca nodded slowly, reassured somewhat, but his heart rate did not slow. “And it, it didn’t bite me, did it? Just cut me up with its claws? Is that right?”
John leaned forward and spoke slowly and earnestly, “It did not infect you, Vesca, I promise. It only clawed the hell out of your guts.” He offered a wan smile. “Don’t worry. You won’t go furry at the next full moon.”
“I had better not, or the first person I’m going to go after is you.” Vesca solemnly vowed.
“That’s fair enough.”
“But you’ll stand with me for a moonlight vigil when the time comes, won’t you?”
John hesitated. As werewolf hunters, they had talked about the possibility that someday one or both of them might become infected if a hunt went sour. God knows, it had happened before to other hunters. It was a risk that they had to be willing to take. Those men that simply couldn’t stomach the risk eventually found themselves drifting over to hunt other, less infectious supernatural predators – zombies, ghouls, trolls, you name it.
By asking him to stand with him for a moonlight vigil, Vesca was asking if he would stay with him during the next full moon to make sure he didn’t Change into a werewolf. More importantly, he was asking if John would be able and willing to put a silver bullet in his heart if he had indeed contracted Lycanthrope Disorder from the werewolf that had attacked him.
To Vesca, there could be no worse fate than that. And he would rather die than become a werewolf.
“Yes,” John promised, “I will stand the moonlight vigil with you when the time comes. But, as I told you, things won’t come to that. That son of a bitch never laid a single tooth on you.”
“Yeah, well, it’s better to be safe than sorry.”
John nodded in silent agreement.
“So, who’s this lady you bought flowers for, John? Is she one of the fine looking nurses I keep seeing running back and forth outside of my door?” Vesca tried to work up a lecherous grin, but the effect was ghastly.
John ducked his head and chuckled. One of Vesca’s current kinks was dressing his various sexual partners up in nurses’ uniforms complete with short, puffy skirts and those stupid white hats. No white nurses’ shoes, though, no sir, only black patent leather stiletto heels for Vesca and his crew of misfits.
“So, spit it out already, John. Who’s the unlucky lady?”
“Well, her name is Mary Anderson and I technically met her here at the hospital.”
And that was the truth, sort of. They hadn’t formally introduced themselves until after Mary had spoken with Dr. Petersons. But for some reason, John found himself reluctant to tell Vesca all the details of how they met. It wasn’t that he thought the other man would try to steal her away. It was just that he didn’t think Vesca would necessarily approve of their budding relationship.
“I don’t understand. How did you ‘technically’ meet her here? Does she work her in some position? Is she a secretary or something?”
Definitely ‘or something’, John thought a little wildly.
“No. She doesn’t work here at the hospital, at least not that I know of. We had previously met under some… unfortunate circumstances, but we didn’t actually learn each other’s names until we were here at the hospital.” John knew he was being evasive, but he desperately didn’t want to discus the matter any further. Things were just too complicated right now as it was. “So, I should probably get going. You know, I have some flowers to deliver and all that.”
Moving quickly, John gathered up his coat and the flowers and headed for the door. But before he could make clean his get away, Vesca’s voice barked out in unmistakable command.
“Wait just a minute there, John.”
John stopped in mid-stride, his shoulders hunching at the sharp disapproval in Vesca’s voice. Shit, he thought, he’s figured it out, hasn’t he?
“Anderson, you said?”
“Yeah, that’s right.” John turned to face the man lying on the hospital bed. “Her name is Anderson. Mary Anderson.”
Vesca’s once pale face was now red and blotched, a sure sign of his outrage. “Does this Mary Anderson have a son who underwent surgery last night after being attacked by a werewolf?”
“But… how did you know?”
“It was all the nurses have been talking about since I regained consciousness. Imagine, a little boy actually surviving a real live werewolf attack. Hell, most adults that are attacked don’t even manage that.”
“He was lucky that an ambulance was already en route, otherwise, there was no way he would have made it.” John said, softly. “His luck would have been a lot better if I had actually killed that motherfucker when I had the chance.”
‘Now, John, don’t go blaming yourself-“
“Why the hell shouldn’t I blame myself?” John interrupted furiously. “It was my damn fault. I had that monster in my sights, Vesca, right in my fucking sights, and I hesitated because I didn’t want to hit you. But if I had pulled the trigger sooner, that poor kid would never have been attacked and he wouldn’t be lying in some hospital room, dying.”
“Maybe it would be for the best if he did,” Vesca muttered. He glanced over at John who looked like he had just been slapped in the face. “Die, I mean. In fact, I’m sure it would be for the best if he didn’t make it.”
“How in God’s name could you even say something like that?” John yelled, outraged. “That boy was an innocent bystander who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. He doesn’t deserve to die anymore than you or I or anyone else does. Jesus fucking Christ!”
“Do you have any idea what’s going to happen to that child if the doctors find out that he’s contracted Lycanthropy Disorder? Do you?”
“No, I don’t but-“
“They will lock him up in an institution, John, for the rest of his fucking life. That is if the Change doesn’t kill him first.”
“But he’s only a little boy-“ John began but was savagely cut off.
“It doesn’t make any difference!” Vesca tried to sit up, but the pain in his abdomen forced him back again. “If he has contracted the disorder from that werewolf, they’ll lock him up and he’ll never be free ever again. There’s no way in God’s green earth that the doctors or the local authorities can risk letting him go because he’ll be contagious! One bite, John, one bite is all it takes to infect a man and change his life forever.”
John ran his fingers through his hair angrily and began to pace the room in long, jerky strides. “They don’t know yet if he’s contracted the disease. And if he did catch it, he might get lucky and it will never develop at all.”
“They’re not going to take that chance, John.” Vesca spoke slowly, choosing his words carefully. “The odds were against that child from the get go. Listen to me, less than ten percent of the humans that are attacked by werewolves actually live. You know that. And over half of them die from their injuries or from the Change. Fewer still survive their first transformation. What chance does this kid have, really?”
“Is there a problem here, gentlemen?” A tall nurse with brunette hair pulled back into a severe bun stuck her head into the door. She saw John near the door and frowned mightily at him.
Her eyes were blue, but cold as ice and the brass nametag on her overly ample bosom proclaimed her name to be Christina Chapel. It took more effort than was pretty to keep a straight face after reading that. The poor woman must have been teased about her name on more than one occasion. That’s the only reason he could thing of why she was scowling at him so fiercely. Either that or the nurses at the station had heard their raised voices and had sent someone to investigate if there was a problem.
“No, there’s no problem, Nurse.” Vesca answered. “Thank you.” He smiled at her and it must have been a damned good smile for the nurse smiled back and turned as if to go. “Oh, wait, Nurse?”
“Yes?”
“I think I’d like my pain medication now.”
“Of course, Mr. Howell, right away.” She bestowed the ailing patient with a rather warm smile, then turned and disappeared out the door and down the hall, her white shoes squeaking faintly on the polished tiles until she was out of earshot.
Nurse Chapel with squeaky shoes and a bad attitude, John thought uncharitably. No wonder Star Trek was cancelled.
John crossed the room so that he stood next to the man who had been his hunting partner for almost five years and looked down at him and suddenly realized that he didn’t know this man as well as he thought he did. When he spoke, he pitched his voice low so that he wouldn’t bring any more nurses running.
“And we’re supposed to, what? Watch on the sidelines as he either dies or is taken to an institution?”
“The best thing you could do for him, John, him and his mother, would be to put a silver bullet in his heart.”
“I can’t do that!”
Vesca waved his hand in the air impatiently. “Christ, John, I’m not an idiot. I know you can’t do that, not legally anyway. That would be manslaughter. But just the same, it would be better for everyone if that child was allowed to just… slip away.”
“I am not hearing this.” John scrubbed his face with his hand. “I just cannot fucking believe that I’m hearing this.” He turned so sharply on his heel that he almost ran into another nurse - thankfully not Nurse Chapel- who had just returned with a syringe full of what he assumed was pain medication for Vesca.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said, holding his hands up and out of the way, “Nurse Shultz.” He had read it off her name tag and she smiled at him as if they were old friends. Also, he was pleased to note, though older, plumper, and grayer than Chapel, this nurse had a much better bedside manner.
“That’s perfectly alright, dear.” The nurse replied and moved over to the side of the bed. “No harm done.”
She inserted the needle into one of the clear plastic tubes that was attached to Vesca’s left hand. With something akin to fascination, he watched her depress the plunger and inject the medicine into the tube. Normally, watching someone get a shot made him squirm, but this was so clinical, so detached and so not being stuck into someone’s actual flesh, that it didn’t have any effect on him whatsoever.
“There you go, young man,” The nurse smiled reassuringly down at Howell. “Is there anything else you need? Some water, a snack? Some help getting up so you can use the restroom?”
“No,” Vesca replied somewhat curtly. He caught himself, and continued in a much more cordial tone, “No, thank you, Nurse Shultz.”
“Okay, then. Just push the call button should you need anything.” She smiled faintly at John, but it also held a touch of reproach for his disturbing her patient. Then she was gone leaving the two men alone together.
An angry silence stretched out between the two men, but it was Vesca who broke it first.
“I’m just telling you this for your own good, John.” He said softly. “Look, I know what your feeling-“
“Bullshit. How in hell could you possibly have any idea how I feel about this or anything else?”
“I know. Trust me, I know. When my brother and his family were attacked by a werewolf, their son, Isaac, somehow survived.” Vesca’s voice was thick and raw and it took a moment for John to realize that his eyes were bright with unshed tears. John blamed it on his recent traumatic experiences and the pain medication they had him hopped up on because it was easier to blame those things for this than it was to face the fact that the man who appeared so solid, so brave and stoic, could hurt just as easily as any normal human being could.
“You never said anything about this before.”
“That’s because I don’t much like talking about it.” Vesca wiped one calloused hand over his face, obliterating all trace of tears, if indeed that was what they had been. He cleared his throat harshly. “This was back in, oh, I don’t know, 1974 or so. I had just turned nineteen three weeks before they died. You see, I was supposed to go with them to their cabin up in the mountains of Colorado, but I had an interview at S.U.N.Y Albany. It was about my medical scholarship. I couldn’t miss that interview, so I begged off from the trip.”
“So I wasn’t there for the attack.” Vesca’s words were coming slower, becoming thick as the medication began to take effect. He blinked his eyes owlishly. “I was a pretty damned good hunter, even in my youth. My dad took me out hunting every winter, without fail. I think I might have been able to save them, had I been there. I really do.”
His eyes closed and for a moment, and John thought he had fallen asleep. But he continued speaking, his story still not told. “They took him to the California State Hospital for Werewolves, in Rosamond. Isaac, I mean. It was the first such institute of its kind. But for all the fancy names, it was nothing more than a prison made just for werewolves. A prison they would never escape from.”
“Isaac killed himself two years later. Hung himself with his own sheets.”
Vesca opened his eyes and stared solemnly at John. “He was only twelve years old when he died.”
“So, believe me when I tell you that you do not want to fall in love with this woman, John. In the end, it will only bring you heartache and problems.”
****
John stood in the doorway, his bouquet of flowers in one hand behind his back and a goofy grin on his face as he watched Mary as she sat in a chair next to her son, Leon. She was reading a children’s book aloud to her son. It was a Sesame Street Little Gold Book entitled Cookie Monster and the Cookie Tree.
Leon lay pale and still on his bed, buried in a confusion of wires and tubing. He was hooked up to a heart rate monitor and some sort of plastic breathing tube had been inserted into his windpipe through his mouth. The tubing had been secured in place by tape that extended around his neck to form a circle of tape. It was this circle that kept the tube securely in position.
The other end of the machine was connected to some sort of breathing machine. John couldn’t remember what the machine was called at the moment, but he knew what its function was, more or less. The breathing tube, John knew from years of medical sitcoms and dramatic television series, provided an airway so that air and oxygen from the breathing machine could reach the lungs.
The boy had dark circles under his eyes and, just like Vesca, there was heavy gauze covering his thin chest. Unlike Vesca, his left shoulder and arm were in a plaster cast because the werewolf had severed the flesh and pulverized the bones when it had shaken him like a terrier with a rat. After stabilizing his condition, Dr. Petersons had gone in and repaired the bones to the best of his abilities, but it was still too early to know if Leon would ever again have proper use of his arm.
Mary seemed oblivious to all this as she read, she used different voices for each character. And she was doing a darned good job, too. Her witch voice was properly high-pitched and cackling, and her Cookie Monster impersonation, as far as he could tell, was spot on. John smirked at the idea of the infamous blue Cookie Monster coming anywhere near a cookie tree, but managed to hold off on his laughter.
“’Oh, I’m the witch with the cookie tree and all of these cookies are just for me.’” Mary trilled, reading the line and John lost his composure and succumbed to his laughter.
Mary jumped, startled, and shut the book carefully and placed it on the chair next to her. “Wow, I didn’t know I had an audience.” She mumbled, embarrassed.
Smiling broadly, John crossed the room and presented her the orange lilies and red frangipani with a flourish that would have done an armature magician proud.
Mary jumped to her feet, practically squealing in delight, and threw her arms around him. He could feel the soft press of her breasts through the soft blue fabric of her turtleneck and it was maddening. Making an effort to control himself, he carefully disengaged her arms from around his neck and stepped back to take her all in with his eyes. She was beautiful, simply beautiful.
Mary held the bouquet under her nose and breathed deeply of its scents. “Why, thank you, John. That was so sweet of you.”
“Nothing to it,” he replied with a lecherous wink. “It was the least I could do after last night.”
“Oh, you!” Mary swatted him lightly on the arm and then, still smiling, turned and walked over to the bed tray.
“Look, Leon,” she said, holding out the bouquet of orange and red flowers and smiling as if the boy could actually hear and see her, “Mr. Orcot has brought us some flowers! Aren’t they beautiful?” She glanced at John from under her lashes. “I think, if I’m not mistaken, that they are orange lilies and, let me see… red frangipani?” She glanced over to him as if asking for confirmation.
“That’s right.” John sounded mildly shocked at her knowledge. Did everyone but him know about these flowers? “You have a good eye for detail.”
Mary laughed shortly. “Not really, but it’s nice of you to say so. My mother ran a flower shop when I was a kid and I guess I kind of just picked up some stuff.” She held her hand to her face as if blocking her words from being overheard, “To be honest, I take more after my dad. I swear I have a brown thumb. Every single plant I’ve ever tried to grow has withered away and died. Pathetic, isn’t it?”
She gestured toward the two chairs by the bed. John took the one farthest away from the bed, not because seeing Mary’s child in such a tragic state made him uncomfortable, but because he knew she would want to sit as close as possible to him.
“No, I wouldn’t say that it’s pathetic,” John admitted. “Different strokes for different folks, as they say. I’m the same way, but with fish. I never did get the hang of taking care of them. But I wasn’t allowed to have cats or dogs when I was growing up because I was an Army brat and we were constantly moving every two or three years. So I kept gold fish… and every few weeks I’d flush them down the toilet.”
He smiled a little at the memory.
Mary chuckled and reached over the bed and took hold of one of her son’s hands. She squeezed it gently, stroking the thumb along his skin absently. For several seconds she gazed at his pale face.
As was standard procedure, Leon’s hands were lightly restrained using a set of medical limb holders that were attached to the bed frame using quick-release ties that secured using hooks, loops and buckles. A slide harness on each cuff allowed the limbs to be rotated without chafing the skin. Restraining a patient’s hands prevented them from attempting to remove the endotracheal tube once they had regained consciousness, a common occurrence since most patients complained about the breathing tube feeling uncomfortable. And it often caused patients cough or gag, at least until the initial discomfort faded over time.
“Leon always wanted a dog.” She finally whispered and her voice was thick with tears that she refused to let fall. Instead, she held her eyes a little bit wider and blinked rapidly until she had managed to regain some semblance of control over her emotions. “He begged and pleaded, but I always said no. I didn’t think he was old enough, responsible enough to take care of a dog. I figured that if I gave in, I would be the one feeding and walking it.”
“One day two years ago, right before a large snowstorm that knocked out the power to over half the city, Leon came home from school, looking guilty and excited all at once. He looked me straight in the eye and said he had something he wanted me to see.”
John smiled knowingly. “He brought a puppy home, didn’t he?”
“Yeah,” She grinned over at him. “The little shit found a six week old puppy on the street. Some heartless bastard had abandoned it in a cardboard box. He tucked it into his coat and snuck it home. Man, you should have seen his face, how it lit up when I said he could keep her.”
Mary sniffled and rubbed a hand over her eyes. “Guido died protecting him, didn’t she?”
“Yes,” John replied honestly. “I believe she did.”
She nodded her head sadly and her face began to crumple as she struggled against her turbulent emotions. “Oh, God,” she moaned, “I’m going to really miss that brave, stupid, wonderful dog.”
Suddenly, she started, and gave a small, shocked cry. “Did you see that?” she demanded. “Leon’s hand, it moved. He squeezed my hand!”
“Are you sure?” John stood and crossed over to the bed and stared down at the boy. “Maybe it was just a reflex or something? He shouldn’t be able to move due to the sedatives the doctor would have prescribed to keep him from removing his breathing tube.”
“No,” Mary was excited, her face lit up with a manic sort of joy. “It was real. He’s waking up. The sedatives must be wearing off and he’s waking up!”
With barley contained excitement, Mary and John watched Leon as he lay in the hospital bed for several minutes but the boy gave no signs of waking and the hand squeeze, if that’s what it had been, was not repeated.
“Oh, baby,” Mary whispered, her voice trembling on the verge of tears. “Please come back to me.”
Uncertain on what to do, John did the only thing he could think of and draped his arm around the distraught woman and held her. “He’ll come out of it, I know it,” he murmured with a reassuring squeeze. “He’s strong.” He placed a kiss on the top of her head. “He’s a fighter, just like his mother…”
John trailed off and his eyes were drawn to Mary’s hand wrapped protectively over her child’s. Something had caught his attention and he leaned closer for a better look. Before his eyes, the small fingers twitched under his mother’s hand, then, slowly, almost imperceptibly, they contracted. The movement was weak, but it was without a doubt movement and not some sort of reflexive action. But as he wasn’t a doctor, he couldn’t be sure. Was it a reflex action or was it really a sign that he was struggling toward consciousness?
Mary’s free hand flew to her mouth. “His eyes, John,” she breathed, “They’re starting to open.”
Indeed they were. Slowly, as if they weighed a ton, Leon’s eyelids began to open. And for the first John saw that those eyes were a bright blue, like his mother’s. His eyes seemed cloudy and unfocused, but whether that was from his recovery from the anesthesia or some other reason, he couldn’t say.
Leon squeezed his mother’s hand again and then tried to move his arm, but his movement was arrested by the limb restraints. His eyes, clearer now and full of equal doses of confusion and fear, widened and he slid his head to the side, making an uncomfortable sound somewhere between a gag and a cough.
“He doesn’t like the breathing tube,” John observed. “And I don’t blame him one bit. I wouldn’t like have a plastic tube shoved down my throat, either. Maybe we should ring a nurse and ask if it’s too early to have it removed.”
Leon’s fingers twitched in Mary’s hand, and then twitched again. Each one was progressively stronger than the last, the movements jerking and random.
“Leon,” Mary whispered hoarsely, sensing something was wrong, but not knowing what it was exactly, “What’s wrong, honey?”
His eyes flew open, wide and frightened, and then rolled back into his head, showing only the whites. The twitches rapidly spread throughout his body, becoming shudders, then shakes. His body convulsed wildly, and his back bowed, and his entire body went rigid. He arched up from the hospital bed like a trout fighting a hook, and all the while, the green, zigzagging blips on the heartbeat monitor spiked like a seismometer.
“Call the doctor! Quick!” Mary yelled, stepping to the head of the bed and trying to wrapping her arms around her son’s shoulders in a futile effort to calm his convulsions. The heat that was now radiating from Leon’s small body was incredible, horrible. Trying to hold his thrashing body was like trying to hold a living oven. “Oh, God, he’s burning up!”
John pressed the button that would call the nurses, but didn’t wait to see if they were responding. He bolted out into the hall, determined to make the nurse’s station, when he almost bowled into Nurse Chapel.
“Watch where the fuck you’re going!” She snarled and pushed her way past him, followed by another nurse, this one young with red hair and a galaxy of freckles on her face.
John followed them into the room, but stayed clear, not wanting to get in the way. Freckle Girl, pushed her way between Mary and her son, with a brusque, “Sorry, ma’am, but you’re going to have to go stand by the door, or out in the hall. We need some room here.”
She quickly released the restraints and removed the tape keeping the breathing tube in place. Froth and foam spilled from the boy’s mouth, disturbingly similar to the slobber of a rabid animal. With Nurse Chapel’s help, she rolled Leon onto his side, presumably to keep him from choking on his tongue.
Trembling and biting her lower lip, she crossed over to John, her face red and blotchy with tears. John wrapped his arms around her and she turned her face to his chest and away from her suffering child.
“Make it stop, John,” She moaned, “please make it stop.”
“His temperature is still climbing,” Freckle Girl announced as she worked. Another nurse, Nurse Shultz, entered the small room with Dr. Petersons in tow. “He’s at 105 degrees Fahrenheit, no make that 106.”
Dr. Petersons barked an order at Nurse Shultz, “Get some tepid water and some rags. Now! We need to bring his temperature down.”
The nurse moved to obey and caught John’s eye as she passed, offering a silent apology by way of her concerned expression.
For what felt like an eternity, but was actually only a few minutes, John and Mary held each other near the door as they helplessly watched the medical team work on her son. The air was heavy with the stench of urine for Leon had become incontinent at one point during his seizures. Slowly the convulsions lessoned, and then finally stopped. Freckle Girl and Nurse Shultz began making preparations to bathe the still, small body and to change his soiled hospital Johnny, while Chapel went to get fresh bedding from the linen closet.
Dr. Petersons approached Mary and John, and his face was solemn. “Please follow me, Miss Anderson. There are some things that I need to discuss with you.” Mary’s eyes flew to John and the doctor, seeing this, amended kindly, “Mr. Orcot may accompany us if you wish.”
Mary gave John a squeeze before releasing him and moving toward the door. “I do.”
Silently and with great trepidation, Mary and John followed Dr. Petersons through the polished tile maze of the hospital until they arrived at, what they assumed to be his office, or at least an office of some sort. The doctor motioned toward two comfortably padded chairs sitting in front the walnut desk in silent invitation, and then moved behind the desk to take his own, much grander, seat with black leather padding.
“Miss Anderson, Mr. Orcot,” he began, inclining his head as he addressed them each in turn. “As you are no doubt well aware, we are having some small difficulties with our patient.” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the top of his desk and pressing the tips of his fingers together. The expression on his face was equal parts reluctance and thoughtfulness.
“Dr. Petersons,” Mary interrupted suddenly, “Let’s get down to the nitty-gritty, shall we? What just happened to my son in that room?”
The good doctor looked down and his hands, now folded neatly on the top of the desk. Then he glanced at first John, then Mary, and studying their facial expressions as if in an attempt to gauge their potential reactions to whatever news he was about to give them.
“There may be any number of things that could have brought on such a critical reaction, but there are three that come more clearly to mind. The first is that he suffered from what we call a febrile seizure, or fever convulsions. Children Leon’s age or even younger are more likely to have such reactions to high fevers. Usually, they grow out of them.”
“About that, Doctor,” Mary interrupted again. “I was holding my son’s hand right before he went into these ‘convulsions’ and his skin didn’t feel particularly hot to me.”
“My dear, I should let you know that feeling a child's body is not always the most reliable way to judge a child’s fever or even if he has a fever at all.”
“That doesn’t make any sense, Doc,” John said, puzzled by this information.
“It’s like this,” Dr. Petersons began and easily slipped into lecture mode, “when a child's temperature is on the rise, the body conserves heat by decreasing the circulation to the skin.” He turned his gaze to Mary and smiled reassuringly, “If you feel a child at that point in his fever he might very well feel relatively cool to the touch even though the fever may be rather significant, as it was in your son’s case.”
“If a child is extremely ill, or has been severely injured as your son has been, or if that child was dehydrated, his body could also have decreased circulation to the skin, which would have cause the skin to feel cool to the touch.”
“On the other hand, when the temperature starts to come down, circulation to the skin may increase to allow heat to escape, which would cause the child to appear to be flushed and cause them to feel hot the touch.”
“But the temperature came on so suddenly,” Mary fretted, wringing her hands.
“Indeed,” Dr. Petersons agreed. “A child’s temperature often seems to hit hard and fast. But that isn’t anything unusual.”
“You said there were other possible reasons,” John asked, wanting the conversation to continue moving forward.
“Yes, indeed. Another potential cause could be that he suffered from either an epileptic or non-epileptic seizure. But we couldn’t determine epilepsy without doing several tests including blood tests to determine if the seizures had a physical cause, like diabetes.”
At that point, Mary reached her hand out to John, who took it and gave it a reassuring squeeze. She didn’t even want to begin to think that her only child could be suffering from a potentially serious disease like diabetes.
“Another common testing procedure in cases like this would be an Electroencephalogram, or EEG. An EEG is a painless test that records the activity, or electric signals of the brain. This activity is picked up by electrodes attached to the patient’s head. The EEG then records the brain activity that happens during the test. An epileptic seizure would be caused by changes in brain activity.”
“Non-epileptic seizures, on the other hand, are not usually caused by changes in the brain’s activity and therefore no changes would show up in an EEG recording. Non-epileptic seizures are often a reaction to very stressful events or situations, such as the one your son so recently experienced.”
“The attack…” Mary whispered.
“Yes. However, I am almost convinced that it was not epilepsy that triggered the attack because he did spike a rather high fever just before the seizures started, and that generally is not the way epileptic seizures work. More tests would be needed before I could professionally make such a diagnosis.”
“And what is the third possibility, Doctor?”
The doctor caught Mary’s gaze with his own, and here he hesitated. He opened his mouth, and then shut it again and no sound escaped his throat.
“The third possibility, Doctor,” John prompted impatiently.
Dr. Petersons cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Miss Anderson, last night your son was mauled by a lycanthrope, a werewolf. The third possibility, the one I feel is both the most likely and the most dangerous, is that your son has contracted Lycanthrope Disorder.”
Mary’s hands flew to cover her mouth as a soft keening wail escaped her lips. “You mean my son could become a… a… monster?”
“A werewolf, yes, there is a strong possibility. That would explain the spike in temperature and the convulsions.”
Seeing their confused and horrified expressions, Dr. Petersons began to explain carefully.
“Becoming a werewolf isn’t as simple as the folklore makes it out to be – you are bitten and then the next full moon you become a werewolf. No, it is far more complicated than that. The victim’s body undergoes what is often referred to as the Change. Now, the Change can refer to either the actual transformation from human to werewolf that all lycanthrope experience, or it can be the physical metamorphosis that occurs on the cellular level.
“To avoid confusion, I will refer to the Change as the cellular metamorphosis that all victims suffer through and the Transformation as the change initiated by the light of the full moon.”
“Fair enough,” Mary agreed, faintly. Her voice trembled, but she took a deep, calming breath that was more than a little shaky, but showed no other outward expression of her feelings, though both John and the doctor had no trouble guessing how hard this must be for her.
Many humans simply do not survive werewolf attacks and those that do will invariable suffer through the Change, a period of time during which their body begin to change, to mutate. They undergo radical physical alteration at the cellular level. Unfortunately, most attack survivors do not make it through this phase.”
“According to my recent reading on the subject, I’ve found that your son, if he has indeed contracted Lycanthrope Disorder, will begin to go through this transformation. That is if he hasn’t already. He will suffer multiple seizures or convulsions as his body is basically reprogrammed from the cells up. It is this change that will eventually allow him to transform into an actual werewolf.”
“What are the chances that he’ll survive the Change?” John asked hoarsely, though he already knew the answer. Still, part of him couldn’t help but hope that Vesca was wrong.
“In his current state, you mean?”
“Yeah, that’s what I mean.”
Dr. Petersons took a slow, deep breath. “His chances or survival in his current condition are very slim indeed, I’m afraid. He’s being heavily sedated to suppress his body’s natural efforts to fight off this invading mutation, but his body will eventually rip itself apart in its effort to protect him.”
“Oh, God,” Mary whimpered.
“I’m sorry, Miss Anderson, but, as I said in the waiting room the other day, it will take a miracle to save your son’s life.”
“And what if he does live? If he has Lycanthrope Disorder, what are you going to do with him?” John didn’t ask for himself, but he thought that Mary ought to have some idea of what Fate had in store for her only child if by some miracle he actually lived through this hellish nightmare.
“Then he will be removed to an institution specially designed for lycanthrope. Force would be used if necessary.”
“But he’s my son!” Mary cried, “He’s just a little boy!”
“I’m sorry, but that’s standard procedure, Miss Anderson. I’ll have blood work drawn up tomorrow. If the test comes back negative, you and your son can be released from the hospital once he has made a full recovery.”
He spread his hands in a helpless gesture.
“If he tests positive, I will have no choice but to contact the local authorities and they will institutionalize your son as soon as he becomes stable enough to be transferred to the proper facilities.”
TO BE CONTINUED…
CHAPTER 04
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Date: 2008-03-17 01:10 am (UTC)That was great - this just gets better and better. XD
At least Nurse Chapel wasn't Nurse Diesel, on a lighter note...although I am kind of wondering what's up with that - a little foreshadowing, perhaps?
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Date: 2008-03-17 01:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-17 04:16 am (UTC)*blush* That's very nice of you to say. But there are far more talented writers in the fandom... I'm only happy to be contributing.
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Date: 2008-03-17 04:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-17 04:08 am (UTC)Thanks for reading!
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Date: 2008-03-17 04:34 pm (UTC)