I yawned again. “Ha ha, Samson, I’m not falling for that again. It was a sick joke when you pretended to be chain-saw-massacred on Halloween, and it’s a sick joke now.”
He didn’t get up.
“Sam . . . Sam?” The wind changed directions, and the smell of his blood finally made it to my nostrils. “Mom!” I yelled, scrambling next to him. My knees hit the boards with a thud. I rolled him over and found a quarter-sized hole just under his ribs. My hands were red and wet as the blood welled over the fingers pressing against his wound.
Mom came out onto the porch. She gasped, falling to her knees beside me.
“Call Dr. Moder!” I yelled. “Now! Better yet, just run down the street to the clinic. Now, Mom, please!”
I tore off my jacket and threw it over him. I pressed my shirt to his side to stanch the bleeding. There was so much of it, and the slick coppery smell was starting to turn my stomach. If the bullet hit something vital, something Dr. Moder couldn’t handle, we were going to have to get him to a real hospital. There would be questions I couldn’t answer, reports that wouldn’t be safe for us to file. And what if we couldn’t get him there in time? He’d lost so much blood. How much more could he have?
“Sam, please hold on, OK? Just keep breathing. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I thought you were kidding.”
“Woods,” Samson whispered. “Shot me. No smell.”
I shushed him. “OK, OK, just save your breath.”
I kept watching the wound, hoping that the bullet would be pushed out by his natural healing ability. The wound was growing smaller, but the little lead round seemed lodged inside. I heard Mama’s footsteps thumping up the street as she practically carried Dr. Moder to us. Sensing Mom’s growing panic, the doctor told her to fetch a blanket and towels from inside the house.
“What do we have here?” Dr. Moder asked, dropping her massive medical bag next to me as she kneeled down. She sounded a lot calmer than I felt. I guess she’d seen a lot worse from us over the years. I just don’t remember feeling this frantic when Cooper got his head stuck in a stair railing.
Up and down the street, I could hear doors opening, my family coming out of their houses to see what the ruckus was. For a second, I considered sending them into the woods to look for the shooter. But that could result in more werewolves with gunshot wounds. Or a hunter with wet pants.
“Does anyone know who was running with Samson today?” I yelled. A few of my relatives shook their heads. “Everybody go inside!” I barked. “Do a head count. Figure out who’s not here. Don’t come out until I come to you.”
Immediately, doors snapped shut, although I could still see a few of my aunts silhouetted against their windows.
After slipping on a latex glove, Dr. Moder probed the wound with her fingertip while I cringed. She pulled out a huge bottle of hydrogen peroxide and poured it into the wound. She pulled out a plastic-wrapped scalpel and forceps.
“I think the bullet probably missed his organs, but I need to open him up to make sure.”
I made an embarrassing squeaking noise. “You’re going to do this right here? On my front porch?”
Dr. Moder’s teeth were on edge as she said, “The bullet’s pretty deep. If I wait any longer, to give him anesthesia or get him to a sterile room, the wound will heal over, and I’ll have to open him up again to get it out. He stands less chance of infection and will heal faster if I get it now. Trust me, your cousin Wayne’s been shot by enough grumpy locals that I would know. Just try not to breathe too much on him.”
I gritted my teeth, blowing a breath out through my nostrils. I handed her the scalpel, which she used to widen the wound, dipping the forceps past the bloody ring of tissue and rooting around.
OK, I could handle a lot, but this was pretty gross. I tried to think of it as a game of Operation. And the only consequence of Dr. Moder screwing up would be a buzzing sound and Samson’s nose lighting up red.
Samson’s hand twitched as Dr. Moder’s instrument gripped the bullet. I threaded my fingers through his, willing the tears gathering at the corners of my eyes not to fall. How could this have happened? Other than my dad and Cousin Wayne, no one in the pack had been shot in years. We’d learned to shy away from any signs of hunters.
At this point, I didn’t care if it was just some dumb-ass tourist who wanted a scary trophy for his den. I wanted to rip him limb from limb. But Samson needed me here now. And I was doing well not to phase on the spot and start howling like a lunatic.>Pops sniffed and sauntered toward the beer weenies. I gave Nick a wink to let him know he’d handled that very well.
And at the end of the night, as much as it pained me, Nick went to sleep at Samson’s house. Because as evolved and open as my family was, the idea of having sex under my mother’s roof really creeped me out. It was bad enough having the first “post-game” conversation with my mom. After I made the mating announcement, she took me aside and asked me if I “wanted to talk about it.”
I sprang up from my chair, suddenly very keen to know whether the top drawer of my filing cabinet was locked. “God, no!”
Mom seemed perplexed. “I don’t know why not. It’s nothing to be afraid of. My first time with your father was fantastic.”
“Mom, I don’t want to hear about your honeymoon hijinks, OK?”
“Oh, honey, it wasn’t on our wedding night. We took care of that a long time before we got married.”
“Ohmygod!” I howled. “Why would you tell me that?”
“Well, we were already mated. Your dad had claimed me. Why wait until the wedding when we wanted to have kids right away? Honey, what are you doing?” she said as I rifled through my desk drawers.
“Looking for something to gouge out my eardrums.”