Now that I was alone and not being pestered with hard questions, I began to feel my body. It hurt. Every time I moved my back, it hurt. Some of it was the dull ache of bruises, but there were two spots that had the sharp bite of things that had bled. I tried to remember how I could have cut my back. The glass in the window when the corpse took us back through it, that had to be it.
My face ached in a line from jaw to forehead. I remembered the corpse hitting me backhand. It had been almost casual, but it had knocked me half-senseless. Just once I'd like to meet a type of walking dead that wasn't stronger than a living person.
I lifted the loose neck of my hospital gown and found little round pads stuck to my chest. I glanced at the heart monitor beside the bed, giving that reassuring sound that said my heart was still working. I had a sudden memory of the moment when my heart had stopped, when the master had willed it to stop. I was suddenly cold, and it wasn't the overly ambitious air conditioner. I'd come very close to dying yesterday ... today? I didn't know what day it was. Only the sunshine pressing against the drawn blinds let me know it was day and not night.
There were red patches on the skin of my upper body like bad sunburns. I touched one, gently. It hurt. How the hell had I gotten burns? I lifted the gown until it made a cave and I could see down the line of my body, at least until mid-thigh where the weight of the covers hid me from view. There was abandage just below my rib cage. I remembered the thing's mouth opening over my skin while he cradled me, gently. The moment when he bit down ... I pushed the memory away. Later, much, much later. I checked my left shoulder, but the scrape marks from teeth had already scabbed over.
Scabbed over? How long had I been out?
A man came into the room. He seemed familiar, but I knew I did not know him. He was tall with blond hair and silver-framed glasses. "I'm Doctor Cunningham, and I am very glad to see you awake."
"Me, too," I said.
He smiled and started checking me over. He used a penlight and made me follow the light, his finger, and kept staring into my eyes so long, he had me worried. "Did I have a concussion?"
"No," he said. "Why? Does your head hurt?"
"A little but I think it's from the sage incense."
He looked embarrassed. "I am sorry about that, Ms. Blake, but she seemed to think all this was very important, and frankly I don't know why you almost died to begin with, or why you didn't just keep on dying, I let her do what she wanted."
"I thought my heart stopped," I said.
He tucked his stethoscope into his ears and pressed it to my chest. "Technically, yes." He stopped talking, listening to my heart. He asked me to breathe deeply a couple of times, then made some notes on the chart at the foot of my bed. "Yes, your heart did stop, but I don't know why it stopped. None of your injuries were that serious, or for that matter, that kind of injury," He shook his head and came back to stand by me.
"How did I get the burns on my chest?"
"We used the defibrillator to start your heart. It can leave mild burns,"
"How long have I been here?"
"Two days. This is your third day with us."
I took a deep breath and tried not to panic. I'd lost two days. "Have there been any more murders?"
The smile wilted on his face, leaving his, eyes even more serious than they had been. "You mean the mutilation murders?"
I nodded.
"No, no new bodies."
I let out the breath. "Good."
He was frowning now. "No more questions about your health? Just about the murders?"
"You said you don't know why I almost died, or why I didn't go ahead and die. I assume that means Leonora Evans saved me."
He looked even more uncomfortable. "All I know is that once we allowed her to lay hands on you, your blood pressure started to go back up, your heart rhythm steadied out." He shook his head. "I simply don't know what happened, and if you knew how hard it is for a doctor, any doctor, to admit ignorance, you'd be much more impressed with me saying that."
I smiled. "Actually, I've been in the hospital before. I appreciate you telling me the truth and not trying to claim credit for my miraculous recovery."
"Miraculous is a good word for it." He touched the one thin knife scar on my right forearm. "You have quite a collection of war injuries, Ms. Blake. I believe you have seen a lot of hospitals."
"Yeah," I said.
He shook his head. "You're what, twenty-two, twenty-three?"
"Twenty-six," I said.
"You look younger," he said.
"It's being short," I said.
"No," he said, "it isn't. But still to have these kinds of scars at twenty-six is not a good sign, Ms. Blake. I did my residency in a very bad section of a very big city. We used to get a lot of gang members. If they lived to see twenty-six, their bodies looked like yours. Knife scars ... " He leaned across the bed and raised the sleeve of the gown enough to touch the healed bullet wound on my upper arm. " ... bullet wounds. We even had a shapeshifter gang, so I've seen the claw marks and bites, too."
"You must have been in New York," I said.
He blinked. "How did you know?"
"It's illegal to purposefully give lycanthropy to a minor even with their permission, so the gang leaders were put under a death sentence. They sent in special forces along with New York's finest to wipe them out."
He nodded. "I left the city just before they did that. I'd treated a lot of those kids." His eyes were distant with remembering. "We had two of them shapechange during treatment. Then they wouldn't let them in the hospital anymore. If you wore their colors, you were left to die."
"Most of them probably lived anyway, Doctor Cunningham. If the initial wound doesn't kill them immediately, they probably aren't going to die."
"Are you trying to comfort me?" he asked.
"Maybe."
He looked down at me. "Then I'll tell you what I told all of them. Get out. Get out of this line of work or you will not live to see forty."
"I was actually wondering if I was going to make it to thirty," I said.
"Was that a joke?"
"I think so."
"You know the old saying, half in jest, all in seriousness?" he asked.
"Can't say I've heard that one."
"Listen to yourself, Ms. Blake. Take it to heart and find something a little safer to be doing."
"If I was a cop, you wouldn't be saying this."
"I have never treated a policeman that had this many scars. The closest I've ever seen outside the gangs was a marine."
"Did you tell him to quit his job?"
"The war was over, Ms. Blake. Normal military duty just isn't that dangerous."
He looked at me, all serious. I looked back, blank-faced, giving him nothing. He sighed. "You'll do what you want to do, and it's none of my business anyway." He turned and walked towards the door.
I called after him. "I do appreciate the concern, Doctor. Honestly, I do."
He nodded, one hand on either side of his stethoscope like it was a towel. "You appreciate my concern, but you're going to ignore my advice."
"Actually, if I live through this case, I'm planning to take some time off. It's not the injury rate, doctor. It's the erosion of the ethics that's beginning to get to me."
He tugged on the stethoscope. "Are you telling me that if I think you look bad, I should see the other guy?"
I gazed down, sort of taking it all in. "I execute people, Doctor Cunningham. There are no bodies to look at."
"Don't you mean you execute vampires?" he said.
"Once upon a time, that's what I meant."
We had another long moment of looking at each other, then he said, "Are you saying you kill humans?"
"No, I'm saying that there's not as much difference between vamps and humans as I used to tell myself."
"A moral dilemma," he said.
"Yeah," I said.
"I don't envy you the problem, Ms. Blake, but try to stay out of the line of fire until you figure out the answer to it."
"I always try and stay out of the line of fire, Doctor."
"Try harder," he said and walked out.