“Depends on what that is. ” I tapped one, and watched it slosh.
“Luna Lobos. ”
I knew enough Spanish to parse that. “Wolf Moon?” I said, and she nodded.
“That still doesn’t tell me what it is. ” I picked one up. “You can’t give him drugs, Luz. You don’t know what they’ll do to him—”
“It’s not drugs. ” I stared at her, and she went on. “I swear it. It’s a booster. Like—the Red Bull with vodka. It’s not the Red Bull’s fault that the vodka is alcohol. ”
“Even if that’s true, it’s not a good idea. He can’t sit up to swallow right now. You give him that, and he’ll choke,” I said, trying to sound stern, setting the vial back down. Truth was, the sum total in those vials was maybe two tablespoons of fluid combined. Hard to see him aspirating on that.
“You don’t know what I’ve seen. This stuff,” she said, rolling the vials around in her palm. “Sometimes it’s better than the high. ” She closed his hand suddenly, making all the vials clatter. “It might make him better. ”
“You can’t bargain his injury away. ”
“I’m his hyna. I have to try. ”
I didn’t know what a hyna was, and I was still within my rights to kick her out of the room. This was why I hated visitors. You gave them an inch, and they’d take a thousand miles.
“Sorry. ” I put my hand out. “Give it here. ”
“Awww, no—”
I shook my head. “Give it here, or I’ll kick you out of the room. ” I hated being a hardass, but there was no way I was going to let her give him medication, vitamin supplements, anything that wasn’t by the books tonight.
She squinted at me in anger and dropped the vials into my hand. I popped them into the sharps container on the wall and stepped outside.
“I’m going on break now,” I told the charge nurse. Hopefully Luz would be less pissed off at me by the time I got back.
“Come back in fifteen,” the charge nurse said as I pushed through the doors into the waiting lobby.
* * *
“Finally. ” Sike stood when she saw me. She walked ahead of me to the elevators and pushed the DOWN button.
“I still don’t get why you can’t get to Y4 on your own,” I said as the elevator arrived.
“Me either,” she said and stepped inside.
We went through the warren of hallways that led to Y4, and reached the final elevator bank. “This is the one that wouldn’t work for me,” she said, pointing. I waved my badge in front of the door. It arrived, and we stepped in.
“The Shadows control our access. You’d have to ask them. ” I looked up, toward the recesses behind the lights set above. “Maybe they didn’t want you to come down?”
“But now it’s fine?” Sike frowned. “What’s changed?”
“I’m here?” I guessed. The Shadows never did anything the easy way, not when the hard way involved more pain for them to feed on. Shit. “Sike—why are you here?”
“There’s been a small accident. ”
The elevator doors opened, releasing us onto Y4.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
My home floor was chaos. The P. M. shift charge nurse spotted me from behind her desk. “Did they call you to come in early?”
“I’m on break from trauma. What’s going on?”
“New admit. If you want to keep your dinner down, stay outside. ” I didn’t think I had that as an option. “Who’s she?” the charge nurse asked as Sike came forward. Sike opened her stolen lab coat, pulling some paperwork out of the breast pocket.
“I have visitation rights for any members of the Rose Throne on this floor. ”
The charge nurse snorted. “Figures. Room four. ”
Sike put her forms away and walked across the floor. I could leave now, my escorting job done, but my stupid, foolish curiosity wouldn’t let me. I followed her in.
* * *
Doctors barked orders and nurses swarmed the room like ants: finding IV sites, hanging meds, setting up sterile surgical trays.
“Did anyone find the fingers?” a doctor asked aloud. “Any of them?” he went on, his voice rising. No one answered.
The patient sat on the bed in the middle of everything, arms exposed, face bound up in gauze, seeping bright red blood. A nurse stood beside the bed, clamping her gloved hands over the gauze where his ears would be, to apply pressure.
“And not a drop to drink,” Sike murmured, then strode into the room. “The Rose Throne demands recursion. ”
The doctor stopped where he was, Betadine staining his gloves and his patient’s hand orange-brown. The doctor was willowy, too tall, folded over the bed like a number 3. When he looked over at Sike, his face was stern. “You can’t take him—he needs profound medical care. ”