Moonshifted(96)
I pulled my badge out from my pocket, bloody lanyard and all. “I’m a hospital employee.”
“Then you know. It’s a Code Triage, we can’t take any more—” He kept talking. Whatever he was seeing, it wasn’t me. “You’ll have to go to another facility.”
Behind him, nurses and doctors and their assistants, my distant co-workers, were hustling a critical-looking patient out the door. That almost never happened. We were a level one trauma center. We could do it all. We didn’t discharge vented patients at—I looked up at a clock—three A.M.
“I’m going to my home floor. I work here.” I held up my badge in his field of vision. It glowed briefly before dimming again.
“Please go to your home floor to help with the immediate evacuation,” the officer said. I nodded.
“Will do.”
As much as it hurt me to walk, we took the back way, through the empty halls, so we wouldn’t be confronted again before we reached Y4.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Gideon and I could hear howls when the elevator doors opened. He helped me limp toward the double doors.
Meaty looked up from the main desk as I came in. “Edie? Are you okay? You look like hell.”
Gina came around the corner with a smile for me, and then pointed at Gideon. “Who’s he?”
“A friend. It’ll take too long to explain.” I hobbled over to the desk. Gideon took off his hat and started walking around the unit, looking at things.
“What’s going on?” Meaty asked as I slowly sat in a chair.
“The whole rest of the hospital is evacuating up there. It’s Code Triage—they’re not taking new people in, and they’re sending everyone inside out.”
Meaty said, “Tell me everything. Now.”
I whitecapped my past two days of events. They didn’t need to know about Gideon or Veronica, sex with Lucas, or the details of the whole ordeal I’d just been through. But they deserved to know why I had blood on me. It would be enough.
“So I came here to get were-shots, only then I saw all the chaos up above—”
“Did they get you?” Gina asked.
“Define get?” I held up my hand, where Jorgen’s teeth had grazed me. Two knuckles were open, raw. And the claw marks on my thighs …
“Shit,” she cursed. “On a full-moon night? You’re going to need the full series.” She stood and went over to the Pyxis to pull out meds.
Meaty sighed deeply. “Protocol says to lock the doors and sit tight. Access to our floor is regulated anyhow—it’s not like they can come barging in.”
“Even when the Shadows are gone?” I asked Meaty.
Gina interrupted. “The Shadows are gone? What?”
Meaty looked away. “We thought it best not to tell anyone.”
I didn’t remember getting a vote, but it was spilled milk now. Behind us, in the newly expanded were-wing, the full moon was working on its children. In between howls, I could hear scrabbling claws, digging at tile—and the occasional thump as a wolf-person threw itself at its room doors. I wasn’t so worried about what might barge in, as what was trying to barge out.
“Who’s watching the zoo?” I asked.
“Rachel,” Gina answered, returning with a box of shots. I pulled out my cell phone.
“Do I have permission to call friends?”
“Are you sure they’re friends?” Meaty asked.
“After the night I’ve had, they’d better fucking be.”
I didn’t call, I texted—Sike, then Lucas. Something’s wrong at work. Can you come?
Sike responded shortly. “On my way.” From probably phoneless and definitely thumbless Lucas, more silence.
Gina stabbed the first were-vaccination into my upper arm, smack into my deltoid muscle.
“That really freaking hurts.” It wasn’t the needle so much as the sensation of burning that spread out from the injection site. It felt like being slapped.
“Just be glad it’s not in the stomach anymore.”
Meaty was checking news links online. “I don’t see anything about our Code Triage here. Gina, start barricading doors.”
Gina moved behind Meaty, reaching up into the pneumatic tube system like she was searching for a flue. She pulled a metal sheet down, latched it into place, and pulled down a plastic sheet after it. She went from room to room after that, pulling down hidden latches and bars.
“Where’d Mr. Hale go?” I asked her. Charles’s daytimer wasn’t in his room.
“Out for a cigarette, about an hour ago. As soon as he left, that’s when they started howling.”
From around the bend, Rachel screamed. Gina startled and ran down the hall. Meaty did too. I followed, much more slowly.