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to call in the police."
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"Steady," she told Hunter. "The man, by rights, is just doing his job and we
can't do anything in here that would harm any of these innocent people." She
waited un-til Hunter nodded and withdrew from the bedside. "Okay," she called
out and then stood. 'Thank you. We're out."
Hunter nudged his grandfather's hand with his nose one last time, but was
paralyzed in his tracks as the elder-ly fingertips fluttered on their own to
try to caress his coat.
Sasha swallowed hard and nodded. "I saw it." She stroked Silver Hawk's hair
and softly kissed his forehead. "Now we just gotta get your grandson better."
~
"Pull the drape," Doc told Woods. "Like I told you ear-lier, no matter what
they hear, unless I call for a specific individual, keep the team on the other
side of the cur-tain." His eyes held Hunter's and then he looked at Sasha. "He
doesn't want you in here, either just patient and doctor."
"But if something goes wrong with the antitoxin ..." she said quietly, her
gaze leaving Doc Holland's and fas-tening to Hunter's.
Hunter closed his eyes.
"The man wants and deserves his privacy, Sasha. The trip back is going to be
painful... probably on the order of a sickle cell episode. I've already
explained this to the team while you both were visiting his grandfather. The
outer door will be locked, Winters is posting 'test in progress' signage on
the door, as we speak, and will be out there with an M-16 in full uniform."
She covered her mouth and touched Hunter's side. "Oh shit, it's gonna be
really bad, isn't it, Doc? Let me help ... if it gets ..."
"No, Sasha. It's his choice, and maybe you should wait outside. The other
doctors are ready to help out if a limb ... gets twisted in transformation.
That's why Williams has already scrubbed."
She glanced at the scalpel tray and the IV drip of saline going into Hunter's
forearm, then closed her eyes and stopped breathing for a moment. Every beep
of his heart monitor felt like one of the scalpels from the tray was stabbing
into her brain.
"What you have to understand is that giving him anti-toxin after this long
could be fatal." Doc Holland looked at Hunter. "He knows it and wants to try,
but that's the risk. His entire cellular structure joints, and tendons, and
the placement of internal organs, et cetera have to shift within a system made
sluggish by a viral infection we have yet to fully understand. Things that
normally happen in a flash could morph and transition so slowly that the pain
sends his body into shock, or leaves key ar-teries and veins blocked, starts
hemorrhages. The list of what could possibly go wrong is infinite. So, please
step on the other side of the curtain. The longer we delay, the harder this
will be on him."
"I'm sorry. I didn't know. We could have just done this first." She kissed
Hunter between his eyes and followed Doc's request. Panic-stricken gazes
joined with hers as she listened to Doc tap the side of a syringe. If she had
only known . . . and what if she'd hit Hunter with the shot that was duct
taped to her leg out in the park? Her gaze tore to Doc's shadow, trying to see
through the curtain to no avail but sensing that he was pushing the stopper
down the tube at a slow, steady rate garnered from years of medical practice.
And then came the wait. All sorts of scenarios ran through her mind. Hunter
could reject, go into a con-vulsion, and come up off the table a full-blown
problem that she, for the sake of the lives in the room, might have to blow
away.
Doc never said it, but it made sense why the door was locked with a Special
Forces guy on the outside toting an M-16 with silver shells, one on the
inside, and her. On the flip side, he might not change at all, it might be too
late, and he could possibly be left as a man trapped in a wolf's body forever.
Those were the two extremes. Her mind was too fried to consider the hundreds
of permutations in between, like him dying on the table as a half-mangled,
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bloody, transitioning mass of flesh. Or maybe winding up a half-human
half-wolf deformity. She closed her eyes and wrapped her arms around her waist
and waited.
The first scream made her pace. Staring at the curtain, she watched the
outline of Hunter's body arch and then slump. Doc's frantic shadow made her
bite her lip until she bloodied it. But seeing the shadows was nothing. It was
hearing the bones snap and the sound of flesh ripping as Hunter's voice rent
the air in agonized wails.
"Can't they give him anesthesia?" Clarissa asked, rocking.
Sasha squeezed her eyes shut tightly and shook her head no. "It's a
suppressant in Shadow systems. Screws up the cell split timing. The only thing
in his arm is saline solution to keep him hydrated."
Winters dry heaved in a waste can as the outline of Hunter's body showed the
head of a wolf still connected to a man's torso as his snout contorted to the
sound of pleading moans and a succession of hard bone breaks.
"Oh, Jesus," Bradley whispered and dragged his fin-gers through his hair.
Woods just closed his eyes and took slow breaths in through his nose. Dr. Lutz
walked back and forth, method-ically smoothing a palm over his scalp while Dr.
Williams remained poised to rush in to assist. Dr. Sanders had found a stool,
and she sat under the bright beams of fluorescent lights so quietly, so
wide-eyed that she seemed like a hazel-eyed gecko sunning herself on a rock.
The rapid hard breaks slowed, and Sasha turned away from the curtain. Facial
structure and human jaw complete but the realignment of his legs and
hips and arms and shoulders ... she fisted her hair to keep from crying out
with him as the first hard snap rang out with his voice. Then the god-awful
sound of his nails clawing at the bed, the IV crashing, and the
gunking-squishing noise that came with his innards shifting made her cover her
face.
Her head jerked up at the same time Woods's did.
"He's going to beg you to shoot him don't," she said, standing and walking
across the room. "Don't you move, soldier, and that's an order."
Chapter 21
A massive wolf had gone behind the drape on a gurney now stupefied doctors
were standing over an unconscious human male body that was going into shock,
and despite their incredulity, their job now was to save a human life. She
couldn't watch or listen anymore.
"Woods," she said quickly as Doc Holland rushed past the drape with a crash
cart. "I want a man on ICU guarding Silver Hawk, one here."
"Where're you going?"
"After the scent trails that Vampire's familiar left be-fore it gets dark."
"Lemme put a beacon on you at least, then," Winters said, his startled eyes
clouded with concern.
Take a couple of these," Bradley offered, tossing her the sample siphoning
tranquilizer shells he'd been work-ing on.
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