"This?"

"Si."

I marked it. Another half a centimeter of feeling, gone. It was like he was slowly drowning, no way to turn around, walking farther and farther out into an inexorable sea.

"Is there anything-" I began, because I had to.

"Just go," his girlfriend said, then added, "Please."

I nodded, and did so.

I noted his new loss of feeling in his chart. The charge nurse came by, I thought to break me early, but she handed me a printout from a news website instead. Two Injured in Drug Deal Gone Bad, said the headline, and beneath it, One died en route, and one went to County, in critical condition. I folded it in half, and stuck it under the chart, realizing how easily their problems could have been Jake's. Thank G.o.d that at his worst, he was always a user, not a dealer, at least not that I knew. Okay, so maybe I did look at our shared cell phone bill some-but only to see if he'd been dumb enough to use it to make too many calls to strange numbers.

An hour is a long time, sitting outside of someone's room. On Y4, I could have made myself useful, restocking things, making bedrolls, reading charts, but here I didn't know the flow, and didn't want to get in anyone's way. I doodled some in the margin of my non-official report sheet, sketching a flaming heart. When I heard a strange beep from inside the room, I looked up. Luz was texting on her phone, and she walked toward the door.

"I have to answer this."

"Just pull the curtain. You can talk in the room." There were NO CELL PHONE signs up all over, but nurses and doctors talked on them all the time-I hadn't seen an iPhone make anyone's pacemaker give out yet.

"No. I have to go."

I stood in her way. My break was starting in fifteen minutes. Sike needed me, for some likely unpleasant reason, and I needed Sike for some guidance. But if Luz left now and there was a break relief nurse sitting out here when she tried to come back who wasn't a softie like me, chances were she wouldn't get to come back at all.

She must have read my thoughts on my face. "You know what it's like to have obligations?" she said, the last word like it was an anchor.

I inhaled and exhaled. "I do. You wouldn't know it to look at me, but I do."

She nodded. "Then you understand. I'll be back." She chugged the last of her coffee, and walked out.

I spent five minutes leaning on the doorjamb. Javier couldn't see me from the bed. He was my only patient, which was something of a miracle for a trauma float shift. He shouldn't be alone, and I didn't have any honest excuses to leave. I took Luz's spot by the head of the bed, hauling up a chair.

"Anything you want to talk about?" I asked him.

"Not with you." A pause. "Nothing personal."

There was a fine line between joyriding someone else's pain, and trying to maintain an open channel of communication. Even I wasn't always sure which side of it I was on. But I sat there to show I cared, just in case it mattered to him.

The second hand clicked away. Sike would come looking for me soon. I hoped she stayed tactful, or her definition thereof.

I could use this time here to read the article the charge nurse had given me. Would it change anything, knowing who else had gotten hurt, or why they'd died? Not really. I had a job to do here, no matter the circ.u.mstances beyond. But sometimes I did wonder where that job ended. Did I ever really throw my scrubs into the linen cart and get to just go home?

I hunched over and set my elbows on my knees, deep in thought, as Javier dozed beside me.

Luz's return startled us both. She eyed me with suspicion as she entered the room, coming to stand by my side.

"Did anything change?" she asked.

"No. I'm afraid whatever they already told you still stands." I looked up slowly and realized she was shaking. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," she said.

I wondered if she was in denial, or if she was so used to being strong that she couldn't stop, not even now.

"Tomorrow, he won't be able to feel me?" she asked. I nodded.

"I'm so sorry." I couldn't even begin to comprehend her loss. Her anger was so palpable, so strong, it was like I could feel her very atoms vibrating-if pushed wrong, there was a chance she might fly apart.

"It's not fair," she said.

"No, it isn't," I agreed, because she was right. I turned to walk out of the room.

I made it three steps before she caught my arm and pulled me back, toward the half of the room hidden by curtains, and I let her.

"What do you think will happen if I give him these?" she asked in a whisper, holding out her other hand. She held four small gla.s.s vials, with a clear fluid inside.

"Depends on what that is." I tapped one, and watched it slosh.

"Luna Lobos."

I knew enough Spanish to pa.r.s.e 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 harda.s.s, 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 p.i.s.sed 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 b.u.t.ton.

"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. s.h.i.t. "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."

Sike took off her lab coat and folded it over her arm. "Gideon Strand is the Rose Throne's property."

I blinked. The man underneath all the gauze was Gideon? The daytimer from my kitchen, with Anna? I couldn't tell. With all the gauze, I couldn't see much of anything.

"We demand recursion. I'm here on behalf of Anna Arsov, the near-ascended."

"I don't care who you are, lady. You're not taking him."

"Gideon," Sike said, addressing their patient. The gauzed man groaned in response. "Come with me." She snapped her fingers.

And like King Kong on the Empire State Building, he started to swat staff away like tiny planes.

"Restraints!" the doctor ordered, and a nurse ran off to get them. Technically-I should have. Or could have. But I didn't know whose side I was on just then-"Ten milligrams of Haldol stat! And get me a trank gun!"

There was an isolation cart right outside the door. I took a step back outside and made my choice-I put the code into the isolation cart and hauled open the top drawer. It unlocked, freeing the trank gun. I grabbed and loaded two of the sedative darts.

I went back into the room with the trank gun ready, even if I wasn't sure whom I was going to shoot. Sike and the doctor were in each other's faces.

"I have every right to take him. He belongs to my Throne. We are responsible for his care."

"You can't possibly care for him. He's staying here."

Gideon was wrestling with the nurses beyond. One of my P.M. shift co-workers yelped as he made contact with her ribs.

"n.o.body get injured!" said the doctor, and the nurses stopped trying. Gideon pulled himself out of bed and stumbled, unable to see where he was at or where he was going.

"I promise he will be better off once relinquished into my care," Sike said. "I have all the official paperwork." She presented her papers again, folded neatly in two. "It's signed in triplicate, in her blood. You have to comply."

"He's covered in wounds. Infection is a given-"

"He'll get blood."

We all knew she didn't mean merely human. "Do it here then," the doctor challenged her.

Sike frowned. "Fine. Leave the room. Now." Sike turned toward me and handed me her lab coat, then pushed Gideon back to sitting. I made to follow my co-workers but she called after me. "Edie-stay."

My curiosity had curdled to guilt and horror, but I did as I was told.

Sike sat beside him on the bed and blotted away the Betadine distastefully with the corner of a sheet. Then she reached into her pocket and pulled out a makeup compact, flipping it open to reveal what appeared to be a creme blush.

"Gideon, give me your hand."

She smeared her right thumb in the substance, then ran it along the edges of his wounds. One knuckle at a time began to seal. Only the first knuckles remained on that hand. I wondered with a sick fascination what was left of the other one.