A Shift in the Water (4 page)

“You’re older now.” The doctor held up his hand when Mara narrowed her eyes at him. “I didn’t say you were old.
I’m
old.” He grinned. Doctor Pendergast was close to sixty. “But perhaps something else has changed. Hormone levels, the IUD, working longer hours . . . it could be anything. But we’ll figure it out. I’m going to admit you for a few hours. I want to run more blood work and give you a transfusion. It won’t fix whatever is causing this, but it’ll make you feel better while we figure it out. It’ll also let me take more blood for testing than a couple of vials. I promise that you’ll be home after dinner.”

Doctor Pendergast walked Mara across the sky bridge to the hospital and brought her to the admitting desk. He handed off her paperwork personally and patted her shoulder. “I’ve known your supervisor Petra for ten years. She speaks very highly of you. We’ll figure this out. I promise.”

Two days later, Mara met with the doctor again. “I wish I had better news for you.” He went on to explain that Mara’s body was attacking her own blood. Something they couldn’t isolate was devouring her red blood cells. The transfusion had nearly erased her symptoms, but the doctor didn’t think that it would last. “We can keep up regular transfusions for a while, but I’ve never seen anything like this and neither have any of my colleagues. Something is killing your active red blood cells and that’s why you’re so tired. The red blood cells carry oxygen throughout the body. Your blood has about twenty percent fewer healthy red blood cells than it should. That’s twenty percent less oxygen. It explains the exhaustion, your blue nail beds, and the dizziness.”

Mara listened, but when he told her that her second blood test showed even more of a decrease in healthy cells than the first, her brain simply shut down. All she could think of was that she was getting worse.

“Mara? Mara? Are you listening to me?” Doctor Pendergast touched her arm and she flinched.

“Sorry. What?” She rubbed her eyes.

“I’m not giving up on this. Neither should you.”

He presented her with a treatment plan that involved weekly blood tests, transfusions whenever her red blood cell count dipped below a certain threshold, and a few supplements. He cleared her for work, but no more than forty hours a week. He tried to convince her to give up her daily swims, but she couldn’t possibly dream of it. She’d give up work and live on the streets before she’d give up swimming. She only felt truly healthy when she was in the water.

Three

After a week, Cade had trouble with complicated thoughts. He stopped trying to analyze the chain-link fence for weaknesses and started throwing himself against it when he could stand to touch the searing dirt. But all he got for his trouble was a body full of bruises, blisters, and singed fur where he hit the ground. Every step onto the dirt blistered his paws, but he had to keep trying. His pack needed him. Was she hurting them too? She’d killed Bill. He remembered his father’s beta falling down the stairs and breaking his neck. What of the rest of them? He heard Christine screaming in his nightmares, saw Liam’s wolf dodging the flames on the fire escape. Were they dead? Injured?

Katerina blasted him with the hose regularly. When the water fell on the scorched earth, billows of steam shot up and obscured his vision. The concrete pad was uneven and trapped enough water for him to drink when it didn’t rain. She always seemed to throw the cheap steak beyond the concrete so he’d have to venture to the dirt, but he did it every time. The meat was never fresh. Half-spoiled, slimy, and disgusting. The man trapped inside hated it. The wolf in control now didn’t care.

“Looking a little thin,
dog
,” Katerina said, taunting him. Cade looked back at his body. She was right. His fur was matted and burned. He felt hollow. He needed more food but she didn’t seem concerned with his comfort. He whined once, but then stopped himself. He wouldn’t give her the satisfaction. Turning around, he curled up with his back to her.

“Ignore me if you want. It’s no skin off my back. Only yours.” A blast of fire hit his spine. Cade leapt up and yelped in pain. The burn slashed across his shoulder. He backed away to the far edge of the concrete as she cackled with laughter. “Jeremy!”

The earth elemental hurried out of the house. Cade sniffed the air. He caught the boy’s scent. It would have been pleasant under different circumstances: rich, strong soil, grassy and loamy, with a damp undertone. The boy had been the one to shoot him with the drugged dart. Cade growled. Katerina stepped close to Jeremy and kissed him on the cheek. “Do you want to be the one to tell him about his pack?” she asked sweetly.

Cade charged to the edge of the concrete. He growled as loudly as he could.
Tell me what you did to them, you bitch!

Jeremy stepped close to the fence. “The old one died in the street. Pretty sure his neck was broken. Still, we burned his body to a crisp before we left. The rest never made it out of the building. I brought the whole thing down on top of their burned bodies. That was fun. It was the first significant earthquake recorded in Bellingham in thirty years. Amazing how it didn’t damage much else in town.”

Cade’s world crumbled and burned, mirroring Jeremy’s description of the apartment. He howled in pain. He bounded across the scorching ground, throwing his body against the fence. He had to reach Jeremy, had to tear him limb from limb. His pack. His pack was dead. He hit the ground with another howl as the blisters on his paws broke open. But he didn’t give up. Again and again he hit the fence, desperate. He didn’t care if he died trying to reach Jeremy and Katerina, as long as he took them down with him.

Eventually, his body gave out. Katerina blasted him with the hose, driving him back to the concrete. When he collapsed—burned, bruised, and spent—he whimpered until he passed out. 

After a month, the wolf forgot his own name. He knew he had one, knew he was a man—a werewolf—but he couldn’t shift back. He couldn’t even remember why, he only knew he couldn’t. He kept trying, but the burning pain always stopped him. Days blurred together. Weeks, even months passed. The man would have gone insane trapped as he was, but the wolf was a creature of instinct. He wanted to survive, to escape, and to kill. Those simple thoughts kept him going.

The woman he hated—the dark-haired evil one—came out every few days and threw him a piece of half-rotted steak over the fence. His human mind tried to refuse the disgusting offering, needing the release of death, but the wolf wanted to live and so he ate the rancid meat. He grew weaker. The wolf spent the endless solitary days pacing the rectangular pad of concrete that protected him from the scorching earth. His body wasted away, but still he paced. It was all he could do.

September

Mara stretched out in the transfusion center’s hard reclining chair and gazed at the autmn leaves outside the window. Four and a half months after her first transfusion, she knew the routine well. Dressed in shorts and a tank top, she grimaced as the needle slid into her vein. It was a fat, thick needle and she hated it. She’d sit there for an hour, try to smile, and wait for the life-sustaining blood to replenish her weakened body. Before each transfusion, she’d donate a pint of her own blood for study. This served two purposes. It kept her blood volume relatively steady and allowed the University of Washington Medical Center staff to study her in the hopes that they could find a cure. Or at least a cause. In the first month, she’d needed one transfusion. The third month, two. Now she was up to a transfusion every ten or twelve days. She had an appointment with Doctor Pendergast immediately after this treatment and she was nervous.

Jen sat by her side. Jen knew Mara better than anyone. Sisters from the first year of college, they’d bonded over all-nighters and a shared love of red vines and cappuccino. Life had dampened their bond after college, keeping them both too busy to spend as much time together as they would’ve liked, but Mara’s illness had reconnected them. It had been Jen who’d gotten the call the first day Mara’s illness had left her unable to get out of bed, Jen who’d driven her to almost all of her transfusion appointments, and Jen who was on her DNR order.

Jen, Adam, Lisa, and Mara’s aunt Lillian took turns being with her for most of her doctor’s appointments. Mara appreciated the support, but sometimes she wanted her friends to treat her normally again, not like an invalid. She hadn’t been out barhopping in months. Mara didn’t have enough energy for it most of the time, but the few days after her transfusions she could manage a night out. Her friends refused her pleas, insisting on bringing DVDs over to her house or throwing small dinner parties where they’d always scheme to leave her with three or four meals worth of leftovers conveniently packaged and ready to go. She loved them for their concern, but she wanted to feel alive again.

“What do you say we go out to Zig Zag tonight?” Mara asked. Zig Zag was an eclectic little bar on the Pike Street Hill Climb. It had an extensive selection of premium liquors, fun tapas, and a great staff. “Maybe ride the Wheel first?”

“Adam bought all of the fixings for lasagna,” Jen replied without looking up from her magazine. “And he’s bringing over a movie.”

“No,” Mara said sharply. Jen’s brown eyes widened and her head snapped up. Mara scowled. “You all are treating me like I’m made of glass. I’m fucking sick of it!”

“Mara. Crap. Calm down.” Jen looked around, catching a few eyes of other patients and nurses who had turned to focus on them.

Mara lowered her voice. “I’m going to feel good tonight. Great even. I always feel great after a transfusion. I want to
live,
Jen. I’m tired of you all coddling me. Don’t get me wrong, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate the meals and how you help take care of me when I feel like shit, but I’m thirty-one-years-old and single. I haven’t gone out on a date in more than a year or been out of the house past eight p.m. since May. One night. Drinks. Dinner. Maybe dancing. A bit of fun. Please.”

Jen looked into Mara’s eyes. Neither woman spoke for several minutes. Mara felt better by the second. Her skin warmed, her heartbeat strengthened, and her breathing steadied. She gripped Jen’s hand. “I need this.”