Bad Hair Day (12 page)

I slowly approached the bed. Bryan was stretched out under the covers, resting peacefully. The monitors showed stable respiration and pulse; the IV dripped saline in a slow but steady
rhythm. The pen had been replaced by a tracheotomy tube; they’d probably keep that in place until they could reconstruct the windpipe and its supporting cartilage. I felt absurdly relieved to see it; it meant my crichoidectomy hadn’t been completely unnecessary.

“What did you want to show me?” I called toward the bathroom.

“Check out his neck.”

Rocky came back out in one of my Bayview sweatshirts and a pair of too-long sweats. She perched on the end of a puke-colored chair at the side of the bed.

I looked. There wasn’t much to see, just a smooth expanse of skin broken by the white bandages holding the tube in place. I was about to ask exactly what I should be looking for when it hit me.

In the gravel lot, I had realized Bryan’s windpipe was smashed because of the marks on his neck. Those things usually take days to fade, and I didn’t see any.

“Where’d the purpura go?” I demanded, bending over him. Getting closer didn’t miraculously make them appear. Big surprise.

“Purpura?”

“The red marks on his neck.”

“They went away,” replied Rocky. “The doctors are really freaked out about it. They won’t transfer him to University until they can explain what happened. I think they’re worried about a lawsuit or something.”

“So they can’t explain it?” I looked a little closer. The skin was smooth and completely unblemished. Not even a bruise, and that didn’t make any sense at all.

“They tried to scan him again, but the scanner won’t work on him. The films keep coming out all white. Bryan’s mom is meeting with them now, but I thought maybe you’d be able to explain it.”

I was about to protest that there was no way I’d know what was going on if the doctors didn’t, but then I heard something that caught my attention. The faintest sound came from the bed, or somewhere near it. I held up my hand for quiet. We stood there motionless for a minute or two, my ears straining to catch it again.

There it was. Under the hollow sound of air moving through the tube, I heard it. A quiet crackle, like Rice Krispies in milk.

“What is it?” Rocky crept toward the bed.

I shook my head. I didn’t know what it was. I’d never heard anything like this coming from a human body before.

I knew I shouldn’t touch him. It wasn’t safe, although if he had any communicable diseases I’d probably managed to infect myself when I’d given him a crichoidectomy without gloves. I could accidentally do more damage just by touching him, but I had to know. The tips of my fingers quivered in the air, and I forced them to stillness. I placed them, feather-light, on the side of his neck.

His skin quivered like a colony of tiny ants scurried underneath it.

My hand jerked back, and I rubbed my fingers together in an attempt to get rid of the creepy-crawly feeling. Then the back of my neck started to itch; it was obviously psychosomatic, but I scratched anyway.

“What?” Rocky demanded.

“What what?”

“What were you listening to?”

She spoke with exaggerated patience, so exaggerated that I knew she wasn’t feeling patient at all. Unfortunately, I couldn’t answer the question. I had no idea what the noise was. If I didn’t know better, I’d think his neck was repairing itself.

Luckily, I knew that was impossible. Just like zombies.

I shook my head. “I’m not sure what it is yet. You can check it out for yourself if you want. I need to try and sneak a peek at Bryan’s chart. Somehow.”

I had to admit the idea didn’t fill me with glee. I was not double-oh-seven material. I was more like double-oh-klutzy. Or double-oh-going-to-get-thrown-out-of-the-hospital.

“Mrs. R is meeting with the medical team down the hall. They probably have it down there. You think they’d let you look at it if you asked?” Rocky asked.

“Probably not. But it won’t hurt to try.”

I let myself out into the hall. It was deserted, which seemed strange for this time of day. There must have been cake in the break room, or maybe a freak zombie attack on the second floor.

I tiptoed up to the nurses’ station and felt like a complete idiot
when I saw that it was empty. I’d just tiptoed needlessly. I glanced over my shoulder to make sure Rocky hadn’t witnessed this latest bonehead move on my part, but Bryan’s door was closed. Whew.

When I turned back to the desk, there was a nurse standing in front of me.

“What are you doing?” She folded her arms and stared me down with squinty, piggish eyes.

“I … you …” I couldn’t seem to form a coherent sentence at first but finally managed to blurt out, “Did you just beam down from the mother ship?”

“Pardon me?” she asked, but it sounded like a demand more than a question.

“There wasn’t anyone here just a second ago, and then I turned around, and you …” I had to stop babbling before she smacked me. From the look on her face, I figured I had about one point two seconds. “Sorry. You surprised me.”

“This is a restricted floor, and visiting hours aren’t until ten a.m.”

“I know!” I said quickly. “I know. But I just dropped off some clothes for Bryan’s girlfriend, and I wanted to let Mrs. Rodriguez know that … uh … I’m taking her downstairs for breakfast. She’s meeting with the doctors, right? I didn’t want to interrupt.”

“Yes, she is. They won’t be done for a while yet.” I watched her eyes carefully; they darted to a closed door down the hallway and back. I’d have bet my booty that was where the doctors were meeting with Mrs. Rodriguez.

“Well, could you give her the message when she’s done?” I chirped.

“I’ll give her the message,” she muttered. Then she stared at me like my continued existence was a personal affront.

I smiled at her with as much innocence as I could scrape up and went back down the hallway. Once I was out of sight of the nurses’ station, I plastered myself against the wall, barely restraining the urge to start humming pseudo–spy music under my breath. I had to listen in on that meeting. Some people might have said it was none of my business, but those kinds of people didn’t cure zombie infestations. Or non-werewolf ones.

Unfortunately, in order to get to what I assumed was the meeting room, I’d have to double back past the nurses’ station. But it was worth the risk. Bryan’s mom would happily tell me all about the meeting if I asked her to, but she might miss some essential piece of info that would explain it all. Besides, the whole waiting thing would require actual waiting, and I didn’t deal well with that.

So I dropped to my hands and knees and crawled down the hallway, hoping that nurse didn’t come out to empty the bedpans. If she did, I figured I’d tell her I lost my lucky pen.

Naturally, now that I’d come up with a decent alibi, she didn’t catch me. I crawled all the way down the hallway, past the nurses’ station, and down to the door without being discovered. Of course, now it felt like my knees had been repeatedly bashed by an ill-tempered dwarf with a hammer, but that was okay. I was a semi-secret agent; I could handle those kinds of things.

I put my ear to the door. Unfortunately, it was one of those heavy-duty hospital doors; they make them pretty solid so you can’t listen through them. So I stood up, prayed that no one happened to be looking in my direction, and peeked through the gap in the window blinds.

There was no one there. Mucho anticlimactic.

I tried the handle; the door opened soundlessly. I crept into a small room dominated by a circular table and a couple of abstract pastel paintings that looked like teeth wearing parachutes. Too freaky. Half-empty coffee cups littered the tabletop. They were still lukewarm. Mrs. Rodriguez and co. must have just left a few minutes earlier.

The computer stood against the far wall. I knew it was futile. Hospital systems don’t dork around; they’ve got security out the ying yang. The screen had one of those blurring frames on it that makes it impossible to read unless you’re sitting directly in front of it. Good thing I was back in epileptic remission, because the random fuzzy flashes probably would have sent me straight to neurological crazytown otherwise.

I nudged the mouse without much hope. And for the first time ever, I was quite happy that our hospital was technologically backward. Because the screen flashed to life, and Bryan’s record still stood open.

It looked like they’d just done a series of CT scans about an hour earlier. CTs give you a nice high-def look at bones and soft tissue and seemed like just the thing I was looking for. But all the images were bad. Totally white, despite their low exposure. So
unless Bryan had turned into a huge blob of bone when I wasn’t looking, there was something seriously wrong.

The only thing I could think of that could cause something like this would be metal. Metal objects like jewelry really screw with the images. But to turn the whole film white, he’d have to wear enough necklaces to make the average rap star quiver with envy.

Of course, the metal thing made me think of the magnetic blood. If the blood sample contained metal, and Bryan’s CT was messed up because of some kind of metal contaminant, I had to conclude he was infected with whatever his attacker had. Forget werewolves; with my luck he’d turn into a cyborg and start shooting lasers out his eyeballs.

I scanned through the records, looking for blood cultures, but someone grabbed me by the arm before I got that far. Just my luck; it was my favorite nurse.

“I thought I made it clear that visiting hours haven’t started yet.” She pulled me out of the chair and “assisted” me down the hallway.

“I dropped my lucky pen?” I said, but we both knew I was full of it.

This was how I managed to get myself escorted to the front door of the hospital. I won’t say I got thrown out, because there was no actual throwing involved. There was some dragging, though. A lot of dragging.

S
ince I wasn’t exactly welcome in the hospital anymore, I texted Rocky and swung through the morgue on my way to the bus stop. It was empty except for the secretaries, and they hadn’t seen Sebastian yet this morning. I couldn’t blame the guy for sleeping in because, well, that would have been awfully hypocritical.

I was pretty excited to see Aaron, especially after the night before. Should I say something to acknowledge what had happened? It’s not like we’d gone all the way on my roof, because I’m not that tacky, and I don’t really think shingles and bare skin go well together. But it still felt like something monumental had happened. Something that needed to be recognized.

So I entered the hospital lobby with a whole crazy mess of emotions—nervousness, excitement, happiness, fear. I wanted to
sit next to Aaron on the bus with his leg touching mine and feel that thrill again.

Then I saw him, sitting on one of the benches near the doors, bundled up in his black winter coat with the scarf I’d gotten him for Christmas wound casually around his neck. His head was thrown back, and he was laughing at something. Elle sat next to him, her face turned up to his. It was impossible to miss her expression of vapid adoration. As I watched, she launched herself onto his lap and shoved her tongue in his mouth.

My vision went red.

I stalked toward them. Aaron pushed her away, but she obviously wasn’t getting the picture. She twined her fingers in his hair. I hated her. And while I could understand him not wanting to screw up his opportunity with his orthopedist, I’d had it.

“Get your slutty hands off my boyfriend before I rip them off you!” I yelled.

Every head in the lobby twisted in my direction. The bus pulled up outside with a loud belch of exhaust, but no one moved a muscle. Well, one guy did. He got out his phone and started taking video. I think he expected a catfight, and I was honestly tempted to give him one.

Elle leapt off Aaron’s lap and made a little screamy face. I didn’t even want to waste my time with her.

“Aaron, you have one minute to explain, and that’s it,” I said.

He stood up, clearing his throat nervously.

“I told her not to,” he said. “I didn’t kiss her back. I’m sorry,
Kate. She took me by surprise; you had to see that.…” He shook his head. “I don’t know what to do. She won’t take the hint.”

“You’ve got a choice here.” My voice wavered, but I was otherwise strangely calm. I didn’t care if I was still marginally geeky. Or if my social skills still needed polishing, or if sometimes I felt like I was speaking a totally different language than the rest of the world. I was still a million times cooler than her, and he should have
known
that. “It’s her or me. If you want to see her outside this program, that’s your choice. But if it happens again, you need to know that I’ll dump your butt so fast you’ll crack your tailbone.”

He gaped at me. So did Elle.

“You’ll dump me?” Aaron asked, like it was a foreign concept that he’d never had cause to consider before. Probably he hadn’t. Neither had I, but there’s a first time for everything.

“You seem to think,” I went on, “that I have no balls. But I’m willing to stand up for us. The question is whether you’re willing to do the same.”