The Wolves Don't Ask

The call came in just before dawn, when the emergency ward was at its quietest and most dishonest. Machines hummed steadily, as if pretending nothing could go wrong while everyone else slept. The lights were too bright for the hour, bleaching the color from the walls, the floor, even from the people who worked beneath them. The air smelled clean, sharp, chemical, scrubbed raw, but underneath it lingered something faintly wrong, the way a room smells after a spill that’s already been wiped away. Irina Holt was alone at the central desk, finishing a chart she had already rewritten twice. Her handwriting was neat, controlled. She liked things that stayed where she put them. Observation helped with that. If she watched closely enough, measured carefully enough, the world behaved. She was calm. She always was. The doors burst open without warning. The sound cut through the ward, metal rattling, shoes skidding, breath coming fast. A gurney slammed through the entrance, pushed by two orderlies whose faces were set in the particular way people wore when they already knew the ending. The sheet covering the patient shifted with the motion, dark stains blooming through it in uneven patches. Irina straightened, pen forgotten. “Found near the docks,” one of the orderlies said as they slowed. “They think animal attack.” Irina nodded and moved automatically, stepping into place at the side of the gurney. The man beneath the sheet was middle-aged, maybe forty-five, maybe older. His face was turned slightly toward the ceiling, mouth parted, eyes unfocused but not yet empty. Alive, but only barely. The first thing Irina noticed wasn’t the blood. It was the smell. Not rot. Not just iron-heavy blood. There was something sharper threaded through it, almost metallic, mixed with something musky and unfamiliar. It didn’t belong in a hospital. The scent clung to the back of her throat as she leaned closer. She pulled back the sheet. The wounds were wrong. They were deep, yes, tearing damage along the ribs, muscle exposed where skin should have been, but severity wasn’t what made her pause. It was the pattern. The spacing. The way the flesh looked pulled apart rather than cut, as if force had been applied first, pressure held, then released violently. Too deliberate. Too wide for a dog. Too uneven for any blade she knew. “Vitals?” she asked, already reaching for gloves. “Dropping,” someone replied. Training took over. Her movements became efficient, precise. Assess airway. Apply pressure. Call out numbers. Her voice stayed level even as the man gasped once, a rough, broken sound, like breath dragged over gravel, and then didn’t again. They worked him for eleven minutes. After, the room fell into a familiar, heavy quiet. Not peace. Just the absence of motion. Someone called the time of death. Someone else pulled the sheet back up. The machines were silenced one by one. Irina stepped back, hands resting uselessly at her sides. She hated that her first response wasn’t grief. It was curiosity. When the others drifted away, she found herself moving closer again. She adjusted the man’s arm beneath the light, careful, almost gentle. The skin around the deepest wound was bruised dark, purple-black, as though something had gripped him hard before breaking through. That didn’t happen with panicked animals. “Could be a bear,” a resident offered hesitantly from the doorway. “They wander sometimes.” “No,” Irina said before she could stop herself. The word landed too firmly. The room stilled. She inhaled, softened her tone. “No fur. No consistent claw pattern. And bears don’t… do this.” She gestured vaguely, then let her hand fall. Naming it felt wrong. Like lying. The attending frowned, studying the body with renewed interest. “So what, then?” Irina looked again, counting marks, measuring distances with her eyes. She thought of textbooks and diagrams, of clean explanations with labels and arrows that made sense. “I don’t know,” she said. It was the truth, and it sat uneasily in her chest. They covered the body properly this time and wheeled him out. The room was cleaned again. Disinfectant burned the air. Still, the strange smell lingered, faint but persistent, clinging to Irina no matter how deeply she breathed. Later, alone, she pulled the file back up on the screen. Cause of death: Exsanguination due to severe trauma. Suspected cause: Animal attack. The words looked thin. Incomplete. She could change them. Not much. Just enough. Unknown animal. Unidentified. Pending investigation. Her finger hovered. If she understood something, it couldn’t hurt her. That belief had carried her through years of long nights and worse sights than this. Knowledge as insulation. Observation as distance. She saved the file. The sun was just beginning to rise when Irina finally stepped outside. The sky over the water was pale and tired-looking, washed in weak color. Fog clung low near the docks, stubborn and unmoving. She scrubbed her hands at the outdoor sink longer than necessary, even though she knew they were clean. That was when she noticed the blood on her shoe. A dark smear along the sole. Dried almost black. She must have missed it. She should have gone back inside to deal with it properly. Instead, she stood there and looked toward the docks, toward the fog that refused to lift, and tried to imagine what kind of animal left wounds like that, and no trace of itself behind. Something in her chest tightened. Not fear. Anticipation. She turned back toward the hospital, already rehearsing explanations she could give herself later. Ways to make the night smaller. Manageable. Ordinary. She didn’t yet know that this would be the last ordinary body she would see for a long time. But she knew, deep in her bones, with a certainty she couldn’t explain, that whatever had done this was still close. And that when she saw it again, she would recognize it.