CHAPTER 11
1070 Words
ELLIE
I tighten my robe as I step out of the bathroom. Adrian is standing by the window with his phone in his hand, typing. He stops when he sees me.
I look him over. His jaw is already set for whatever he thinks is coming. I turn and go to the closet.
"What do you want for breakfast?" he asks from outside the walk-in.
I don't answer.
"I can have it brought up," he says. "If you'd rather eat here."
I come out of the walk-in and go for the door.
"Ellie, did you hear me?"
I keep walking. I reach for the door handle, but his hand covers mine before I can pull it.
"Where are you going?"
I lift my eyes to meet his. "Breakfast."
I peel his hand off mine, and he lets me. I pull the door open and go past him into the hallway. I'm four steps out when he speaks.
"Wait. We'll go together."
I stop, keeping my back to him for a second longer than I need to.
I turn around. "If I have to look at your face, I won't eat."
The words are out before I can stop them.
His brows lift.
My chest pulls tight.
"Fine." His voice is level. "Someone will go with you then."
I laugh. It comes out flat and wrong.
"You won't let me work, and now you're having me followed. Are you serious?"
"Someone goes with you, or I do."
There's no lever in it. If he argued, I could argue back, and we could go around it until one of us bent. He isn't arguing. He's telling me what my choices are.
"Roan, then."
"Roan's at the north line. He'll be there through tonight."
Of course he will.
"Fine." I walk back into the room, past him, and sit down on the couch. "Anyone. As long as they stay out of my way."
He lifts his phone and starts making it happen. I pull mine out and open i********:.
Moon Wolf Pack has posted. Their official account, the one that puts up training schedules and mid-winter feast times and photos of somebody's litter of pups.
There is a notice about a road closure on the eastern approach. Fourteen comments. I go into them out of pure boredom.
Someone is asking whether the closure affects the clinic run on Thursdays. Somebody else has answered her. A third has posted the actual times. A fourth is asking her what she needs picking up, because she’s going anyway.
They’re helping each other. Not one of them is in the same room as any of the others.
My thumb goes still on the screen.
I don’t need to be in that building. I just need to be reachable.
My mother diagnosed half of Moon Wolf territory from her own kitchen table. People described things to her, and she told them what to do about it.
I open the Sun Wolf Pack account and go into its following list. She’s pack, so they follow her.
I put Millie into the search inside it. Nothing. I try, Mil. Millicent. Camilla, because people shorten things. I try healer, and I get a man in his fifties who posts scripture.
I close the search and scroll the list instead, all the way down, thumb going numb. Six hundred names, and half of them aren’t names at all.
I have a first name and a face. Neither one is in this list.
I put the phone down. I know what I want to do, and I can't reach the one person I need.
A knock comes at the door. Adrian opens it. A wolf is standing in the hallway, young, maybe twenty, sandy hair cropped close. He straightens when he sees me and dips his head.
"Luna."
"Teo will take you down," Adrian says, reaching for his jacket off the back of the chair. "I'll be at the north line most of the day."
He will have it. Of course, he'll have it.
"Adrian."
He stops.
"Can I have Millie's number?"
He turns around fully. "Why?"
"I want to know how my patients are doing."
"You don't need her number. I'll find out for you."
"I don't want to talk to you." I hold his gaze. "The only reason I'm speaking to you at all right now is that I have to. Just give me the number."
He looks at me for a second longer than he needs to. Then he takes out his phone, and mine buzzes in my lap.
He crosses the room and bends to kiss my cheek. I turn my head before he reaches it. He stays there a second, close enough that I can feel him breathing. Then he straightens and goes.
Teo steps back into the hallway and pulls the door shut behind him.
I open my phone and type.
This is Ellie. Adrian gave me your number.
Sent. Then I keep going before she can decide not to answer.
The omega on the second mat. Did she hold overnight?
I ask her about others. The reply takes eleven minutes.
She's breathing on her own.
That's all of it. No hello.
I type again.
What about the femoral from the first night? The woman you had in your hands when I came in.
Alive. Leg's hot. Fever's been climbing since dawn, and nothing's touching it.
I sit up straight.
Is the skin at the edge grey, or is it going green underneath? Does it smell sweet?
The three dots come up. Go away. Come back.
How did you know that?
That isn't an infection. That's what was on the claw. If you treat it as an infection, it will keep climbing. You'll lose the leg by tomorrow night and her the day after.
You need burdock root and yarrow, boiled down thick, not steeped. Packed hot into the wound, changed every three hours. It'll smell worse before it smells better. Do you have burdock?
The dots come and go for a long time.
We have yarrow. I don't know about the other one. Ellie. What are you?
I pull my knees up onto the couch. My mother was a healer for eleven years. I'm what she made.
Send me a photo of the leg. And tell me what else you've got in that ward that isn't closing.
The dots start up again, and they don't stop.
- Writer
