The Ugly Luna

CHAPTER 9

ELLIE

Should I just go?

It's one thing for Adrian to refuse to let me work here. It's another to be thrown out of a room I came to help in.

Maybe I could help in some other way. I turn for the door.

I spin around, and my stomach drops. A girl on the second mat coughs violently, blood pouring over her chin faster than she can wipe it away.

I immediately rush towards her, going down onto my knees.

Her eyes drag open and find me. I watch the fear come up through the fog and take her over completely.

"No." It comes out as barely anything, all breath. Her hand comes up off the mat and pushes at my forearm. "No, get away from me, don't, don't touch me, somebody, please, don't let her."

Her chest hitches, and the rest of it drowns.

"You're going on your side," I tell her.

Her fingers close around my wrist, and there's nothing behind it. No strength at all. That alone tells me how long she's been like this.

I take her hand off my arm and set it down. I get one palm under her shoulder, the other at her hip, and roll her toward me, hard, onto the injured side.

It comes out of her in a rush. Dark and thick and more of it than should be in anybody's mouth. She coughs and coughs. Finally, at the end of it, drags in a breath that goes all the way down.

Good. Down is where it belongs.

I peel the dressing off her collarbone. Underneath it, the wound is small. A single puncture, barely bleeding. I understand in one second why four healers walked past her.

Nothing was coming out. It was all going in.

"Gauze," I say, loud, to the room. "Somebody get me gauze."

I don't wait to see if anyone heard. There's a tray abandoned on the cart beside the mat. I drag it to me, and get the roll open with my teeth because my hands are already committed.

Fold it thick. Press it flat over the puncture and hold. The bleeding out here was never the problem, but the hole is, because every breath she takes is pulling through it, and until it's shut, she can't build any pressure in that lung at all.

"Tape," I say. "Or a bandage, anything, I need this held down."

Someone crouches beside me and puts a roll of tape into my open hand. I don't look up to see who.

I tape three sides of the pad and leave the bottom edge loose. Air can come out. It can't go back in. My mother made me do this on a pillow 40 times before she let me near a person. Now my hands do it without asking me anything.

The omega's shoulder works under my forearm. She's still trying to get away from me and getting nowhere.

"You don't want me," I say. "Stay on your side anyway."

I get my knee braced behind her back so she can't roll flat, then I take her chin and turn her face down toward the mat, because there's still a mouthful in her and it needs somewhere to go that isn't her chest.

It comes up. All of it, in one long convulsive rush. She coughs and coughs. I hold her there through it and don't let her turn back.

Then, at the end of it, she drags in a breath that goes all the way down.

I watch her chest. It comes back up and goes down again. The sound that was catching in her throat isn't catching anymore. Her fingers uncurl against the mat.

The rest her wolf can do. That's what our bodies do once somebody gives them the chance. She just needed the hole shut and her face turned before she drowned in eight inches of open air.

I sit back on my heels. My arms drop into my lap like they belong to somebody else. I look down at my own hands, red to the second knuckle.

The omega's eyes open again. She looks at me, then away, and then at the ceiling, before staying there.

"Thank you." It's small. It comes out sideways, and it costs her something to say.

She won't look at me. I recognized her once she started breathing right. She's the one who called me cursed yesterday.

"You're welcome," I say.

Running footsteps come up hard behind me.

I turn on my knees, and it's Millie. She’s coming across the whole ward at speed with her mouth already open.

She stops.

Her eyes come to me. Then down to my hands. Then to the omega's face.

"What's your specialty?" Her voice is clipped.

"Wounds," I say. "Bleeds, packing, closures. And herbs. Poisons, mostly. I can tell you what's on a rogue's claws by the smell of the wound, and I can make you something that counters it."

Millie looks at me for one second longer.

"Room three, down the hall." She's already moving. "Wash your hands first."