Moonshifted by Cassie Alexander Page A

Gina’s report. In a way, I was relived to be holding the rifle—despite my poor track record in shooting things on Y4 and at the range, it was easier than managing eight separate IV drips. We were supporting him in every way possible, keeping his blood pressure up but not too high, tracking his insulin every hour, running in antibiotics that I didn’t even recognize the names of. It sounded like Winter had a lot more wrong with him than just a straight trauma.
    And at the end of it, I heard the term LKA . I blinked, and looked harder at Winter. Sure enough, under the sheets, his left lower leg was gone, amputated below the knee. The accident had turned Karl Winter into a three-legged dog. It sounded like it ought to be the punch line of some joke, but I doubted Winter would find it funny when and if he woke.
    There was the rustling of paper and the chart check behind me, and then the drawers of the metal isolation cart slamming as Gina pulled on her gear.
    “I don’t suppose you got any range time in between now and the last time we did this.” Gina’s voice didn’t sound like she was kidding. She was in nurse mode now, and although we were something that almost passed for friends, I wouldn’t press things tonight.
    “I was a little too busy to go through my allotment of bullets this month,” I admitted. Our jobs at Y4 came with access to ammo and free time at the range. We both knew I was an awful shot. “I’ll make up for it by standing close.”
    “Sounds good,” Gina said, though I noticed the first thing she did was dial Winter’s sedation up.
    I watched her check the lines and then check her patient. It was strange watching another nurse do her job while I was hampered by the gun. The nearer she got to him, the tighter my finger felt around the trigger.
    “How is he?”
    “Rough.” She shone a bright light into each of his eyes. “There’s some brain function—he’s initiating some breaths on his own, but the ventilator’s doing most of the work of breathing. It’s hard to say if there’s anybody home.”
    “When will we know?”
    Gina shrugged. “Full moon?”
    “Oy.” I tried to imagine myself standing here, a rifle halfway up my shoulder, on and off for the next six nights. I’d wind up having a hunchback.
    “They think the bleeding in his brain’s stopped at least.”
    “Why’d they have to take his leg?”
    “Were-limbs are hard as hell to reattach. Their stupid healing powers—it’s like working with superglue, and gluing your fingers together instead of your project. You stick the limb on, it adheres, but none of the blood vessels talk to one another on the inside, and then it gets infected and just falls off…” Gina’s voice drifted off as she leaned in, listening to him breathe. “It’s one thing if the patient’s awake and can control himself, slow it down. Entirely another if he’s out and he’s in shock.”
    I waited till she took the stethoscope out of her ears to ask my questions. “Wait. I’m confused. Why didn’t he just heal himself up at the scene?”
    “The brain injury stuff—I think that prevented him. The surprise, then the damage—who can say?” She gestured to her own head, then looped the stethoscope over one of the IV poles. “Plus, he’s old.”
    “He doesn’t look that old.” Sure, he looked sixty, but that wasn’t that old nowadays. Hell, there were whole wings of County that were filled with people over seventy-two.
    “Edie, he’s the oldest were I’ve ever seen alive.” She stripped off her gear and stepped outside. I walked backward and set my back against the doorjamb. My left arm was already aching from holding the rifle at half-mast.
    “How old is he?”
    “Fifty-eight.”
    “My mom is fifty-eight. Fifty-eight is the new twenty.”
    Gina snorted, which was nice because it let me know she still had a sense of humor. “Werewolves run down as they age. The metabolic processes their transformations require of them—it’s