Nightshifted (15 page)

I trotted outside, coat and bag in tow, to stare at the footprints outside my door. There was a small patch of earth outside my window where dandelions grew in the summer. The wind had drifted snow into the shallow footprints, enough to make me pause and question myself. I felt sure I’d seen them clearly. I was almost sure I had, I thought, as they completely disappeared.

“Edie?” someone said, and I whirled. I took a step backward, wishing I hadn’t already locked my door. Asher was there, getting out of a warm car. He had flowers. Bright expensive tropical ones. I stood there for a moment, stunned.

“Hey there,” I said, when I remembered how. He couldn’t see, but I was smiling from ear to ear.

“I thought we could maybe go on a date.” He held the arrangement out to me.

“I’d like that.” I stepped forward into the parking lot’s lights. “But I have to work tonight.”

He got one good look at me, in green scrubs, my hair in a ponytail, and his flower-holding hand faltered. “I should have known,” he said. The birds of paradise sank down to the level of his perfect thigh.

“Known what?” I asked. My guard, which sometime between last night and today I’d let drop, due to either sentimentality or exhaustion, rushed back to me. My smile evaporated and serious nurse Edie took over.

“What are you?” he asked.

“I’m a nurse,” I said. And then I put it all together. The accent, the money, the car—the attitude. “Oh, God. You’re a doctor, aren’t you?” There was no one I wanted to date less in the world than a doctor. They could fake seeming human at first—medicine doctors more so than surgeons—but it never lasted. Whatever pleasant shyness they’d begun their careers with when they were your resident and needed your help was gone by the time they returned as an attending, knowing everything. I’d met a ton of older male doctors. The years of being right on most things, compounded by an interest in hearing their own voice be loudest, were like layers of nacre over a center of shit. They might look like pearls on the outside to people who’d never have to call them at three
A.M.
begging for an important test—but when you were a nurse you began to feel like most of them were swine.

I’d never known a doctor-nurse relationship to survive—unless one of them was a shrink, or a dentist.

“Where do you work?” he asked, as I got my keys out and edged around him.

“Look, it’s okay. You don’t date nurses, I don’t date doctors. I get it. We’re even.” I opened up my Chevy’s door, and threw my bags inside. “I’m going to be late, I’ve got to go—”

“Where do you work?” he repeated as I sat down. He caught the door before I could close it, flowers shaking in his opposite hand.

“What, County nurses not good enough for you?” I gave my door a solid yank. He fought me for a second, and then let go. I turned over my engine and I sat there for ten seconds as my car warmed up. He glared at me, then walked over to his own car, but not before I watched him throw his very expensive flowers in the snow.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

I had the whole drive into work to think about ways I could have handled things better. Maybe if I’d just stopped things after that first night. Dammit. I knew better than to ride the same ride twice.

I tromped into the hospital and took the elevator down to Y4. At least being angry at Asher had stopped me from thinking about my upcoming vampire trial. Or about small childlike footprints in the snow that may, or may not, have been created by a small childlike vampire.

Only one way to know. I had to get some blood.

*   *   *

Most drugs are clear, their amounts so small as to have been completely diluted in the saline we give them in. Putting them into a person—you know it helps, but there’s no visual. It’s not satisfying.

But blood transfusions look dramatic. It’s the stuff of life running in, and there’s this ritual with another nurse before you hang it—unless you’re running it into a vampire during a ceremony, whereupon transfusion reactions mean lunch buffet—when you recite batch numbers and blood types like a short scientific mass. Someone can die if you get it wrong. Always a thrill. Even before my time on Y4, I’d loved the process.

That night, it was my turn to hang blood. Gina did the paperwork with me, her normal enthusiasm somewhat restrained.

“You sure you’re okay?” she asked, for the fourth time.

“Okay for now.” I took the identifying paper off the packed red blood cells and handed it to her. “What would I be doing at home?” I knew what I’d be doing at home. Walking around my parking lot shouting, “Anna? Annnnnna!” like I was calling a lost cat. “I’m being far more useful here.”

“If you say so,” she said, signing out my transfusion sheet. I stuck it into the chart, with both our signatures.

I watched the blood go in as my patient watched TV and ate Jell-O. When there were just a few cc’s left, I stopped the transfusion and took down the bag. Normally you ran blood in till it went almost dry, and you flushed the end in with saline, so the patient got down to the last drop. But right now I needed it slightly more than this guy did. I taped the bag shut, and when I went on break, I hid it in my bag.

*   *   *

I drove home that morning with the blood bag in my coat pocket. It’d been chilled since whenever it’d left its original donor—but right now, knowing I had it made it feel hot against my thigh. I’d been busy ever since I’d saved Anna, practically—I’d either been at work, as a patient or working, or been distracted with some guy. Maybe if I hadn’t been so keen on getting laid, I’d have already solved my own mystery. Then again, who knew I would be called to vampire court? You couldn’t
not
get laid, especially by a man like Asher, worrying about every bizarre possibility.

I’d wait up for Anna tomorrow. I put the blood bag in my refrigerator, beside my expired milk and prepackaged turkey slices.

Who was I to ever criticize Mr. November now?

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

That night, the hard part was sitting in the dark. Well—the hardest part had been getting to sleep that morning. After I’d woken up and the sun had fallen, I’d thrown the bag of blood outside. Its clotted contents looked like a buried autumn leaf against the tire-treaded snow.

And now I waited. I was used to staying up all night, but I usually had things to do, and bright lights to do them under. Minnie was asleep, and the sound of her soft breathing taunted me.

I didn’t know if Anna would want fresh blood, if the plastic would somehow ruin the taste, if she wasn’t into biohazards. I just knew that I’d stay up all night and hope for the best.

Snow drifted down like endless static on an old TV screen. I’d been lost in the chaos of it all, my body in a hibernatory trance, staring out the window. Any sign of the blood bag was long gone, as were the outlines of the cars across the lot. And then near dawn, just as I’d begun doubting my sanity, thinking that I was in some sort of perpetual waking dream, I saw her.

She moved through the snow quickly, still wearing the grimy shift I’d last seen her in. Her hydration was better now—she was still thin, but no longer hollow. Her frizzy blond hair was so light it was hard to see against the snow. She made her way across the quiet lot, dug the bag out, and smelled it. Then she fastened her fingers at its edges and pulled it apart to lap at the frozen blood inside. She looked like a raccoon munching on a wrapper stolen from a Taco Bell Dumpster. Then she turned toward me, as I was watching her from the darkness of my room. She shoved the bag into her mouth and bolted away.

Overhead, I knew the moon I couldn’t see through the clouds anymore was barely half full.

*   *   *

The next night, I was finally assigned the gentleman in room five. I got the report and then looked at the chart myself.

He was a zombie … firefighter? That was a bit odd. We’d only had two zombies on the floor while I’d been here—Mr. Smith was the second of them, and I’d never been assigned the first.

But I had a mission tonight, above and beyond mere nursing. I needed to get more blood. I walked into the darkened room, tubes in hand. If I got his blood now, I could toss it in my purse on break. The monitor was still in standby, casting a faint glow over him where he lay on the bed. I knew what smelled different about this room now; it was the scent of warm earth.

“Hello, Mr. Smith.”

He smiled in the dim light. “Hello again, ghost nurse.”

I snorted. “Well, neurologically, you’re intact. Mind if I turn on the light?”

“Feel free.”

My hand found the switch and I got my first look at a real live—dead?—zombie.

Mr. Smith was tall, stretching almost the entire length of the bed, with wide shoulders. The parts I could see of him outside of the sheets and his hospital gown—his arms, his neck, and his face—were all covered by almost-healed smooth rippling scars. Between the dark color of his skin as it was and the slightly lighter color of his skin as it healed, he looked like a dark pond on a windy day.

“I remember you,” he said. His eyes were a light golden brown, and the skin around them crinkled when he smiled.

“I remember you too.” I smiled back. “Thanks again—and sorry for waking you up.”

“I don’t really sleep.” He sat up straighter in his bed.

As I walked into the room I formed my plan. I would do the blood draw last, so I could hurry away and hide. I hadn’t heard about any IV sites, but I had a butterfly needle for the draw. I didn’t really like poking someone unnecessarily, but it wasn’t like he could get an infection and die from a needle stick now, was it? I reached for the blood pressure cuff, to start my set of vitals, and held it aloft. “Which arm?” I asked. A lot of patients with heavy scarring had a side they preferred, one which the cuff’s squeezing hurt less.

Faint eyebrows rose. “I believe the previous nurse was having you on.”

“How so?” I un-Velcroed the cuff.

“I don’t have blood pressure.” The corners of his lips quirked into a smile. “I have blood, but to the best of my knowledge, it doesn’t really
go
anywhere.”

“Oh.” The lab tubes in my pocket felt heavy, and I felt my face flush. “Damn.”

“You were … looking for some?” he asked, tilting his head forward.

“Actually, yes. Sorry.” I frowned at myself. How was I going to get Anna to come closer tomorrow night when I was off shift again?

“I could … give you a finger?” He held up his right pinkie. “I don’t need all of them. One won’t hurt much.” I blanched, and he laughed out loud. “I’m teasing. It would grow back—but I’m teasing.”

I forced a grin. “Heh. Sorry.”

“You apologize too much.”

“Sorry—” I began instinctively.

“See?”

I rolled my eyes. He was right, but what did he know about me, and the things I had to apologize for?
He
wasn’t Igor-ing around, stealing blood.

I looked around the room. He’d been here for long enough to have photos on the walls—rows of uniformed men stood in front of large red trucks. A cafeteria tray sat on the shelf on the far side of the room. I walked over and picked it up. A rime of brown-gray sauce and a gnawed portion of a bone remained. “What was dinner?”

“Long pig?” he guessed. I looked askance at him and he waved his arms in a negating fashion. “I’m not sure. I eat what they send me.”

For a moment, I imagined him lumbering after me, slow-shuffling horror-movie style. He was far wittier than a movie zombie, but he was still technically undead. I lifted the tray—it had a good weight. I could hit someone over the head with it if I needed to. I turned around and kept the tray between us.

“How is it that you’re a firefighter, if you want to eat people?”

“I don’t want to eat everyone. I really only need flesh to regenerate. Which is why I’m here, so I can eat under qualified medical supervision.”

“So this?” I asked, dipping the tray.

“I have a don’t ask, don’t tell, policy.”

I supposed that, given the number of surgeries being performed in the hospital at any one time, and the number of people dying here—some of whose identities were unknown and some few of those who likely had no next of kin—it was possible that we did have enough extra flesh to go around, as disgusting as the thought might be.

“But why be a firefighter?”

“I’m almost indestructible. What else should I do?” He shrugged. “I get to have a well-paying job and save a few lives. I get burned a few times, heal up a few times, and then move on to a new town.”

“You’re the Bruce Banner of zombie firefighters?”

His lips broke into an easy grin. “A comic book fan?”

“My brother used to read them a lot.” I shrugged with the tray. I didn’t mention how fast he’d sold them when he’d found other pursuits.

“I only saw the movies.” He jerked his chin at me. “What’s the last movie you saw?

“It’s, uh, been a while.” Was he flirting with me? I’d only ever had patients who were detoxing flirt with me before, and they’d never been very subtle. More of a “Hey, nurse, can we fuck?” between periods of trying to run naked down the hall.