The Results Are In, Part 1

DR. GAIL’S POV

As I sat and waited for the processes of testing the bloodwork to finish and the X-ray films to reach me, I pondered the anomalies of this patient’s appearance. Glasses? Overweight? Is she even a wolf? Due to the super-high metabolism of werewolves, there has never been a werewolf who wasn’t lean and muscular, or at least as far as I have seen in the 30 years that I have been a pack doctor. So that was one of the tests I was running – ensuring this woman was a wolf. If not, I hoped it would give me the direction to look for her true lineage and, more importantly, help her.

I went to my office and brewed a cup of coffee in my single-cup coffee machine. I had a sinking feeling that this was going to be a longer night than anyone had previously dared to think. When I returned to the lab, I noticed that the printer was shelving the newly completed labs results. The films from the X-ray department were also on the lab table next to the printer addressed to me. After skimming over the lab results, I sat down and meticulously read each line’s results, making notes in the margins. I then looked at the X-rays.

What I saw was medically impossible. One test confirmed that this young lady was indeed a she-wolf but outside of that, nothing else made sense. According to the X-rays, she had never shifted, which generally happened for the first time when a wolf hits puberty, generally under the supervision of its parents. There was no evidence of healed broken bones, which every wolf had if they had X-rays done after they shifted, even once. According to the lab work, by all accounts of the levels of toxins in her system, this child should be dead, not merely unconscious. I was only sure about why she still had signs of bruising and was not showing any indications of healing expected from a wolf’s super-healing abilities. I gathered all of the paperwork quickly and made my way back to Scarlett’s room. Scarlett returned to her room, and Alpha Ryan was sitting in a chair beside her bed. I noticed that his sister, Emily, was asleep on the couch under the window. When I opened the door, the Alpha looked up. I motioned for him to step into the hall with me.

“Alpha, do you know if Scarlett has any family?” I asked. He looked up with concern and answered, “I just met her tonight at the Halloween Carnival. She bears the scent of our pack, but I can’t even say that I have ever seen her before. Why? What kind of results did her lab work come back with?” I slowly and deliberately answered, “The lab work came back with results that cause more questions than answers.” He looked at me quizzically, so I continued, “It seems that she was injected with some multidimensional bioengineered potion with properties of Bella Donna, Monkshood, Wolf’s Bane, and other chemicals.”

As soon as I finished giving the rundown of the chemicals I found in Scarlett’s bloodstream, we heard the sound of a slight gasp behind us. When we turned around, we saw Emily standing in the doorway, her hand covering her mouth with tears glistening in her eyes. “Oh. My. Goddess! Was she injected with something that those rogues planned on injecting me with before she rescued me?” I answered Emily with the most honest answer I had at that time, “I can’t say for sure what the injection was that the rogues had or if it was intended for you. What I can say for sure is that the levels registering in her blood are elevated way past what one injection would typically hold.”

The Alpha then asked, “What exactly are you saying, Dr. Gail?” My answer, as I looked at both him and Emily, was, “I’m saying that this child has been systematically poisoned over some time…and there’s more.” The Alpha looked at me incredulously, “MORE?!!” his voice roared in his Alpha Voice. Both Emily and I shrunk back slightly before I continued. “Yes, Alpha, her blood tested positive for Angel’s Grace and….” I hesitated for a moment before seeing the look in the Alpha’s eyes and finished, “and Luna’s Metal…silver”.

“Oh, my Goddess, Oh my Goddess, Oh my Goddess” was all Emily could manage to verbalize as she paced back and forth in the hallway, frantically. The Alpha’s eyes glazed over, mind-linking someone. He then looked at me and stated, “We should probably take this conversation to the conference room, away from unknown ears,” and he began marching towards the double doors that lead to the office section of the hospital which held the conference rooms.

Emily and I followed, and falling in step with us were Beta Chris and Trainer Georgia. I motioned them to proceed to the conference room while I stopped briefly at the nurse’s station to leave instructions for the Charge Nurse to call me on my cell and inform me immediately of any change in Scarlett’s condition. I then continued to the conference room, knowing that I had no definitive answers to any of the questions I was about to be bombarded with from everyone. I squared my shoulders, held my head high, and pushed through the doors into the conference room, results in my hand and my laptop over my shoulder. It looked like we would begin the arduous journey of piecing together who Scarlett is and what happened to her.