Chapter 2

Although I was tempted to cancel all of my patients for the day and lay in bed with my head buried beneath the covers, I knew better.  Hadn’t I just used my business and bills as an excuse not to follow him to Africa?  I needed to be the responsible adult and tend to the life I’d just sacrificed the man I loved for.

I’d had breakfast and was opening my office for the day when I realized that Peter and I hadn’t worked out a plan to talk once a week like we’d discussed.  My heart sank.  Our separation was off to a horrendous start.

My first patient had entered the waiting room at the same time that Angela popped her head through the door that connected to the kitchen in the main house. “I don’t want to disturb you, but I need Peter.  Do you know where he went?”

“Africa,” I sighed.

“Pardon?”

“He left for Africa this morning,” I sniffed. “I can’t discuss it right now, Angela.  I have a patient and I’ve only just gotten my eyes back to normal.”

“They’re still a bit puffy,” she mused.  “Did you put ice on them?”

“No time now,” I scowled.  “I’ll blame allergies.”

“He never was good at long good-byes,” she said as she heaved a sigh of disappointment and closed the door behind her.

My first patient was an eighty-three-year-old woman named Jasmine Woods.  She was as cantankerous as she was wise.  By the time the exam of her arthritic knees and shoulder was over, she’d managed to write down a list of cures for my “allergies” and scolded me for trying to work when my body clearly wanted rest.  The relief I felt as I watched her shuffle out of my office and get into the cab was immense.

Grateful for the fact that my patient load for the day was a relatively short one, I dove into caring for the rest with diligence and sincerity as they straggled into my office.  I saw no reason for the care I gave them to suffer simply because something in the private area of my life wasn’t to my liking.

I saw my last patient at three in the afternoon and eagerly closed my office.  Not only was I exhausted from the stress of Peter’s leaving, but my body felt the absence of sleep with an intensity that surprised me.  I’d eaten very little and my stomach would have appreciated a decent meal, but, as I closed the door to my office behind me and entered the main house, all of my strength fled.  I had barely enough left in me to climb the stairs and fall onto my still unmade bed.

I shed my clothes and wrapped my naked body in the bedding that still smelled of Peter and let sleep take me away.

The sound of Angela’s light tapping on my bedroom door woke me.  The pale illumination from the starry sky through my bedroom window told me that it was sometime in the middle of the night.  I brought my eyes into focus enough to read the florescent numbers on the clock by my bed.  It was three in the morning.

“I’ll be right there,” I managed to croak past my parched and unused lips. 

From the dryness of my mouth and the damp spot on my pillow, I deduced that I’d not only slept with my mouth wide open – and probably snored, as I tended to do when I was overtired – but I’d drooled what little saliva my air-dried glands managed to secrete.  I closed my mouth and did my best to rejuvenate the moisture it craved.

“Vickie,” Angela said in a low tone. “I’m sorry to wake you, but the sheriff is downstairs with an injured man. He says it’s an emergency.”  After a brief moment of silence, she added, “He’s bleeding pretty heavily.  There’s too much blood for me to sit with them.  I never developed that ability, like Peter did.”

I grabbed my robe to cover my nakedness and quickly tied it shut as I slid my feet into a pair of slippers and raced to the door.  Angela was just walking away when I stepped out into the hall.

“What?  Max brought a man to me who is bleeding that badly?   Why bring him here, instead of the emergency room?”  I mused, more to myself than to Angela.

“I didn’t stick around to find out,” she said, apologetically.  “There was a scent about the blood that forced my fangs down without my being able to stop it.  Not only didn’t I want to expose my vampirism to the injured man, I was afraid that, if I couldn’t control the dropping of my fangs, then what if I couldn’t control resisting the blood?   I left them in the kitchen.”

I took her hand in mine and said, “You did the right thing.”

“I’m going back to my room,” she said with a wrinkled nose.  “I can still smell the blood.” As she walked away, she shook her head in confusion.  “I’ve never had this happen before.  Of course, I don’t get around intense bleeding like Peter does.  Even so, I’ve never had my fangs just take on a life of their own before.   I don’t like it.  I don’t like it one bit.”

The idea of getting dressed before I went downstairs to tend to Max flashed through my mind, but was quickly replaced by the urgency in Angela’s description of Max’s condition.  I held the handrail of the broad staircase as I scooted downstairs as fast as my slippered feet could carry me.

I found Max sitting at my kitchen table with a towel pressed against the jagged, torn flesh of a strange man’s shoulder.  Without checking it closely, it looked to be some type of animal bite.  Although severe in appearance, I felt relief that it wasn’t a zombie that bit him.

“I’m sorry to force you out of bed like this,” the man managed to say between labored breaths.  “I couldn’t take this to the hospital.”

I tossed Max a curious look.  “Help me get him into my examination room.”

Max bent over, put the man’s good arm around his neck and then pulled him to his feet. “I get the feeling he won’t be conscious much longer.”

From the amount of blood on the kitchen towel that Angela gave them and the pool that had formed at his feet, I had to agree with Max. 

“You really should be in the hospital,” I said to the stranger. “You’re going to need blood.”

I hurried ahead of them to open the door that separated my kitchen from the medical office and stood back while they staggered through the entrance.

“For one, the hospital is too far.  I’d never make it,” the man managed between labored breathing.  “For another, this type of bite isn’t something I want to report.  Not yet, anyway.”

“I was worried that it was a zombie bite,” I whispered to Max as I struggled to think of what type of animal could have inflicted such a vicious wound.  Then, in a louder voice, I asked the man, “What got you?  A bear?  No, not a bear.  You’d be a bigger mess than you are if a bear got a hold of you.  A mountain lion, maybe?  They have them here, don’t they?”

“It was a werewolf,” he confessed, although timidly.

I stopped in my tracks and stared up at Max’s face while I searched for signs that the man was teasing me.  There were none.  He couldn’t have been wearing a more serious look. 

“The sheriff said that you’d believe me,” he added with a painful groan.

A myriad of thoughts flew through my mind as I forced my body back into motion as I helped Max position the man onto the table so that he was comfortable and that I could easily work on the wound.

 We’d no sooner straightened his body out than he fell unconscious.  This gave me a better opportunity to grill Max about what happened without having to monitor my words.

“Am I to believe that we now have werewolves in our midst?” I snapped as I cut the sleeve of his shirt off his arm so that I could better see the wound.

“I kept it from you as long as I could, but when Elijah got tangled up with one, I had no choice.  If we take this to the hospital it would hit the news and then the place would be crawling with reporters.

“Which is why we kept the zombie problem quiet,” I mused.

“The fewer people who know about this, the better,” Max said with a nod.  “Werewolves tend to attract other kinds of shifters.  I’m making it my mission to get rid of them before that happens and the place is crawling with shifters of all types.”

“Are they that bad?” I asked as I peered at Elijah’s wound.  It was angry and looked as if it was already getting infected.  Considering the amount of blood that flowed from it, that surprised me. 

“I think they’re worse than the zombies,” Max said with a nod.

“Impossible,” I gasped; more to express my disbelief that we’d be faced with such a dilemma than that I didn’t agree with Max.

“You’d better warn Peter,” he said in a flat tone. – It was no secret that he was jealous of the fact that Peter and I were a couple - “Wolves hate vamps. They’re mortal enemies.  Although, I have no clue as to why.”

“Peter’s gone,” I sighed as I did my best to clean out the infection.

“Gone?” Max said with surprise.  “Gone, where?”

“He left for Africa yesterday morning. He’s gone back to check on his non-profit and to search for a cure for vampirism.”

“I didn’t realize that he didn’t like being a vampire,” Max said with a thoughtful scowl.

His comment made me pause.  Peter and I had never really discussed whether he did or didn’t like being a vampire. In fact, the only time the topic of curing vampirism came up was when I’d thought of it.  Then, and only then, did he sink his teeth into the idea.  Was the cure for him?  Or did he know of others who suffered because they were unhappy as vampires?  I just didn’t know.

“I don’t know if he is or isn’t,” I admitted.  “It never came up.”

“Then, why is he searching for a cure?” Max boldly asked.

“I mentioned that I believed that there must be a cure for zombism, since it was a virus and the conversation slid to the fact that vampirism is also a virus so, therefore, there must also be a cure for it and things just progressed from there,” I said with a sad tone.

Max looked at me long and hard.  “Why didn’t you go with him?”

I shrugged while I forced back the remaining tears that I’d yet to cry out.  “He’s one of the smartest men I know.   He shouldn’t be gone too long.   I have a practice and responsibilities.  I plan on doing my research from here.”

“Won’t you need a zombie or two for the research?”  he asked.

I looked at him, dumbfounded. “I imagine so.”

“Hmm.  That’s a problem, since we chased them out and I don’t intend to let them back in again.”

My mind whirled as I continued to tend to Elijah’s wound.  After making sure that it was completely cleaned out I applied a liberal amount of antiseptic solution to the wound and bandaged it.

Since he couldn’t remember when he’d had his last tetanus shot, I gave Elijah a booster, as well as an injection of penicillin and a prescription for it to take for the next five days.