Cassie Alexander - Nightshifted

Then the Versed pump started beeping. I hit the alarm silence button, and looked imploringly out to Charles.

He rolled his eyes at me. He would have never gowned up to come into a patient’s room and not brought in the medication they were almost sure to run out of next. “I’m on it.”

“Thanks,” I said, and gave him a winning smile hidden by my mask. I hit the alarm silence button a few more times and when Charles brought me the Versed, I hung it as quickly as possible before sneaking back out of the room.

“So, Meaty—” I held Mr. November’s clipboard out over the nursing station desk like it was proof of something. “This guy—no word on him yet?”

Meaty shook a large hand in an indeterminate fashion. “Sorry, Edie. We sent his photo out to all the Thrones.”

I looked at the clipboard and sighed. At least with patients at my last job I could make assumptions. I used to know that when someone had too high a drug tolerance, or too low a pain tolerance, that maybe they’d been a user back in the day. Here at Y4—maybe they’re a werewolf? Or weretiger. Or weremanatee. I snorted. Gina down the hall was a vet and an RN, in charge of the were-corrals in rooms one and two. I knew someone was in one now, because they were howling. Last night was the full moon. We kept track of that here.

Mr. November might be completely new to town, since the local vampire Thrones hadn’t jumped to claim him. It’d take longer to figure out which Throne he belonged to the farther he was afield. Maybe vampires only put out missing vampire bulletins at night.

“He doing okay?” Meaty asked. I didn’t know if Meaty thought I would hurt patients by my mere presence, or if I gave off a bad-nurse aura. It wasn’t that I didn’t appreciate the repeated check-ins, I just didn’t like feeling like I must need them all the time.

“He’s fine, I’m fine, everything’s fine,” I said, with just a touch of sarcasm. Meaty squinted at me, then went back to ordering morning labs on the computer.

The desk between Meaty and me had the telemetry monitor on it, a computer screen that showed all the vitals from all the occupied rooms, in coded colors. Heart rhythms were largest, in bright green, and when alarms sounded these were usually to blame. It was hard to keep lead stickers on squirming patients who were sometimes slick with sweat. So when an alarm sounded, I glanced over, wondering who’d flatlined momentarily while scratching themselves.

But none of the green waves changed, and the alarm went on. Mr. November’s corner of the screen lit up. I leaned in closer, actually reading numbers. After the obligatory oh-shit second, Meaty looked up, and I saw Mr. November’s oxygenation saturation go from an acceptable 92 percent, to a potentially emphysemic 85 percent, to an incompatible-with-life 40 percent.

“Wake him up!” Meaty yelled.

“On it!” I leaped and ran around the station to his room, racing inside without gear.

I stood there for a second, overwhelmed. I’d left his right hand unrestrained, and Mr. November’d pulled his ET tube out. Inadequate ventilation = certain death. The heart monitor over his bed warned of an atrial fib before its green line dove flat.

Charles blazed past me at a speed walk. He slammed the bed into CPR mode, and pointed at me. “Ambu bag, now!”

I swallowed and nodded and pulled it off the wall. It felt like it took me an hour to assemble the pieces, to shove the face mask and bag together, the one that was supposed to be breathing for Mr. November but wasn’t until I finished the fucking job. I managed it, and shoved the bag over Mr. November’s open mouth.

Which reflexively closed.

On my left thumb.

“Shit!”

I yanked my thumb out, catching it on his teeth, and put my fingers under his jaw for a better seal.

I hadn’t even seen Gina come in, but there she was, with epinephrine from the crash cart. Charles was already performing CPR. Meaty began counting cycles.

“Fifty-nine—switch!”

I vaulted onto the bed to straddle Mr. November, pumping with my injured hand, trying to pretend he hadn’t just bitten me, that a motherfucking daytimer had not just bitten me. What if the tests we had run were wrong? What if he was infected? What if it didn’t take repeated exposure? My thoughts flowed in time with my CPR, and just like his ribs, they resisted at first, then relented with a sickening crunch.

“Epi!” Meaty announced. I saw Gina push it.

Mr. November bucked beneath me, dislodging the ambu bag, sending the titanium-tipped ET tube by his head clattering to the floor. He stared at me, hard.

“Save her!” he commanded—but he was only mouthing the words. He’d shredded his vocal chords when he extubated himself. “Save her!” he mouthed again, before collapsing beneath me, expiring.

I sat there on his chest in shock. And then—the movies sometimes got this part right at least—he went from what’d once been a living, breathing thing, to a dough, then a dust. He crumpled in on himself, leaving a dark soot-colored stain on the insides of my thighs. All of the rest of his tubes and restraints fell and landed where they would have been were he an anatomically correct ash sculpture, something stolen from Pompeii. I wasn’t sure what to make of this, or what to do next—I sat there stunned, before dismounting with excessive care. Meaty, Charles, Gina—they were all staring at me, silent.

“Can’t the Shadow-things fix this?” I asked, my voice rising. The Shadows were some mystical protection for our floor, or so I’d been led to believe in training. I hadn’t seen them myself, but I’d write Santa Claus and clap my hands for fairies right now if I thought it would help.

“Nope,” Charles answered, and my shoulders slumped. He pointed at the remnants of Mr. November’s hand. “Wasn’t he supposed to be restrained?”

I nodded and Charles shook his head. “Awwww, new kid.”

“I’ll need an incident report,” Meaty said, dismissing the whole situation with a head shake. “Gina, stay here and show her what to do for the coroner.”

My mouth went dry. I’d killed a man. My mistake killed him. No—not a normal man, a daytimer, a vampire servant, and likely already alive way past his normal life span. But—he’d looked like a human, and he’d felt like a human, and he’d died, because of me.

A tall man I’d never seen before came up behind Meaty. His embroidered lab coat read DR. EMMANUEL TURNAS in red thread italics. “You rang?”

“More sedation. Please,” Meaty said, without the hint of a smile.

“Don’t breathe the dust. It’s bad for you and it’s flammable.” Gina put my mask on me while I stood there, numb. She was my age or younger, I couldn’t tell, and Latina with dark even skin and straight black hair. Stylish bangs went from short at her right temple down to chin length at her left cheek. She’d probably be pretty if I ever got to see her smile. I suspected she wouldn’t start today.

“First code?”

I swallowed and nodded. “Down here, yeah. And ever. That too.”

“I could tell.” She stared me down and then her gaze softened with pity. “You know, the last nurse who did something like that here died. I liked her a lot too.” I didn’t even know how to respond as she went on. “So look at it that way—you lived, right?”

“Yeah. Right,” I said, my voice flat. If I hadn’t gotten cocky and undone his wrist, if I’d ignored him—if he’d just behaved!

Gina ducked under the bed and unfastened the empty Posey vest. “Did you learn something?”

“Don’t kill people?” I mouthed off—sarcasm being my best defense against crying—and instantly regretted it.