Fang Hospital (Dr. Gabriella Van Court, Book 1) (5 page)

He sank into a chair in front of the computer screen, ready to enter his notes on his patient. His fingertips had just touched the keyboard when his heartbeat took flight. Max glanced up from the computer, but only saw nurses bustling about. He pressed two fingers over the Band-Aid on his neck. His carotid pulsed past the bandage. Could he be having an allergic reaction to that bug bite? Nah! He was just paranoid. Max focused back on his work.

“Boo!”

Max startled erect in his chair.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Did I spook you?” Gabriella asked.

He slumped in his seat and drew a deep breath. “You got me.”

Gabriella leaned over the computer and kissed his forehead, which only propelled his heart to beat faster.

“I’ll make it up to you,” she said.

He tapped her on the nose. “Yes, you will.”

His playful tone faded. Max crooked his finger. “Let’s go to cubicle 6. There are no patients there. I need to show you something.”

“I’ve had a preview of that, but if you insist, I’ll beat you there!”

“No, seriously. Follow me.”

Max and Gabriella entered cubicle 6, and he slid the privacy doors shut. He pulled the drapes across the glass doors, ripped off his Band-Aid, and pointed to his neck. “A bug must have bitten me while we were on the picnic bench.” He studied Gabriella’s neck. She had no markings. “What do you think? Is it bad?”

She walked over to him and assessed his wound. “Yep, something bit you alright. But you’ll live.”

She clutched the “V” of his scrub top and pulled him close. The throb elsewhere eclipsed the pulse in his neck.

“I’ll kiss it and make it better.”

Gabriella’s lips rested smooth and cool upon his wound.

She eased away from him. “All better.” She squeezed his shoulders. “I have to see some patients, first. Then I’ll give you all my attention.”

Gabriella let him loose and slid the glass doors open. She turned around and gave him a queen’s wave. “I’ll see you later!”

Max looked down at his growing dilemma.
Not again! That wicked woman!
He’d have to wait it out a few minutes. He walked over to the mirror above the hospital sink and tilted his head, exposing his neck.
What the hell?
The puncture marks were gone!

****

Gabriella left Max with an arousal that rivaled her vampire libido. She stopped at the cubicle where the man with the kidney stone was waiting to see the urologist, which historically could take longer than his pain medication lasted. The man writhed and moaned in the bed. She’d see to his agony. She entered the cubicle and slowly walked to his bedside. Gabriella peered into his glazed eyes as he fought the pain.

“Hello, Mr. Fitz,” she said softly. “I’m Dr. Van Court, one of the E.R. physicians this evening. I know you’ve endured many hours in pain. I’m going to help you.”

He grimaced and between strained breaths, he rasped, “Need more pain meds.” He clutched his back. “Please?”

“In a moment you won’t need anymore medication.”

The man stared up at her. She held his gaze.

“Look at me,” she directed him.

He gave in to her trance. His breathing eased. Gabriella placed her palm against his back, over his inflamed kidney. Deep blue electric waves shot from her fingertips. Gabriella blinked and removed her hand.

“You’ll be fine now.”

The man startled free from her gaze. “Amazing! The pain is completely gone. How did you do that?”

Gabriella grinned. “Practice, lots of practice.”

“You’re a healer. I felt it the moment you touched me. You’re gifted, Dr. Van Court. God bless you!”

“God bless who?” the urologist asked as he stood in the doorway. He glanced at Gabriella and rolled his eyes. “You must have given him some stellar narcotics.”

Mr. Fitz sat up in his bed and tugged at his IV. “I won’t need this anymore.” He pointed at Gabriella. “Dr. Van Court cured me! Praise be!”

Gabriella and the urologist gently laid him back into the bed.

“Relax, sir,” the urologist said. “I’m going to help you. I’m going to get that miserable stone out from your kidney.”

“It’s gone,” the man insisted.

“He probably passed it,” she said to the urologist. “But,” she winked at Mr. Fritz, “I think that it would be wise to repeat his renal ultrasound.” She nodded at the man. “Right, Mr. Fritz?”

He nodded back with a grin. “I guess that wouldn’t hurt.”

Gabriella patted the urologist’s back. “He’s all yours.”

She shot the man a thumb’s up for playing along. “Take care, Mr. Fritz,” she said as she left the cubicle.

One patient down, and one to go. The pint-sized Dracula was next. Then onto Max! The E.R. dispatch had remained silent thus far, and she and he stood a good chance at a rendezvous.

Her fingernails had sprouted to a scary length. She headed to the restroom to trim them, but halted. She sniffed. Her kind was present. It was a male. Her heart flickered. She sniffed again.
Ah, a weak one.
Volk’s scent would have buckled her knees. Gabriella’s pulse waned. The kiddie in cubicle 4 was a vamp. With no urgency to cut her nails, Gabriella swept into the room.

Lying on the bed, fangs out, and holding his belly, was a boy vamp dressed ironically as Dracula, his hair slicked back to a shine. With it being Halloween, the little imp passed for mortal. But he was vampire sweet. A woman sat by the young vamp’s side. Gabriella had not detected her. The boy’s distress signal muted her scent.

The woman extended her hand. Her nails rivaled Gabriella’s.

“I’m Anabella. I’ve heard of you. Many of my clan are indebted to you. This is Michael. He played mortal this evening and ingested human treats, unfortunately not the blood kind.”

Michael rolled side to side. “Please help me. I just wanted to be like the other kids.”

She gazed at his pale but cherubic face. He must not have been even a decade old when he was turned. While she often had lamented the loss
of her life at 28, Michael was stuck in perpetual boyhood. Anabella was not his mother. His parents and probable siblings were long dead. But clan took care of clan.

“How old are you, Michael?”

He grabbed an emesis basin and fired a night’s worth of undigested M&M’s, Snicker Bars, and Reese’s cups into it.

“I’m 215.”

Gabriella winked. “You don’t look a day over nine.”

Michael wiped his mouth with a washcloth. “Tell me about it.”

“I had the same thing happen to me when I once ate spaghetti.” She glanced at the candy in the basin. “It didn’t come out as neat.”

Anabella and Michael chuckled.

Gabriella shrugged. “Weirdly, I can eat clams. Perhaps because I used to go clamming with my Uncle Claude in the South of France.”

“I can eat croissants. Before I was turned, I owned a bakery,” Anabella said.

“Ooh, croissants. How I miss those! Where in France was your bakery?” Gabriella asked.

“France? No. I had a bakery on Main Street in Caribou, Maine. I guess when they want you, they can find you anywhere.”

Gabriella’s eyes went vampire large. “They can find you anywhere,” echoed in her head. Volk! He’d vowed to find her. Her thoughts shot to the parking garage in Boston the other night. Was that Volk lurking, waiting for the right moment to snatch her back?

“Are you all right, Dr. Van Court?” Michael asked.

She snapped back to the present. “Yes, I’m fine. And I’m glad you’re feeling better. But just in case, I’ll get you my special vamp elixir. I concocted it after my spaghetti incident. Stay here. I’ll return shortly.”

Gabriella snuck past the nurses and ducked into the women’s locker room. Luckily, no one was there. She opened her locker and grabbed the clippers next to her special formulated elixir, off the top shelf. Trimming her pesky talons to doctor length, she returned the clippers. Her heart hammered in her ears. The elixir was gone. Between her staccato beats, she could make out a whisper.

“
Gabriella. Gabriella
.”

Crap! She’d just cut her vampire nails. She’d have to rely on her other defenses. Gabriella readied her fangs. But she was no match for Volk. There was no way out. She’d have to try. Gabriella hissed and whipped around, her points poised for combat.

A nurse stumbled backward. “Oh, Gabriella. You got me! She patted her heart. “Wow! Those look real!”

Gabriella exhaled. “You scared me, too.”
And they are real, dear.

“I guess you were so deep in thought that you didn’t hear me call you.”

“Sorry. I was chilly and I came in here to grab a sweater.” Thankfully, she did keep one in her locker. “And like a doctor, I was mentally going over each patient.”

“You’re a great Doc. I always trust your judgment. You’re thorough, and you care about the patients. Which brings me to why I followed you in here. I know the day shift Docs practically signed out that man in bed 3 with indigestion, but I think his discomfort is really cardiac. I just have this feeling. You know what I mean.”

Yes, she did.

The nurse tilted her head toward Gabriella. “Can you review his record? He doesn’t look right. They must be slammed in the lab, because his cardiac enzymes are still pending.”

Gabriella nodded. “I’ll check it out.”

“Thank you. Hey, where did you get those awesome fangs? I’m going to a costume party this weekend; it’ll be a weird, belated Halloween blow-out since we’re all working tonight.”

“I got them on line.”

It was a quick solution. Mortals liked getting goods “on line.”

The nurse shot a finger at Gabriella. “I’ll check that out.”

After the nurse left, she ravaged the top shelf of her locker.
Where is it? It was just here
. She reached into the back and felt the bottom of the flask. It had tipped over. She looked around. The flask had been upright moments ago. Maybe she did knock it over in her hurry to attend to her nails while the locker room was empty. Distracted by her name being called, and the nerve-gripping thought of Volk behind her, she hadn’t heard the flask fall. Gabriella donned the cardigan, grasped the flask, and headed back to her little vamp patient. She’d give him a sip of the potion and send him on his way. Then she’d find out what was taking so long for the man’s blood work to come back. She’d pay K.L a visit.

With the flask tucked into the front pocket of her cardigan, Gabriella glanced behind her, making sure neither human nor vamp had tagged along with her before stepping into Michael’s cubicle. She took out her magical mixture with an inventor’s pride, swirling its rainbow contents in front of Michael’s transfixed eyes.

“Wow! What cool colors!”

“It’s not red, but it works.”

Gabriella poured the potion into a medicine cup and handed the remedy to him. Michael gulped it as she directed.

He looked up at Anabella. “It’s not bad. It actually tastes better than human candy.”

“You should have stuck to tricks instead of treats,” Anabella admonished him.

Michael set the empty medicine cup onto the bedside tray. He sighed. “If Anabella can eat croissants, and if Dr. Van Court can have clams, what can I eat?”

Gabriella patted his head. “Chances are you didn’t live long enough to know what that is yet. But never say never.” She winked at him. “Especially for vampires. Why don’t you go home and think about how something you ate before made you feel alive?”

“Thanks, Dr. Van Court. I’ll do that. I guess I can rule out chocolate.”

“I think so, too.” She approached them and softly said, “There’s an alley next to the hospital. I use the same one to go home.”

“We’ll find it,” Anabella said.

Gabriella waved to them as they left. “Happy Halloween.”

“Happy Halloween to you, too, Doc,” they called back as they walked through the closed glass doors of Fang E.R. and disappeared.

She winced.
I hope nobody saw that
.

****

Gabriella turned around and smacked into Max. He hugged her and rubbed her back.

“I see you’re wearing your sweater, but I’ll warm you up...soon.”

No chance in hell, she thought. He was as valiant as he was sexy.

She gently pushed him away. What she wanted to do was to yank him into the call room and continue where they’d left off on the picnic bench. No one would walk in on them there. She’d be free to pillage him!

“Max, hold that thought. I need to run down to the lab.” She stroked his neck. “I won’t be long.”

He brought his lips to hers and kissed her. They were soft and velvet. She rose to her toes and her stomach stirred. She wished she were alive. Damn that Volk! He robbed her of her warmth. But then again, if she had lived, she would never have met Max. Nor would she be a physician at The Fang, tending to mortals and her kind. Perhaps he had done her a favor, after all.

He slowly parted from her. “You’re killing me, Gabriella.”

She arched her brows. “Not yet. But there’s still time.” She skipped around him, teasingly. “See you later. All of you, that is!”