Immortally Yours, An Urban Fantasy Romance (Monster MASH, Book 1) (2 page)

And why not? We fought the war in the operating room as sure as they fought it on the battlefield.
 

I tossed the claw into the metal pan. "It's easier on you if you don't stiffen up."
 

He flopped his head back on the table. "You MASH docs always go on
two.
"
 

I shook my head as I inspected the wound for splinters. "
Merde.
I hate being predictable."
 

The wound was clean, and healing, even as I stitched it up.
 

I tugged off my gloves and tossed them into the bio waste can.
 

My dad had worked a factory job all his life. He spent forty-three years shaving the sharp edges off Folgers coffee cans. He called it good, steady work. And he kept on doing it until plastic containers came along and they forced him to retire. I never understood how he could do the same thing day after day.
 

He worked long hours to put me through school because I wanted to be different. I'd be a doctor. I'd change the world.
 

Ha.
 

If he could see me now...
 

I stepped back and accepted a cool towel on the back of my neck. We had the air conditioners going full-blast, but the operating tent wasn't terribly efficient at keeping cold air in.
 

"What about my horn?" my patient demanded as Horace fluttered to my side.
 

"As soon as we find it, it's yours," I said, letting the orderly take him.
 

I held my hands out as Nurse Hume scurried to fit me with a new pair of surgical gloves. We took a step sideways as an orderly rushed past my table with four units of blood. "How about a real case next time, Horace?"
 

Horace stiffened, his pointy ears twitching. "Protocol dictates—"
 

"Screw protocol."
 

His cheeks colored. "Oh please, Dr. Petra. You don't have the rank or the seniority."
 

I'd been here for seven years and I was low man on the totem pole. I'd probably be a newbie until I died. That's what happened when half of the docs were immortal.
 

I took stock of the packed OR. "What about the burn victims?" At least two patients had just come straight from a greased lightning attack. From what I'd seen, Colonel Kosta hadn't called in any of the off-duty surgeons.
 

"Taken care of," Horace singsonged.
 

"Just give me something interesting." Or at least the chance to save somebody. We'd lost three patients today. Maybe they'd have died on my table, too, but I owed it to these soldiers—and myself—to try to make a difference.
 

"Perhaps if you showed me the respect I'm due," the winged god began, "I could find it in my heart to..."
 

Oh please. Horace had been worshipped once for about five minutes. His cult had died out around the time of Caesar. He'd been trying to get something going ever since.
 

But I knew I'd get better results with honey. "See what you can do," I told him. "In the meantime I'll leave an offering at your altar."
 

The orderly huffed, but I saw him perk up a bit.
 

"You do still have an altar," I said.
 

"Yes." He flew a few inches higher. "What will you leave me?"
 

"Er..." I had to think. "Flowers?"
 

He looked rather put out at that. "I am the god of three-wheeled chariot racing."
 

"I don't have any chariots."
 

"You're as funny as a bad rash. Enough of the games. I like copper." He squared his shoulders. "You have three pennies in the bottom of your footlocker."
 

"Fine." And interesting to know. Perhaps the little god had some power in him after all.
 

He sniffed, as if he knew what I was thinking. "Make sure they're neatly stacked."
 

"Done," I said.
 

"All right. Perhaps I will help you," he said, wheeling away my patient. "Although I must say your entire style of worship leaves something to be desired."
 

I didn't doubt that. This place was killing me.
 

"So what's next, Nurse Hume?"
 

Nurse Hume simply stood there and waited, all the fire gone from his pale blond hair, pasty skin, vacant eyes. He'd had been here for decades. This place had turned the man into a total drone. Some days I wondered if Charlie were more alive.
 

Well I wasn't going to let it happen to me. I wasn't just going to stand here and yank out claws. I wasn't going to spend my life tracking down lost horns and eyeballs.
 

Or was I?
 

Nurse Hume took the next set of charts and shuffled his way around the table. "X-rays indicate our next patient has ingested a horse."
 

"Excuse me?"
 

He posted the images to the light board next to my table. "His colleagues bet him that he was not, indeed, hungry enough to eat the unfortunate animal. And so he did."
 

I stared at Nurse Hume. Then at the X-rays.
 

"Son of a bitch."
 

He cleared his throat. "As you can imagine, hooves and harnesses are not digestible."
 

"So this is my life," I said to no one in particular.
 

"I can't imagine... ," Nurse Hume began before his voice trailed away.
 

"What? Do you want to say something to me?" Frankly, I wished he would. If Hume started getting opinions, there might be hope for the rest of us.
 

"No," he murmured. "Never mind."
 

Just when I was about to bang my head against my steel operating table, I heard a commotion on the far side of the tent.
 

"We need a doctor,
stat
!"
 

Ambulance workers loaded an immense New Order Army soldier from a stretcher onto a table. He must have just come in. They were still cutting his uniform from his body.
 

His face was hard. His jaw could have been cut from marble. He was well over six feet, with scars slicing across one impossibly wide shoulder.
 

He had powerful arms, cut abs. He was like a Greek statue come to life. Only he was more. Much more. Even prone, he was intensely powerful—striking in a way that went beyond mere physical strength.
 

He was commanding.
 

I stared at him, raw excitement thudding through me. I'd seen a lot of demi-gods, but none of them as astonishingly regal as this one.
 

He was rough, dangerous.
 

He was a work of art.
 

My breath caught.
He was watching me.
 

I crossed the crowded ER, intimately aware that he never took his attention off me. It was as if he'd come to find me.
 

Ridiculous.
 

He needed me because I was there. Everyone else was busy with the greased lighting victims. I was the only one who could handle this.
 

"What have you got?" I glanced at a sandy-haired EMT.
 

"Stab wound to the upper chest. Possible punctured lung."
 

Finally, a real case: a soldier who needed my skills, my expertise—me.
 

No wonder it felt good.
 

I ran through my mental checklist as I inspected the bronze knife lodged in his upper torso and took stock of his vitals.
 

He must have gone down during the storm. His clipped brown hair still held water droplets.
 

"What's his pressure?" I could feel my fingers shaking.
 

"Ninety-seven over fifty-six."
 

My patient fought for every breath, his impossibly blue eyes locked onto me.
 

"I'm going to save you," I told him.
 

The soldier closed his fingers over mine and squeezed, leaving a smear of blood across my hand.
 

"Get him over to my table."
 

I grabbed his file. His heart rate was dropping. Blood pressure down. He was hemorrhaging. I was glad to see Nurse Hume already at the table, prepping my instruments. "Patient is a male, mid-five-hundreds. Blood pressure's down to eighty over forty. Pulse is up to one twenty-six. Hook him up to both blood and saline." I took a final glance at his chart.
 

Galen of Delphi. Rank: Lokhagos. Decorated unit commander and head of the Green Hawk Special Forces team.
 

"You're in good hands, Galen of Delphi."
 

He nodded, wincing against the pain.
 

"Don't worry," I said for his benefit, and mine.
 

I could feel my blood pumping as I handed off his file.
 

Metal weapons wounds could be dicey. The commander's head slammed against the table as he began to convulse.
 

My gut clenched. "Let's get a move on, people."
 

Horace posted the X-rays. The knife was dangerously close to his heart. And convulsions meant poison.
 

"Get me one hundred twenty cc's of toxopren."
 

The drug was highly toxic, and flammable.
 

Nurse Hume offered me a prepared injection the size of a horse tranquilizer.
 

Both armies liked to poison their weapons. They usually used the blood of Medusa, or spittle from Cerberus, the three-headed dog of the underworld. I'd even seen them use Britney Spears perfume. We actually preferred that last one. It smelled nice and it wouldn't kill any mortals on staff.
 

The commander thrashed harder as I injected him with toxopren. Soon his entire face went red.
 

Toxopren burned as it neutralized the poison. The commander was lucky he was delirious. It was the kind of pain that made even the gods scream.
 

But that was the least of my worries. The poisoned blade was designed to split as it came out—over and over again. The shards would slice him apart, from the inside out, until he was well and truly dead.
 

"I hope you know what you're doing," Horace said.
 

"Don't you have some chariots to bless?"
 

I rubbed at the trickle of sweat working its way under my surgical cap.
Focus
. Of course I knew what I was doing. I'd looked this man in the eye and told him I'd pull him through. I just needed to concentrate.
 

The commander thrashed on the table.
 

"Hold him steady," I said. "I need him motionless."
 

It took both ambulance drivers to pin his arms and legs down.
 

I double-checked my grip on the leather handle of the knife and used the nervous tension to help me focus. The blade was millimeters from his heart. One wrong twitch and he'd be dead. One really bad move, the knife would shatter and we'd both be dead.
 

"Okay." I cleared my mind and tugged at the blade.
 

My stomach churned as I felt a droplet of sweat snake down the side of my face. I held steady, my fingers working the poisoned knife.
 

"Halfway there. We're doing good." Bracing my left hand against the closing wound, I extracted the knife with my right. I kept my grip steady, and followed the entry trajectory, until a piece broke. I watched it snap and disappear.
 

"Shit!"
 

His vitals plummeted. I tossed the remains of the dagger into a silver-lined tray. "Give me suction." I needed to see where the piece went. "Now."
 

The heart rate alarm sounded.
 

Nurse Hume dabbed blood away from the wound. Too slow. I yanked the suction tube out of his hand and did it myself.
 

"Stay with me," I ordered.
 

I needed to see where it went. He wasn't even thrashing anymore. One piece of the blade would kill him.
 

I saw it under his skin, inching down his chest, toward his stomach and bowels. It could just as easily nick the liver.
 

"Scalpel!"
 

"You can't just cut him open," Nurse Hume protested.
 

"You got a better idea?" I snapped.
 

Of all the times for him to grow a pair, this wasn't it.
 

The scary thing was I had no idea if it would work. But I didn't have any other options. Not to mention his original knife wound was still bleeding out.
 

"Stay with me," I repeated like a mantra.
 

With my scalpel tip, I followed the bulge of metal under his skin until I got about half an inch ahead of it. Then I sliced. Blood pooled in the wound. I spread my fingers and put pressure on either side as the tip of the shard emerged. I seized it. The deadly metal ground against my thin latex gloves.
 

Not a good idea.
 

I tossed the splinter into my tray. "See if I got it all," I ordered Hume as I suctioned more blood and felt for any remaining knife fragments.
 

A shrill alarm sounded as my patient flatlined.
 

"No, no, no, no." My mind raced.
 

Shocks didn't work on immortals. Adrenaline didn't work. His body had to heal itself, and now there was no more time.
 

His spirit began to rise from his body. "Stop!" I needed a minute more, maybe less. "I need more time."
 

The commander's spirit blinked at me, as if wondering where he was. I stared at him, throat dry, heart pounding. When he'd arrived on my table, I'd held his hand and told him I'd save him.