Nightshifted

The lights in the bathroom flickered and went out. We sat there in the dark with only the sound of the ambu bag exhaling sweet air into Shawn’s trach, which I held with one hand, and then at the baby, whom I trusted to remain in the general vicinity. I prayed that this last door would buy the Shadows enough time.

“What is that?” the charge hissed.

“I told you.” How could I expect her to believe me? I’d never even seen a were in person because Gina was always the were-vet-RN.

“Not that. That.” I felt her hand at my chest and looked down. My badge was glowing faintly, a warm gold. Huh.

“My penlight,” I lied. I could see the fear on her face from its dull glow. Shawn’s eyes were still wide, and the baby, not smart enough to be scared, reached out for my hand as I held the ambu bag above her face.

I couldn’t let them down. I couldn’t lose anyone else. I couldn’t be that person again.

“Here—” I grabbed the charge nurse’s hand and put the ambu bag into it.

“Why? Where are you—”

“Just stay here.” The baby cooed. I stroked her soft hair with my free hand. “Keep everyone quiet.”

I stood and tapped the door’s handle, to see if it was hot. It was, but not so much that I couldn’t grab it. I beat on the door to get the dragon’s attention. “I’m coming out!”

I’d only been on Y4 for a month, and one week of that had been watching lame training videos, some of which had involved puppets. And not good Jim Henson puppets, but hand-up-the-ass puppets, especially the videos about weres. I was completely unprepared for this, but goddammit, there had to be something I could do.

“My name is Edie Spence! I’m a noncombatant! You can’t hurt me! I’m coming out!” That much I remembered from training. I stepped swiftly out and closed the door behind me. I heard the charge nurse quickly relock the door.

I only had a second to take the room in. The dragon had slagged a hole into the room from the stairwell outside. It was still clawing its way through, using Shawn’s bed frame for traction. The fire-alarm light above made everything strobe red, like a haunted house.

And then it saw me. Its sleek green head lunged out, whip-fast, teeth clashing in midair. I screamed and jumped backward, my back slamming against the bathroom door.

“I’m a noncombatant!” I shouted, as I made myself small. I tried holding my badge up again. “You’re not allowed to hurt me!”

The dragon hadn’t gotten the memo. Maybe there weren’t noncombatants in Europe. It began scrabbling faster now, writhing its muscular body to snake inside.

I crawled around the perimeter of the room. Maybe I could draw its attention away, buy some time for the Shadows to hurry their mythical asses up.

It leveraged itself up by half a foot, scales scraping on the broken wall. I could see its round belly now, where an emberous glow was taking hold. It stretched its head out again, snapping at me, then went for the bathroom’s door.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

“Over here, you stupid thing!” I reached up against the back wall, unhooked a suction canister, and threw it at the beast. It hit the dragon’s side. The suction pump was next—made of solid metal, it was bound to get its attention. “Over here!” I shouted again, and then threw the pump at it with all my might.

The dragon’s head looped away and the pump thumped down into the shredded mattress. The dragon stretched forward like a cat and with one final lunge pulled itself free. It sat on its haunches on Shawn’s demolished bed, shrieking its triumph. I fell to my knees under the onslaught of its roar—lion, velociraptor, Godzilla, all rolled into one. Its tail lashed in violent sweeps, knocking down spare IV poles, tearing curtains, and it sent Shawn’s CD player skittering across the floor. I picked it up as the dragon lurched toward the bathroom.

“Hey!” I jumped up and waved my arms to get the dragon’s attention. It ignored me completely. “Hey, damn you—hey!” I threw the CD player at the dragon. It sailed end over end, like an oversized pill. The dragon snapped it out of midair and gulped it down. “Stop this! You have got to stop!”

At long last, the fire sprinklers went on, pouring down rust-laden water. I sputtered and edged back toward the bathroom. “You have got to stop this now!” The dragon paused and sat back on its haunches. I waited, and it waited—maybe I was getting through! I took a step forward, repeating myself. “I’m Edie Spence. I’m an official noncombatant. You’re not allowed to hurt me. You need to stop this.” The dragon bowed its mighty head. My heart raced. Was this a victory?

The light that I could see so clearly in its belly was moving higher now, like rising mercury on a summer day. It pulled its head down to rest on its own chest and I saw the light inside its stomach rise up into its neck.

I should have recognized the expression. Lord knows I’d seen enough patients puke.

“Fuck.” I cast my glowing badge up in front of my face, fully expecting my illuminated employee number to be the last thing I’d ever see.

And then the German began. I didn’t know what Grandfather was saying, but he was pissed. The German rose in tone and intent, louder and louder in volume, until it became more frightening than the dragon’s roar, even though it too was coming from inside the dragon. It became louder than any concert or club I’d ever been at, each syllable reverberating in my chest—I could feel it change the course of my beating heart.

The dragon opened its mouth as I heard one last Germanic battle cry.

By the light of its own belly, the dragon ruptured. It split at the seams—legs, stomach, spine—and chunks of hot dragon flesh flew outward, sizzling as they touched the water raining down. A large piece caught me in my chest and knocked me on my ass. I could hear dragon pieces land with wet smacks across the room, and a stench worse than from any rectal tube rose up. I was covered in dragon meat, green scales, pink bone, charred flesh—the room was slimed with it, the crib, the teddy bears, Shawn’s bed, the bags of Doritos. I had to fight to keep myself from gagging.

In the middle of all the chaos and gore, the melted CD player’s power light glowed a baleful low-battery yellow before finally winking out. I crawled through the muck over to it.

“What—how?” I picked it up and shook it. From my vantage point on the floor I could see people walking toward the rooms, past the curtains, outside.

And then the cavalry arrived.

They weren’t dust bunnies after all.

Spots on the ground that were shaded by monitors, desks, and chunks of dragon meat started moving. Anywhere darkness pooled it gathered and grew, tendrils of black snaking along the ground. The Shadows—the protectors of the hospital, the ones I’d heard stories about but had never had occasion to see—were here at last.

A heat-popped soda can spun in small circles near my foot, like a firework going out—the Shadows covered this in passing, and it disappeared. A sheet of them formed where the curtains darkened the floor, and I saw them merging on the walls in between the light strobes. A group of them started pooling in my shadow, and I grabbed for my badge instinctively. They ignored me, washing around me and through-underneath-over the bathroom door, which opened without a turning of the handle or a loosing of the lock, and pulled out one shell-shocked charge nurse and my two respiratorily compromised patients. They appeared frozen in time and space, stiff like mannequins, hoisted into the middle of the room on a wave of black. The fire-alarm light stopped and the sprinklers ceased. I watched while all around me they washed over every surface, cleaning it, like demented fairies from a children’s tale, where the price of clean dishes and fresh linen was blood. I didn’t know what they did to the dragon’s remains—did they incinerate it? Eat it? But the hole in the wall sealed up after their passage, and a reunited mattress emerged from underneath a separate slick of black. They replaced Shawn and the baby in their respective beds, and surged the charge nurse out-through-between the closed glass doors back to the desk outside. I peeked at the clock, half expecting them to wind back time too. And then they were done, except for—

“Oh, no—” I backed away from the pool of them growing at my feet. But I was the last thing that needed to be cleaned. I gasped as they lapped up, colder than ice, crawling down inside my socks, rolling up against my skin beneath my scrubs, to pull themselves toward my scalp, submerging me completely in their dark.

In a second I was nowhere. I was no one. No—I was me, but I was suddenly aware of how inconsequential being me was. I didn’t matter, nothing I would do would ever matter, I would eat, breathe, and shit just like everything else on this planet, but nothing would ever have a consequence. I was worthless, my small life utterly bereft of meaning, and when I died, I would die alone. I gasped like I’d been punched in the stomach, and then they began to let me go.

I caught the baby’s crib to stay standing, and leaned against it, wishing I could undo … undo … everything, really. From the beginning. Just everything at all.

Then they receded like a tide of La Brea tar, holding just as many bones, leaving me with honest dark. I stood in the middle of my reconstituted room, with my two living patients, and a set of memories that were mine alone. I looked out through my now open curtains and the charge nurse down the hall waved cheerfully at me. I waved weakly back.

Then I slumped down into my chair, hidden by the computer desk, and put my head between my knees. The intercom clicked on above. “The fire drill is now over. Thank you for your participation.”

You’re welcome, I suppose, I thought. It was a long while before I sat upright again.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Everyone stuck around to hear my story in the locker room hallway that morning. I told it as quickly as I could, except for the part where the Shadows had submerged me, which I didn’t share at all. Charles nodded knowingly, Gina hung on my every word, and Meaty was, well, Meaty.

“You did all right, all things considered,” Meaty said.