Warning: Very graphic surgery ahead, description mostly anatomical. Next chapter will be much more emotion based, if you've been waiting for that, it's coming.
Enjoy.
Magnus hadn't taken two steps before her radio burst in to life again.
"Magnus, she was faking it." Kate's voice, strained. "She waited 'till I couldn't see her, got behind the door, went wolf and barged me. She's coming your way."
"Damn it! Kate, are you injured?"
"I'm OK."
"Armed?"
"Got live, but no stunner."
"After her, but don't shoot to kill."
"Got it."
"Mum, I've got my Desert Eagle, and I'm miles from an armoury."
"Join up with Kate. We have to catch her. If she breaks perimeter, we're in trouble."
"Doc, I can seal off the lower levels." Henry put in.
"But that cuts me off." Will put in.
"We can handle this." Ashley said. "It's one oversized dog."
"Henry, you and I need to get to an armoury." Magnus said, cursing herself for leaving her pistol in the van. Henry got up and followed her at a run. They turned right, in to the main lab. It was a moment before either of them heard it.
A low soft growl from behind them. They both turned. The HAP stood there, bristling, growling. For a second, they looked at each other, frozen. Then the HAP charged. Magnus and Henry bolted apart. The HAP froze where they had been, then turned on Magnus. She was unarmed. She couldn't fight. She ran. The HAP cut across her again. The HAP drove her back. It was toying with her, cornering her, knowing she couldn't stop it. Henry was no stronger than she, he couldn't help her. The HAP came at her, knocking her off her feet. She punched at the underside of its jaw. It yelped and reared. Magnus scrambled away. It bought her barely a second. She felt its paws on her back. She fell. She could feel its breath on the back of her neck.
A baying howl. The paws disappeared from her back. Snarling filled the air. Magnus rolled over. Two HAPs tumbled over each other, thrashing, clawing. Henry. Henry was fighting the other HAP. Which was he? They moved so fast, were so close together, that she couldn't see where one ended and the other began.
Running footsteps. Two figures. Ashley and Kate, guns levelled. Magnus drew breath to shout a warning. Both opened fire. Both HAPs fell to the floor, on top of eachother, still moving, bleeding, howling in pain.
"Oh my God." Ashley breathed. "Which one's Henry?"
Magnus ran forward, scruffed the uppermost HAP and dragged it clear. Blood gushed from its abdomen. Its howl became a high-pitched scream as she moved it. Magnus released its scruff and pulled one hindleg forward. Female.
"That one." Magnus pointed to the other. He was as bloody as the female, his howling had subsided in to whines, not necessarily a good sign. Nothing with collapsing lungs could howl, or anything in clinical shock. If she lost him...
"What happened?" Bigfoot ran in.
"Both HAPs injured. We treat Henry first. Get him to the OR." Magnus pointed , indicating Henry again, then set off at a run to gown up.
"Ashley and Kate have the other one." Bigfoot said, shouldering the OR doors open, Henry still cradled in his arms. Magnus nodded.
"Put him down and re-scrub. You're no longer-"
"Aseptic. I know." Bigfoot obeyed. Magnus turned to Henry.
"Henry can you hear me?" He nodded, chest rising and falling rapidly. Pulse? Very fast, but not as faint as she'd feared. How much of this blood was actually his, and where was he bleeding from? There was most blood on his abdomen and his shoulder. If there was a bullet in either of those places, abdomen would kill him faster. She reached for the swabs and started work, looking for the wound.
The blood didn't replenish itself as Magnus removed it. There was no wound there. Magnus sighed in relief and turned to Henry's shoulder.
"I need you to stay in HAP form, Henry." She said, more for the purpose of talking to him than anything else. "Otherwise I won't be able to get the bullet out. If you morph, your tissues move over each other, they'll trap the bullet." Bigfoot lifted Henry's top lip away from his teeth.
"Pale." He remarked.
"Prep blood for transfusion, and 7mg morphine." Magnus reached for the forceps, hoping she wouldn't have to mangle the tissue too much. She slid the surgical probe in beside the bullet. Henry emitted a high yelp of pain. "I'm sorry Henry, this has to be done." Bigfoot returned with the morphine. "No, not yet. If he passes out while he's like this, he won't morph back and I won't be able to stitch him." When he did morph back, the movement would pull the sutures through him like cheese wire. Magnus felt the forceps close around the bullet. Henry yowled again as she drew it back along the path by which it had entered.
"Mum." Ashley pushed the door open, fear all over her face. "The other one is restrained. What do we do now?"
"Standard first aid. Pressure on wounds, but don't endanger yourself. If she stops breathing, use a funnel and muzzle her first, resuscitate as you would any canis." Ashley didn't leave. She was still looking at Henry.
"He'll be fine." Magnus turned back to her patient. "Henry, listen to me. I need you to be in human form now. Once you are, we can give you morphine." Henry's eyes closed. "No. Henry, stay with me. His shoulders contorted. He was morphing. Relief flooded her. Now she could treat him. "That's it." She breathed. Bigfoot threw a blanket over him, just before his fur disappeared. Magnus slid the morphine-loaded needle in to Henry's axillary vein in his uninjured arm, before Henry's head had quite returned to normal. The bullet wound was now on his back. She rolled him over, exposing it.
"Suture."
It didn't take her long to close the wound, in spite of how distorted it was by the morph. Henry had lost consciousness, but his pulse was stronger and steady. While Ashley took Henry down to the infirmary, Bigfoot fetched the second HAP.
"Bad." He shouted, laying the limp, bloody form on the table. "Pulse barely there, bleeding everywhere."
"There's a bullet in her abdomen. Our first priority is to deal with that." The blood was appearing from not one site, but two, one just behind the ribs, the other just in front of her pelvis.
"I'll hook her up to a monitor." Bigfoot offered.
"Do. Intubate as well. This could be a long job." She couldn't see what she was doing for blood. The bullet was deep, very deep. If it was in the HAP's stomach or pancreas, it was over. Sepsis would have set in by now. Which side was the stomach in a HAP? She'd never dissected one. She had to widen the wound of she'd never find the bullet. Magnus slit the skin back an inch and eased the tissues apart. Bigfoot reappeared and held them. Magnus swabbed the wound out and, for an instant, she could see. Metal glinted in a solid mass of tissue. Liver. The bullet was embedded in the HAP's liver. Magnus reached for the forceps and recovered it.
"There's nothing more to be done here. Set up a fluid drip. We don't want her in deep shock if we can avoid it."
"Hoh." Magnus turned to the second wound, painfully aware of the HAP's low blood pressure and slow, irregular heartbeat. The second bullet hadn't gone in straight, perpendicular to the HAP's spine, it was angled in to the seat of the pelvis.
"How conscious is she?"
"Way out. Gums are white."
"Oh dear God. How much blood do you think she's lost."
"A lot."
"I need to get that bullet out, but that would be fairly invasive surgery."
"She's dead if you don't." Magnus nodded and reached for the scalpel again. As soon as she disturbed the endimetrium, she knew something was wrong, badly wrong. It didn't smell of blood, or even dog. It smelled of urine. She widened the wound further, chasing the bullet. Then she saw it. Two concentric, hollow spheres, the outer pink, the inner red lay pierced before her, contents lost to the abdominal cavity. It had been a bladder once. Now it was nothing.
The monitor emitted a single, high tone. Bigfoot went for the defibrillator.
"Leave it." He stopped and looked at her. "Ruptured bladder. She'd be dead in hours." He looked in to the wound Magnus was holding open.
"Hoh. No chance."
"Not with that much blood already lost." Bigfoot reached and turned the monitor off.
"We tried." Magnus sighed and lowered her head.
"That we did."
"What do you want me to do with the body?"
"Store it. I'll dissect it at some point. I know next to nothing about these creatures. I'll clean up here."
"Hoh." Bigfoot disconnected the monitor and the drip, bundled the body in to a bag and carried it out. Magnus set about the table, first with hot water and soap. If they'd treated the female first, could they have saved her? She wouldn't have lost as much blood, so she might have survived surgery. Might. Even if they'd patched up the physical damage, the chemical damage from the urea might have been fatal, and both layers of the bladder were broken. It would have been nigh on impossible to repair that. Henry might have bled to death while they'd tried. She'd sacrificed any chance the female had had saving Henry. Better that than the reverse, however unprofessional that sentiment was. Henry was the closest she had to a son.