The slam of a car door jolted Joel from his slumber, his eyes snapping open. "Sheila, Sheila!" he whispered, shaking his wife, causing Sheila to groggily roll over towards her husband.
"What is it, honey?" she mumbled, wiping the sleep from her eyes as she watched her husband grab his phone, checking the screen, before jumping out of bed, and rush toward the door.
"I need you to make sure Abby doesn't come downstairs until I give the signal," he plead.
"Why is something wrong with Eric?" she asked, her worry and panic for the young teenager, growing.
"Nothing like that, I stayed with him until 3:00am and there were no major changes," he soothed as Sheila visibly relaxed, "It's just that Dr. Wolf is here," he sighed opening the door as Sheila let out a gasp, worried for what this could mean for Eric.
Joel took off down the stairs rushing towards the living room, where Dr. Wolf already stood over a sleeping Eric. "What, why, how did you get in my house?" Joel whispered angrily, once he'd recovered from his shock at seeing the woman already in his home.
"Please, you think I can vivisect a variety of creatures, yet you're surprised I can pick a simple tumbler lock?" scoffed the blonde woman, casting a light glare at Joel for his ignorance, before going back to inspecting Eric. She pulls out a stethoscope, pressing it around to Eric's chest and checking his temperature, before pulling away to pull out a notebook from her pocket and jotting down some notes. "Now you said that when your wife transformed, it was just normal behavior followed by immense vomiting, the expulsion of a small organ, and the bleeding black?" she listed off, as Joel listened raptly.
"Correct, but we now know that those organs are sentient," Joel replied, shocked when the only reaction he got from the woman was a brief pause from her notetaking.
"Fascinating. Now was the transformation any different for yours?" she replied, not even looking up from her notebook, as Joel froze, stunned.
"No. Wait...what...how did you know?" he spluttered as Doctor Wolf snapped her notebook shut, to look at Joel.
"You haven't blinked in the last 5 minutes and you live in a house with your zombie wife, I can put two and two together. Now tell me, did she bite you during intercourse or were you attacked during a fight like this young man?" she asked, surveying a blushing Joel.
"Uh, neither, but we can talk about me later, I need you to help me with Eric. Something's different this time. He's the first person we've heard of to pass out from the bite," he snapped, getting irritated.
"Well I'll need to do some additional tests, but I've never actually seen this process so you and your wife may have to fill in what seems most abnormal to you if anything," she said opening the duffel bag beside her, pulling out several surgical instruments, before settling on a large blade, much to Joel's horror.
"What do you think you are doing with that? Get away from my boyfriend you psycho bitch!" shrieked Abby sprinting down the stairs with Sheila chasing close behind the frantic teenager. Once at the base of the stairs, Joel was barely able to keep Abby from lunging at the woman.
"I'm simply gathering some samples for testing. I've never seen the transformation before so I'd prefer to document this specimen before we have to put him down," replied Doctor Wolf, disappointed that she would be losing such an important sample to study.
"He's not some specimen, he's my boyfriend and you won't be touching him! And who told you that you'll be getting rid of him? He's not some lab rat that you can just play with and then dispose of when you're done," screamed Abby, wrenching herself from her parents' grip.
"Why isn't that the plan we agreed upon, right Joel? You told me to see if I could stop the transformation and in return, I could document as much as I needed before you and Sheila got rid of him, should we be unsuccessful," replied the disgruntled woman, straightening her lab coat as Abby turned to glare at her parents with the utmost rage.
"You two told her what!" snarled Abby her rage now switched from the doctor to her parents. "You told me you'd help him if he became like you guys!" she practically growled, putting herself between her parents and Eric.
"We're just worried that if Eric becomes, different, that it might tip of the Knights of Serbia," reasoned Joel, but Abby's gaze didn't waver.
"You see honey, we're just worried about you both, I mean what if Eric doesn't want to be like us?" soothed Shelia, seeing her daughter's look of betrayal. Not caring about the tension in the room, Doctor Wolf grabbed the scalpel, and with one fluid motion cut off a piece flesh from Eric's forearm, dropping it into a test tube so quickly that Abby didn't even have time to react as Eric's hand twitched in reaction to the pain.
"You bitch! How could you do that to him?" she sobbed, grabbing a nearby rag to stop the bleeding, wrapping her free hand around Eric's as Doctor Wolf placed a portion of the sample onto a microscope slide. Unfazed by the teen's outburst, the Doctor Wolf placed the slide onto a microscope on the kitchen island, making Joel wonder how long she'd been in the house before he came downstairs this morning as he strolled over to her.
"Well, has he transformed yet?" asked Joel, earring a negative nod from Doctor Wolf.
"It seems like something's off. Actually, would you mind calling the rest of your family down, it'd be easier to have to explain only once," muttered the woman as the color washed from Joel's face as he gestured his wife and daughter over.
"Is he okay? Like is he going to be in control like my parents?" said Abby shaking as she finally pried herself away from her seat beside Eric, desperately hoping that the change wouldn't alter the man she loved too much, for both their sakes.
"Well, the thing is, the bite doesn't seem to be reacting like what you described, in fact, his immune reaction, you would say, is anything but normal," she stated, earning a confused look from the family. Joel was about to ask a question, but before he could get a word out he was interrupted by a concerned Sheila.
"So is he one of us now?" asked Sheila walking over to her husband.
"No, in fact, quite the contrary, his body seems to be fighting the transformation, and it's winning," stuttered the regularly emotionless Doctor as the Hammonds looked at the slumbering teenage boy in pure shock.