For the Dead Travel Fast
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The phone rang at the bedside.
Kate was half asleep when she answered, dragging herself across the bed in nothing more than an undershirt. "Yeah?"
"Hi, this is Kate, right? This is your nurse, Tessa Harry; Walt is with me too. Dr Harris and I have looked over your bloodwork and that of your husband, Rick. Do you have some time to talk with me about it? We think your husband is likely in phase, or about to be—"
"He is," Kate rasped, her eyes on his unconscious form. Sweat slicked her neck and made the shirt cling to her. "He has a fever."
"Which is normal, but we'd like to have a nurse on call for you, and to monitor his vitals. Would that be okay?"
"We can talk?" she said, rubbing a hand over her eyes. This was on her now, and her alone. She had to figure out how to trust. "I mean, face to face."
"Yes, that would be ideal. I can meet you outside your hall in about five minutes?"
"Give me ten," she said. "I just woke up."
"Okay then, ten minutes."
The phone clicked and went dead and Kate slowly replaced the receiver, bemused by the landline, wondering if she could (or even should) pick it up and call Alexis.
Later.
She pulled on a pair of yoga pants that weren't too grimy and rubbed her eyes, threaded her way through the rooms to the exterior door. It led onto a hallway, and she felt the cool trickle of air around her, wondered if this isolation ward was also negative pressure. At the far end of the hall, coming towards her, was Walt with a young native woman in scrubs, her pony tail swinging as she walked.
"Hi!" She was also very cheerful. "I'm Tessa Harry; I'm a nurse, usually on the addiction and rehab side, but I pitch in when Dr Harris doesn't know what kind of vampires she's dealing with." She crossed her arms in front of her, over a file folder, beaming. "Since I'm not one, and can't smell you, and don't get scared easily."
Kate blinked, cleared her throat, paused down the hall from them. "Uh. Hi."
"Come on, there's a nice comfy conference room this way." She gestured and dived like a fish through a doorway, leaving Walt and now Kate to follow.
Which she did. The conference room was rather comfortable, with plush carpeting and groupings of tables and chairs, nothing at all like a board room, cloth blinds on the windows, a coffemaker on a back counter.
"Want coffee?" Tessa said. She was already pouring herself a cup.
"Yes, please. Thank you." Who had made the coffee, so that it was fresh for this meeting?
"Sorry to have woken you, but we let it go as long as we thought prudent," Tessa said. "Walt is here with me because I understand there are some misconceptions about us here at Transitions, as well as deep mistrust for vampires, which I definitely want to allay, and anything I can do to—"
"Are you a nurse, or are you a therapist?"
Tessa chuckled and returned to a table with two coffees. "I'm just very used to the recovery side of things. Come sit with me. Walt, will you grab us some creamer when you get yours?"
"Do for myself, I see," Walt snorted. But it was good-natured, and when he returned with his own coffee—and the creamer—she saw him lay his hand on Tessa's shoulder and squeeze.
"Oh," Kate realized, sitting down hard. "She's your daughter."
"Daughter-in-law," Tessa corrected.
"Sure is," Walt grinned.
"Okay, well…" Kate waved away whatever last traces of suspicion she might have had. "What's the bloodwork saying?"
Tessa grinned. "Try the coffee first. Before you add creamer, I mean. It's gonna blow your mind."
Kate paused, once again no idea what to say. This woman didn't seem to want to do anything in order and Kate was being thrown off her game with every swerve in conversation. But she plucked up the coffee mug and sniffed before taking a sip—
"Oh, that's good coffee. No, you're right, no creamer needed."
Tessa nodded, beaming at Walt. "I told you. She just has the look of a coffee gourmand."
"Snob, you mean," Walt said, but Kate noticed he didn't add creamer to his either.
Kate took another sip, then another, let the heat unwind her tense muscles and relax her shoulders. She'd seen Tessa drink of it first, and in fact, the nurse had pointed it out, proving that it wasn't laced with anything, not that Kate assumed—
Except part of her did assume. And she wasn't sure she could turn off that part of her. "Since we're paused, is there some kind of laundry facility on this floor? We need clean clothes."
"We do have community laundry on every floor, but due to your dual predicament—this relates to your bloodwork, actually—I bet Walt wouldn't mind taking your clothes to the laundry? Walt?"
"Sure."
"Oh, no, don't do that—" Kate tried to protest but Walt was waving her off in that same exact manner her own father did. And that was the trigger, just that shrugging manner, which made her realize she had instinctively trusted Walt just as she might her own father, though he was likely ten years younger. Her father, who had no idea what was happening to her, who might have his only real information from Martha, whose dramatics were legendary (she would not say histrionics, but—)
"My pleasure. You're in a kind of isolation anyway. They want to be careful of you both. Freshly washed clothes will go a long way to helping."
"The smell," she said, grimacing. She ducked her nose to her own shirt, but all she smelled was body odor, the normal kind.
"Neither of us can tell," Tessa said, grinning as she pulled a bright pink pen from her pocket. It had a rainbow pom on the end, and when she smooshed it, the ballpoint clicked out. "This is ostensibly a tribal recovery center, alcohol and drug rehab, we get federal grants, and currently we do have in residence seventeen patients. But we also have, on this side, blood families who are undergoing a transition in one of their members. We firmly believe that transitions are easier with the blood family around for moral support—"
"And blood letting," Kate cut in.
"Usually some drinking," Tessa nodded, pushing out some paperwork from her file folder. "Some drinking of the blood, back and forth, bonds a stronger family, but too much, a Letting, and you wind up creating an entirely new blood group. Which is what we assume has happened with you two?"
"How much is too much?" Kate hedged.
"Oh, if you have to ask—"
"No, we… haven't really. Drinking, yes, but not Letting. See, I had a bad—I was transitioned in my early twenties, right out of… school, and it went very badly for me. I was in a lot of pain, I ran away and he caught me again and basically had to sit on me, but that meant hourly bloodlettings—"
"Oh God, no," Tessa said, flinching. "No, that's not how it's supposed to go. At all. Oh, Kate, I'm so very distressed to hear that." She reached across the table and laid her hand on Kate's wrist, briefly. "That sounds more like a sexual assault than—"
"He wouldn't have sex with me—" Kate bit off that terribly worded defense and tried again. "We were lovers, beforehand. That is, I thought we were. I convinced him to transition me; I wanted to have what he had. But it didn't take, all the way, I guess."
Tessa pressed her hands to the table. "That isn't how it's supposed to happen." Her eyes were just so dark and liquid; Kate had to keep her gaze steady on the ridiculous rainbow pom on the pen to keep from burning with fresh tears. "Okay, I can see this is upsetting, and long ago trauma isn't what you're here for. Though, as a nurse on the recovery side, we do have some therapists who would—"
"That was my next mistake, taking another vampire to bed, so no," Kate bit out. "Thank you though."
Tessa nodded as if she understood, both hands raised in surrender. "I get it, girl. Don't worry. You'll hear nothing more from me." She snatched up her pen and began to write, jotting down notes on the paperwork. "But this does help us explain why we haven't ever seen your blood family before, and also why you give off certain chemical signals similar to a recently transitioned individual."
"Because I am. Recent, that is. Castle, my husband, his transition has triggered the completion of my own."
"Yes, that seems most likely," Tessa agreed. "Dr Harris thinks that her sister suggested some drinking, back and forth, between you two?"
"She did."
"Yes, there are signs of that. How much, though?"
"Only a few times, at first, back and forth. Um, three?"
"Complete passes, or are we getting into Letting territory?"
"Oh, no, not that. But I don't know about a complete pass: it was me drinking from him first, then him from me, then back. I think just those three, so one and a half? Maybe two passes?"
"Oh." Tessa glanced to Walt, as if that was some kind of improbable information. "Only? Are you sure?"
"Yes? No. I can't remember." She wasn't sure if the sex part of things was… accurate medical information. "It's been a really long day."
"Oh, yes, I'm sure it has. With such a strong pheromone coming off you two, so I'm told, that would be like running the gauntlet."
"It was." She rubbed her eyes and took another hit of the coffee, gulping more of it now that it wasn't so hot. "You sounded surprised?"
"Oh, so when I said complete passes, that's a term for passing antigens—which I should have realized you wouldn't know—and can take anywhere from six hours to a few days. You said you'd been on the road for a while, and that you were with Dr Harris's sister, the researcher, and I wasn't sure how long a time that had been."
Kate blanked.
"Or can you tell me how many months or weeks it's been since first transition?"
"Weeks?" Kate croaked, shaking her head blindly. "No. No, it's been only a few days." She tried to think, to reach back into the telescope of time for the accurate amount. "Three? Two? I can't…"
"Three days at the longest?" Tessa's pen stopped. "That's not possible." She tossed her head, thumped the pom on the table. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't say that. We're talking about old world mythology, aren't we? My father in law's tribe has a story about the Blood Clot Boy—"
"I told her," Walt said happily.
"My tribe is smaller, and dwindling, and our stories are mostly lost, but my mother has tales she tells my children to make them stay in their beds at night, and those are the blood-takers. And here I work in a rehab center where I see them every day, every night, and yet I tell my daughter, hush, there's no such thing." Tessa shook her head. "So I should stop saying that, shouldn't I? You tell me, how long did your transition take, if you don't mind delving into some of the past."
"Um. A week, I think. Or maybe a few more days over a week. But he made me get STD tested for three months after, so I think he was looking for something that never showed."
"Perhaps." She pressed her lips together. "Did he ever tell you how long his own transition took?"
Kate rubbed her jaw, tried to recall if that had ever been mentioned, even as a dig against her for how wrong she was turning out. "No? But I had the idea, all those three months of testing, that three months was excessive, that he was holding out hope for something he already didn't think would happen."
"Was this vampire part of a family, that you know of?"
"No family," she said, with certainty. "He wanted me for… for his family."
Tessa sat back. Her face was just too emphatic; she saw too much. "I see. It's possible he was an ancient family that we no longer see. Like a tribe that is dying out."
Kate flinched. She'd never thought of Royce like that, a dying endangered species.
"Whatever he did," Tessa said quietly. "It should have taken much longer than a week. And the two of you? Your bloodwork has all the indicators of months of transition, just as it should have happened, naturally over time. Months."
Months. God. What were they? What had she done to him?
"Your initial transition, which didn't take, as you say—"
"The other Dr Harris said my lichen wasn't balanced," Kate remembered. "That the… um, the alliinase inhibitor? that part wasn't viable, and if left unchecked—I think the fungal part, without the algae, um, I might be confusing those—if I hadn't transitioned Castle, and he hadn't taken my blood right off like that, like a Letting—I'd have been dead in months of iron toxicity."
Tessa startled, but then began writing, fast, to get down everything Kate had said. "Oh good, this is good stuff, a Letting right off, a couple of back and forth drinks, the algal imbalance, okay, so glad you found Dr Harris's sister and then Dr Harris—we can't call that dumb luck, it's more like divine intervention, really—"
Or a kid on a taco truck.
"Let me get this to Dr Harris," Tessa said, pushing back from the table. "Walt, you mind getting her laundry and then bringing back some of those packs of Cloves?"
"We had garlic and onion shakes," Kate admitted.
"Oh, they're not garlic cloves, it's ginger. It's a different thing, but it helps accelerate phases, which is already what your bodies are doing naturally—well, his is, at least, and yours is being dragged along behind, it seems—and Dr Harris wanted you—just you, Kate—to chew on our specialty cloves—"
"Chew on ginger?" she protested.
"Oh, it's gum, it's not a whole—I'm so sorry, I'm just excited about this, this is good information, and you were both such a weird puzzle—it's chewing gum. You'll go through a whole pack. Spit it out when it loses its taste. Call me if you run into problems, but I'm sure I'll be calling you first."
Kate was left bewildered as Tessa sped out of the conference room.
Walt chuckled. "She's something, isn't she? Leaves my son in her dust. I think it's why they married. He's slow as a turtle, and she's the whirlwind itself."
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