"Tears are for the craven. Prayers are for the clown.
Halters for the silly neck that cannot keep a crown.
As my loss is grievous, so my hope is sma—"
There was a knock at the window. Most of the room stopped singing as the reddish-brown gargoyle opened the window and stepped inside. A few who refused to be fazed by the sight, or least refused to admit to being fazed, continued singing.
"So my hope is small,
For Iron, Cold Iron, must be master of men all."
"Sorry to interrupt," Brooklyn said before anyone could start the next verse. "Julie, we need you. Lex is hurt."
She dropped all pretence of not knowing the gargoyles. "Hurt as in needs me to come and give first aid, or hurt as in needs to go to my operating room?"
"I think it might be a good idea if he went to your place, where you'd have your surgical tools," Brooklyn admitted reluctantly.
Julie stood, dug into her blue jeans pocket, pulled out her keys, and tossed them to the gargoyle. "You know where my car's parked? Go get it warmed up. I'll grab my stuff and meet you down there in a minute."
"Be quicker if we fly," Brooklyn said.
"Maybe, but I doubt you could carry me and Lex. Go warm up the car." She headed for her bedroom, then turned for a second. "Just get it started, nothing else. This is no time for another driving lesson."
Brooklyn nodded, too concerned about his rookery-brother to care how much he and Julie were revealing about their relationship.
"If you need to transport a wounded gargoyle, don't put him in Julie's back seat. Take my van," Zack Sinclair offered. "Dan, you got your 'gumball' ?"
"In my car," Det. Dan Napier, NYPD, responded. "But it's only legal if I'm in the car while it's on."
"You drive. You've got paramedic training, you might be able to help Julie." Zack gave Dan his keys. "Take good care of my baby."
"You don't even know Lex," Brooklyn said.
Zack smiled. It was the smile his fiancée hated, the one that made women in five boroughs melt. "You can introduce us later."
Julie came back, jacket on, black bag in hand. "Why are you still here?"
"Change in plans. I'll explain on the way downstairs," Dan said.
"Meet you there." Brooklyn ducked back out the window.
Julie looked around. Kathy was a born-again Christian, and wouldn't miss church for anything less than a broken leg. Ed and Susan had to get home before the babysitter worried. Harold had to work on Sundays. Matt wasn't trustworthy. Karen … Zack's fiancée Karen Jensen didn't have to be up early tomorrow, and she was reliable. "Can you take over as hostess, Karen? I may not be back until breakfast."
She nodded.
"Fine. See you when I see you."
"Ciao."
"Vaya con la Fuerza."
"Give us all the gory details when you get back."
Juliet Heyes, Th. D., D.V.M., stopped at the door. "Anything that happens will be covered by doctor-patient confidentiality."
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
With Det. Napier at the wheel, his 'gumball' blazing atop Zack's van, they rushed to Lexington's rescue.
"What happened?" Julie asked.
"We were stopping a bodega from being robbed, when Lex got two bullets in the wing. I think his arm's broken, and his wing," Brooklyn shook his head, "it's bad, Julie. He can't fly."
"I'll do what I can," the blonde veterinarian promised.
"I tried to call, but your line was busy."
"That was probably when Susan was checking with the babysitter," Dan said. "So, how long have you two known each other? I know you've been eavesdropping on filks for a couple months now."
"Nearly half a year," Brooklyn admitted. He knew Dan Napier was trying to get his mind off Lexington's injury, and he was grateful for the attempt. "We met a few days after she was on TV, standing up for us."
"When you started lurking outside the windows at filks, I thought maybe Julie already knew some gargoyles before she went on TV."
"See what happens when you don't have the brains to have an unlisted number," Julie muttered. "Drop-in company all the time."
Dan asked, "Which way at the corner, left or right?"
"Left," Brooklyn directed him.
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Horn honking, light flashing, they reached Spanish Harlem quickly. Dan, Julie, and Brooklyn hurried out of the van and into the bodega.
Dan pulled out his badge. "NYPD," he announced.
Lexington, a small green gargoyle, lay on the floor. Broadway, a much larger blue gargoyle hovered over him, watching uneasily as the blood seeped through the makeshift bandage on his rookery-brother's left wing.
"You no arrest him. This gargoyle, he's a hero," the store's owner protested.
"Not planning to arrest anybody, except the ones who did this," Dan assured him.
"Julie!" Broadway exclaimed. "Am I glad you're here."
Julie knelt beside Lexington. "How you feeling, Lex?"
"Hurts," he admitted. The strained look on his face, the frightened expression in his eyes, and the grayish cast to his green skin told her just how much pain he was in – lots.
"Let me take a look," Julie said gently. She removed the blood-soaked towel covering his wing. She tried to keep her expression neutral as she examined the shattered wing-bone. She didn't want to frighten him, but with two bullet holes through the bone, she didn't know if he'd ever fly again.
"He's lost a lot of blood," Broadway told her. Worry was written on his face with a capital W, and his voice was concerned.
Julie nodded. With all the blood he'd lost, she wasn't even certain if he'd survive. She touched his fingertips. "Can you feel that?"
"Yeah." Lexington's voice was weak.
"Good. No nerve damage." She turned to Dan, Brooklyn, and Broadway. "We need to get him to my OR right away. Find something you can use to carry him to the van. Be very careful of his wing." She placed gauze pads over the two gunshot wounds, and rebandaged them. She rummaged through her black bag, but the only painkiller she could find was a bottle of Tylenol. She grabbed the bottle, thought a second, then released it. She had no idea how Tylenol would react with the medicines in her OR. Safer to let him endure the pain for a little bit than to risk a bad drug interaction. "We're going to have to wait until we get to my clinic before I can give you anything for the pain," she told Lexington. "Hang tough, okay?"
"I'll try."
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
DeMarcus Foster, the night security guard, unlocked the clinic door and opened it for Julie. "Here you go, Doc."
"Thanks, DeMarcus." She nodded to the tall, slender guard. Both of them watched as Broadway carried Lexington in. Dan and Brooklyn followed. "And maybe this doesn't need to go into your report?" she suggested.
In his best Sgt. Schultz imitation, DeMarcus replied, "I see nothing."
"Thanks."
"Call when you're ready to leave, Doc." The security guard turned to go, ready to return to his rounds.
"This may be an all-nighter," Julie warned him. She led the way into the zoo clinic's combination operating room/lab. "Put him on that table, please." She turned to a coat rack and put on her lab jacket, then went to the sink to scrub her hands.
"What can we do to help?" Brooklyn asked.
"There's a little screen on the side of that table. Read me the numbers," she ordered as she put on her gloves. "First we'll get his weight, then I'll take an X-ray."
Brooklyn snarled at her: "You're wasting time putting him on a scale when Lex could be dying? Er, is hurt," he corrected himself when he realized Lexington was listening.
"I've gotta know his weight to give a proper dosage of painkiller. With hollow bones, I can't make an accurate guess, and an overdose could be more dangerous than bullets." She maneuvered the X-ray machine into position as she spoke. "Hold still, Lex. Just gonna take a picture."
"Our bones are hollow?" Broadway asked. He'd never given any serious consideration to his anatomy … other than his stomach.
Julie nodded. "How else could someone your size fly?" She grabbed a blood pressure cuff from the cupboard. "Dan, do you know how to take blood pressure?"
"Yeah."
"Good. Get the BP for me while I set up an IV." A saline solution couldn't do any harm, she decided, and after the blood loss, Lex certainly needed to get some liquids into him. She had no idea what medications would be safe for him; she'd have to guess.
"Uh, Julie, his wing – I can't take his blood pressure," Dan realized.
Lexington's wing structure was different from his rookery-brothers, more like a flying squirrel's or a bat's. There was no way to get the cuff around his arm.
"Then put it around his leg," she ordered as she began administering a saline solution.
"Uh, that painkiller you mentioned, Julie?" Lexington asked weakly.
"Sorry to make you wait, pal, just trying to decide which medicine is best for you. Vet school didn't have a class on gargoyles." Julie took a good look at the X-ray. She'd need to treat the wing like she would an eagle shot by a poacher, but for medication, it would best to treat him like a chimpanzee that she needed to put under for surgery. Unlocking the medicine cabinet, she prepared a syringe and prayed.
"Is there something we can do?" Broadway asked. "We want to help. He's our rookery-brother."
"Pray," Julie ordered as she gathered her surgical tools. "No, actually, there is something you can do. Dan, you still got that blood pressure cuff?"
"Yeah."
"Good. Check both of them," Julie indicated Brooklyn and Broadway with a jut of her chin. "I need a healthy baseline for comparison."
The room was too quiet. Her boombox was on the counter. She pushed a button, neither remembering nor caring what tape was inside. A second later Clannad's "Legend" album began. Julie took a deep breath, then re-examined the X-ray.
"Julie."
The blonde vet looked up. She walked over to the counter where Dan, Brooklyn, and Broadway were waiting.
"Are you going to be okay with this?" Dan asked. "I know doctors don't normally operate on friends or family."
"I'm going to have to be okay," she replied in a low voice. "There's no point in taking him to another hospital; the doctors at St. Vincent or Mt. Sinai don't know any more about gargoyle physiognomy than I do. And what I know," she continued bitterly, "is absolutely nothing. No idea which drugs are safe and which could cause an allergic reaction. Anyone who's lost as much blood as he has should have a transfusion, but I don't dare give him animal blood, and I don't know if human blood would be safe for him."
"Could we donate blood?" Brooklyn asked.
"Just because you're the same species doesn't mean you're the same blood type. If gargoyles even have blood types." Julie took a deep breath and forced herself to calm down. "If a human receives a transfusion from a blood donor of a different type, it can kill them. And I have no idea what blood type Lex is: A, B, he could be T-negative for all I know."
Dan forced a smile. "I doubt he's T-negative, despite the ears."
"This is what I get for being so scrupulous about respecting your privacy. So help me, tomorrow both of you are getting complete physicals."
"Yes, ma'am," Brooklyn murmured. Broadway merely nodded.
She took another deep breath, then another. "I'm as ready as I'm going to be." She turned to Lexington, a smile she didn't feel plastered on her face. "Ready, Lex? Time for the Sorceress of Surgery to work her magic."
"Will I be able to fly again?" Lexington couldn't keep the note of fear out of his voice.
"You'll soar," she promised confidently. And she prayed silently that she wasn't lying through her teeth. She prepared the nitrous oxide. "Do you remember that videotape I lent you? The Court Jester?"
"Uh-huh," Lexington replied weakly.
"Breathe deeply, and see if you can recite the pellet with the poison bit," she instructed as she administered the nitrous oxide.
"The pellet with the p-poison's in the – the vessel wi' the pestle. The chalice – the ch-chalice…." The small green gargoyle slipped into unconsciousness.
"The chalice from the palace has the brew that is true," she finished for him softly. "Better than counting backwards from ten."
As the soundtrack to Robin of Sherwood played, she set to work, demonstrating a confidence she might not have felt, but which her surgical skills warranted. She set to work on the broken bone. Dan handed her instruments as she called for them. Brooklyn and Broadway watched the monitors, keeping an eye on blood pressure and heart rate. Julie hummed along with Clannad and patched.
