Chapter Fourteen
Chris found Doctor Hollis in his office.
“Could we talk?” he asked.
“Of course, sit down. What do you want to speak about?”
Chris sat down. “I’m between two minds at the moment. Either those people you have locked down in your basement. Or the fact that a knowledgeable shifter doctor tells me you can’t cure lycanthropy in someone who has been born with it. Take your pick.”
Hollis looked away. “You’ve been downstairs?”
“Curiosity got the best of me. Occupational hazard. How long?”
“Pardon me?”
“How long have you been trying to treat this ‘side effect’?”
“Longer than I’d care to admit. The first patient started showing signs six years ago. He died two years ago. So far, the average progression from the start of the illness to death is around four years three months. Eventually, the crystals start depositing in vital organs and sometimes in blood vessels. They die of organ failure, strokes, heart attacks.”
“And your treatments?”
“We thought we were having some success with using radiation to wipe out the bone marrow supplies completely. But the shifter cells survived the process, the new bone marrow didn’t take, and those on the trial died. No chemical agent, no medication, nothing we’ve tried has worked.”
“Where did all the patients downstairs come from? Where were they between when you cured them and when they got sick?”
“Here. They never left. Except for Danny and one other.”
“What about their families?”
“The human families didn’t want them. Social services wouldn’t permit them to be fostered, even after we’d cured them. Lycanthrope families weren’t considered eligible to foster, so they remained in our care.”
“Have you always kept them separate?”
“It was the protocol. It was felt they were a bad influence on each other’s behavior. That it encouraged the Pack mentality. They’d have some time together, but we didn’t encourage friendships.”
Chris was struggling to keep his composure. “How many in total?”
“Twenty-three in all. Danny and the five downstairs are all that’s left. Within four years, there’ll be none.”
“Have you told Danny this? Does he know how long you’ve been working, how many things you’ve tried? How many have been lost?”
“Danny has been the pinnacle of my achievement, Chris. Responded excellently to the cure, minimal side effects, returned to the world and lived a normal life. He shows it can be done.”
“But you said it yourself, he’s dying at the age of twenty-two.”
“If I can solve this problem, this side effect, he could live a completely normal life.”
“Except it’s not a side effect. You haven’t cured them. That’s what my doctor friend wants you to know. All you’ve done is remove one small part of the cycle, preventing the completion of a shift from human to wolf. They’re still shifters, in blood, in scent. They’re dying because their shifter side can’t fully assert itself.”
His phone beeped and he glanced at it. “My doctor friend has sent you some articles. I would really appreciate it if you, as Danny’s doctor, as Danny’s friend, read them with an open mind.”
Stepping out of the office, he went to speak to Danny. It was time for some home truths.
Chris took a seat at Danny’s bedside. The third infusion had gone through and the nurse had taken away the empty bag. In a few hours, the exhaustion would kick in and Danny would sleep until the pain came.
Resting a hand on Danny’s arm, he called him quietly.
“Hey, Danny. Can you wake up for me?”
Danny murmured under his breath and twisted on the sheets before his eyes opened. “It hurts. My knee. Why won’t it stop?”
“May I?” he asked, waiting for Danny nod before he tugged away the light blanket covering him and set his hand on Danny’s knee.
“I feel like I’m dying,” Danny whispered.
“You’re not dying.” He set his other hand on Danny’s chest, over his heart. “Beating nice and strong. Here, feel for yourself.”
Taking Danny’s hand in his, he set it over the same spot. “Feel that?”
Danny nodded.
“Danny, there are some things you need to know. About Doctor Hollis and the treatment.”
“What things?” Danny winced as Chris turned his attention back to his knee, hands kneading it firmly.
“This thing he’s calling a side effect, he’s known about it for six years. He’s been trying to treat it for six years.”
Danny froze. “That long?”
“Yeah. It sounds like every other person he treated with the infusion protocol has already developed it. I think he was hoping you’d be the exception.”
“Why aren’t they here then?”
“Some of them are downstairs. I’ve seen them. You remember that scream we heard when we arrived? The others… they didn’t make it.”
Danny went pale at his words. It took a few moments for him to recover enough to speak.
“How are they?”
“Worse than the worst I’ve seen you. So, bad, really bad.”
“Am I going to die?” Danny’s lower lip trembled and Chris stilled his hands.
“If things continue as they are, yes. If you continue with this course of treatment, the serum, then I think things will get worse quicker.”
A single tear trailed down Danny’s face.
“Why?”
“Because you were never cured, Danny. You’ve always been a shifter, you were born one. All the treatment did was stop part of the natural process. It didn’t alter your genes or stop the changes in your body that come part and parcel with being a shifter.”
He reached a hand out, cupping Danny’s cheek and brushing the tear away with his thumb.
“Doctor Hollis believed he’d cured you because you never shifted. But you began to feel better a few days ago when your body started producing the shifter proteins you need to change. You have a choice to make, Danny. Live as a shifter or die as a human.”
“Cindy wanted me to live a life free from that, free from the stigma.”
“Lots of people grow up with stigma, Danny. It makes things harder, sure. But it doesn’t stop you living a life. And the shifter community is big, and it’s close. You could find a place for yourself in it. You could belong.”
There was a yearning on Danny’s face, just for a moment, before it faded.
“I want to talk to Doctor Hollis.”
Chris did his best not to let his disappointment show through.
“Of course, Danny. I’ll ask the nurse to let him know.”
He left Danny alone to think and sleep, finding Robin and Lee had switched places.
“Hell of a week,” Lee said, glancing up from the comic book he was reading.
“You’re telling me,” he replied, heading down to the nurses’ office.
Chris’ words kept playing over in Danny’s mind as he drifted in and out of sleep. That he was a shifter. That he was going to die. That scream they’d heard sounded over and over in his head.
“Danny? Danny.”
He woke with a jump, finding Doctor Hollis at his bedside.
“You wanted to see me.”
Turning on his side, he winced as the pain flared in his elbow.
“Do you need more medication?” Doctor Hollis asked, moving as if to stand.
“No, I’m okay for now. I need to be awake for this. Chris told me some things, about my condition.”
“He told me some things, too, and I was just speaking with Heidi, a friend of his who doctors to shifters.”
“Am I dying?”
Doctor Hollis couldn’t meet his gaze.
“The condition you’re currently experiencing is progressive and there is an end stage.”
“In plain English, Doctor Hollis, please.” He could barely keep his thoughts straight as it was, the lure of sleep so powerful.
“Yes, Danny. The condition has proved fatal to everyone so far affected. You probably have a little more than two years left.”
“And a treatment?”
“I’ve done extensive research and testing, with no success.”
“Is Chris right? Am I still a shifter?”
“You possess shifter markers on some of your cells. Your genes carry lycanthrope DNA. But you don’t manifest the phenot—”
He stopped and tried again. “The difference between you and an adult shifter is that you don’t express the shifter proteins they do. A fundamental difference. Like saying you carry HIV because it’s in your cells, but you aren’t HIV-positive because your body isn’t producing the virus or capable of infecting others with it.”
“And those proteins had come back when you tested me?”
“That’s correct.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know, Danny. Your tests have been clear for years. Your initial blood tests showed only a small number. But that had almost doubled when we repeated them.”
“And I started feeling better. The pain was lessening. Now that the serum is getting rid of the proteins, the pain is back.”
“I wasn’t certain there was a connection until I spoke to Doctor Heidi. I understand you met her?”
Danny nodded. He hadn’t met a female shifter before her.
“She showed me some research papers on a condition almost identical to yours, that occurred in young shifters. In their case, it was cancerous cells reproducing and killing off their shifter cells, dropping the levels of shifter proteins.”
“What happened to them?”
“They treated the cancer, and the shifter cells regenerated. Once their protein levels returned to normal, the condition went away. But they progressed almost immediately to full-blown lycanthropy, shifting within a matter of weeks.”
“They lived, pain-free?”
“I understand they were healthy, except for still being afflicted with lycanthropy.”
“So that’s my choice, then? Stop all treatment and, if my cells regenerate, become a shifter. Or continue treatment, hope for a cure and probably die in agony.”
“We’ll do our best to keep you pain-free for as long as possible.”
“Are the patients downstairs pain-free?”
Doctor Hollis looked away again, giving Danny his answer.
When he looked back, his eyes were bright. “I only ever wanted to give you normal, healthy lives. I believed that I had succeeded. I never meant for any of this. And if you choose to continue, I promise to do my utmost to cure you.”
It was Danny’s turn to look away. “So I have a choice to make?”
“Yes, I’m afraid no one can make it for you. But I know what your aunt would have wanted, Danny.” Doctor Hollis stood. “Try to get some rest now. We can talk again tomorrow.”