It was that sound she remembered in every nightmare. The sound of bones breaking sharp as gunfire as the girl’s legs shattered and reformed, curling up and bending backward. Her arms moved sideways, and Angelica flinched as the bones snapped and ground. The child’s head elongated, shifting, almost fluid in its movements, and her lips pulled back into a snarl.
Fine, wispy hairs grew thick and heavy and covered her body as her back arched and roiled like boiling soup, and she snarled and stretched and licked sharp, gleaming teeth. Within moments a young lioness lay on the gurney where moments before a young teenager had been.
“My name is Angelica,” she said slowly and carefully, lowering the phone and setting it carefully in her pocket. “I’m a doctor.”
The lioness snarled at her and leapt off the bed, scattering the tray of instruments which rained down on the tile in a symphony of clattering metal. The orderlies outside shouted and began pounding on the door.
“Stay out!” Angelica cried, terrified they’d break down the door. “Stay out and be quiet!”
“Doctor, are you all right?”
“Yes, now shut up!” Angelica yelled, her back pressed hard against the door—in part to keep them out, in part because she had nowhere to go. The room was small, with just enough room for the examining table. The rest of the space was taken up by a cabinet in the corner and the stool next to the short counter and sink. Thankfully the gurney had been removed when they’d shifted the girl over to the table.
Angelica looked at the lioness and tried to still the trembling of her limbs. To show fear now could incite the animal to act. She stared at the instruments on the floor; nothing useful, not like in a surgery. Tongue depressor, otoscope. Nothing even remotely like a weapon. But what need would you have for a scalpel in an exam room? I have no defense. I have nothing to...
She set the phone down and laced her fingers behind her head and knelt on the floor in front of the cat. Quiet. Submissive. The lion’s head turned from side to side, ears flicking, whiskers extended. Her movements were frantic as she looked for a way to escape. Angelica held her breath. There was no place for the cat to escape either. No place to hide.
Angelica didn’t move. The lioness streaked to the door. An unused IV hanger clattered to the floor. The cat was directly behind Angelica now, the heat of the lioness’s breath on the back of her neck. She didn’t move.
A paw the size of a dinner plate landed on her shoulder. The claw that was sheathed within it was bright white and as sharp as a pin. Angelica tried to breathe slowly. The claws extended, curling around her shoulder, and the tips dug into the fabric of her shirt. Into the skin just below.
And then the sound came again. The sound of breaking, reforming, injury, and healing. The paw was pulled back from her shoulder and still Angelica didn’t move. Didn’t turn to look.
“Doctor?” a girl’s voice said from behind her.
Angelica turned and grabbed a gown from the cabinet in one swift movement, keeping her eyes averted until the naked girl was clothed and safely back on the table. I need to get her into a bed. That has to be exhausting. “It’s okay,” Angelica said softly. “It’s all right now. You’re all better.” A cursory examination showed that the bruises were gone. The bones felt strong and solid under her skin. “You’re okay now.”
“Did...did anyone see?” The girl was wide-eyed with fear.
“No. The door was closed the whole time; no one saw you.”
“Good,” Charra said with a hint of pride, a subtle lifting of her chin that reminded Angelica of the cat, but the girl was betrayed by the small sob that escaped her lips before she could stop it.
“Who did this to you?” Angelica asked, turning to pick up the instruments, acting like the question was casual though she wanted nothing more to sit down and give this girl the third degree until she had names and addresses. Something. Anything that would prevent this from ever happening again. Her fingers clenched a tongue depressor so tightly that it snapped in her hand.
“I was born this way.”
“No.” Angelica turned and smiled, relieved to find that she still had the ability to laugh after the all-consuming anger she’d felt since the girl had been brought in. For someone who hadn’t seen this before, that would be the first thing they’d ask, wouldn’t it? “No, I mean, who hurt you?
“Oh.” Charra looked at Angelica with an appraising look. Her eyes wide. Surprised. “You’re not frightened?”
“I’ve seen it before.” Angelica found herself blushing. Not wanting to explain just how and why she knew. “I would like to introduce the two of you, in fact.” She grabbed a thin blanket from the cabinet and tucked it around the teenager’s thin shoulders, wishing it were warmed that the girl might stop shivering. “Who hurt you?”
“I don’t know his name,” Charra said with a shake of her head. “He said he was a doctor, too.”
A doctor. The word left a bitter taste in Angelica’s mouth. There had been enough bad things connected with Doctors International in the past year and a half. While she loved her work in the medical clinics, in remote places like this there had been a terrible scandal that had all but shut the organization down. Now, here was another brewing. Someone, somewhere, who hurt little girls? She swallowed hard, trying not to let the anger and distaste show on her face. The girl needed reassurance. Wasn’t life already confusing enough to be going through the adolescence of being both lion and girl on the verge of womanhood? That she was here, near this camp, told Angelica that she was likely a refugee, someone who had fled from something so terrible that life here was preferable.
And now she was being hurt?
Her hands shook, but with rage now, and she had to step back. Taking several deep breaths as she tried to figure out what to do. There was only one other full-time doctor at this clinic. A handful of specialists who divided their time between other such clinics. Not a lengthy list to choose from, and she hadn’t been here long enough to get a full understanding of the politics of the place though, if she were to venture a guess—
There was an insistent pounding on the door. Different from the knocking of the orderlies. More authoritative. Angelica put her finger over her lips, signaling for Charra to be quiet as she rotated the lock and turned the knob. Her quiet moments had caught them by surprise. On the other side of the door was a strange tableau: the two orderlies stood in the background behind two very large men with assault rifles. Between the two of them Dr. Manchester, the administrator of the hospital, stood with his arms crossed.
Him. It would have to be him.
Dr. Manchester had come to Africa rather than retire. Pushing seventy, he stood lean and spare, only slightly bent, using a long cane to support himself. He complained frequently of bursitis. For that matter he complained frequently in general, his long face etched in a thousand lines that painted a portrait of a man who’d spent his life complaining frequently. Right now his blue eyes, so sharp still that they missed absolutely nothing, sparked with anger, his whole body shaking in a quiet fury that came off him in waves.
It was no wonder the girl was terrified.
“Care to explain this, Doctor?” he asked, gesturing broadly to the room behind her with his cane.
“Just building trust, Doctor,” Angelica said, her eyes on the ebony walking stick. She wondered how hard it would be to break bones with a solid piece of wood like that. She stepped back and left the door open, letting them see the frightened girl within but not allowing them past her. She turned to the security man closest to her and said, “Tell me, do you use armor-piercing bullets on every frightened teenager you see, or are the explosive- tipped heads to show how macho you are?”
“That’s quite enough, Doctor,” Dr. Manchester snapped.
“No, it isn’t enough, not by a long shot. This is my patient now. She’s about to be moved to the ward, and she will be watched for 72 hours. I’m placing her under observation.” Right out in plain sight of the nurse’s station, and a dozen other patients.
Dr. Manchester’s eyes narrowed. “What’s the diagnosis?”
“Possible internal bleeding, due to... wait, where’s the woman?”
“Excuse me?” Dr. Manchester blinked, startled by the question.
“The old woman!” She spun to the open door and to the two orderlies who, surprisingly, had held their ground despite the armed guards, though the one had been nervously edging closer and closer to the door in the last ten minutes. “Where did the old woman go?”
They looked at each other and shrugged.
“She... uh...” The nervous one, Anitah, didn’t seem to know where to look.
“She left,” the other one drawled with a bored shrug. He shot a look at Dr. Manchester and Angelica could see clearly where this man’s loyalties lay.
“I wanted her detained!” Angelica knew the words were wrong as she said them, but she needed to speak to the woman again.
“Dr. Truman!” Dr. Manchester snapped. “This is not a prison. You are not the law. This is a clinic at a refugee camp, and you have patients to attend to. I suggest you see to them!”
“She’s...” Angelica pointed to Charra.
“Yes, under observation. I understand, but unless you intend to stand and watch her for three days personally I suggest you get her a bed and get back to work!” Manchester stormed out with a sour glance to Charra. The security guards followed silently in his wake. If they were embarrassed by the way they’d threatened a teenage girl, their iron-clad expressions betrayed nothing.
The orderlies left in Dr. Manchester’s wake. Anitah darted an uneasy glance to Angelica before murmuring something about having some work to do. But the other, Jacques, had hurried after Dr. Manchester, stopping to talk to him outside the doctor’s office almost all the way down the hall at the door to the clinic proper.
Angelica frowned and wondered what an orderly would have to say to the doctor that he hadn’t been able to say in front of her.
Not liking the conspiracies, Angelica returned to her patient. “Don’t worry, Charra,” Angelica reassured her with a smile that felt wrong on her face when she was so worried. The fear was mirrored in the girl’s eyes, yet what promise could Angelica make that would take the fear away? It’s hard to tell someone the bogeyman wasn’t real when he’d just stood outside their door. She called to a passing nurse and quickly arranged for Charra to be taken to the women’s ward. Thankfully there was an open bed she could take, one right near the nurses’ station.
They’ll figure out quickly that she’s no longer injured.
What could she do? She gave the orders, put in some malarkey about suspected internal bleeding, and arranged for tests that of course would come back negative, but would create enough busywork to keep the girl where she could keep an eye on her. All she really needed was to buy some time.
“You’re going to be safe here,” she said to Charra as the nurse left to fetch a wheelchair to move the patient. “I’ve set you up in the ward.” In Angelica’s pocket was her phone. That video she took. The half-formed idea she’d had when the footage was taken took hold. “I’d like to introduce you to my... friend.”
Their eyes met. There was no doubt as to which friend Angelica was talking about.
Charra smiled cautiously. “I would like that,” she said quietly, and the fear left, just enough of it, that her eyes showed the barest glimmer of hope. “Sometimes I feel like I am alone.”