Chapter Two

“Car wreck,” the attending physician said as we both rushed into the exam room. The sounds of the ambulance siren could still be heard. The nurses were cutting open the young man’s shirt, freeing his body so we could find any signs of internal injury. He had a large injury to his temple. The physician opened his eyes, shining a tiny flashlight into them.

“No sign of a concussion,” he said. “But he’s definitely unconscious.” He began to study the rest of the young man, handing me a pair of scissors. He looked at the x-rays of the patient that were along the monitor on the wall.

“I don’t see that there are any signs of internal bleeding on the x-rays,” he mused. “Looking at him, it seems that the only damage is to the head. Check his legs for any further injury, and I will go and attend to the young lady who was in the passenger seat of his car.”

“Okay,” I replied. The patient was covered in scrapes and bruises. I took up the pair of scissors, cutting along his pant leg. It revealed a pale, hairy, masculine leg. One of the nurses came in with his test results.

“This patient has a very low red blood cell count,” she said, frowning.

“What?” I looked at the patient. I had to admit, he did look rather pale and bloodless, but he didn’t have any major open cuts which would have bled enough to make him that way.

“You have got to be kidding me,” I said in disbelief.

“He’s anemic,” she confirmed in surprise. “Do you think that’s what made him crash?”

“Could be,” I said, examining his leg. “Look at this.” I rotated the patient’s leg for her to see. There was a single injury to his otherwise unhurt limb. It looked like two large pin pricks on the pale skin of his leg. They were located on the inside of the young man’s thigh.

“It’s a double-puncture wound in the femoral artery,” I said. “Yet it’s clean.” I looked at the patient’s pant leg. There was no significant blood on the fabric where there should have been intense bleeding.

“How recent?” the nurse asked me.

“Very,” I said. “It hasn’t even begun to coagulate. It’s like it happened, stopped bleeding, and then he put his pants on and got behind the wheel.” I squinted at it. “It’s big enough that he definitely knew when it was happening. I mean, how could he miss it?”

“It almost looks like a bite.” I turned to the nurse. I wondered at that. Could he have been bitten by a pet? A dog, maybe? “I want to just run to the medical library and see if I can identify the bite mark.” The attending physician stuck his head in the door.

“Samantha?”

“Yes?”

“How is he?”

“Low platelet count, but otherwise, he should be fine to be admitted into a room for observation for that head wound and the one on his leg.”

“Anything serious?”

“Just a puncture. Might be a bite.”

“Get a specialist down to look, see if he needs a rabies vaccine.”

“Okay.”

“The passenger needs a transfusion. She’s lost too much from her injuries, and we’re low on our supply since it’s been such a busy night. Can you run to the blood bank and get us a fresh supply?”

“Sure,” I replied. The nurse automatically began to call for a specialist to view the potential bite while I rushed off. As I left the room, I heard her mention to another of the nurses who had just walked in:

“We’ve really had an uptick in the number of transfusions lately.”

“It’s an ER, Mary. People mostly come here when they’re bleeding to death.” I didn’t hear the rest of their conversation. I, too, wondered if maybe there were more instances of anemia than usual.

When I reached the blood bank, I found a man dressed in blue hospital scrubs inside, staring at the bags of blood through the refrigerator door. He had warm-toned skin, as though he spent a lot of time in the sun, but he had dark bruises beneath his eyes, as though he rarely slept. There was something off about him that I just could not put my finger on—not off, as in weird, but different, not your usual, run of the mill human being. I was sensing that something else was there. But I could not have told you what, as it was an experience that I had never had before.

"Excuse me, can I see your identification?” I asked him as the door to the blood supply room shut behind me with a click. The sound my stomach feel a bit queasy. My heart pounded strangely in my chest. I tried not to show how intimidated I felt.

“Oh, I'm fine,” he said blithely, looking into my eyes. A strange, tickly feeling ran through me as soon as we met eyes. He smiled confidently, and a chill ran down my spine, as though he were doing something to me; what, I didn’t know. I shrugged the feeling off. He was definitely not supposed to be here. I frowned.

"No you're not. And I'm calling hospital security if you don't show me that you have a right to be in here.” I made sure to make my voice drip with superciliousness. He looked taken aback, as though he were seeing me for the first time. His eyes narrowed suspiciously.

"How did you do that?" he asked me, his voice and his face both registered extreme shock.

"Do what?” I snapped. I wasn’t here to play games. There was a victim of a car crash in the ER, possibly bleeding to death. Every second counted at that moment. “You still haven't told me who you are."

His eyes widened. "You—it’s impossible!"

"That's it. I'm calling security." I backed away from him. He must have escaped the psych ward.

"Wait! You want to know why so many people are getting sick, don't you?" I looked at him, sighing.

"This is a hospital. Of course people are getting sick. They come here when they get sick.”

“But the increase…in the blood loss…unexplained anemia in otherwise healthy patients? Strange puncture marks?” That caught my attention. I crossed my arms to hide the shake of my hands. This guy was really throwing me off balance. “It's happened within the past ten days, right?” I was dumbfounded. How did he know?

“I’m a detective…of sorts,” he said. “I’m working to find the party responsible.” As he said this, he stepped backward, placing one of his pale hands on the metal countertop…where there was an empty bag of blood. It looked like it had been sucked empty—like a child’s juice box drank dry. I wanted to gag, thinking about this man drinking an entire bag of blood. What sick, twisted…I took a step back.

“What did you do?” I growled, grabbing the phone by the door off of its hook. An operator answered immediately.

“Emergency,” the woman’s voice said. Before I could answer, the man rushed past me, knocking me off balance as he bolted from the room. He moved unnaturally fast, and when I looked out into the hallway, he was already gone. I frowned; I couldn’t remember actually seeing him cross the room. One second he was there, the next, he was gone.