frantic calm that you never want to hear when you're on your back looking up at doctors.
A spike of fear got through the shock - Peter. It had to be Peter. The adrenaline rush of it stabbed through my stomach like a fresh blow. Edward turned, and I could see more of the room. It wasn't Peter. He was lying on a different gurney, not that far away from the one that had everyone's interest. Who the fuck was it? We didn't have any more humans on our side.
The only person with Peter was Nathaniel. He was holding the boy's free hand. The other hand was hooked up to an IV. Nathaniel looked at me, and his face showed fear. Enough that Peter fought to turn and see what was coming through the door.
Nathaniel touched his chest, held him down. "It's Anita and your... Edward." I think he'd been about to say your dad.
I heard Peter's voice as we got closer. "Your face, what's wrong with them?"
Nathaniel said, "I didn't think there was anything wrong with my face." He tried to make a joke of it, but the noises from the other side of the room made humor sort of hard.
I couldn't see past all the white coats. "Who is it?" I asked.
Nathaniel answered, "It's Cisco."
Cisco. He wasn't hurt that badly. I'd seen shapeshifters heal throat wounds that bad. Were there more bad guys in here with us? "How did he get hurt?" I asked.
Peter actually tried to sit up, and Nathaniel kept him down with that hand on his chest, as if he'd been having to pin Peter to the gurney for a while. "Anita," Peter said.
Edward put me on the nearest empty gurney, and the movement didn't so much hurt as let me know that it was going to hurt. It was as if things shifted around that I shouldn't have been able to feel. I had a moment of nausea and knew that that was just me thinking too hard, or hoped it was. Edward moved me so Peter could see me without moving. It meant that I could see Peter. His jacket and shirt were gone, but bulky bandages were taped across his stomach; more of them were on his left shoulder and upper arm. His weapons and jacket and the remains of his bloody shirt were on the floor under his gurney. It'd be my turn next.
"What happened to Cisco?" I asked.
Peter said, "You're both hurt."
"I'm fine," Edward said, "it's not my blood."
Peter looked at me, his eyes too wide, face sickly pale. "He got his throat torn out."
"I remember, but he should be able to heal that," I said.
"Not all of us are that good at healing, Anita," Nathaniel said.
I looked at him now. The fact that I hadn't truly looked at him said clearly how much I was hurt. He was wearing one of his pairs of jogging shorts that left very little to the imagination. His hair was back in a tight braid. I met his eyes, and I still loved him, but for once my body didn't react to the sight of him.
Edward came to stand by Peter, and Nathaniel came to me, an exchange of emotional prisoners. Nathaniel took my hand and gave me as chaste a kiss as we'd ever exchanged. His lavender eyes held the worry that he'd been hiding from Peter, or trying to hide from him. He leaned over my body, and I heard him draw in a big breath of air. "Nothing's perforated," he whispered.
Until he said it, I hadn't thought about it. My intestines could have been perforated, or hell, my stomach. If I'd had to get clawed up, it wasn't a bad place for it. It wasn't a fatal hit, not right away, not if things weren't spilling out of me. They were bulging out, not spilling. There was a difference.
"Is Peter..."
"Not perforated either, you were both lucky."
I knew he was right, but... The voices had risen in pitch across the room. When the doctors start sounding that panicked, things are very bad. Cisco, shit.
It was Cherry who peeled away from the crowd around him and came to me. She had thrown a white coat over the usual black Goth outfit. Her heavy eyeliner had run down her face like black tears. She touched Peter's shoulder as she went past, and said, "Let the drugs work, Peter. You can't help him by fighting to stay awake."
"She was trying for me," he said. "She