Disorderly.”
The hand holding the oxygen mask hesitated, torn between training and the doctor’s interference, and Ben used the distraction to make one more plea. “Don’t let me in there. Too dangerous.” Talent in emergency rooms were bad in the best of times, their pain and panic causing things to go haywire. As shocky and drained as he was... If his core went down too far, he would pull from the nearest source to protect himself. It would be instinctive, unstoppable except by his death, and without meaning to he could pull so much off that their entire system could fail. People could die.
“Hold up,” the doctor said, putting a hand down on the gurney to stop their progress. “Sir?”
Ben tried to focus, again, on his face.
“Sir, are you Talent?”
He almost cried in relief, managing to give a quick, sharp nod of agreement.
The doctor turned to the paramedic trying to affix the oxygen mask and snapped off an order. “Bring him into the overflow room.”
“But – ”
The other male EMT, either quicker on the uptake or more experienced in the whims of doctors, slapped his companion on the arm, hard, and nodded in agreement to the doctor. Ben felt the gurney shift slightly, rolling in a different direction, the pace picking up as they went down another hallway, not into the main emergency room but a smaller, quieter space. The same off-white walls, the same smell of disinfectant and urine and sweat filling the air, the same undertone of concerned voices speaking too softly, and then a cry or a shout breaking the tension and causing a flurry of activity... .
But the seductive, dangerous hum of high-powered machinery was less, as though the room was wrapped in a protective bubble.
You didn’t take a panicked, injured Talent into an emergency room filled with expensive, high-maintenance, highly calibrated electrical life-giving equipment. Not without precautions. Not when other people’s lives depended on those machines.
The doctor leaned in closer, his voice now pitched only for Venec to hear. “Do you need a sedative?” In other words, was he still a danger to anyone in the hospital?
Ben managed to shake his head. The urge, the panic, was fading, removed from the direct lure. Whatever they’d done to block out the current in this space, it was effective.
He might not need the sedative, but he wanted it, badly. The lacerations in his throat and arms were agony, and although the drip in his arm was dulling the pain, it didn’t do anything for the memory of the beast coming for him, the hot stench of its breath on his face, the acrid burn of its drool... .
It hadn’t been a full-on purebred hellhound. If it had been, he would be dead. A crossbreed, or maybe even a quarter-breed, something with mastiff or –
His mind went over the details, trying to determine what the beast was, so that he could find out where the client had gotten hold of one – and why – and then go find the breeder and issue a smack-down for letting a Null have a goddamned hellhound, even one that watered down. It was pointless obsessive work, but it kept his mind occupied and away from what they were doing around him, shifting him onto another surface, drawing white curtains around him, switching out the drip in his arm for another and the doctor was there again, his face covered but his eyes dark gray and focused the way a real professional got when they were in the groove, and Ben was able to let go of the last bit of conscious thought and let them do what needed to be done.
When he had first approached Benjamin with the idea – then only a glimmer born out of frustration and anger – for PUPI, Ian Stosser had thought about things like justice, and consscience, and how to win people over to his cause.
Ben Venec had thought about things like training, licensing, and hospital authorizations. Making his signature on the seventh page of tagged forms, Ian was thankful, once again, that his partner had a grasp on the practicalities he sometimes forgot. Trying to reach Ben’s family in time... wouldn’t have happened.
“Fortunately, he hadn’t lost much blood, and there doesn’t seem to have been any infection in the wounds. From the size of the bite marks, I’d say it was a mastiff or some other large breed. We gave him a rabies shot as a precaution, but... ”
The doctor’s voice trailed off, and he