As soon as she realized I was looking at her, her face cleared.
I couldn't interpret the emotion I'd seen, just that it was very strong.
"Anybody hurt?" asked Ben.
When he extends himself beyond his usual nasty personality, people tend to find Ben reassuring.
I think it's the nifty British accent and composed appearance--and even with the burns and the charred clothing, he looked somehow more civilized than anyone else.
"No," said the doctor, whose name tag read REX FOURNIER, MD.
He looked to be in his late forties.
"I surprised him when I opened the curtains." And then in a spirit of fairness seldom seen in terrified people, he said, "He was pretty careful not to hurt anyone, just knocked me aside.
If I hadn't stumbled over the stool, I'd have kept my feet." "He was unconscious when I left," Mary Jo told Ben, half- apologetically.
"I came out to see if I could find someone to help him--we'd been here for a while.
I didn't realize I'd been away long enough for him to change." "Not so long," I said.
"I saw the ambulance pass us.
You can't have been here more than a half hour, and it takes about half of that for him to complete the change.
Whose bright idea was it to bring Adam to the hospital in his condition anyway?" It had been Mary Jo's.
I could see it in her face.
"All he needed was the dead flesh peeled off," she said.
A really, really painful procedure--and no painkillers work on werewolves for long.
It was such a bad idea that we all stared at her, all of us who knew, anyway--Ben, Sam, and I.
Adam was preoccupied with his change.
"I didn't realize how bad it was," she defended herself.
"I thought it was just his hands.
I didn't see his feet until we were already in the ambulance on the way over here.
If it had just been his hands, it would have been okay." Maybe.
Probably.
"I thought you and Samuel were dead," she said.
"And that left it my problem as the pack medic.
And as medic and as my Alpha's loyal follower, I deemed the hospital the safer option." She'd just lied.
Not about Adam being safer at the hospital than home.
With the recent upheavals, she was probably right that a badly wounded Adam wasn't safe with the pack in his condition.
They'd tear him apart and apologize and maybe even feel bad afterward.