Between - By Kerry Schafer Page 0,2

a general sense of cold dread. But the details floated around the edge of her brain, elusive as mist when she tried to capture them.

He lay unmoving on the exam table, shirtless and barefoot, his faded jeans torn and grass stained at both knees. Chest, right arm, and face were reddened, as if from a long day at the beach, and beginning to blister. A blood pres-sure cuff on his left arm automatically tightened and released, one hundred over sixty. A little low, nothing to worry about. Pulse at one hundred. O2 sats good at ninety-eight percent.

But something was off; there was a subtle wrongness in the air that set her skin to crawling.

“What happened?” She gloved and masked, then squeaked over to examine the damage. First-degree burn; a couple of areas maybe second. It was going to hurt like hell but should heal up okay. No scars for the kid to worry about.

He spoke through a jaw clenched around pain. “I already told the nurse. She thinks I’m fucking crazy.”

“So tell me again.”

Tell me you got too close to a fire—a campfire, a grease fire, a blowtorch. Got dunked in a cauldron of boiling water. Something explainable. Not—

“Dragon.”

She shivered, but kept her tone light. “A dragon? In Krebston? Now there’s one I haven’t heard. Open your mouth. Say ah.”

His brown eyes were opaque, almost black, the pupils dilated with pain and fear.

“Ahhhh. Like I said. Nobody believes me.”

Airway clear, no signs of inflammation or swelling.

“Okay. So you saw a dragon—”

“I’m telling you, it was a dragon. Breathing fire.” He sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the gurney. “You know, fuck this shit. I’m leaving. You all think I’m crazy—”

Vivian put a gloved hand on his shoulder, gently pressed him back. “Look, I’m sorry. It’s not a tale you hear every day. Lie down, and tell me. Please.”

He hesitated, his breathing a little too rapid and shallow. A burn could do that, but she’d seen that look on other faces; it was the look of a survivor waking up to the reality that he was still alive, that someone else had not been so lucky. Her guess was that Arden hadn’t been alone, but there was time yet to ask that question.

“You hurt anywhere else?”

“Shoulder. Thing spiked me.” He indicated a smear of blood in the flesh just below his right clavicle.

“Lie back, let me look.”

With a sigh, he complied. She wiped the blood away with a piece of gauze, revealing a puncture wound the diameter of a large nail. “When was your last tetanus shot?”

“I don’t remember. Man—we knew better than to go down to the Finger. Stupid—”

“We, who?”

He didn’t answer. He had begun to shiver. Sweat slicked his face; his breath rasped in his throat. The oximeter alarm went off—his oxygen level had dropped to eighty-five.

When Vivian put her hand to his forehead, his skin burned through the glove. She frowned. Felt a damned bit hotter than 102.

She turned on the oxygen with one hand, pushed the call button with the other. Roxie popped in. “Get an IV started, stat. And check his temp again, would you? He’s burning up.”

“Got it.” Roxie skittered off to follow orders, but before she hit the door Arden gasped, one long indrawing of breath. His eyes rolled back in his head, his spine arched like a bow, and he began to convulse in great wrenching spasms that threatened to throw him off the table. Vivian flung her body over him, anchoring him. Heat flowed into her, uncomfortable even through several layers of clothing.

Roxie yanked the cord from the wall and the emergency alarm went off.

Max appeared in the doorway, took one look, and headed for the crash cart.

As suddenly as it began, the seizure stopped. Arden lay twisted, knees drawn up a little and to the side, head corkscrewed at an odd angle, eyes wide open and staring. His mouth gaped, a string of bloody drool festooned over his lip and down his chin.

The oximeter alarm continued to bleat. He wasn’t breathing—no rise and fall of the chest, no air on her cheek when Vivian put her face close to his. She checked the carotid—no pulse.

Shelly stood in the doorway, mouth fallen slightly open, eyes wide.

“Code,” Vivian said through clenched teeth. Shelly ran.

Vivian began chest compressions, aware through her peripheral vision of Max pulling out equipment and Roxie prepping an IV. A disembodied voice floated out of the loudspeaker: “Code blue, ER. Code blue, to the emergency room.”

Max