Page 15 of The King

Ettie could feel Eden struggling to differentiate one type of Shifter from another. When the Empress Eagle spoke, her voice sounded far away and distracted.“Can’t you feel the warmth of fur, the soft downy of feathers, the cool slide of scales? The Wild Magic knows the doctor is the source of pain for everyone here, but that just makes figuring out who is who all the harder. Since we can't stop her, the Wild Magic will try to soothe her victims and embolden them to take action, and I'm gonna keep doing what I'm doing.”

"That's great. I also need to know how many there are and if we know any of these people."

“You know I can’t tell that. I’m locked down as tight as….”

“I know. I know. Sorry, it’s just so damned frustrating.”

Moans of discontent and disorder that rose in a sharp, cacophonous crescendo interrupted Ettie’s thoughts. The hairs all over her body once again stood on end. Emotions were riding so high that she involuntarily shook despite the anesthetizing shit they had pumped into her veins.

Moaning turned to low, gagging and groaning mewls, but still, the squeak of one of the wheels on her bed and the squishes of rubber-soled shoes told her she was headed toward the exit. Coming to an abrupt stop, her body jerked toward her feet, then immediately reversed, making her already woozy head spin for a moment.

The doctor's tapping on the chart and scolding the nurse didn't wane for even a second. Not only was she walking and bitching, but she was clueless about the storm brewing all around. Ettie's nose itched, and her eyes once again started to water. The tingle of a single tear rolling down her cheek was maddening. She needed to wipe it away, right along with scratching the tip of her nose and stretching her back. All of it was just another thing Dr. Prissy Pants would pay for when the Demi-Goddess was awake and unrestrained.

Focusing on the bedside conversation and not the growing discontent and sorrow of the Magical Beings she was moving away from, Ettie was just in time to hear the nurse try to get a word in edgewise. “Yes, but…”

As expected, it didn't work. The doctor really did love the sound of her own voice. Just another trait of a maniacal tyrant – stay focused at all times and baffle everyone around them with bullshit. It was the best and easiest way to deliver as much pain as possible to your victims, especially when they never see it coming.

“I cannot believe she’s not even acknowledging or reacting to the rumblings all around her. Talk about a cold hard bitch,”Ettie sneered.

The squeak and squish of the soft soles skittered to and from in every direction. It was as if someone had turned the lights on and freaked out a Colony of Rats in a New York alley – and so much louder wherever they'd parked her. So much more offensive – no, grating, than she could ever remember. Where the hell had they put her. It was not a damn thing like any isolation she'd ever seen.

There had to be at least twenty attendants scrambling, asking the doctor what to do to calm their 'patients.' Sadly, Ettie couldn't hear what the physician said. The words were quick, sharp, and so incredibly patronizing. However, what she ordered must have worked. Within a matter of seconds, the mournful dirge waned to a sorrowful whine that touched the Demi-Goddess' soul and made her heart hurt.

Oh, this bitch was going to pay. But first, Ettie was going to have to hold on tight because Evel Knievel and three of his best buddies were steering her bed.

Barely able to register thethunkof the bed’s brake, Ettie felt a breeze as one guy grumbled, “Get the door, will ya’, Sweetheart?”

“Sure, Chuck,” a voice she didn’t remember hearing answered with a giggle.

"Seriously, we've got Love American Style going on at Hell's Hospital?"Eden growled.

“Yep, and buckle up, Buttercup,”Ettie grumbled. “We’re heading to the Daytona 500.”

No sooner had the words floated from her mind to Eden's than she heard the click of a button followed by the creaking groan of an automatic door opening – and the race was on. A breeze blew the bangs off her forehead. The sheet rose and fell over her body. And the squeaking of the one whining wheel on her bed sounded like one of the tortured, little white mice her cousin used to feed her pet boa constrictor.

And through it all, the Demi-Goddess was forced to endure more of the doctor's ramblings.

"Please be careful, orderly. Do not bump the specimen's ventilation tube or any of the lines going into the port in her arm."

“Yes, ma’am, we made…”

“And I don’t hear the heart monitor. Please do not tell me that you did not hook it up to the battery pack.”

"Yes, ma'am," a new male voice answered, this one deeper and full of disdain. "It is hooked up to the battery. We turned down the volume as is protocol when transferring a patient from one ward to another."

"Yes, I know the protocols," she hissed. "I wrote them. And as such, I know the volume is not to be turned down lower than five. Is that machine's volume set to five?"

The air filled with the sour scent of embarrassment right before the orderly slyly confessed, “No, ma’am. It is on two.”

"Then fix it immediately and consider this your one and only warning." Without so much as a breath, the doctor returned to berating the nurse. "As I was saying, Nurse Weatherly, I sent an order to the pharmacy to decrease the dosage of silver nitrate in even increments until a sixty percent titration was reached. That should have started with the seven a.m. shift change. At exactly two p.m., it should have been dropped to a fifty percent titration, which should have been the last dose. Is that how it was handled?"

“That was not… I mean, I am doing what…”

The nurse’s humiliation and frustration joined the emotional overload party that seemed to be following them as they raced down the hall. On one hand, Ettie felt sorry for her. Well… no, sorry was too strong of a word. She couldn’t feel sorry for someone involved in what she could only describe as torture, but…

Well, the problem was, Ettie was sharing in the poor woman’s embarrassment and resentment, and there wasn’t a damned thing she could do to stop it or even ebb the tide. It was uncomfortable –very uncomfortable, especially without any of her unique abilities to reinforce her mental shields – to protect herself.

Being Empathic was part of her heritage, a special part of who she was that she had inherited from her mom's side of the family, and usually, it came in handy. It helped her assess situations and, at certain times, stop hasty decisions. It also ensured that she said the right thing no matter the circumstances, since tact wasn't really her thing without it. She was a shoot straight kind of woman. Most importantly, Ettie's Special Insight let her know when someone was hiding something or lying –and the doctorand the nurse- were most definitely doing both.

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