Page 60 of Rafael (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 28)

Pierette sat down on the bench and said, “I’ll be your pillow, my queen.”

“If I’m laying my head in your lap, can you at least call me Anita, instead ofmy queen?”

“For tonight, you mean?”

“Sure,” I said, and I laid my head on Pierette’s thigh. I’d never laid my head in her lap before, so there was a moment like kissing for the first time when you don’tknow where the noses go, and then my cheek found that sweet point where my head rested just right on the curve of her thigh.

She offered me her hand to hold while Doc Lillian got the syringe ready. I didn’t try to be tough, just took the offered hand. I tried to find something to stare at while the doc injected the local. Did I mention that I really don’t like needles? The curtains on one of the ER “rooms” were moving as if there was a quiet fight going on inside it. I stared at the curtains and tried to piece together what was happening behind them. It gave me something to think about while the needle went in and Lillian started asking me if I could still feel when she touched my skin.

A man in scrubs came stumbling out of the curtains. I started to say “Look out” to the nurse holding the tray, but he moved smoothly out of the way without so much as moving any of the instruments. It also meant that the other nurse fell backward into Pierette and me, or would have except that she put up an arm and that was all the man needed to regain his balance.

“Did he hurt you?” Lillian asked.

The nurse raised his arm up. It was bleeding.

“Knife or claws?” she asked.

The man made a disdainful face. “He’s not powerful enough for claws.”

“Is he allowed to cut up the medical staff?” I asked.

“No,” she said.

The man who’d gotten cut said, “Yes.”

I looked at Lillian.

“My rule is that if you harm my staff, then we don’t work on you.”

The bleeding man said, “The rule here is if you can’t protect yourself, then you deserve to be hurt.”

She touched my leg. “Can you still feel this?”

“Pressure only,” I replied, then asked, “How do you guys get anything done if everything is a fight?”

“I’m going to start stitching you up.”

“Just tell me when you start, I don’t want to startle and make you drop a stitch,” I said. I tried to concentrate on the curtain that the nurse had just come out of, and then I looked at his arm. “Why aren’t you healing?”

“Silver,” the nurse said, and he didn’t seem offended by it. I’d have been pissed.

“Why did he cut you?” I asked.

“I’m starting now, Anita,” Lillian said.

“Do it, doc,” I said.

I felt the pressure of the needle and then that unsettling sensation of it starting to pull through the skin. It wasn’t sharp, so it didn’t technically hurt, which I was grateful for, but just feeling the needle go through my skin made my stomach roll a little. I held tighter to Pierette’s hand and it helped.

“Why did he cut you?” I asked again.

“Diego,” Claudia said from where she was standing over us. Apparently, she didn’t plan on any more stumbling nurses getting past her to Pierette.

I said, “Diego, why did he cut you?”

“He’s an asshole.”

“Besides that,” I said, and smiled before Lillian started tightening the stitches in my thigh. My stomach rolled again.

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