Obsidian Butterfly

He frowned; obviously it wasn't the reaction he'd wanted. "You've got over forty stitches in your back."

My eyes went wide before I could stop them. "Gee, that's a record even for me."

"This isn't a joke, Ms. Blake."

"It might as well be fu

"If you start moving around, you're going to rip the stitches open. Right now, if you're careful, the scars won't be bad, but if you start moving around, you'll scar."

I sighed. "It'll have plenty of company, doctor."

He stood there, shaking his head slowly, face set in harsh lines. "Nothing I can say is going to make any difference, is it?"

"No," I said.

"You're a fool," he said.

"If I stay in here until I'm healed, what am I going to say to myself when I'm staring down at the next round of bodies?"

"Saving the world is not your job, Ms. Blake."

"I'm not that ambitious," I said. "I'm just trying to save a few lives."

"And you truly believe that only you can solve this case?"

"No, but I know that I am the only one that … this man will talk to." I'd almost said Nicky Baco, but I didn't want Doctor Cu

"I told you that I'd check you out if you looked at your injuries. I keep my word."

"I appreciate that in a person, Doctor Cu

"Don't thank me, Ms. Blake. Don't thank me." He moved towards the door, giving both the makeshift altar and Edward a medium-wide berth, as if both made him uncomfortable. At the door he turned. "I'll send a nurse in to help you dress because you will need the help." He walked out before I could say thank you again. Probably just as well.

Edward stayed until the nurse arrived. It was a different nurse, tall, light brunette, if that wasn't an oxymoron. Her gaze stayed on my bruised face longer than was politic, and when she helped me slip out of the gown, she gave a low hiss at my back. It was unprofessional and sort of u

"You'll never be able to wear a bra over the stitches in your back," she said.

I sighed. I hated to go without a bra. It always made me feel underdressed no matter what else I was wearing. "Let's just get the shirt on."

She held it and helped me slip it over my head. Putting my arms up to go through the sleeves made the pain in my back sharp and immediate, as if the skin would pull apart if I moved too quickly. I wondered if that would have been the analogy that I'd chosen if Doctor Cu

"I normally work in the nursery," the nurse said as she helped me straighten the shirt, buttoning the first two buttons.

I looked up at her, not sure what to say. But I didn't need to worry. She knew exactly what to say. "They called me in after you destroyed the monster. For the … cleanup." She helped me sit on the edge of the bed. I sat there for a few seconds with my legs dangling off the edge, letting my body adjust to the fact that we were getting dressed, we were going to stand … in just a second.

"I'm sorry you had to see it," I said, because I had to say something, I wasn't even comfortable with her saying I'd «destroyed» the monster. It made it sound entirely too heroic, and what it had felt like was desperate. Desperation is the true mother of invention, at least for me.

She started to help me into the black panties, but I took them from her hands. If I couldn't even put on my own underwear, I was in serious trouble. And if I was truly that hurt, I needed to know it. It would cut down on my urge to be heroic.

I started to simply bend at the waist, but it just wasn't that easy. I lowered myself downward a little bit at a time, and I was still nowhere near low enough.

"Let me start them up your legs, so you don't have to bend all the way down," the nurse said.

I finally let her, and even pulling them only part way up my body turned my back into one great big hurt. I leaned against the bed when they were on, and didn't even argue when she bent down to put on my socks. She never argued that I was too hurt to be leaving. It was too obvious to argue about it.

"I'd worked with Vicki for two years. It was Meg's first job." Her eyes were dry, wide, and I noticed the dark circles under them like purplish smudges, as if she hadn't slept much in the last three days.

I remembered the body that had blocked the door into the nursery, and the nurse that had been thrown through the window. Vicki and Meg, though I'd probably never know which had been which, not that it mattered. They were dead and didn't care, and the nurse helping me slip into a pair of black jeans looked too fragile for questions. My job was to listen, and make encouraging noises where needed.

I slipped the jeans over my butt without help, buttoned them and zipped them all by myself. Things were looking up. I'd tried tucking the shirt into my pants out of habit, but that required more back movement than I thought.

Besides, untucked, my braless state would be a little less noticeable. I was really too well endowed to go without, but my modesty wasn't worth the pain, not today.

"Every time I close my eyes, I see the babies." She was kneeling with one of my shoes in her hands, when she looked up. "I keep thinking I should be dreaming about my friends, but I only see the babies, their little bodies, and they cry. Every time I close my eyes, I hear the babies screaming. I wasn't there, and I hear them, every night." The tears were finally there, sliding soundlessly down her face as if she didn't know she was crying. She slid the shoe on my foot and looked down, paying attention to what she was doing.

"See a councilor or a priest or whoever you trust," I said. "You'll need help."

She got my other shoe off the bed, and gazed up at me, the tears drying in tracks down her pale cheeks. "I heard that there's some sort of witch making these corpses, causing them to attack people."

"Not a witch," I said. "What's behind all this isn't human."

She slipped the shoe on me, frowning. "Is it immortal like a vampire?"

I didn't do my usual lecture about how vamps aren't immortal, only hard to kill. She didn't need that particular lecture. "I don't know yet."

She laced my shoe solid, but not too tight, as if she did this regularly. She looked up at me with those strange empty eyes of hers, tear tracks still visible on her face. "If it's not immortal, kill it."

Her face held that absolute trust that is usually reserved for small children or people that are not quite all there. There was no questioning in her shocked eyes, no doubt in that pale face. I answered that trust. Reality could wait until she was ready for it. I said what she needed to hear. "If it can die, I'll kill it."

I said it because she needed to hear it. I said it because after what I'd seen it do, that was the plan. Maybe it had been the plan all along. Knowing Edward it probably had been. He said solve the case when what he usually meant was kill them, kill them all. As a plan, I'd heard worse. As a way of life, it lacked a certain romance. As a way to stay alive, it was just about perfect. As a way to keep your soul intact, it sucked. But I was willing to trade a piece of my soul to stop this thing. And that was perhaps my biggest problem. I was always willing to compromise my soul if it would take out the great evil. But there always seemed to be another great evil coming down the road. No matter how many times I saved the day and took out the monster, there was always another monster, and there always would be. The monster supply was unlimited. I was not. The parts of myself that I was using up to slay the monsters was finite, and once I used it all up, there would be no going back. I'd be Edward in drag. I could save the world and lose myself.