18 A Visit to the Doctor

'El-kor…?' I immediately thought when I saw the dark, looming silhouette in the doorway. I hid my fear, I knew the Elf only gained joy from it.

My hands clung to the chest of drawers and my eyes weren't on the presence in the door. It became harder to breathe and I was soon coughing. A horrible, hacking cough. I collapsed to my knees and saw blood on the floor.

I held my neck as I doubled over in pain. It felt like I was coughing up chunks of my throat.

"Would you like a glass of water?" A deep voice asked and I remembered that El-kor had been standing there. But… it wasn't El-kor. It was James. I shook my head, and crawled to the area rug. I climbed onto a low ottoman and continued hacking away.

My body trembled like a leaf as I fought to stop the horrible burning in my throat.

I felt a hand on my back and I tensed. My back was bare. I closed my mouth to try and muffle the coughs. I looked down and saw that my chest was covered, as were my arms. I nearly twitched at the feeling of being touched.

I hobbled away and out of the room. I felt disoriented. This wasn't my room. Where was it. I looked down a hall and saw unfamiliar sights. I was lost. Panic and fear began to build in me and I clenched my fists to search for an anchor.

"Your room's that way." I glanced to see James behind me. I jumped and moved away so he was in my line of sight. His finger was still pointing down the hall to my right. I swallowed and then panicked because I'd revealed my nervousness. Still struggling to breathe I padded slowly to my room.

Eventually my nerves calmed from being back in my room. In familiar surroundings. My hands slowly and carefully removed my ruined shirt. I searched my mind for why it'd been torn. There was bloodstains all over it, I looked at my bedsheets and saw a large puddle of blood. I sighed as I thought of how I would possibly clean those.

After changing into some clothes, sweatpants and a loose, beige shirt with a grey sweater over top of it. I sat on my couch trying to figure out what had happened. I must've blacked out. I blinked hard as I tried to force my brain to remember.

After five minutes of this I emerged from my room, a vague memory of a cold cloth on my back lingering in my mind.

~~~~~~~~~

James stood in front of the stove, whisking together some eggs. He looked up when he sensed her coming down the stairs.

She sat down and he placed her scrambled eggs in front of her. She stood silently and walked to the stove. She then proceeded to drop them back into the frying pan. He mutely watched in utter annoyance as she cooked the egg until it looked dry as a bone.

But she sat down and ate it. He looked down at her waist, her baggy clothes hid how thin she was. He removed his gaze and ate his breakfast while reading some files.

"We have to go to Malcolm's today." He heard her say quietly. He glanced over, luckily it seemed as though she had absolutely no memory of last night. And of him in a drunken state helping her.

"Why?" He asked putting down the files and eating his breakfast.

She didn't reply and instead ate her breakfast with no sound.

After breakfast they both got in the car and he drove to the head healer's house.

It was a sunny day and the skies were a radiant blue, which meant that the temperature was freezing. The car drove smoothly over the pavement. Which reminded him that he had to pick up his truck from his cabin.

They arrived at the house. It was a good sized, two story, Dutch colonial styled building. The bright white siding made it hard to look at in broad daylight. The lawn was even and covered in a thick layer of snow. There were garden plots but all of the shrubs and plants were dead.

The human got out of the car lethargically. And he followed behind as she walked along a narrow, paved path that led to a door at the back of the house.

'She seems to have been here a lot.' He thought as she rung the doorbell with disinterest.

He heard footsteps and soon the door was opened by the overly optimistic healer.

"Brooke! And you brought James, excellent." The Lycan said with a happy smile, "Come in, come in."

The human walked in and walked past the healer and disappeared into a room at the far end of the hallway. Malcolm, still smiling, turned to look at James.

"So, how are things going?" He asked as he shut the door. The basement was nice and heated.

"Fine." He answered and began to walk down the hall.

"Uh, James, Gamma." He called after him and James turned. The ceiling was very low and his head was just a few inches from it. Malcolm answered, "You'll wait out here." He gestured to a small waiting room.

There was a coffee table littered with magazines and a table set up with a kureg and kettle. He sighed and sat down on a low couch, it's springs creaking under his weight.

"I'll call you when we're done." The healer said and then he walked down the hall and shut the white door.

James tuned his ears to listen to the room. It wasn't that he was bothered by Malcolm being alone with the human. It's that… it's that…

He couldn't think of a reason. But his instincts told him to protect that fragile being. He frowned. His instincts? Why was his wolf telling him to protect a human?

While he was angry at his inner battle he heard Malcolm say, "So, any attacks or episodes recently?"

He heard the human sigh, and say quietly, "I blacked out last night. I'm sure you heard about the other times."

"No. No, I haven't." He heard a swivel chair move across the floor, "Why don't you tell me."

The human spoke in a droning voice about her flashback in the resort, the thing that had happened in the car, a panic attack apparently, and another panic attack yesterday morning.

"Alright, these are probably just because of the new adjustments and changes in your life. Things should calm down soon." Malcolm replied and James caught the sound of keys on a keyboard clacking, "Any flare ups or reopenings?"

He heard the human huff, "In the resort my hand broke, on the way to the resort my throat acted up-"

"As in the wolfsbane and poison?" Malcolm interrupted and James could only assume she nodded because she continued on.

"Then there was paralysis…" She ended on the 's' and her voice diminished into nothing.

"Brooke?" Malcolm questioned, "How long did the paralysis last this time?"

James could hear her heartbeat begin to patter and her breathing begin to falter.

"It started…" She took a shaky breath.

"Brooke, try counting. Say these numbers. Five, nine, two-"

"Stop it, Malcolm." She whispered firmly, "The paralysis started at nine pm and I came to at five in the evening." Her voice was strained and James was surprised that she was so affected by it.

He was surprised by a lot of things. The fact that she'd been poisoned with wolfsbane was a big one. How had a human, part Lycan, survived that?