Chapter 6 Kathryn
Kathryn
As I walked towards the conference room table, Darla glared at one of the women. The woman promptly hopped up and moved to another chair, looking between me and Darla with a smirk. I had a feeling something was happening that I wasn’t privy to.
“Have a seat, Kathryn,” Darla said softly, gesturing to the newly vacant chair.
Once I sat down, she took the chair next to mine. I could feel this weird almost vibration between us. I’d never felt anything like it before. I was… drawn to her, it was the only way I could describe it. I had the strangest urge to crawl into her lap.
With a discipline born of years working as a doctor, I kept my face neutral and turned my attention to the terrifying woman who introduced herself as Lois. She was obviously in charge here.
“Tell us what happened, start at the very beginning,” Lois ordered.
I went through the entire story, starting with Dr. Xi recruiting staff for her clinical trial and finishing with what I’d seen in the lab.
“It sounds crazy, but I think they’re trying to turn humans into shifters.”
“You know about shifters then?” Lois asked.
“Yeah. Y’all have slightly different biology than full humans,” I explained. “After so many treatment issues, now they teach a unit of shifter biology in medical school. Although with my father having shifter units under him in the military, I was already aware of their existence.”
Lois nodded approvingly but didn’t say anything. She scratched a few things out on a legal pad, her forehead creased in concentration, while everyone else in the room watched her. She finally looked up and pinned me with a look. I resisted the urge to shrink back.
“The best option would be for you to take a leave of absence from work and let us put you in a safe house until we can figure out what’s going on. We don’t know if whoever came into that lab last night realized that it was you who was there.”
“No,” I said immediately. “The hospital is already short-staffed. I can’t leave my patients.”
“The General said you’d say that,” Lois replied with an aggrieved sigh. “That’s why we have Plan B. Darla here was a medic in the military. We’re going to insert her as your medical assistant. She’ll stick by your side and be your personal protection while you’re working.”
Darla was going to stick by my side? That sounded good, and not just because I needed protection.
I mean, my father was right, I totally did need protection.
Even I could tell that what I’d seen in that lab was dangerous.
It was more that I wouldn’t mind spending some time with the hot bodyguard who was giving me those intense ‘you’re so sexy’ looks right now.
“And when I’m not working?” I asked. “What happens then?”
“We’ll transport you to a secure location. It’ll be easier and less obvious than adding security to your condo.”
I didn’t ask how she knew I lived in a condo. Lois struck me as a person who did their homework.
“We’ll have a team there at night to stay there with you.”
Next to me, Darla made a growling sound that made my hair stand on end. I eyed her curiously.
“Yes, you’ll be there too, Darla,” Lois snapped. “Don’t forget what I told you.”
“Yes ma’am,” my bodyguard answered immediately.
Again I had the sensation that something was going on that I wasn’t privy to.
“How will you make sure that Darla and I are on the same shifts?” I asked. “They usually rotate us quite a bit.”
“I already hacked into the scheduling system,” the woman who’d introduced herself as Wanda called from the end of the table. “You both have a shift starting in two hours, and you’re on the same schedule for the rest of the month. Hopefully that’ll be enough time for us to figure this out.”
Someone knocked on the door and walked over to Wanda, handing her an envelope.
“Your IDs are here,” Wanda said, sliding one to Martha and one to Darla. “Standard cover stories.”
“What about my… uh, client?” Darla asked. “She needs tracking. We don’t want another Tasha situation.”
Lois made an annoyed growling sound while the rest of the women at the table groaned.
“Tracking?” I asked, wondering what a ‘Tasha situation’ was.
“It’s standard practice for our protectees,” Lois said smoothly.
Wanda looked me over. “I know you can’t wear rings with your gloves, how do you feel about earrings with a tracker in them?”
I shrugged. “If you think it’s necessary.”
“It is,” Darla said firmly. “We need to know where you are at all times.”
Her strict tone made me shiver, but it wasn’t with fear. I was attracted to this woman. More attracted than I’d been to anyone in my life. Obviously, I was losing my mind. Someone had killed my friend, they were probably after me too, and I was fixated on how hot my bodyguard was?
She was hot too. Darla was a couple of inches taller than me, with long, thick golden hair, a shade that wasn’t blonde or brown but something in between.
She had high cheekbones, smooth pale skin, and almond shaped brown eyes.
I would describe her body as compact, with gentle curves, tight muscles, a combination of hard and soft.
She was obviously super fit – and some kind of a shifter.
I’d treated enough of them to recognize the almost feral energy that seemed to surround them at all times.
Like everyone except for Lois, she was dressed entirely in black, from her boots to her pants to the fitted leather jacket she wore. Darla wasn’t the kind of woman I was usually attracted to, but despite being in a room filled with beautiful women, she was the only one who caught my attention.
Given that she was supposed to be my bodyguard, that was going to be a problem.
A few hours later I exited the doctor’s locker room wearing scrubs and my new tracking earrings that looked exactly like small rubies if you didn’t look too closely.
Marcella, the charge nurse, was standing there with Darla.
My bodyguard had changed into navy blue scrubs.
With her hair pulled up in a bun and a pair of tortoise shell framed glasses perched on her nose, she looked totally different than the badass bodyguard I’d met a couple of hours ago.
“Doctor O’Brian, this is Darla Pavlovski. She’s your new MA and will be shadowing you today.”
“Nice to meet you,” I said, reaching out to shake Darla’s hand. “Please call me Kathryn.”
Just as we’d planned earlier, I led Darla around the Emergency Department, showing her all the patient rooms, storage, and supplies.
As we approached the fishbowl, as we called the circular space in the middle that was part staffing desk and part gathering place, I saw our admin coordinator training Martha on the computer.
I was surprised how quickly Sapphic Security had been able to embed people in the hospital.
Then again, we’d been incredibly short-staffed since the pandemic, so no one was going to ask questions about having some relief staff.
With Darla at my side, I looked at the triage board. At the top of the board was a forty-five year old male who’d been in a knife fight.
“I’ll take thirteen,” I said, referring to the patient room number. We always referred to the patients like that in order to keep their names confidential from any passerby.
Darla stayed half a step behind me as we entered, her eyes scanning the room.
“Mr. James? I’m Dr. O’Brian. Can you tell me what happened?”
As I spoke, I pulled on latex gloves and moved closer to examine the wound. He had a good sized stab wound on his chest, blood seeping through the large gauze pad that had been taped there.
“Don’t they got any men doctors here?” he grumbled.
Despite the fact it wasn’t even noon he reeked of alcohol.
“There are no male doctors available right now,” I answered calmly. It wasn’t the first time some asshole had asked this question. “You’re welcome to wait for one to be free, but I should warn you that every minute that your wound is open, you’re more likely to get a serious infection.”
“Fine,” he said grudgingly. “Fix it.”
I resisted rolling my eyes at his attitude.
Darla went into action, listening to his chest. “Lungs clear,” she reported. “Pulse ox and pressure look good.”
At least the knife hadn’t hit a lung. I used a forceps to gently remove the gauze that the paramedics had pressed against the wound to staunch bleeding.
It was a clean cut, but a long one, at least six inches.
I got to work irrigating the wound with saline to remove blood and debris so I could stitch it up.
Darla stood across from me, watching carefully and dabbing the edges of the wound to keep the blood from seeping down his chest.
“It looks like you got lucky, Mr. James, the wound isn’t too deep.”
I must have hit a particularly sore spot, because suddenly the large man shot up, knocking me away.
I stepped back quickly, ready for an attack, but I didn’t have to worry.
Darla’s hand shot out, pressing against the other side of his chest and pinning him to the bed so quickly I thought I’d imagined it.
He struggled for a few seconds before sagging back against his pillow.
The man looked at Darla in shock. “You’re pretty strong for a chick.”
She gave him a look that made him flinch. “I’m pretty strong,” she said firmly. “Now be still for the doctor before you get sepsis.”
Sending her a look of thanks, I finished cleaning the wound, then stitched up the patient. I could have waited for Plastics, but it was more important to seal it up and stop the bleeding than it was to have a nicer looking scar.
“You handled yourself well in there,” I said to Darla as we left the now sleeping man.
“I’ve mostly practiced in battle,” she said. “Shifter strength and not having regular access to anesthesia teaches you real fast how to subdue a patient without hurting them.”
The next ten hours flew by in the usual chaos of the ER, but having Darla by my side made everything go easier. She was incredibly fast at everything she did, and she seemed able to anticipate what I needed before I did. Her military experience transferred well to a busy city emergency department.
“We make a good team,” I told her as we grabbed a shitty coffee in the staff lounge. “Our nursing team is great but it’s nice to have someone with more higher level medical experience.”
“I forgot how much I like medicine,” she said, looking almost sad for an instant before her face smoothed again. “Maybe it sounds weird, but I’m having fun today.”
It seemed like a rare personal admission. I noticed that she wasn’t super chatty, her words typically economical and focused on the task at hand. I didn’t mind too much though. Most of us who worked in emergency medicine were exactly the same.
As we exited the lounge, we ran right into Dr. Xi, the doctor who was running the trial that had killed Seth.
“Oh there you are, Doctor O’Brian.”
The doctor was a tiny Asian woman, but she had a coiled energy around her that told me she was not fully human.
She was impeccably dressed in designer clothes and impracticably high heels, her shiny black hair in a perfect bob despite the late hour.
Xi’s gaze pinned on me and even though I had six inches on her, it felt like she was looking down her nose at me.
“What did you need, Dr. Xi?” I asked, carefully keeping my expression neutral.
“I was reviewing the access logs for my lab and saw that you were trying to scan in last night. Did you need something?”
Darla didn’t move a muscle, yet somehow I felt her stiffen beside me.
“I was looking for my friend Seth, he’s the social worker here?
” I raised my voice into a question, pretending I didn’t know she knew him.
“He wasn’t feeling well and mentioned that he was going to see you.
When he didn’t come back, I decided to see if he was still there.
I guess I must have missed him though, because y’all were all gone by then. No one answered when I knocked.”
Xi stared at me, clearly trying to decide if I was lying or not. I heard her make a sniffing noise, her nose wrinkling slightly.
“Seth told me he was quitting,” she finally said.
“He said it was too much for him, working in the Emergency Department. It’s so much stress.
In fact, he asked if he could work in the lab with me, but unfortunately I don’t have any openings right now.
I suggested maybe he go work in a school or something. ”
I knew that was a lie. My friend loved working in the Emergency Department and thrived on the stress of something new happening every day, the same as me.
Her attention shot to Darla, and I saw her nostrils flare, as if she was sniffing her too. What was up with that? We were at the end of a ten hour shift, but I didn’t think either of us smelled that bad. No one had even thrown up on us.
My bodyguard didn’t say a word, but she was radiating menace.
“Who are you?” Xi demanded.
“This is Darla, my new MA. Today’s her first day,” I said quickly. “Darla, this is Dr. Xi, she heads up the hospital research program.”
“Nice to meet you, Doctor.” Darla’s tone was polite, even though I knew she’d figured out who Dr. Xi was.
“Welcome to Seattle Memorial,” Xi said, her eyes appraising. “It’s good to see that we’re getting more diversity here in the hospital. Have a good evening.”
The doctor strode off, her high heels clacking against the tile.
“What did she mean about diversity?” I asked Darla.
“She wanted me to know that she recognized me as a supe.”
“Because she’s one too, right?” I asked.
“Fox shifter,” she confirmed. “I hate fox shifters. Never met one I could trust.”
“Do you think she suspects that I was in her lab?” I asked.
“Yeah, she was scenting you, trying to see if it matched what she smelled in the lab. She knows you were there.”
I lifted up my arm, taking a whiff. “How? I use deodorant.”
Darla smirked. “Supes have a much stronger sense of smell compared to humans,” she said. “She definitely recognized your scent.”
I felt a flash of unease. “Are you ready to get out of here?”
Darla nodded. “Let’s get changed and go home. You need to eat.”