Chapter 4
Four
JULIAN
Vesper Point Memorial Hospital
In service, there is strength.
Erected by the Vesper Point Historical Society, 1973
The plaque shines bright in the morning sun.
I’m surprised to see it given the overcast nature the coast has, but it’s a nice little break in the gloom.
I sip my coffee and turn to look out from the hospital to the cliff drop off just a few hundred yards away.
The sea rages beneath and I can smell the salt spray and hear the caw of the gulls as they glide on the wind overhead.
A cliff drop off isn’t the safest choice of location when it comes to a hospital but the view can’t be beat.
The ocean stretches out in front of me, the waves an infinity of motion that blends right into the horizon the longer that I watch it.
I sip my coffee and stand there for a minute longer, enjoying the quiet of the morning.
It's my first day at Vesper Point Memorial and I’m in no rush to meet the locals.
In a place as quiet as this, I’ll have to be on my best behavior.
There won’t be any getting away with mistakes or sloppiness feeding.
In Seattle, it was easy, it wasn’t unusual for patients to never come back given the transient nature of the city.
Seattle was vibrant, raw and alive in a way that made people move.
Sometimes to it and sometimes away. A neighborhood could change in the blink of an eye.
It was easy to lose people, you came to expect it, the loss, the longer you lived in the city, so why would it be any different when it came to patients in the city’s busiest hospital?
I’d been spoiled at Harborview Medical Center, but that was really just another way of saying that I had gotten lazy.
So much so that my maker was able to fuck my shit up and I barely locked it down before I lost everything.
I grip the paper cup I got from The Perky Perch a little tighter when I think of Rosanna.
Coffee sloshes out of the top and gets on my hand.
I sigh and flick it off before I take another scalding sip of my morning coffee to calm the fuck down.
I’m fine. I’m not going to lose my shit about having to lay low in a backwater town where I have to watch my every fucking step in an effort to go unnoticed.
“A low profile is fine,” I remind myself as I turn away from the ocean view and back towards the doors of the hospital.
They’re big, bronze and glass art deco doors that harken back to a busier, more prosperous time in Vesper Point.
Ivy crawls along the front facade making it a sea of waving green leaves.
Weeping stone angels mark the hospital’s corners.
Not everything is bad about Vesper Point.
There is, for instance, the woman that lives next door.
I was surprised to see her standing there in her kitchen watching me when I moved in.
Even more surprised when she dropped to the ground when I waved, though not as much as when I saw her lay out the local in the coffee shop.
She might not be a supe but she’s interesting, not a bad thing with my self-exile to Vesper Point.
It won’t hurt to have a distraction close by if I need it.
Although, I suspect my trying to blend in as a human in Vesper Point is going to take a lot of my time and energy.
I’d even had to go grocery shopping to keep up appearances.
A newcomer to town that didn’t eat or grocery shop?
Definitely going to be a red flag to locals.
Vampires could eat, we didn’t need to but it was something we could do if we chose to.
Some vamps were even making money as foodies on social media.
A real bold move if I ever saw one, considering digital footprints are forever and too much attention brought the Varcolacus down on you, but whatever.
Sometimes the immortal nature of vampires bred carelessness but that wasn’t me.
The last thing I want is a summons from the group of over powered vampires.
The Varcolacus aren’t like the rest of us.
At a certain age, vampires started to develop powers outside of our natural enhanced speed, strength and skills at glamouring.
The Varcolacus could fly, move shit with their minds, there was even a shapeshifter in the mix.
For as long as it takes Rosanna’s trial to be handled and the Varcolacus to focus on someone else, I’m staying put in Vesper Point. I’m not ready for the Varcolacus to know about me. When I make that play, it’ll have to be for something that’s truly worth it.
Something I’d die to protect.
I scan the ID card that I’d been mailed by the hospital when I’d formally accepted the position as the town’s newest doctor and enter the doors with a fake smile plastered on my face while I channel the energy of a harmless golden retriever.
It works, from the way the nurse at the intake desk lights up when she sees me.
“Hello! How can I help you?”
“Good morning,” I stop to look at her name tag, “Donna. I’m Doctor Vale and I’m your new hospitalist.”
Donna’s eyes widen and she sighs. I know the look in her eyes. She’s older, maybe fifty or so but still pretty with silvering blonde hair and big brown eyes that remind me of a deer. Donna is going to be an easy ally when I need anything done that isn’t quite above board.
“Oh my word, I didn’t expect someone so young and…
” her voice trails off and I know what Donna isn’t saying, which is likely a variation of handsome, good-looking or I’d even been called dashing recently.
They’re right. I am damn good-looking but such is the life of a vampire.
We’re pretty because we’re the perfect predators.
Humans trust pretty people, and in life humans trust me far more than they should which means I am very fucking pretty.
“And tall?” I ask, feigning innocence. I’m decently tall at six foot two, and while I’m not towering over anyone it’s the best excuse I can give the nurse to recover and keep her at arm’s length. I don’t want anyone on staff thinking they can get too close to me on the first day.
Donna blinks like she remembers she’s indeed working and nods. “Yes, that’s it. I-sorry! We just are an older bunch here at Vesper Point Memorial. You’ll be the youngest on staff but that’s perfect. We’re positively starved for new blood.”
I smile at her comment. If she only knew how wrong she was about my age. “I’m excited to learn from such an experienced staff. I can’t think of a better place to learn from.”
Donna blushes at that and then motions for me to follow her.
“It’s a pleasure to have you here with us.
And it’ll be our staff that learns from you, we’ve never had such a skilled hospitalist on staff.
The entire town is going to be over the moon!
I’ll take you back to show you around and introduce you to the staff. We have an office ready for you to go.”
I’d had a shared office in Seattle, but never my own.
“Thank you, that’s very kind.”
Donna waves a manicured hand and bats her eyes like she personally arranged my office. “We had to pull out all the stops for our big city hospitalist.”
I give her a smile I know doesn’t reach my eyes but she doesn’t notice.
Instead, she takes me through the hospital and chatters about the history and the founding of the place.
I half listen to Donna but I do pick up that the building is original to the 1901 founding, which means there’s only two floors and the basement where the morgue is.
Even though it’s been renovated since its founding, it’s dated.
I bet that plaque is the newest addition to Vesper Point Memorial.
There’s only two wings, the north and the south wings, on each floor with 40 beds total, which is nice.
I’ll be able to relax after the bullshit in Seattle.
The first floor houses the maternity wing, which is woefully empty, ER, and the surgical suites.
There’s a few going on today, which is good.
Calm is what I’m after, not deader than me if I want my abrupt move from Seattle to Vesper Point to be believable.
The second floor, Donna tells me, is where I’ll be spending the majority of my time.
Internal Medicine and general inpatient care occupies the north wing, alongside post-op recovery in the south wing.
I spy six beds in post-op and ten in internal medicine.This is going to be a cake walk.
I might even have time to pick up a hobby.
Something boring like fishing, which for all my lack of interest seems like a better waste of time than the hours I know I’ll be spending ingratiating myself with the locals.
Distasteful I know, but a necessary evil to show just how much of a stable vampire I am.
One perfectly capable of assimilating into the human world and ensuring the continued ignorance of humans to the vampire world.
It’ll earn me a shiny fucking gold star in the Varcolacus’ book, or at least it better fucking earn me one.
Access to steady meals and my general curiosity about the body and its ever present march towards decay and death might have first lured me into medicine but I stayed for the cover it gave me.
Doctors do good, more than good, they save lives.
They’re helpers. I can’t be entirely evil if I’m helping, right?
No, of course not. It isn’t like I’m worried about the state of my non-existent soul or the balance of good and evil in the world.
I’m a doctor because it means I’m generally allowed to do as I please and remain safe from the overreaching arm of vampire law.
If the Varcolacus turn their eye on me because of Rosanna, it’ll be obvious she was operating on her own.
Vampire sires turn out to be assholes like human parents all the time.
They won’t punish me on account of her sins.