The heart monitor rang out a steady song, and Teddy was grateful for that. Nina was tough, maybe not vampire strong, but she was healthy and there was no way she’d believe anything other than this woman, this woman with her angry words and fierce loyalty, would be anything other than okay.
Marty pulled Nina’s hand to her cheek, tears streaming from her eyes, rolling onto Nina’s pale skin and dropping to the sheet covering her. “I begged you. I told you I didn’t give a damn if it got me shunned or put me in werewolf jail or whatever the hell happens when you turn someone willfully. But you wouldn’t listen, would you? Do you ever listen to me? No one had to know. You, with all your in-your-face, no-rules-apply-to-me bullshit, refused. The rule breaker was suddenly a chicken-shit. And now…look. Look at what you’ve done!” she whispered, her voice laced in hysteria, her shoulders shaking.
Wanda came up behind her friend and gripped her shoulders, her knuckles white from the effort, her face wet with tears mirroring Marty’s.
And Teddy marveled at these women as tears also streamed down her face as well. Marveled at how true they were to each other. How steadfast. They were more than just family. They were something bigger. Something she had no definition for, no word in the dictionary covered how bonded these women were. How integral each of their lives was to the survival of the others.
It was amazing and frightening all at once.
“When you’re done being a sissy-ass, lying around in this bed like some kind of diva, you’re done. No more adventures for you, Elvira. If I have to lock you in a padded room, I’ll damn well do it! You’re not the person you were since the change, Nina. You have to stop pretending you are. Do you hear me in there?”
Teddy gnawed on the inside of her cheek to keep from crying out.
“I was so angry with you, Nina Statleon. I kept thinking, how could you not want us to turn you back? Why were chicken wings more important than living out our eternities together? What about Charlie and Greg? Didn’t they matter? How could you go right on being human when you’d eventually die and leave us?” She rasped the words, pressing Nina’s hand to her forehead.
Wanda grabbed Marty’s free hand and clung to it, held on to it like her life depended on the very contact.
“Then I thought you were choosing. I thought all the horrible things you always say to us just might have a smidge of truth. Maybe you really were glad you were human again because it meant you didn’t have to put up with us for an eternity. With me. Or maybe you weren’t really as passionate about helping others like us as we were. But that wasn’t it at all. I know the truth now, Nina. Darnell told me tonight. You were too afraid I’d get caught for turning you—that I’d end up punished, maybe taken away from Keegan and Hollis because it was my second infraction, after helping turn Wanda. I didn’t understand it at the time. But you were just looking out for me. Just like always. Please come back, and I swear on every damn eyeshadow I own, I’ll look out for you now. Always. No matter what. For as long as you choose to be here.”
Teddy stuffed her fist against her mouth to keep from weeping out loud, the hot sting of tears clouding her eyes. Cormac pulled her from her chair and sat, bringing her to his lap, settling her against him. His big hand ran over her hair, pass after pass, soothing her.
And the night wore on. Long, dark, cold, sterile, with nothing but the glow of monitors and the incessant beep of Nina’s life in green numbers on a black screen.
She prayed. She made bargains with whoever was in charge. She offered up sacrifices. Whatever it took to keep Nina with them, she’d give it up.
Marty and Wanda never moved. Clinging to one another, they talked in whispers to their friend, stroked her hair, held vigil. Greg sat in silence, his eyes closed, his wife’s hand at his forehead.
Teddy and Cormac brought a tormented Carl to the waiting room, where they took turns talking to him, reassuring him. Exhausted, he finally spread his long body over a row of chairs and placed his head on Teddy’s lap, where she caressed the face that had so rapidly become precious to her until he slept.
Darnell and Archibald had joined them, holding hands, the wide beefy paw of the demon swallowing up the smaller manservant’s fingers. Darnell’s lips moved, likely in silent prayer. Something she no longer found quite so strange.
Archibald, as perfectly dressed as ever, sat straight as an arrow, his posture impeccable, everything in its place but his tears. They streamed freely from his eyes, plopping to the black linen of his trousers in salty splotches.
Her brothers had finally arrived, travel-weary, their eyes brimming with worry when they enveloped her in a silent hug then shook Cormac’s hand before they, too, sat to wait.
Nurses came and went. Doctors on silent feet tended to patients. The day came and went, too, melding into yet another night of waiting.
No one but Carl slept. No one spoke much. Every ounce of energy, words, thoughts, were reserved for Nina alone.