Franny was trying to pull off her wet clothes in the frigid weather. Allan was afraid she was planning to turn into her wolf.
“Franny, hold on. We’ll get you and Stacy to the clinic as soon as we can. The ambulance will be here any minute. Dr. Holt will take care of you both.” He pressed the baby against his wet chest with one arm, while holding Franny close to him with the other and trying to keep her from stripping out of her wet clothes. She needed to, but not as a prelude to shifting. He moved them up toward the hatchback to get them out of the stiff, cold wind, but Franny was struggling to get free.
Slipping a bit, Debbie hurried as fast as she could back down the hill to reach them with blankets and some dry clothes.
“Let’s get them up to the vehicle. You can remove the baby’s clothes inside the car, and I’ll take care of Franny,” Allan said.
“Okay,” Debbie replied, and Allan gave her the baby, then lifted Franny’s trembling body into his arms and trudged up the hill.
“Need…to…turn,” Franny bit out.
Yes, their double coat would help warm her, as would the shift itself, but then her baby would turn too. He could just see Debbie dropping the baby-turned-wolf-pup and screaming in fright.
“When you’re in the ambulance, Franny. Just wait.” He spoke firmly, like the pack sub-leader he was, encouraging her but at the same time commanding her to do his bidding.
At the car, Debbie climbed into the backseat, pulled off the baby’s soaking-wet pink fleece jumpsuit, and wrapped her in a dry blanket, while Allan struggled to remove Franny’s wet clothes. She was shaking badly from the cold, which was better than if she wasn’t shivering at all, but her skin was ice white, her breathing abnormally slow.
Sirens in the distance told them the cavalry was coming. Thank God. He just hoped it was their ambulance and not the regular one.
“What happened?” Allan asked Franny. He had to keep her talking and alert, keep her from shifting unexpectedly.
“Red car—no accident.”
Allan paused as he was trying to get a wool ski hat on her head, but she kept removing the blanket. She was either thoroughly confused or she really wanted to shift. Maybe a little of both.
Franny looked on the verge of collapse as he pulled the wool knit cap over her head and removed the rest of her wet clothes. Then he wrapped her tightly in the blanket, lifted her into his arms, and set her inside the hatchback. There she was at least protected from the bitter wind. Debbie was holding the baby close. Both he and Debbie were also suffering from hypothermia. He felt his speech slurring, and he was having a hard time concentrating on what he needed to do next. But he had enough presence of mind to know not to shift.
“Your daughter’s breathing and her heartbeat’s steady,” Allan reassured Franny, though he couldn’t know for sure about the baby’s overall condition until the EMTs took her to the clinic and had her checked out.
Debbie frowned a little at him, and he realized he’d made another mistake. The problem was that his wolf senses were enhanced enough that he could hear, smell, and see things that humans couldn’t. Debbie probably figured he was just soothing the mother with a story. The truth was that he could hear the baby’s heartbeat. It was steady, which gave him a modicum of relief.
The ambulance pulled up and the medics took over from there. Allan should have asked Franny more particulars about the accident, but he wasn’t thinking as clearly as he normally did in an emergency. Not that Franny could have responded with any real mental clarity, but it was something he should have done in a case like this.
He and Debbie were shaking as hard as Franny from the cold, but the EMTs had already given them blankets too.
“My…purse,” Franny said, her teeth chattering.
“Anything else you need from the car?” Allan wished he could put on his wolf coat or his wet suit. He was afraid she had something damning in her purse with regard to being lupus garou, though he couldn’t imagine what. He didn’t want to jeopardize their situation if anyone else went to get the bag for her later. So he made the decision to go after it, despite how chilled he was.
“Just…purse,” she managed to get out. “Front…seat.”
Then again, the hypothermia might be the reason she felt she had to have her purse. It might have nothing to do with keeping their secret safe. Just more of a concern about her money, credit cards, driver’s license, and whatever else she might have in it. Hell, he knew of a case where a woman told her adult son to return to her burning house to retrieve her laptop. And then she was kicking herself for it afterward, wondering why she even had him do it. Irrational, sure, but people could do or say crazy things in a crisis.
Still, Allan felt it was safer if he went back for it—just in case. “I’ll get it for you,” he reassured Franny.