Mercy Nocturne Medical Center: Night Shift

There are worse punishments than being assigned to the night shift.

I mean, I could have been fired? Tied at the stake? Had my fingernails ripped out.

But this? This is terrible and I hate it. I can think of so many other things I’d rather be doing at eleven o’clock at night.

Sorting my laundry.

Banging on the wall so my neighbor stops blasting music at all hours.

Flipping aimless through tv channels until I fall asleep listening to infomercials.

Saturday nights make me wild.

I shoulder my bag and make my way through the employee entrance of Mercy Nocturne Medical Center, smothering a yawn against the back of my hand. This is my third shift as Mercy’s Night Emergency Attending, which means I am on night three of ‘Valen is suffering the consequences of his own actions’.

I’m Incubus enough to own that I deserve this. I broke the rules, something that I never do, and there had to be consequences for that. But the night shift? Seriously?

Ten years at Mercy Nocturne. Six of them running Diagnostic Medicine. Multiple published studies. A respectable success rate with rare magical disorders. And now I get to spend my nights treating whatever supernatural idiot has decided that tonight is a good night to discover whether or not they can regrow a finger.

For the record, the answer depends heavily on the species but good news is, most can.

The werewolf behind the security desk looks irritatingly awake for someone working at this hour but he’s probably used to it. I’m the one that’s on day three of sleep deprivation because sleeping during the day just feels wrong.

“Evening, Dr. Vorlath. Rough day?”

I almost give him my usual nod and keep walking but I’m desperate to delay my shift for just a few more minutes. I’m early anyway.

I run a hand though my long dark hair and a few strands catch on one of my horns and I smooth it out.

“Haven’t quite figured out how to sleep during the day. My body rebels against it. I’d be surprised if I got more than three hours today.”

Owen winces in sympathy but then his muzzle breaks in a small smile. “I know a witch that makes a wicked draught. No side effects at all and perfectly safe to use. She sells ’em out of the locker room at my gym.”

I blink at him.

“Uh. Thank you for the offer but I’m sure I’ll sort myself out.”

“If you change your mind, let me know, I’ll get you the hook up. Also, cardboard and duct tape all your windows. It’ll be dark as shit. Kinda suffocating though. I tried it once and woke up thinking I’d gone deaf and blind. Had no idea where I was. Not a fun time. Now I just sleep with a pillow over my head. Haven’t suffocated yet.”

I shake my head and adjust my bag.

“I appreciate the... advice.” I try to punctuate it with what I hope passes for a smile as I head farther into the building.

I wonder what the HOA of my condo would say if I made it look like a trap house. I can already imagine the letters and fees.

I’m not the most sociable person. No, that’s understating it. I don’t like small talk. Or any talk that’s not about work. I never know what to say or how to end the conversation. There’s no indicators of when you should stop talking.

One thing I love about being a doctor is that all of my interactions have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Socializing does not. Which is why I’m great with patients. I know what they expect from me.

I knew from a young age that I wanted to go into medicine. The idea of taking something that was broken, a person that was broken, and having the power to fix them? I liked the science of figuring things out. Helping people is a bonus.

Medicine suits me. Diagnostic medicine especially. Give me an impossible collection of symptoms and a patient three specialists had already given up on and I was happy.

Or as close to happy as I generally get.

The emergency department is quiet tonight. A few patients occupy the waiting room, although none appear to be actively dying, bleeding out, transforming, shedding, spontaneously combusting, or attempting to eat anyone else.

It’s going to be a boring night which means I might be able to catch a nap in the staff room. The thought fills me with longing. I never knew how much I loved sleeping until I wasn’t getting any.

Felix is behind reception with a phone tucked against one pointed red ear while one hand flies over his keyboard, and the other one holds an energy drink. Someone should tell him those are bad for your health. He works in a hospital for Gods sake. He should know better.

I give him a nod as I pass and he holds up a finger indicating that I should wait. He says something into the phone and then hangs up, taking a long chug of his drink before he puts the can down and wipes his mouth. His lips are blue. Which his notable because the rest of him is various shades of red. I look down at the drink and see that it’s blue raspberry flavored. That’s not even a real flavor. Is there anything more artificial?

“Third floor wants you, ASAP. Human case,” he says, golden eyes meeting my pale gray ones.

I raise my eyebrows.

“Human case? Interesting. Know anything about it?”

Of course he does. Felix and to a lesser extent, Owen spend all night every night gossiping. That’s not entirely fair, last night I caught them talking about the merits of chicken in Italian pasta vs meatballs. They asked my opinion and I gave the obvious answer.

Seafood.

Which was apparently the wrong answer. The demon and the werewolf are attached at the hip and are always the first ones to know anything.

“Rourke and Cahill brought him in about an hour ago. Grimvale got him stabilized. Waiting on you for next steps.”

“Thanks,” I say leaving reception as the phone starts ringing again.

I haven’t had a lot of human patients. Mercy Nocturne Medical Center is a hospital that services supernaturals and the occasional human with an injury caused by a supernatural. We fix them up, erase their memories, and send them on their way.

I’m not sure how an attack would warrant a consultation by me. They’re generally pretty straightforward cases. Grimvale is one of the best trauma surgeons in the hospital. Because he’s the only one. But that doesn’t stop him from letting it go to his head.

While I like the diagnostic aspect of medicine, Grimvale likes the blood and guts bit of it.

I put my bag in my locker, shrug into my white coat as I tie my long dark hair out of the way, and head to the elevator. I pass by a supply room and my tail flicks once behind me. I can feel a sexual energy emanating from behind the closed doors.

I don’t even have to try to read the energy signature to know who it is. It’s Nurse Nico with his latest conquest who’s probably the orderly I saw him flirting with last night in the break room. For a vampire, he has a sex life that would even rival your average incubus.

And incubus have sex a lot since we feed on sexual energy.

I am the exception. I only feed by proxy, which means I feed from supplements and from the sexual energy around me.

I don’t like sex. I don’t like the way that it makes me frenzied, how I lose control, and how I’m not myself. I don’t like that I need it.

Thankfully, sexual energy dissipates naturally, and an incubus absorbs some of whatever is around them whether we mean to or not. If two people decide to fuck in a supply closet ten feet away from me, I’m going to know about it.

Is it invasive?

Yes.

A little creepy?

Sure.

Am I going to starve myself on principle because other people refuse to go home and use their bedrooms?

Also no.

A guy has to eat, so I allow myself to feed on the energy in the time it takes the elevator to arrive. It wasn’t very much but it helps wake me up.

I step into the elevator and press the button for the 5th floor and then I curse. The 5th floor is diagnostics and where I worked before this hellish placement.

Muscle memory.

I impatiently press the 3rd floor button a few times and then lean back against the wall of the elevator.

Being an incubus in medicine has always come with certain assumptions. Mostly that I became a doctor to sleep with nurses. I did not.

In fact, I originally thought a hospital would be the perfect career choice for an incubus with very little interest in sex. Trauma. Surgery. Infections. Open wounds. There’s nothing remotely erotic about any of it.

I was very, very wrong.

If I’ve learned anything in ten years, it’s that nearly dying makes patients horny and working twelve-hour shifts while marinating in adrenaline apparently does the same thing to the staff.

There’s probably less sexual energy floating around most strip clubs.

Which, from a nutritional standpoint, is useful for me but from every other standpoint, it means I know far too much about my coworkers.

The elevator opens and I see Dr. Julian Grimvale. When he catches my gaze, he smiles, baring his sharp canines.

“You’re here. Thank fuck. I need a diagnostic consult.”

“What kind?”

“The kind where I’ve got a human who was attacked by something that apparently couldn’t decide what species it wanted to be.”

I frown. Okay. That is interesting.

“What are we looking at?”

“Claw wounds. Venom. Magical residue. Possible paralytic agent. There’s more, but I’d rather show you.”

I hate that Julian knows exactly how to get my attention.

Last night I spent nearly an hour treating a 150 year old vampire for impacted cerumen. It’s not as fun as it sounds, it was a buildup of earwax in his ear canal that caused a blockage and made him think he was going deaf. Pretty sure he hadn’t cleaned his ears since he’d been turned.

This sounds like a much better way to spend my night.

I follow Julian down the hall. “Is the human conscious?”

“Yeah. Lots of screaming. Tried to bite me.” Julian shakes his head. “He’s a feral one.”

“Let me guess, you weren’t glamoured?” I ask, glancing sideways at him.

“No. It makes me itchy. He’s going to see things while he’s here regardless, and they’ll wipe his memory before he’s discharged. Seemed pointless.”

I shake my head slowly but he has a point. Still, I can’t imagine waking up after a supernatural attack and finding Julian leaning over him did much for the human’s state of mind.”

Julian is dark fey. Which means when the human gained consciousness he was greeted by lavender skin, pitch-black eyes without a hint of sclera, pointed ears, and a pair of small black horns jutting from his forehead.

By human standards, not a comforting sight.

Not that I’m any better.

My skin is dark gray, my eyes pale gray with vertical pupils, and my horns are considerably larger than Julian’s, sweeping back through my black hair. There’s also the tail, which tends to ruin any chance of passing for human even faster than the horns do.

I can glamour myself. Most of us can, at least enough to move through the human world without attracting attention. Julian’s right about the itching, though. Keeping one up for too long feels like a constant buzzing underneath my skin.

“Besides,” Julian continues, “he regained consciousness in the ambulance and saw Rourke. Can you imagine waking up to that?”

He gives an exaggerated shiver. “Poor human was traumatized before he even made it through the doors.”

Ah. Rourke.

Werewolf EMT and Julian’s self-appointed arch nemesis.

I don’t bother pointing out that, given the two options, Rourke was probably the less terrifying thing to wake up to.

He’s essentially a very large talking dog.

Julian looks straight up demonic.

And as a member of a demon-adjacent species, I feel uniquely qualified to make that distinction.

I hold out my hand.

“Chart.”

Julian passes it over.

I flip it open and scan the first page.

Three deep lacerations across the outside of the left thigh. Ragged edges. Significant blood loss at the scene, although nothing immediately life-threatening.

Whoever, or whatever, attacked him had claws.

That part is simple enough. My eyes look at the attached pictures of the wounds pre-suture and I tap a black nail over my dark lips, thinking.

“Not werewolf, the spacing is wrong and there’s one too many lacerations. Shifter or hell hound maybe?” Not my area of expertise.

“Negative and negative.”

“Hm.”

I turn the page.

Toxicology. That’s where things become interesting.

“Paralytic venom?”

“Temporary,” Julian says. “Left leg was completely unresponsive when Rourke picked him up. Started resolving in the ambulance. Full motor function came back about forty minutes ago.”

I scan the results.

Neurotoxin present in the blood. Low concentration now, presumably metabolized, but enough remained when he arrived to get a magical classification.

Serpentine.

I look at the photograph again.

Snakes don’t have claws. There are supernatural species capable of producing venom and possessing claws, of course. Nature is creative and magic even more so. The problem is that the venom isn’t from any of them.

It most closely resembles a naga neurotoxin but nagas do not have claws. A puzzle indeed.

I flip another page.

“Why did you run a magical residue panel?”

“His wounds were glowing. You can’t tell from the photos but there was definitely a magical signature. Rourke noted it,” he grumbles, like it pains him to admit it Rourke could ever do something right. “But I could trace it myself once I knew what I was looking for. It had faded substantially.”

I return to the chart.

The magical residue analysis takes up nearly half a page. There’s no way this is right. Even accounting for cross contamination, three magical classifications is unlikely unless there was cross contamination.

“We need a fresh sample. Have Nymir in pathology run it on a different machine.”

Julian just grins and motions for me to flip to the next page and I do. My pale gray eyes running over the page.

They did exactly that. Accounting for the time between samples, the magic faded even more, but the test results are more or less the same.

“The sample contains therian magic, which isn’t surprising considering the claw marks. It also contains serpentine magic which is consistent with the venom. But Fey magic?”

“Thus the consult.”

My finger finds its way back to my lip, tapping as I think. “The simplest explanation with the fewest assumptions is usually the most likely one. He encountered multiple creatures. Something clawed him, a naga bit him... but there’s no bite mark,” I say flipping back to make sure.

“Something attacked him with claws dipped in naga venom and a Fey came along and tried to help him?” I’m thinking out loud, not really expecting a response.

“Rourke only scented one signature. Says it ‘smelled weird’, whatever the fuck means. Human paramedics showed up and they made the call to route it to us. Rourke and Cahill got there pretty quickly. The other signatures might have faded by then,” he gives a shrug.

Rourke is a werewolf and werewolves can identify most creatures by scent alone, and Rourke has been an EMT for longer than I’ve worked at Mercy. If he couldn’t recognize the scent left behind, that narrows absolutely nothing down while somehow making the situation considerably worse.

I turn back to the report.

“Then the simplest explanation is the samples included contamination from the scene or in the ambulance.”

Julian shakes his head. “All three signatures were recovered from inside the wounds. I swabbed pretty deep.”

Well.

That’s perplexing.

Julian leans against the wall while I scan the remaining notes.

Elevated heart rate. Mild fever on admission. Temporary paralysis. No evidence of infection. No ongoing magical deterioration.

The human is stable and all things considered should make a full recovery. Lucky.

I close the chart and start walking toward his room.

“He was too busy screaming and biting for me to get a statement. He’s had about 30 minutes to calm down.”

I glance through the narrow window in the door.

The human is lying in bed. No screaming. No biting. His head is tipped back against the pillow and it looks like he’s counting something on his fingers.

I’m not around humans often enough to be particularly good at guessing their ages, but he looks somewhere in his twenties. Maybe late twenties. He has light brown skin, a mop of dark curls, and the exhausted, slightly dazed expression.

My attention drops back to the chart.

The human is the least interesting thing about this case, but I’ll take average over whatever boring cases are waiting for me downstairs.

“Alright,” I murmur to myself. “Let’s see what got hold of you, human.”