ARCANE VOW

IRMA

The lights in the ceiling started flashing red and the emergency alarm went off. Outside the trauma room, Irma could hear the corridor filling up with doctors and nurses sprinting with featherlight steps, trying to reach the phone to take the emergency call.

Irma let her movements become slow and deliberate as she cleaned the room, tidying up after the last trauma patient had been rolled into the ICU about an hour ago. It was an unusually quiet moment in the emergency department, especially on a Friday night, and she took the opportunity to draw a deep breath, letting the brief silence wash over her, allowing her nerves to settle before the next case arrived. The other staff sat in the break room, playing cards or dozing, waiting for the next wave of urgency to crash through the doors.

She took a deep breath and stretched her arms towards the ceiling. It had been a quiet and relaxing hour, and she was grateful for the time she had had to collect her powers before the next trauma was due. Any minute now, someone would burst through the doors and let her know what was on the agenda next. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. A tingling sensation started to form in her belly as she heard the voices of her colleagues getting closer: bring it on, she thought.

Irma had never planned to become a trauma nurse. She was a witch and had dreamed of studying the art of magic as every witch does. But fate had other plans for her. Every witch is blessed with a unique power, one that sets them apart from others. Irma’s blessing was unlike any other—the special power of the Ouroboros.

This rare and ancient gift allowed her to mend any wound, cure any sickness, and even defy death itself. But her magic followed a law as old as time: what it gave, it also had to take. It was up to Irma to decide from where the essence of life would be drawn. To heal one person, she had to take from another—or sacrifice a part of herself. Without harming others, her powers would inevitably destroy her, piece by piece.

The power of the Ouroboros was the most extraordinary and feared among witches, and for good reason. It required immense control, resilience, and sacrifice. Throughout history, there had been few witches blessed with it, and none had managed to escape its ultimate cost.

Irma had studied all the right books and read every piece of literature she could find to be able to wield without causing damage but had found nothing. Making her leave her coven and take up the next best thing: becoming a trauma nurse.

Within a minute, the whole trauma team came bursting in at the same time, and everybody was talking in excited voices as they started to put on their safety gear. She loved the hopeful feeling in the air every time she and her colleagues were getting ready to face another trauma, another human being in need of their help. When everybody was ready, Doctor Lund stepped up onto a chair, held her hands in the air, and everybody went quiet.

“Okay people,” she started, “we’ve got a thirty-four year old man, who’s been hit by a bus and has multiple traumas. He’s not conscious, and his body is badly broken. He may have some internal bleeding and we don’t know the extent of his injuries just yet, but our main focus will be getting his heart beating again, alright? The ambulance has already begun CPR, and they will arrive in about 5 minutes.” She looked around the room and Doctor Lund’s eyes found Irma’s.

“Irma, I want you on the defibrillator, and we’ll have a full tube insertion ready just in case. Everybody else, be ready.”

Irma nodded and smiled. This was why she had become a trauma nurse.

Everybody took their places in the trauma room just as the patient got rolled in, and the paramedics started to debrief what they had done and what had happened. Irma and her colleagues started working rapidly, and everybody let out a massive sigh as they pulled the patient over from the gurney to the trauma bed. The guy was huge, extremely tall, had massive muscles, and on the parts of his body they could see, his skin was covered in tattoos. Irma glanced over at Molly only to find that she too was staring at the man’s big arms and torso. They gave each other a meaningful look over their masks before getting back to work.

Before her colleagues could start the compressions again, she wanted to attach new pads for the defibrillator to his chest and gently pulled his long brown hair away from his face and chest into a bun on top of his head. Through the blood that was smeared across his face, she could tell that he was beautiful. She attached new defibrillator pads and stepped aside so that the compressions could start again.

To make sure they didn’t miss anything, she cut through his jeans and discarded them on the floor. It didn’t look good; he had blood all over his face and body and a big flesh wound in his leg. Irma put a temporary bandage on his muscled leg before returning her attention to what her colleagues were doing. He still didn’t have a heartbeat.

As she was waiting for the defibrillator to let her know that he had some kind of rhythm that she would be able to shock, Irma took a flashlight and opened one of his eyes to see if his pupils would react to light. As she opened his left eye and lit the flashlight, she gasped. His pupils were reacting to light, but what made her gasp was the color of his eyes. They weren’t human and the darkest brown that she had ever seen; it was mesmerizing.

While her colleagues continued taking turns doing chest compressions, she looked around the room and settled on the scraps of clothes and personal belongings the ambulance had left in one of the corners of the room. It wasn’t much, but when her eyes landed on the dark leather that was torn to pieces, a cold rush went through her whole body. It looked like a biker-cut but it wasn’t, she had seen the mark on the back of the cut before and it could only mean one thing: werewolf.

Irma removed her gloves to assert that the pads of the defibrillator were sticking to the mans skin when Doctor Lund screamed ”Irma, he’s in v-fib, shock him!”

She pushed the pads to the wolfs chest and as her hands touched his skin the man’s massive body shook on the gurney in front of them as if electricity traveled throughout his whole body and then went limp again. What had she done?

The room went silent, and Irma turned her head to look at the monitor to see if a heartbeat could be detected. The silence was deafening as the whole team held their breath, waiting for any kind of vital signs from the man. Just as they were about to start the chest compressions again, the monitor started beeping, and the man took one huge breath. Irma instinctively reached for his wrist to try to feel a pulse, and the second she touched his skin, a flash went through her whole body, and she now felt like she was struck by lightning. She instantly let go of his wrist and looked at her colleagues in shock, but nobody else seemed to have noticed. Except for the man who had now opened his eyes and was looking directly into hers.

”Sir? Can you hear us?” Dr. Lund asked.

The man’s eyes searched for the eyes that had asked the question, but he didn’t say anything; he simply nodded his head. Irma put on a new pair of gloves and got back to work as her colleagues followed her lead. The whole time, she could feel the man’s eyes upon her, watching her as she tried to help him. When he was stable enough to be rolled into the ICU, Irma was left alone in the trauma room, thinking about what had just happened. She sat down on a small stool, and just as she was about to let out a big sigh, somebody came back in and she looked up.

”How did you do that?” Dr. Lund slowly made her way to Irma and sat down next to her.

”Did what?” Irma shook her head before putting her head in her hands.

”You didn’t use the defibrillator to shock him. It was when you touched his skin that the flash struck through his body; everybody saw it. Something happened. You know that I would never spill your secret among the staff, but did you use your magic?” Dr. Lund’s voice trailed off, and Irma straightened her back to be able to look at her.

”No, I didn’t. It was nothing.” Irma furrowed her eyebrows and shrugged her shoulders.

”I think you know that that man is a werewolf. We’ve treated many before this one. And if you didn’t use your magic then there could only be one thing that would bring his heart back to life.” A smile started to spread out over Dr. Lund’s face.

”What?” Irma could feel her brain working on overdrive; she didn’t understand how that would have anything to do with the fact that she somehow shocked the man back to life with her bare hands. She may be a witch and a fine one at healing magic, but to shock someone to life without having tapped in into the black magic? It was a bit much, even by her own means. If it had been her, and she had used light-magic she would have been left with a hollow dept in her chest and she wasn’t. If anything her heart felt full.

”I know that you know a lot about the werewolf community, a lot more than me, probably. I just want to ask you to tread lightly and be careful. A shock like that can only mean one thing.”

Dr. Lund kept her intense gaze fixed on Irma as she was thinking. Her whole body tensed up as the realization hit her. Dr. Lund didn’t say anything; she just kept on smiling.

”It can’t be…He is my patient, that’s all.” Irma could feel her mind getting blurry as Dr. Lund nodded her head.

”Sure he is… as for now. You’ve got an interesting time ahead of you, Nurse Bergström.”

Dr. Lund patted her back and stood up to leave the room. Before she left, she turned around.

”He’s a handsome man; he’ll clean up nicely when he gets better.” She chuckled. “It could definitely have been worse,” she said and winked at Irma before she left.

Irma sighed and put her head in her hands again, wondering if she had the energy to deal with any of this. Not that she had any choice. The last time they had had a werewolf as a patient, she had done her homework and had tried to find out as much about the community as she was able to, pulling strings in the witch community to get as much access as she could. It hadn’t been easy; the werewolves did everything to keep themselves hidden from the outer world, but she had been persistent and had managed to find bits and pieces that had been helpful to her.

She had gone above and beyond simply because she was interested in everything that could make her a better trauma nurse. Her goal was to be able to give the best care to her patients; it didn’t matter if they were werewolves or not. She was as much of an outsider as any of them in the human world.

And what she had found out about the werewolves wasn’t much, they were a secluded society and lived among their pack much like witches in their covens. They had several physical perks that included the obvious: shifting into a wolf, but also minor things such as a great physique, amazing healing capabilities, and enhanced hearing and smell. They were a possessive species that mated for life. Every wolf has one true love, chosen by the moon goddess, that is their perfect match. The only downside is that they have to find their mate to experience the love, and not all wolves are lucky enough to do that in their lifetime.

And that was what Dr. Lund was getting at. She was convinced that the touch of Irma’s hands had been the mate bond snapping into place, saving the man and his wolf’s life. It sounded scary. A werewolf could be her mate? She let out a big sigh. She wasn’t ready to be stuck with a man for eternity. She was a witch for crying out loud, they despised the thought of being chained to someone of the lesser sex. And her last breakup was still fresh in her memory. She was the one who had broken up with the guy, but it had taken her quite some time to get back on her feet after that. It had taken a lot out of her, and she wasn’t sure if she was ready for another go. But this man was the first one to catch her eye in a long time. And the look he had given her had sent chills through her whole body.

She was pulled out of her thoughts when the red light in the ceiling started flashing again. She didn’t have time to think about the wolf right now; it would have to be a problem for later. For now: back at it.