Eva winced. She thought she was doing a good job at suppressing the pain. The reminder cracked open her mental wall. “That might be true. There are circumstances. I can’t–Can I talk to Zoe Baxter before we do anything?”
Where was the woman. Eva hadn’t thought about it, but she could teleport the same way Wayne Lurcher could. Why hadn’t she shown up instead of him?
The nurse stared at Eva for a long moment. She pulled out her cellphone and tapped away at it for a short moment before holding it up to her ear.
I really need to get one of those, Eva thought with a sigh. My master as well.
“No answer,” Nurse Naranga said. She slipped her phone back into her pocket.
“What? What would cause that?”
The nurse shrugged. “She’s busy. Or otherwise indisposed. I don’t keep up to the minute tabs on her.”
Too busy to answer the warning wards on the dorms?
“Now, we need to reset that bone and get a bone mending tonic in you.” She reached towards Eva once again.
“I don’t think that is a good idea,” Eva said as she pulled away again.
The nurse put her hands on her hips. “Oh, and I suppose you have more healing certifications than I do?”
“No, but I have a… preexisting condition.”
That seemed to give her pause. For a moment. “That may be, but I need to take a look, at the very least. You can tell me about your condition while I examine you.”
Eva sighed as the nurse moved in. She pulled out her good hand.
A small squeak came from the nurse as she actually stumbled back. She quickly recovered her composure and marched forward. “Forgive me,” she said. “I just got startled for a moment.”
“Sure.”
She pulled Eva’s hand over and looked it over. She knocked against it and pulled all the fingers. “This is extraordinary. It is part of you.” The nurse’s fingers traced up the exoskeleton to the little curls that helped anchor it to her arm.
“Yep. If you took an x-ray, you wouldn’t find any bone in my hands. If you could see inside at all.” Eva tapped about halfway up her forearm. “My normal arm bones funnel out about here to connect to the exoskeleton. They grew holes to allow meat through. Or so I’ve been told, I haven’t actually seen it myself.”
“This happened in November?”
Eva nodded.
“I see.” She softened her voice as she let Eva’s arm drop. “Zoe told me some of the story, she wondered if anything could be done about your eyes. Even after I discussed it with the other medical officers, we couldn’t think of anything. We can regrow bones and some organs. Not eyes. If you still had them, we might be able to reattach them–if they weren’t rotten by now.”
“That’s fine,” Eva said. She never even met the nurse before. It was nice that they thought about that, but ultimately, Eva had her own plans. Partially. She still hadn’t even looked for a donor demon.
The nurse wrapped her knuckles on Eva’s forearm. “This, Zoe neglected to mention.”
“In any case,” Eva said, “I don’t know what will happen if I take anything that tries to regrow bones. I’d rather not have my hands destroy themselves trying to grow bones where they shouldn’t.”
“Understandable.”
It was surprising to Eva just how understanding the nurse was being. Maybe she should just wander around school without gloves on.
“We still need to fix that fracture on your arm. We’ll do it the old-fashioned way.” She smiled. “A cast.”
That didn’t sound good. Yet Eva didn’t protest as the nurse pulled out padding and the cast wrapping. She sat still while the nurse set to work.
The cast had been the easy part. Eva’s right arm hung in a sling all wrapped up in a cast colored bright green. Her shoulder was where things became complicated.
Nurse Naranga actually let out a short shriek when she saw Eva’s shoulder.
“What happened here?”
For once, Eva was glad she couldn’t see. If her wound was anything like the wound her master received, it was a bubbling mess of puss and fused cloth from her shirt. Whatever happened to her shoulder must have been bad.
“A nun’s lightning.”
Oddly enough, it didn’t hurt. There was a throb and when the nurse touched it, a sharp sting ran up and down Eva’s back. Other than that, her arm hurt more.
She had been given painkillers, so that could be part of it.
The nurse set to massaging in some potion or another. That had Eva hissing through her teeth.
Plucking bits of her shirt out of her back increased the intensity of the sting. She had to cut into Eva for a few scraps of cloth.
“You heal these cuts unnaturally quick.”
“A side effect,” Eva hissed, “of everything.” Blood magic, mostly. She shouldn’t have healed them at all, but it was almost unconscious. Stopping now would just raise more questions.
Nurse Naranga just hummed.
The blackish color of Eva’s blood never got brought up. She didn’t know how to explain it, so the lack of questions suited Eva. The nurse was certainly forming her own theories and opinions. Hopefully they were far from the truth.
As soon as the nurse finished plucking debris out of her back, she went back to massaging in a potion.
“It is just a local regrowth potion,” she said after Eva asked. “It isn’t working as well as I hoped.”
“That is also a side effect of everything, I think.”
“You’ve had a lot of everythings, have you?”
Eva shrugged. She immediately wished she hadn’t. Pain flared out in a star like pattern from her shoulder-blade. She gritted out, “a few.” It didn’t make sense. Hopefully it would dissuade further questions.
“Well,” she said as she pulled her hands off of Eva’s back, “I think I’ve done all I can.”
“I can go then?”
The nurse let out a laugh that sounded like the twittering of birds. “Most certainly not. You’ll be here for close observation until I am satisfied. You’ve had a terrible shock and I just pumped you full of potions that may have unintended side effects with your,” she made a short humming noise, “unique physiology.”
Eva slumped back against the soft pillows of the infirmary bed.
“I know that’s not what you wanted to hear, but it is dangerous to move around while you’re injured.”
She was right. That wasn’t what Eva wanted to hear. There were things that needed doing, not the least of which included checking on Arachne and making sure she hadn’t done anything foolish.
Not that Eva thought Arachne would do something like attack the nuns. Still, if it wasn’t her then, as Sister Cross put it, there was a demon running around town.
“If you need anything or have any odd pains,” Nurse Naranga said as she handed a small button on a cord to Eva, “press the buzzer. I’ll be just over in my office.”
Eva nodded and waited. She’d already waited over an hour in the company of the nurse, another hour wouldn’t hurt. Besides, she was exhausted. A short nap wouldn’t hurt anything.
—
It was the middle of the night before Eva awoke. She groggily tried to slip out of her bed before she realized where she was. A short curse tumbled out of her lips.
Immediately, Eva channeled magic into herself. She concentrated on her end goal. Despite her haste, she channeled slowly, taking her time. Screwing up and becoming trapped in Hell again wasn’t something she was all too eager to repeat.
She spent five minutes building up her charge. With a light popping in her ears, the world around her vanished.
Screaming agony replaced the nurse’s office.
Not Eva’s agony or screams. She didn’t know whose they were.
Screams echoed into her mind. Even if her arm wasn’t in a cast, plugging her ears would do nothing. A deep masculine voice this time, Eva noted. It was always different.
Eva fell, tumbled through a tunnel dripping with viscera. She could see, but only in grayscale. Like her island.