Chapter 34

Claire POV

My young Gamma patient collapsing after I healed her was just the beginning.

The next day things got worse.

Much worse.

The Gamma patient, Rebecca, was on my mind all night after I went home. I just didn’t understand how she’d gone from being healed and ready to go home to on the floor convulsing and unconscious.

It just didn’t make any sense.

I’d stayed with her for hours before Amelia finally made me leave to get some rest. Scanning her, using my abilities to dive deep into her body, I found a sickness that hadn’t been there before.

So where had it come from, and how could I heal it?

When I returned to work in the morning, after a night with little sleep and a lot of tossing and turning, checking on Rebecca was the first thing I did.

She was stable, thank goodness. Her condition hadn’t grown any worse overnight.

But it hadn’t grown any better, either.

“I’d like to run some tests on her,” I told Amelia as we discussed the appointments and schedule for the day. “The fact that she just collapsed out of nowhere must mean something happened between when she came in and when she got ready to leave.”

Amelia nodded. “I agree. I’ve put in orders for another full workup. We’ll look at the results together once the lab finishes the tests. In the meantime,” she handed me a small stack of patient files, “here’s your bunch of today’s patients.”

She glanced down the hallway, and a small sneer passed across her face. “And here’s your lovely new volunteer.”

Sabrina. I’d almost forgotten about her in all the worry and wondering about Rebecca.

Great, I thought. Just what I need.

Sabrina POV

Aw, poor Claire. She looked so tired. She must have been up all night worrying about her little patient.

I smiled to myself as I walked toward her.

Brace yourself, wolfless, I thought. It’s only going to get worse.

Without saying a word to me, Claire handed me the stack of patient files and then walked away. I followed her as we began to make the rounds of the morning’s first appointments, eager to cause as much trouble as possible.

“Good morning, ma’am,” Claire said as we walked into the first room.

An older woman, her graying hair pulled back into a high bun, returned the greeting. She tried to smile, but her face was full of pain as she cradled her wrist against her body.

“I see here you slipped and fell this morning,” Claire said after reading the file. “Let’s take a look at that wrist of yours.”

Turns out she had a fractured wrist, and several dislocated fingers.

How lucky for me!

“I’ll go get the healing tonic, Dr. Green,” I said, hurrying out of the room and down the hall.

I’d passed Nurse Devin in the hall earlier, and with a nod and a wink she’d let me know that her part of the plan was done.

All the vials of healing potion in our pharmacy now contained the poison the Alpha Soren provided.

Returning to the room, I handed over the vial and watched the woman drink it down.

That’s two, I thought.

Two “healed” patients that were anything but healthy.

How many would it take before the clinic, the patients and even the pack turned on their precious “Dr. Green”?

Since the woman with the healed wrist barely made it down the hall toward the checkout area before collapsing, her whole body jerking in a seizure, I figured I wouldn’t have to wait long to find out.

Claire POV

There were three more sick patients by midday.

All of them mine.

I had seen, and healed, each and every one of them. And during my healing I had detected no other threat to their health than whatever illness or injury had brought them to the clinic in the first place.

And yet every single one of them collapsed before they could even leave the clinic.

“I just don’t understand!” I cried to Amelia as we sat in her office.

She had made me stop and take a break, after spending the whole morning running from room to room, patient to patient, trying to figure out what was going on with them.

“They’re fine when they’re ready to leave - I swear to you they are. I heal them, and they are absolutely fine.”

Amelia held up a hand. “I believe you, Claire. And I’ve seen you heal enough patients now to know that if there was anything else going on inside them when you used your abilities, you’d spot it.”

I sat back in my chair, the lunch Amelia bought sitting untouched on her desk in front of me.

How could I eat, when people I had healed were sick, confused and scared?

Especially when I didn’t have a single clue about how to help them.

“It’s alright, Claire,” Amelia said. “I know this is incredibly upsetting, but we’re going to figure out what’s going on. And we’re going to make those people better.”

But we didn’t.

Instead, more people got sick, dropping like flies to this mysterious, sudden illness.

And I began to wonder if it was all my fault.

Within days the number of ill patients rose to well over a dozen, causing increasing fear and even panic among pack members and even the staff at the clinic.

Soon patients were calling in to cancel their appointments, and staff members were calling in sick. No one knew what was causing this awful sudden illness, and none of them wanted to take a chance that it might be airborne, and contagious.

The staff that did come in was soon run down and overworked, having to pick up the slack for everyone who called off. Tempers rose, and the worry began to erode everyone’s mental health.

And the more I tried to heal the sick, the worse they got.

“I just - I just don’t understand,” I said, lowering my hands and stopping the internal exam I was doing with my healing abilities. I could feel tears of frustration and exhaustion welling in my eyes.

This patient, Rebecca, had been the first one to fall ill. And I had healed her several times over the last few days.

Each time I would find that strange illness that hadn’t been there when she first came into the clinic. And each time I would chase it down through her body, killing the sickness and healing her body.

And she’d be okay.

But only for a little while.

Over and over again, with each and every patient that dropped like flies to this illness, it was the same thing. They’d get sick, I’d heal them, they’d get better. I would give them a healing tonic, to help their bodies rest and recover, and then hold my breath, hoping that this time would be different.

Then they’d get sick again.

Worn down, nearly at the end of my limits both physically and mentally, I felt like I was about to lose my mind.

What was going on - and why weren’t my healing abilities able to get rid of whatever was ravaging their bodies?

And then - finally - we had our answer.

But it only brought more questions.

“Claire!” Amelia called for me just as I stepped out of a patient’s room after yet another frustrating healing session. “Come with me.”

All of them had been admitted for serious care, and we were starting to run out of rooms for them.

I followed Amelia to her office. Weary and sleep-deprived, it took me a few moments to realize how upset my friend seemed.

And that she was holding a lab report in her hands.

“The labs are back on your first patient, Gamma Rebecca,” she said as soon as we were in her office. “There’s been such a flood of orders for healing potions, the lab techs had a backlog on all their other work. But when they realized what was in Rebecca’s blood, they stopped everything and ran the tests again.”

They’d found something. My breath caught, and I had to swallow hard to speak. Dread was like a fist in my chest.

“What is it?” I said. “What’s wrong with her?”

“She’s been poisoned, Claire. With wolf venom.”