Chapter 35
Claire POV
I sank down into a chair, horrified.
“Poisoned??” I whispered. “But...how?”
Amelia shook her head. “It’s a notoriously difficult poison to detect. Is it possible you might have missed it on your initial exam?”
“I…maybe? I just don’t know. Are they sure that’s what it is?”
She nodded, glancing down at the lab report. “And once they knew what they were looking for, they tested all the other patients who have fallen ill over the last few days.”
I closed my eyes, already knowing what she was going to say. “And it’s in all of them, isn’t it?”
Her face was grim as she came around the desk to crouch beside me.
“Yes,” she said. “Every single one of them. Claire.” She took my hand. “Someone’s been poisoning your patients.”
“But how?? I’m the only thing they all have in common. They were checked in by different nurses, and were put in different exam rooms.
“When would someone even have a chance to poison them, and how would they administer it?”
I sank lower in my chair, resting my head in my hand, feeling utterly overwhelmed.
“The only thing each of them share is that I healed them of some illness or injury. I healed them, and then they got sick.
“And now that just keeps happening, over and over and over.”
Unable to stop them, tears began to roll down my face. I was so tired, and had been under so much stress trying to help these poor people the last few days.
What if it was me? What if somehow I was poisoning them with my healing abilities.
Amelia rubbed my back while I wept, trying to comfort me.
“Is there anything you’ve been doing differently?” she asked. “Any change in your routine?”
“No!” I cried, feeling helpless. “I do the same thing, every time:
“I examine them, using my abilities to scan inside their bodies. And there hasn’t been any sign of that poison when I first examined them, I swear. Just the illness or injury that brought them here in the first place.”
I scrubbed my hands over my face. “So I heal it. I heal them, I give them a tonic to help their body rest and recover, and then…”
Suddenly, as if jolted by electricity, I sat up straight in my chair.
Amelia and I stared at each other as we finally found the missing piece to this large strange puzzle.
“The healing tonic! It’s been poisoned!”
Third POV
Fear and worry saturated the air of the clinic.
The families of the patients admitted to the clinic after being “healed” were angry and scared, and frustrated that even with this talented healer on staff, their loved ones weren’t getting any better.
In Gamma Rebecca’s room, her father paced from her bed to the window and back again, his worry turning into anger.
“Something is going on here,” he said to his wife, turning sharply to complete another short lap. “This isn’t right. Something has to be going on here.”
Sitting at her daughter’s bedside, holding the unconscious young woman’s hand, Rebecca’s mother dabbed at her tears with a handkerchief.
“We have to trust that Dr. Green and the rest of the staff are doing their best,” she said. “And we have to pray that it’s enough.”
In the room of the older woman who came in with the injured wrist and fingers, her sons stood at the end of the bed.
“She looks so weak,” said the oldest, staring down at his widowed mother. She was unconscious, and had been for days now.
“It’s like every round of healing takes that much more out of her,” said the middle son. It hurt to see his vibrant, energetic widowed mother so pale and motionless.
“I don’t understand it,” said the youngest. He was the only one of them still living at home, and had been unable to sleep since his mother was admitted to the clinic. The house felt too empty without her.
“I thought the healer here was the best,” he went on. “So why does Mom keep getting worse?”
And out in the waiting room, more chairs sat empty than full. Something that hadn’t happened a single day in the last few months was now a regular occurrence: many people were choosing to go to a different clinic.
No one wanted to take a chance of contracting the dangerous mysterious illness now haunting the clinic’s halls.
The few patients who did keep their appointments sat in the waiting room huddled near each other, whispering in the hushed air.
“I trust that the staff here is doing all they can, but it’s so scary! Do they know what’s going on yet?” said a young woman bouncing a toddler on her lap.
“I don’t know,” the man next to her answered. “Like you, I trust the staff here, and Dr. Green especially. But I’m glad I’m just here for my regular check up. I plan to get in and get out as quickly as possible.”
“Same here,” said the woman sitting across from them. “I’ve heard it’s only the people that get healed by Dr. Green that are getting sick, so I’m glad I just need to have my cholesterol checked.”
The man shook his head. “The healing is truly a miracle. But…I’ve wondered if it doesn’t leave a body open to some threat or dangers. Messing with magical abilities like that - it can be dangerous.”
The young woman beside him looked doubtful, but the woman across from the man nodded in agreement.
Doubt, and even suspicion, was taking root among the pack members attending the clinic.
And it only got worse when Nurse Devin, listening in on their conversation, took the opportunity to jump in.
“It’s a shame, isn’t it? So much faith in healing, and what happens? People end up poisoned with wolf venom.”
The patients gasped and stared at Devin, who nodded.
“It’s true. I’ve just come from informing the patients’ families. They’ve been poisoned with wolf venom, every single one of them.”
“B-but wolf venom is deadly” the young woman exclaimed. “Everyone knows not to even go near the stuff.”
The other woman held a hand to her chest. “How did they even come in contact with it.”
Devin shook her head sadly. “It was in their healing tonic. So every time Dr. Green healed them, they’d get a little better. But then she gave them a tonic, and they just got worse again. It’s so, so sad, isn’t it?”
She shook her head. “What’s worse is Dr. Green made those tonics herself. She’s just sick with guilt over the whole thing.”
“She’s a doctor!” the man said. “How could she make such a mistake??”
Trying not to smile at their reactions, she gave a half shrug. “It kind of makes sense, I guess. Since the doctor is wolfless, maybe she couldn’t tell the difference between wolf venom and a safer plant that resembles it. So she must have used it when making her healing tonics.”
Another gasp followed the news that Claire was actually a wolfless. Devin, satisfied that word of these revelations would spread, took the man back for his exam.
She was going to enjoy seeing Silverfang’s magical healer take the fall for poisoning all these patients.
Claire POV
It wasn’t easy, going back into those patients’ rooms and telling their loved ones what was going on.
I watched doubt and suspicion linger on the faces of parents and children. A few I even had to convince - with Amelia’s help - to let me treat their loved one at all.
But now that I knew what was causing this illness, I knew I could finally heal these people. I could give them that much.
One by one I made the rounds to the room of each and every patient affected by the poison. I was exhausted and barely able to think straight by the time I was finished, but I managed to use my healing abilities on all of them.
And left careful instructions about their care from then on.
No healing tonics, or any other restorative medicines, were to be given to them.
Healing would take longer, and be more tiring for them this way, but at least I would know we weren’t risking further exposure to more poisoned medicines.
I left the clinic that day feeling better than I had in days. Completely exhausted, and sick over what had happened, but at long last feeling hopeful.
Yet doubt and questioning lingered.
I had been trained very carefully in making medicines. That included the selection of safe, proper plants. And I’d been making this specific kind of tonic for Andy since he was a baby.
In my gut I knew I hadn’t made a mistake, especially one so serious that it involved wolf venom.
So who had been poisoning my patients??
