For someone who was making the most of her second chance, Becky didn't like to dwell on time. It wasn't as if she were perpetually late, but she also didn't like to focus on how much time it took to do something; she felt it took away from the experience. Time felt like lace now, delicate and full of holes, impossible to see the pattern from up close. She remembered Black & Brave and then the house, though the house was mostly blood and pain. Everything after that was vague: angry voices, rolling beds, the hiss of air. She distantly remembered waking up on a plane, but she couldn't remember getting on board or where it was going.
She wasn't sure how much time she had lost. She wasn't sure where she was. The more Becky thought—which was difficult, because her brain felt like a water balloon about to burst—the less she was sure of at all. She thought she should have legs, but she couldn't feel them, so maybe she didn't. She was pretty sure she had hands because she had seen those, but her eyes weren't always working properly, so maybe she didn't have those either. Maybe she didn't have a body at all anymore, just a drifting consciousness that had nowhere to land.
"Hello, Becky." The words sounded like wind chimes in a summer breeze, nostalgic and magical. When Becky managed to open her eyes, she saw a tiny woman who seemed to embody the concept of pixie. Becky had wrestled smaller women like Alexa Bliss and Kairi Sane, but this woman seemed even tinier somehow. Her energy, however, was the polar opposite of her stature: wherever she stood, calm power seemed to reign. "My name is Zenna. I'm Vida's sister. Do you remember Vida?"
It took Becky a moment. Remembering female werewolves wasn't exactly high on her list of things to do at the moment, but the name was familiar. "Tall?" she said at last. "Amazon?"
Zenna chuckled, and she had the laugh of someone three times her size, hearty and full of life. "That's her. Our parents started naming their kids from the back of the alphabet, and I was lucky letter Z." She pulled a chair up to the bed—no, a stool—and hopped up on it. "I need to ask you some questions, but first, how are you feeling? How's your pain?"
Was it pain? Becky, yet again, wasn't sure. What she could sense of her body felt thick and sluggish, like being congested. Moving took a ridiculous amount of effort, so she avoided it if she could. "Heavy," Becky managed. "Slow."
Zenna nodded, jotting notes on a clipboard. Given all the flashing, beeping technology in the room, her clipboard almost looked comical. "You suffered quite an ordeal. I have you on some heavy painkillers right now so we can work on stabilizing you and properly assessing your injuries."
"Thank you." A thought sparked somewhere in the recesses of Becky's brain. "For work... only certain meds...?" Something about a wellness policy came to mind, but there was no way she would be feeling well any time soon.
"Seth told me about that," Zenna assured her, "and you don't have to worry. All our medications are made by witches, so any human-made test would read them as generic organic supplements." Her tone was cheery enough, but Becky could hear a vein of worry pulsing through it. "Do you think you can tell me what happened? Don't worry about it making sense. Just say whatever comes to mind: feelings, colours, sights and sounds...."
"Someone at the door." Becky didn't want to shut her eyes and have her brain replay the memory, but it took too much effort to keep them open. "With a box... and knife." She lowered a hand to her abdomen and was delighted to realize she did indeed still have hands and that they they were no longer restrained. "Stabbed." When she felt the area, it was so padded with gauze that she could barely feel the wound. "She... wolf. Teeth." She made a clamping motion with her other hand. "Biting everywhere."
"I'm told you managed to attack her," Zenna noted. "What do you remember about that?"
I did? Becky only remembered one knife, the one that came in with the box, and she didn't remember grabbing it. But screams came to mind now and a hard thump. She wouldn't have had time—or the strength, with a stomach wound—to run around the house looking for a suitable weapon, so she would have had to use something that was handy. If she was in the living room, it could have been anything from a lamp to a book. "Screaming, grabbing...." Becky shook her head in frustration.
"That's okay. It's okay. I don't need details. I'm just seeing how much you can recall." Zenna reached over and adjusted her pillows. "Isabelle did a very good job stabilizing you," she began, "and Seth did what he could, but I think you were there for a while before Seth got home, weren't you?"
Tears slid out of Becky's eyes and down her temples, startling her when they hit the pillow. Were tears always so loud? "I think so. When I... when I couldn't move anymore, she turned human again and ran, and then I was alone." In some ways, that had been more terrifying than the attack. She had managed to grab her cell phone and tried to call Seth—then Holly, then 911—but she got nothing but silence; her clumsy attempts at texting, which would have baffled even the strongest auto-correct settings, never went through. It was just her and a symphony of suffering: her ragged breathing, her blood dripping onto the floor, bones creaking as she moved. "I tried... to scream. Maybe... neighbour?"
"Seth found you," Zenna replied, checking her pulse. "And he did everything right. A human hospital could have stopped your bleeding, but they would have treated this like a dog attack."
At least Kevin wasn't home, Becky thought. Darrell had had the good sense to run and hide, but intrepid little Kevin would have tried to attack the werewolf and likely would have ended up dead for his efforts. "Bites?"
"The teeth marks would have been similar, yes, but... not the effects." For the first time since entering the room, Zenna sounded hesitant. "You lost a lot of blood, Becky, and you had a lot of bite wounds. And as I'm sure you know from being with Seth, the full moon is close...."
"Full moon," Becky repeated. That meant something, more than just a big white orb in the sky. "Does it make... bites worse?"
"Yes. Many younger werewolves also have a harder time controlling themselves around a full moon," Zenna added, "and I believe your attacker is younger."
IS younger. Becky's mind caught on the verb like a lifeline. She hadn't killed the werewolf. Strangely, part of her was worried about that. What would other werewolves have thought of Seth if his human girlfriend had killed a werewolf? Would they shun him? Would they try to punish him? She had acted in self-defence, but she still worried about the consequences. "Where is... she? Is Seth safe?" She craned her neck as best she could, but she couldn't see any sign of Seth.
"Seth is fine," Zenna assured her. "You were sleeping, so I told him to get some rest. I'll wake him up in a little bit. Your attacker is in custody. Isabelle—the witch who tended to you—came with two werewolves who tracked down your attacker. They locked her up on your flight here."
She was on the same plane? Becky shivered a bit. What if she had broken free? What if she tried to finish what she had started or gone after Seth instead? Becky hated to think what would have happened if Seth had come home with her. "Where... now?"
Zenna stood abruptly and started examining Becky's limbs. When the doctor pushed the sheet back, Becky realized she was wearing a tank top and pyjama shorts. "She's being held in custody. Don't worry. She's not in the hospital. She... sustained some injuries during the flight." For the first time in the conversation, Zenna's tone had a bit of a chill. "She received medical care here and then was taken to a secure facility."
Becky waved a hand at her body. "How bad?" She didn't enjoy being in pain, but she almost wished she could feel just how broken her body was. It didn't seem right to be so disconnected.
"Are you sure you want to hear this right now?" Zenna asked, stepping back. "You suffered a severe trauma, Becky. You need some time to process...."
"Please." Becky tried to lift her arms to examine them, but they flopped uselessly at her sides.
Sighing, Zenna lightly touched the cloth wrapped around Becky's neck. "This actually wasn't as bad as it looked. You sustained much of your blood loss from your neck, but the actual bite didn't do any major damage to any muscles or anything. It will be very sore for a while," she cautioned, "but it will heal up nicely."
Becky's jaw tingled and she remembered another injury, the time when Seth lost control and nearly ripped off her jaw. She had survived that with scars that only supernaturals could see, so maybe her Irish luck would pull her through one more time. "Good. What about... arms?"
Zenna lifted her left arm first. "There's a lot of defensive damage. I'm guessing you held your arms up to fend off the attack. The left is worse than the right. The right forearm should heal fully. I suspect you might have lingering issues with the left, however."
What about wrestling? Becky thought. How would she be able to lift weights—or her opponents? If she couldn't lift another wrestler, her career was over.
"The stab wound missed major organs, thankfully, and was rather clean. It will hurt like hell as it heals," Zenna remarked, "but it shouldn't be too bad. The bites in the region, though...." She lifted Becky's tank top and touched a few spots on her abdomen. "Those will make it hard to stretch."
That leaves the legs, Becky thought grimly. She was sure they were the worst of the wounds.
"Your left thigh is severely damaged. She bit through muscle, tendon, bone. They're all just... gone." Zenna's expression darkened for the first time since she started her assessment. "If you stay human, you'll likely lose the leg."
Becky knew the last part—you'll likely lose the leg—was the key part, but the wording of the first was what caught her attention. "If I stay human?"
Zenna nodded gravely. "Between the blood loss and the number of bites... you might turn."