For a second, I don't know where I am.
The curtain is too close. The air is too thick. My mouth is hot.
My teeth are still pressed into skin that should be cooling, and the taste in my throat is a flare—iron and smoke and something else that wants a name and doesn't deserve one.
I blink, hard, like I can scrape the moment off my eyes.
The man under my hand twitches again. Not a seizure. Not a dying reflex. It's deliberate, as if something inside him is trying to stand up wearing his body like a coat.
And I'm—
I'm leaning in.
That's the part that makes my stomach lurch. I'm not dreaming. I'm not imagining. I'm in my scrubs, in my ER, with my fingers hooked under a stranger's jaw, and I just drank from him like it's a reasonable response to a flatline.
The first sip is enough to quiet the worst of it. The pressure behind my eyes eases. The tremor in my hand fades. The part of me that was narrowing into a single thought loosens its grip.
I taste blood on my lips and it is both relief and accusation.
The curtain lifts.
A woman steps into the makeshift room without asking permission from anyone's body language. She's not wearing scrubs. She's not wearing a visitor badge. She's not wearing panic. That last part is what tells me she isn't family.
Her hair is pulled back tight. Her face is calm in a way that isn't soothing. It's the calm of someone who keeps their fear on a leash and doesn't let it bark unless necessary.
Her eyes flick once—bed, my hands, the red at my mouth—and then lock onto mine.
"Doctor," she says, like the word is a placeholder until she decides what to call me next. "I need you to step out."
I swallow. The movement drags the taste down my throat.
My tongue wants to go back for more. It's already calculating, already coaxing: one more swallow and you won't shake. One more and you'll think clearly. One more and—
I force my teeth together until my jaw aches.
"Ma'am," I say, because that's what my mouth knows how to do when it wants to snarl, "this is a patient."
She doesn't glance at the monitors, because there aren't any. The screen outside is still flat. We called it. Time of death. The room knows the rules, even if the body doesn't.
"I'm aware," she says. Her voice stays polite, the way a knife stays shiny. "Step out of the curtain."
"That's not how this works."
Two men appear behind her, parting the curtain seam like they belong there. They're not in uniform either. Both are built like they spend time in gyms and time in places you don't call police about. One of them has a short beard and the kind of dead-eyed stare you see on bouncers after the third fight of the night. The other keeps his hands visible, palms empty, posture mild.
Mild doesn't mean harmless.
Lauren Mitchell doesn't have to introduce herself for the room to rearrange around her. She already owns the space.
She turns her head slightly, not taking her eyes off me. "Doctor. I'm requesting you remove yourself."
The word requesting lands wrong. Too careful. Too rehearsed.
I wipe my mouth with the back of my wrist. It smears red across white glove. The gesture is ordinary enough that it almost sells me the lie that I'm still in control.
Almost.
"Request denied," I say, and my voice comes out steady, which surprises me. "He arrested. He's—" I hesitate, because saying he's dead feels suddenly negotiable, and I don't like that feeling at all. "He's unstable. If he's infectious, if he's toxic, if he's contaminated—then you don't get to walk in here without PPE and start pulling things apart."
The bearded guy shifts closer, boots whispering over tile.
Lauren's gaze stays on my face. "You're bleeding."
I glance down. There's a red smear on my chin I missed. The IV of shame, visible and simple.
"It's his blood," I say automatically, as if that's better.
Lauren's expression barely changes, but something sharp flickers behind her eyes, a quick measurement.
"I'm not here to debate your bedside manner," she says. "Step away from the body."
Body. Not patient. Not man.
That tells me she has already decided what this is.
"No," I say. "This is my trauma bay. My staff is out there. If something is happening with him, I need—"
"You need to be alive," she cuts in, the politeness thinning. "And you need to let people with the right tools handle this."
The mild guy at her shoulder speaks for the first time. "Doc. Please."
It's the please that bothers me most. It implies they've done this before. That there's a script.
I straighten slowly, making sure my hands aren't shaking. My fingers don't want to let go. The skin under my palm feels warm. Wrongly warm.
The corpse twitches again, stronger. A shiver runs up its spine. Its nails scrape against the sheet in a sound that makes my molars ache.
Lauren's voice drops half an octave. "Now."
My throat tightens. Hunger swells, aggravated by denial, by scent, by proximity.
[HUNGER: 92% — PREDATORY]
[HEALTH: 84% — STABLE]
I taste blood again, not from the air this time but from memory. My tongue presses against my teeth, yearning.
This is the moment my body could betray me in front of strangers who clearly came prepared for betrayal.
I take one step back. Then another.
Not because I'm convinced. Because I'm cornered.
"Fine," I say, sharp, and it comes out as close to a growl as I've ever let it in the hospital. "But if you touch him and my staff is exposed to something, that is on you."
Lauren's eyes do not blink. "Understood."
I slip past her and the two men, out through the curtain seam. Cool air hits my face as if the world outside the curtain is a different climate. The noise of the ER rushes back in—phones, footsteps, monitors, voices layered over each other like a choir that forgot harmony.
The curtain falls closed behind me.
For half a second, it feels like relief.
Then I realize what I just did.
I left a twitching corpse with three people who aren't staff, aren't law enforcement, and aren't acting like confused civilians.
I'm still holding a bloody glove.
I peel it off and toss it into the biohazard bin. The second glove comes off, too. My hands are damp with sweat and something else.
I go straight to the sink and scrub like I'm trying to erase the last minute of my life.
Water. Soap. Friction.
It doesn't remove the taste in my throat. It doesn't remove the ache under my tongue.
It does remove evidence.
Behind me, the ER keeps moving. Nobody looks twice. Nobody asks why a doctor stepped out of a curtained bay with blood on his mouth.
Because the ER is chaos, and chaos is camouflage.
I dry my hands, breathing through my nose. The smell of blood still threads the air. There's always blood here. That's the job.
But behind the curtain, the scent changes. It sharpens, becomes something else—ozone and bitter metal, like a storm trapped in a bottle.
My skin prickles.
I turn my head slightly, pretending to check the supply rack, and focus.
The curse sharpened my senses early—quietly, passively—like it couldn't help improving the tools it relies on. Smell becomes layered. Vibration becomes information if I let it.
The curtain ripples once, a small movement that isn't from airflow.
A thump follows, low and heavy, felt through the tile more than heard. The bed frame? A body hitting a rail?
Then a scrape, like something dragged.
Not a gurney wheel. Not a shoe.
Something else.
A short sound—almost a hiss—cuts off abruptly.
I hold still, eyes on a box of gauze as if gauze is fascinating. My heartbeat feels too loud in my ears.
My Hunger doesn't care what they're doing. Hunger cares that blood is behind fabric and I am not.
[HUNGER: 95% — PREDATORY]
[HEALTH: 84% — STABLE]
My vision tightens. The world sharpens around edges and loses softness, like a camera switching to a colder filter.
I grip the counter with my fingertips and force the impulse down. I can't go back in there. Not with them. Not with my mouth already stained.
Inside the curtain, the ozone smell intensifies. There's a faint click—metal on metal—and then a sound like cloth tearing.
The corpse makes a noise.
Not a human groan.
A wet, angry rasp, like something trying to inhale through a throat that no longer follows anatomy.
Then—silence.
Not immediate, not clean. Silence that arrives after a struggle stops.
I feel the vibrations through the floor: a quick stutter, then stillness. The bed frame settles. The curtain doesn't move.
A beat passes. Another.
My mouth waters anyway, delayed reaction to something I didn't witness. My body is too eager, too ready to believe blood is available if I just act.
I swallow hard, and the swallow is painful.
Someone calls my name from the nurses' station. "Dr. Thorne? We need you in bed five—pressure dropping!"
I pivot on the word need. Need is safer than want.
"I'm coming," I call back.
As I move, I keep my head angled just enough to keep the curtain in the edge of my vision.
I work a hypotensive patient—fluids, pressors, reorder labs—automatic, precise, like my hands are running on rails while my mind keeps listening for what's happening behind fabric.
The ozone smell fades slowly.
A different smell replaces it. Not blood. Not bleach.
Something herbal and sharp, like crushed leaves.
My stomach knots. My tongue prickles.
It's new.
That's what scares me.
I finish the stabilization, pass off instructions, and return to the bay area with a calm face I don't feel.
The curtain is still closed.
Lauren steps out first, smooth as a thought. The two men follow a second later. Their posture is looser, like the room behind them is no longer fighting.
Lauren pauses when she sees me.
Her eyes flick to my hands. Clean now. Too clean.
"Doctor," she says again, and the word shifts slightly. Less placeholder. More pointed. "Thank you for your cooperation."
I don't return the thanks. "What did you do to him?"
Lauren's gaze holds mine without effort. "Handled a hazard."
"That's vague."
"It has to be," she says, voice level. "For your own safety."
I almost laugh, because that phrase—for your own safety—gets used in hospitals, too. It's what we say when we restrain a patient who's swinging fists, when we medicate someone who's spiraling, when we lock doors and close curtains and pretend control is kindness.
Lauren uses it like a badge.
"You can't just come into my department and—"
"And what?" she interrupts softly. "Prevent something worse from happening in front of your staff?"
The words land too close to my own fear. My mouth goes dry.
"What was he?" I ask.
Lauren's expression doesn't give me the satisfaction of an answer. "Not your problem."
"He died in my care," I say. "That makes it my problem."
Her eyes narrow by a fraction. "He didn't die in your care."
The statement is flat. Certain. Like she saw something I only tasted.
My stomach turns again. I think of the twitching fingers. The wrong warmth. The way my body recognized him as food before my mind understood why.
Lauren shifts slightly, and I catch the smallest detail: her jacket is plain, but there's a patch on the inside seam near her shoulder, half-hidden—an emblem, not official, not corporate. A stylized shape I can't make out fully before she turns.
A mark, not meant for me.
Her team stands flanking her again—not threatening, just present.
Lauren's voice lowers. "Doctor. You're going to forget what you saw."
"Am I," I say, and the edge in my tone is sharper than I intend. "Is that a request, too?"
The mild guy's hand drifts toward his beltline, where there's nothing visible. The movement is casual, which makes it worse.
Lauren doesn't react to him. She watches me like she's watching a dog decide whether to bite.
"I'm not your enemy," she says. "But you're standing too close to things that eat people. That makes you a liability."
Liability.
Not victim. Not civilian.
My pulse jumps.
"What are you?" I ask, and I keep the question plain because any more words will show my teeth.
Lauren's mouth curves slightly, not into a smile. Into a decision.
"My name is Lauren Mitchell," she says. "And if you want to keep working this ER without waking up one night with your throat open, you're going to do what I tell you next."
Her name hits and sticks. It shouldn't matter, but it does. Names always do.
"What's next?" I ask, and I hate that part of me leans in.
Lauren turns her head toward the curtained bay behind her. "You're going to stay away from that room."
"I need to document—"
"No," she says, and the word is final. "You don't."
My Hunger pulses again, reacting to the word stay away like it's a dare.
Behind the curtain, the air feels wrong. The herbal sharpness lingers. The blood smell is… muted. Not gone. Covered.
Something in me aches at the denial.
Something else in me—quiet, new—wants to understand why the corpse smelled like food.
Lauren steps closer, voice dropping so only I can hear it over the ER noise.
"And you're going to tell me," she adds, "why you had blood on your mouth."
The question doesn't land like accusation.
It lands like a hook.
For a split second, my body wants to lie.
Then I realize she already knows the shape of the truth. The way she says it, the way her eyes don't flinch, the way her men don't look surprised.
She didn't walk in blind.
She walked in expecting to find a monster.
And she found a doctor with too much blood in his orbit.
My tongue presses against the back of my teeth. I taste nothing now, and the lack of taste is its own hunger.
[HUNGER: 96% — PREDATORY]
[HEALTH: 83% — STABLE]
I force my voice steady. "It was contamination control."
Lauren's gaze holds mine, unblinking.
"Try again," she says.