33

The forest always tamed Mikhail’s mind. Unrelenting ground under his feet, ferocious ice-cold wind on his face, night sky above, threatening to split open and pour itself on top of him – that was the Heaven they had been blessed with down here, on Earth.

Although most of the time he hid behind a human guise, a big part of him was still a beast. And beasts belonged to the wild; humans – to civilisation.

Which made him wonder sometimes where he belonged.

Yet, yielding to the animal was a blissful experience. Only then did his thoughts crystallise, free from any emotional burden. The animal was simple. It had primal needs. Food. Reproduction. Survival. It never pondered or speculated. When it and Mikhail became one, his reasoning transformed through the prism of the beast. That was why every time he lost his way or started doubting himself, he turned to the beast.

He returned to the Hospital through a secret passage and changed to his human form, his anger dissipating. Getting dressed, he took out a little vial from his jeans pocket.

Perfume with the scent of a vampire. The same kind Amelia had used in her pointless attempt to run away. Because of the recent events – Mary Clare’s murder, Viktor’s berserk mode and the communication with the Tribunal, Mikhail hadn’t thought much about her.

At first, he had been enraged with her actions, but now the memory of her almost successful escape curled his lips. He should not underestimate Amelia any longer. There was something inside her – a little beast, if he were to compare it to the immortal species—one that wouldn’t succumb to him so easily.

On his way to the top floor, he stopped in the staff room where Mary Clare had been murdered. “Don’t mind me,” he told the creatures sitting on the couch.

They only stared at him in return. Mikhail had expected such a reaction, so he aimed to be as quiet as possible while he rummaged through their supplies in the fridge. Digging through boxes and wrappers of food, he wasn’t sure he knew what he was looking for. When he lifted his head out of the fridge, the three creatures in the room were observing him with a mixture of shock and curiosity.

“I had a sudden craving for human food,” he said. “I’ll take this”—he grabbed a box labelled Kate and reached for two apples next—“and these.” As he closed the fridge, he noticed that one of the creatures on the couch had frozen with her hand in mid-air, clutching a fork. Cutlery, of course! “Where can I find a fork? A spoon, perhaps?”

One of the women pointed to a kitchen drawer by the fridge. He slid it open and took a spoon, a fork, a knife, and a pack of napkins. “These will do.” A box of chocolates caught his attention and he snatched it on his way out. “Tell Kate and all the others whose food was taken to report to their superior and they will be compensated. Good day.” He left the three bewildered staff members behind and continued heading upstairs.

Amelia’s door was still closed, so he knocked and waited. The last time, he had been too harsh with her, so he wasn’t surprised her response was not immediate.

A while passed with no answer until he walked in, uninvited. She was sitting on the edge of the bed with her back to him. Beside her on the sheets was a closed book she must have taken from his library.

Amelia gave no sign she was aware of his presence, but her pose stiffened at the sound of his approaching steps. He dropped the food on the bed and positioned himself face-to-face with her. “You haven’t eaten in over two days.”

Her features were stone when her gaze fixed on him. He stared at her dark blue irises and found it suddenly hard to look away. There was something in those eyes that he hadn’t paid attention to before.

After her failed escape, he’d expected her to be frightened – despondent even – but that was nowhere close to what he read in her. A flicker of determination lurked beneath the surface, a resolve that piqued his interest.

The beast inside him stirred with anticipation. After their last encounter, something had shifted inside Amelia’s head, and he was eager to decipher it. Had she merely masked her defiance? Was she biding her time until the perfect moment to escape came?

Mikhail pulled the vampire perfume vial from his pocket and passed it to her. “You know what this is. I want you to put it on again.” She furrowed her brow in confusion. “I promised to take you to the OR, and I will. But I want you to go in as a vampire.”

Amelia blinked a few times and her pupils widened. “What?”

“I said, I will take you to the OR, but you’ll go as a vampire. And before you even put this on, I want you to eat.”

She glanced over her shoulder at the food.

She had to be starving. Preoccupied by everything else that had happened, Mikhail had forgotten that humans needed food to survive.

Amelia drew the box on her lap. “Kate,” she read the note out loud. “Who’s Kate?”

Mikhail unpeeled the note from the container and crumbled it up. “The cook.”

Amelia removed the lid. “Pasta?” When he said nothing, she dug in with the fork.

Then she ate like an animal that had been starved for days while Mikhail watched her. She devoured the two apples and half the box of chocolates in seconds. Yet despite her obvious hunger, she still took a moment to tell him that she didn’t like chocolate.

***

“What’s the surgery we’ll be observing?” Amelia asked as they exited the lift in a lobby, similar to all others she had seen before.

Mikhail guided her through the double doors to their right. The scars on his face from the other day had healed, but a slight limp marked his walk, as if he was careful not to strain his right side.

“We’re not observing. We’re operating,” he said.

Her heart skipped a beat. “ We will be operating?”

Standing in the hallway, he turned to her. “You want to be a surgeon, right?”

“Yes, but I’ve never performed a surgery before. I’ve only ever watched.”

“There’s always a first time.” He let his eyes run down her body. A sudden heat passed through her. She stared at the green tile floor, praying that her cheeks hadn’t turned red.

The double door behind them swung open and a woman in civilian attire walked in.

“Prep her for the OR. She’ll be practising today,” Mikhail said to the woman and landed a heavy palm on Amelia’s shoulder, which nearly made her lose her ground.

“Oh, Mikhail! I didn’t see you there.” The woman smiled at Amelia. “Practising? Wonderful. It’s always good to welcome newbies. Come with me, darling.”

Amelia threw an insecure glance at Mikhail.

“Go with Faye,” he told her. “I’ll be here.”

The woman led her to the female changing room. “First time?” She started a cheerful conversation while removing clothes from a locker.

“Yes.”

“Good, good.” She assessed Amelia. “I think this is your size. Wear it. Take some shoes from there.” She pointed to a wardrobe to the left. “You’ll get a mask and gloves before you enter the OR.”

Amelia changed into the offered green scrubs while Faye dressed in her own. When she was ready, the other woman stood close, observing her with an unreadable expression.

“Did I put it on wrong?” she asked, worried the vampire scent was fading.

“Hmm…” Faye approached her. “Are you from the Barich family?”

“Excuse me?”

“The Serbian vampires?”

“No.”

Faye exhaled. “Thank the gods. I hate them! We have a blood feud, if you catch my drift. If you were one of them…” She didn’t continue, but the sudden darkening in her otherwise pleasant features showed that Faye had a deep-rooted hostility for these vampires.

Amelia concealed her nervousness behind a friendly smile. All of this felt unreal. First creatures, now blood feuds? What had she let herself get dragged into?

And why was she even going along with this surgery, when she had never done one in the human world?

But then again, she had been dreaming of being a surgeon since her first year at med school. And regardless of where it was happening, she was now about to operate! Excitement fizzed through her veins, followed just as quickly by her palms growing clammy.

When Amelia stepped back into the hallway, Mikhail was waiting for her just as he’d promised. He’d also dressed in scrubs, and was leaning against the wall in a casual stance. As she took a few steps towards him, she found it impossible not to stare at him. The colour of the medical attire emphasized the green of his eyes. His bright gaze was too intense and, in an effort to avoid it, her own landed on the muscles of his arms. They were bulging, stretching the material of his sleeves. Her pulse quickened but she convinced herself it was excitement for the upcoming surgery, and it had nothing to do with what she’d imagined while reading that damned anatomy book.

“I had no idea you still performed surgeries, Mikhail,” Faye remarked with glee when she approached.

“Only on special occasions,” he replied and led Amelia to the ORs.

Creatures equipped with masks and caps marched from one room to the other. In front of the nearest OR, two surgeons were having a lively discussion. One of them, a man with a broad face, had lowered his mask below his chin.

“What happened to the gutted nymph?” he asked.

The woman beside him made a dismissive hand gesture. “She’ll survive. But… I bet she won’t dare touch what isn’t hers for the next three hundred years, at least.”

“Tut-tut! I don’t believe it. Some creatures just know no bounds.”

Mikhail interrupted their chat. “What do you have inside?”

The couple seemed startled by his appearance.

The woman was first to explain, “Male, lycanthrope, three gunshot wounds. One transitory, torn lung, one bullet scraped the aorta. They’re prepping him now. We were just about to start.”

“I’ll take over,” Mikhail said.

The two creatures exchanged glances.

“Shall we assist?” the man asked.

“I already have an assistant. You’re free to go.”

He urged Amelia to follow him into the room. Edging in behind him, a sudden burst of enthusiasm ran through her. She was about to help operate on a lycanthrope with gunshot wounds, and despite it being a huge trauma to tackle, Mikhail trusted her enough to be his only assistant.

He handed her a cap and a mask. “Do you know how to clean up?”

“Of course.”

Mikhail prepared and Amelia copied everything he did. After they had washed, dressed the surgical gowns over their scrubs and donned gloves, they got into the OR. The lycanthrope’s body was lying on top of the table, positioned on his left side. His head was hidden behind a green cloth. A burly man with a face mask waited by the table, so Amelia supposed he was the anaesthetist.

“Boris,” Mikhail greeted him.

The man nodded.

The operating nurse, whose tiny size had been nearly dwarfed by Boris’ bulky frame, stepped around him and waited on one side of the operating table.

Mikhail stood beside her, and Amelia took the position opposite them.

“Change of plans,” Mikhail said. “I’ll be teaching my new assistant, so I ask for your patience.” Then he turned to her. “First, we’ll open the chest. Scalpel.”

The nurse handed him a knife from the instruments table. He cut the lycanthrope open from the sternum to the back, sliding the blade with confidence along the ribs. Amelia observed his skilful movements. Once, she might have seen an animal inside him, but now he was the epitome of a surgeon’s precision and finesse.

He spoke to her while he worked. “The lycanthrope is a combination of a man and a wolf, but, of course, you already know that.” Blood stained the cut through the skin. Mikhail pressed on the vessel with a gauze, took an instrument that Amelia recognised as bipolar forceps, and coagulated the tissue. The smell of burnt skin filled the air. “What you may not know is that anatomically, a lycanthrope is very similar to a human – like many other species, actually.”

He cut the tissues underneath with an electric knife until he reached the glowing greyish structure Amelia knew was the pleura. Mikhail pierced it with one swift motion of his index finger. A puff of air escaped through the puncture, resembling the sound of a tyre deflating.

“I’m checking for lung adhesions,” he explained as he moved his finger around. “If there are any and I cut the pleura with a sharp instrument, I can harm the lung.” He cut the pleura wide open with the electric knife, taking the retractor from the nurse and placing it on the patient’s chest. “Unlike some other species, which can live without food, the lycanthrope needs a regular supply of meat to survive.” He exposed the intercostal space step by step. “That is why a lycanthrope’s stomach has four parts…”

Ever since she had decided to study medicine, Amelia had dreamt of this. She had been inside an OR many times as a student but had always stood by the wall, from where she could view most of the working process only in her imagination. In some halls, she had observed through a screen, connected to a camera pointed at the operating table. Two or three times, she had been allowed to step onto a small platform just behind the operating surgeons and survey their work from there, over their heads. Most surgeries she’d seen, however, were streamed off the internet. When she had started at St. Nicolas as a nurse, her duties had focused on the patients who had already been operated on and she had never got the chance to enter an OR – as a volunteer or anything else.

What she was experiencing now was a dream come true, to some extent. Maybe not under the current circumstances and definitely not with Mikhail, but the feeling that she was finally doing what she was supposed to was too strong to ignore.

The two of them inspected the patient’s insides, but it was next to impossible to see anything beyond the blood that had filled up the chest.

“Take the aspirator and suck up the blood,” Mikhail instructed in a tone that showed no doubt in her ability to perform the task.

That made her confidence inflate – she was part of a team. She took the aspirator. “The lung is unrecognisable. I’ve never seen one so mangled before!”

“There are three entrance wounds and only one exit wound,” Mikhail said as he surveyed the injury. “We cannot save the damaged lobe. We’ll have to remove it. Use the retractor and pull the lung out.”

The upper lobe of the right lung was torn beyond recognition. The rest of the lung tissue was precariously attached to the bronchus and vessels. She obeyed and hesitantly placed the retractor inside the lycanthrope’s chest, praying that her hands wouldn’t shake under the watchful gaze of the three immortals.

Mikhail grabbed the lung in his hand. “Pass me the Satinsky clamp,” he told the nurse, then clamped the bronchus and, with the help of two other instruments, also did the artery and vein.

Amelia shifted her attention from the lycanthrope on the table to Mikhail. He was concentrated but calm. His movements were quick, precise and confident. She had never seen skill like his before. Not a single surgeon, young or old, had ever shown such unnatural, borderline creepy agility.

“Scissors,” Mikhail said. “As part of the New Generation, you’re privileged. You can come here and learn. Years ago, when we were starting, we had to go to human hospitals to gain knowledge. Among humans. Operating on humans.” He cut the bronchus and the vessels above the instruments, removing the upper lobe of the lung, while Amelia held the retractor and aspirated the blood. “At first, everything was one surgery. I have to admit that the humans I studied under were truly impressive. One doctor could do everything, not like today, with the hundreds of medical divisions and narrow specialisations.”

“Medicine today is not like it used to be,” Amelia couldn’t help but respond. “There’s so much information, and no way for one person to know everything.”

Mikhail threw her a telling glance.

The nurse bobbed her head to support Amelia’s statement. “Of course. But in the human world, there are a lot more diseases than in ours… Although”—her voice lowered to a whisper—“you’ve probably heard of Doctor Nyavolski’s strange discovery a few days ago? The carcinoma…”

The nurse waited for Mikhail’s reaction, as did Amelia.

Earlier today, before heading for the ORs, Mikhail had already told her about the large intestine carcinoma they had recently discovered in what he called a ‘New Generation’ vampire, but despite that, she burned with curiosity to find out if there had been any developments.

“Yes, we heard. Unfortunately, I know as much about it as you do,” Mikhail said in a neutral tone. He turned to Amelia. “What type of surgery do you want to work with?”

Disappointed by his lack of response, she answered, “I’ve always wanted to work in emergency surgery.”

“Everything we do here is emergency surgery. However, for us, emergency is a slightly different term. In the human world, this trauma”—he pointed to the patient on the table—“would have been operated on immediately, in the emergency room. But the immortal bodies are stronger. They can last hours or even days longer than mortals, which gives us enough time for transport and preparation before surgery.”

“Trauma, then. I’ve always wanted to work with trauma.” Amelia’s answer was definitive. She urged herself to watch what she said when there were other creatures around.

“Now we have to close the other structures.” Mikhail went back to work. “Give me two mounted ligatures, three over zero prolen.” Amelia nodded, although he wasn’t watching her. “Release slowly as I ligate the vessel.”

She did as she was told. Mikhail slowly connected the two blood vessels and moved on to stitching the bronchus.

“You’re doing well.” Mikhail dug into the body once more. “We found one bullet, the other has gone through, and now we need the third one…”

Amelia caught herself staring at him.

“There it is. Missed the aorta by a hair and lodged into the spine. Removing it…”

They finished the operation in silence, punctuated by Mikhail’s occasional guidance. He showed her how to do the stitches, even allowing her to attempt a few on her own – an achievement that filled her with pride.

When they left the OR, adrenaline still coursed through her veins. She stole a glance at Mikhail as he removed his mask and cap, revealing his strong jawline. It dawned on her – he had believed in her abilities, trusting her to assist him without needing backup. His faith in her skills had allowed her to focus and learn without fear of failure, something she’d never had before in all her med school rotations.

“Are you okay?” he asked her.

“Yes.”

“For someone who has never taken part in a surgery, you did good.”

Satisfaction blossomed in her chest anew at his words. “Thank you.”

“Will you have dinner with me?”

Mikhail’s out-of-the-blue question caused her breath to hitch. “I… I thought you don’t eat…”

His lips curled. “There are a lot of things you don’t know. Tonight. In my room. You were there while I was gone, so I assume you know where to go.”