Plastic slid over my mouth and nose and cool air rushed into my lungs. I jerked as someone pinched the inside of my elbow and the back of my hand. My veins burned. A metallic tang contaminated my mouth and I clawed at the mask.
Firm hands replaced it and someone shouted in my ear. “Leave that alone, Ada. It’s oxygen. Have you taken any medication or eaten anything in the last few days? Do you remember?”
“Vampire blood,” slipped out before the angry voice in the back of my head reminded me to keep my damn mouth shut. So I laughed instead in the uneasy silence from whoever asked, and hoped they knew I was Chilhowee’s resident loon. Everyone else would dismiss it, because who the hell believed in vampires?
“On a scale of one to ten, how much pain are you in?”
“Forty-two,” I said.
He snorted, a genuine laugh that warmed me from the inside. “Answer to everything in the universe, eh? This is a little morphine to take the edge off; we’ll be at the hospital soon.”
A cool sensation flowed into me and I sank. I sank down and down and down until nothing looked or felt right. Each blink took an eternity. The rest of my body faded away.
The next time I opened my eyes, the world had gotten much quieter. More lights and voices floated around me. Through it all, a quiet voice in my head reminded me to Stay grounded. Remember who you are and what you must do. Anchor yourself. Stay grounded.
It was that voice I listened to. The doctors and nurses continued with reassuring platitudes but the dark voice with a very soft lisp from fangs in a mouth not meant to hold them carried me through the pain. Who knew a telepathic vampire could be comforting?
In my head it was easy. I was Ada Lovelace Montgomery, PhD, daughter of Dr. Helen Stafford and Dr. August Montgomery. I was named after a brilliant thinker and an ass-kicking, barrier-breaking pioneer for women in science, and I would contribute amazing things to whatever field of study I chose to pursue.
I am Ada Lovelace Montgomery I whispered to the voice in my head, since it seemed important that he knew it, too.
“I know, honey,” someone said next to me, and I forced a swollen eye open. A woman with bright green eyes stood next to my shoulder as she pressed an ultrasound wand against my side and abdomen. “You’ve got such a pretty name. How are you feeling? Any pain?”
“Everywhere,” I said. The medication or maybe just time had dulled it all to a more distant misery, though I couldn’t stop to think about it too closely without my control slipping and the anchor giving way. When that happened, everything else crumbled.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll tell the doc. We’ve got one more test to run on you, darlin’, then we’re going to take you back for a little tiny surgery on your leg, mmkay?”
“Betsy,” I whispered. I really needed to hear my best friend’s voice, even if the first thing she’d say to me was “I told you so.”
Betsy had probably been behind the search party, driving them onward and pouring sweet tea as they went. Maybe her husband had been one of the blurry faces who’d found me. I distantly remembered the jolting suddenness of being found and hoped that the rest of the memory faded away as well.
The ultrasound tech talked too fast to understand as more people in scrubs and latex gloves arrived, standing around me in a half-circle of blue and green and tan. I tried to keep up but someone flicked the IV bag and I drifted away again.