Page 41 of Omega's Heart
The gamma passed over a slip of paper and a pen. “Write it down, please, and I’ll see if I can add it to the system. You should get a pack-issued phone, then you’d be in the database.”
“I like my phone,” Kaden said with what I called his good-natured grumpiness as he wrote down his phone number. “About an hour, you said?”
“Right now it’s looking like an hour. We see cases based on how urgent they are. I’ll call you.” The gamma turned back to his computer, dismissing us.
Kaden’s lips twitched like he wanted to laugh, then he straightened his face and looked up at me. “Thanks for bringing the chair down. You can get back to what you were doing.”
I winked at him and started to roll him out of the room over his protests. “You saved me. I was so bored. Holland put me in charge of organizing things. I’d rather have been sewing.” Then, because I wanted to make sure he didn’t do anything silly and I was pretty sure that he wouldn’t if he had an audience, I asked in a plaintive voice, “Can I come hide out with you?”
He laughed. “Sure.” But I could smell the unease beneath his careless manner. He wasn’t as confident about what was happening as he was trying to convince me.
And that was worrying.
Upstairs, I made him comfortable on the couch, then insisted he let me soak the sock off his stump and gently clean around the wound.
I could see why he couldn’t walk on it—much farther down and I was certain the end of the bone would have been poking through. Only on one side, though—I thought back to the biology course I’d done in school, the picture of a skeleton clear in my mind. The raw section was about where I’d expect to find the end of the thinner of the two shin bones. Had they actually left the bones uneven? I didn’t know anything about amputations, but shouldn’t they have been cut off evenly? Especially if there was going to be weight on them.
Did they just not care?
I felt the hot rise of a surprising rage against the doctors who had butchered him so incompetently.
But I was omega and taking offense on behalf of another pack member wasn’t one of the things we were supposed to do. So I did the only thing I really could, which was to clean the stump with all the care I was capable of, cover it lightly with a clean cloth, and then see to his comfort until Adelaide’s gamma secretary called us to go down to the clinic again.
Kaden was polite but quieter than usual, except for a vibrating energy that beat off him in waves. I didn’t think he was even aware he was doing it, shedding his anxiety like a wolf shed fur in the spring, but in an alpha of his power it was uncomfortable. As much as I could, I made myself into a soothing presence for him, catered to him with coffee made to his liking and treats that I’d hidden away for the days when he didn’t realize how much he was struggling. If there was ever a day to break them out, I thought that today was that day.
I’d finally calmed that prickling energy of his down to a low hum when his damn phone went off and it started beating against my nerves again like an unruly tree branch in a storm. Regardless, back downstairs we went, while I braced myself for the bad news I worried was coming. Alphas, for all their power, could be so strangely fragile—I didn’t want to see him broken.
We were shown into a room down a corridor and around a corner to wait. Which we did, for at least another twenty minutes. Kaden’s good leg jigged in place until he noticed it.
Finally, just when I thought my own nerves would snap, Adelaide bustled in, carrying a folder with several sheets of colored paper in it. “Hello, Kaden. The leg causing problems?”
“Something like that,” he muttered, but when she asked him to roll up his pant leg, he didn’t protest. Nor did he protest when she unwrapped my rough and ready bandage to poke around in a way that had to have caused him a good deal of pain. The knuckles of his right hand went white on the armrest of the wheelchair and his mouth tightened down to a harsh line that would have been frightening if I didn’t know what he was really like.
“I’d like to do an x-ray, but the machine is broken. The information I have from your previous doctor indicates that nothing unusual happened during the surgery.”
“Well, we all know how much that means,” Kaden replied, the first notes of bitterness souring the air.
She gave him a sympathetic look. “It’s not necessarily that. Sometimes there isn’t anything they can do. I’m sure they wouldn’t have sent you home if they thought it would be a problem for you.”
“It didn’t feel like this when I was still in rehab.”
“Tissue changes happen over time. This could have nothing to do with the bone. I can do some blood tests and see if you’re deficient in anything, but I can’t be certain I’ll find something easily fixed.”
“I see,” he said, his voice flat. “So, what? I’m stuck with this chair for the rest of my life?”
“There isn’t any guarantee, so don’t give up on it yet,” she said in a voice that even I thought was far too gentle to be true. “But you need to keep in mind that not everyone adapts to the prosthetic, for any number of reasons. I think you should consider what you would need if that were the case, though, and start preparing yourself for that possibility. Some people are prone to bone overgrowths, we don’t know why. Not enough research. It might be that they can do another surgery to correct this, but we’ll have to rule out some other possibilities first.”
“What other possibilities?” His voice was flat and expressionless and even that sense of energy that always surrounded him was gone, like he was locking his entire being down, hiding from everyone.
“Kaden, let’s do a few tests first—” Adelaide began, but Kaden interrupted her.
“Tell. Me,” he growled and I almost tasted blood in his words.
She sighed and moved away to lean back against the counter on the other side of the room. “It could be a form of cancer. It’s not common, but this one is more common in shifters than in humans. Did you have any chemical exposure overseas? “
The color drained out of his face, leaving him gray and stricken looking. I tried to put a hand on his shoulder, anything to offer some comfort, but he shrugged me roughly away, all his attention focused on Adelaide. “And if it is?”
She watched him closely for a moment as if she was doing some sort of silent assessment of his mental state. Not unreasonable under the circumstances, I thought. And not being an alpha herself, she was likely considering his response to what I guessed was probably bad news. “Let’s talk about that when we’re closer to understanding what’s going on, okay? I don’t think it’s a very big chance. I’ll see if I can get Bram back on the weekend and have him have a look at it too if you’re free.”
