Dr. Ursa had barely slowed down when I slid off her back. I rolled across the ground. I had to admit it wasn’t the best dismount ever. However, I wasn’t worried about how graceful I looked. I had to get to Gage. He had been alone for way too long.
She quickly transformed into human form and grabbed a pullover dress from her bag and slipped it over her head.
She was hot on my heels when I entered the cabin and headed straight for the bedroom where I had left Gage.
His face was ashen white, and his breaths were shallow. He was unconscious.
When I saw his condition, I began to cry.
“Luka, I know that you are upset and worried. However, I need you to pull yourself together. I’m going to need your help. You can fall apart after we’ve taken care of him.”
Then, she looked at me and smiled. “And after we’ve taken care of you. I’d like to ask you what the other guy looks like, but I’m pretty sure he lost this fight.”
I tried to smile, but my heart wasn’t in it. I liked Dr. Ursa immediately. She was trying to help me, too.
She asked for several more towels and some boiling water.
I brought the supplies that she needed.
She had taken out several items that looked like instruments of torture. She also took out several bags that had plants in them.
Dr. Ursa asked for a trash bag. She said that I needed to be strong. She was going to take the bandages off. She needed to see if the bullet was still lodged in his body or if it had made its way out. Since he was in bear form when he was shot, and there was no hole in his back, she suspected that it was still in his side.
She said I could be sick later, but for right now, I needed to dig out a tough persona, a tough persona of the old Native American and pioneer women that showed that nothing would keep them from doing what they had to do.
The blood poured out of his wound, although not as fast as before, when she removed the towels from his side. She nodded in approval at my attempts to stem the flow of bleeding.
After putting them in the trash can, she got a tiny, high-powered flashlight to look at the wound.
“It’s a good thing that he is unconscious. This would hurt like a bear, pun intended,” she said.
She located the bullet and handed me some gloves. “Just as I suspected. Since he was in bear form, it didn’t go all the way through. It only got about halfway into his side. I have to take the bullet out. I need you to hold open the sides of his wound so I can get it.”
I nodded my understanding, showing a lot more bravely than I felt. She showed me what I needed to do, and I gritted my teeth. Then, I gently held the sides of the hole open. She put the flashlight between her teeth. Then, using a probe and a large pair of tweezers, she dug into the hole.
Gage must have felt the pain, even in his unconscious state, because he emitted a loud moan.
I began to talk to him. “I love you, baby. I need you to hold still and to hold on, so Dr. Ursa can work her magic. I need you, and you can’t leave me when I just found you.” My voice caught in my throat as I said the last of it.
“Be strong, Luka. You’re doing great.”
“I only found out today, when he changed from bear form to human form, that he was a shifter. He has to survive so I can beat him for keeping such a secret from me.”
She laughed. “At least wait until these wounds heal before you inflict new ones.”
“I will do my best,” I assured her.
“Got you,” Dr. Ursa said as she triumphantly pulled a bullet out of Gage. She set it aside.
She looked at the wound, inspecting it. She said that Gage was lucky that the bullet didn’t hit anything vital. His kidneys, liver, and intestines were fine. Nothing had been nicked. That was very good and meant that Gage would heal nicely from his wound.
“He will be in a lot of pain for a while,” she said. “If he’s like most men when he’s hurt, he’ll probably do a lot of whining and want to be babied.”
We both laughed, and I really appreciated her attempts to make me feel better.
She used the water to flush the wound. She asked me for a bowl. I ran to get it. When I returned, she was busy sewing up the hole.
She put a handful of dried plants with yellow flowers in the bowl. She added a little bit of water to the plants until it was pasty.