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Chapter 23 - Unknown

-H-

My arms were shaking.. He had been so scared of what might happen if he lost contact with me. I hadn't seen what the big deal was, maybe I still didn't, but the unknown was suddenly very scary. My fingers curled into that thick, black fur and I buried my face into his neck, breathing slowly and trying to calm myself as I whispered to him two words.

"I'm sorry.."

My fingers unclasped and I stepped back shakily. My legs felt like rubber, my arms felt heavy. He looked so huge on the table as I stepped back and looked at him, waiting for anything to happen to him.. but nothing did. He didn't fade away into black dust. His breathing didn't stop. He didn't mutate into some monster. He just lay there.. dying. My hand clutched my stomach.. I was feeling something. It hit me hard and worry hit a moment later. Emptiness.. I felt empty. There was this immense sense of loss.. like something was missing. There was a void in my gut right alongside that heavy ache of anxiety. Somehow both existed in parallel. What had I done? What would happen now?

That emptiness, that hollow feeling, it didn't let up. It wasn't physically uncomfortable per say but it was disconcerting. I felt cold, a shiver running through me as my skin goosebumped.. but I couldn't waste any more time on my own worries. Nearly tripping over the cat dish on the floor I scrambled to the storage closet, rummaging through my tools and random gear I had. Backpacks. A tent. Rope! There we go, hiking and climbing gear from when I'd go rock climbing with some friends up north.

Rushing back to the kitchen I tripped on the damn dish again, letting out an angry and frustrated shout at no one but myself and kicking it across the room. Calm down asshole. You need to stay calm, this isn't the time to panic. I kept telling myself that as I stood next to the wolf, my wolf, and tried to figure out how I was going to do this. There was a rather heavy-duty metal fixture bolted to the ceiling over the counter. It was where the lights were mounted up inside and where I hung some metal pots and pans.. I could only hope it was mounted sturdy enough for what I needed. It was going to need to support most of the weight of a werewolf.

I quickly cleared the pots and pans off, exposing the metal beams and slinging some rope through them. It moved along the smooth metal easily enough, hopefully it gave me some leverage and worked a little like a pulley system. Though without a wheel.. the smooth metal bars had to work. They had to. I pushed a bundle of the rope under the wolf's belly and out the other side.. the rope got wet with blood. Feeding it back around and under him, hooking his neck and chest a bit it got soaked with more blood.. I knew this was going to be bad. Had to try. Had to succeed. His breathing seemed agonizingly slow. Without wasting any more time I grabbed two handfuls of rope and pushed my foot against the table, keeping the other firmly against the ground as I pulled with every ounce of strength I had left in me.

His shoulder lifted.. and I pulled hard. I was grunting out and breathing heavily but he was rolling, or flipping was more accurate with how limp his heavy body was. Once I got his shoulder nearly straight up I threw all my weight into it and pulled.. the bloody ropes tugging and twisting his body as the bolts and beams of the fixture strained and I heard something in the ceiling crack. The metal fixture had bent but I could see the wolf's chest and face! I quickly let go of the ropes and pushed his upper body the rest of the way over, straightening out his legs and looking over the damage.

There was so much blood.. it had soaked his fur and matted it all down. It had been bleeding this whole time and still was seeping out.. though it had clotted and thickened some. My heart sank, I was in over my head but my hands started moving and cleaning him up with some wet washcloths. I trimmed back the fur to get to the bullet wound.. It was so small compared to what I was expecting. I had bandaged my own dumb injuries up before from various accidents on bikes or climbing but this was different. it was deep and small, and it just kept bleeding.

Rinsing it out was the first thing I knew I needed to do.. though I hoped that if the bullet had been pushed out when he had melded with me then maybe, if we were lucky, anything else foreign would have gotten pushed out too. He was breathing so slowly, his chest rising and falling under my hands as I worked on cleaning him up, flushing the wound and getting a little patch of bared skin wide enough that I could bandage him. I thought I'd have to stitch him up but.. it wasn't a cut, it was a hole. There wasn't much more I could do than put some antibiotic rub on it and push some gauze in a ways, setting a large bandage pad over the whole thing and sticking it to his dark skin.

Then I waited. The bleeding seemed to slow enough, either clotting or held back by the glaze or both. It'd have to be changed frequently I assumed, but what did I know, I'm not a nurse. All I could do was try my best to keep him clean with fresh bandages and hope he would wake up. Reluctantly I left his side, stepping away to wash off everything I touched, my hands, the towels, cleaning up as much of his blood as I could. Flashbacks of my poor cat filled my head.. I had just cleaned up blood not a couple days ago. A day? How long had it been now? I was losing track of time.

When I returned to his side with fresh towels and more clean water, he was breathing more regularly.. or at least what I thought a werewolf should be breathing like.

My hand slipped into his large, clawed paw, giving it a squeeze, "Can you hear me?.."

Nothing.

Stroking his dark skin and fur I waited.. I started cleaning his matted fur with more washcloths as best I could while I waited with him, idly passing the time.. there was no way I was going to be able to get his massive body to the bathtub so this was going to have to do until he could stand. The house felt quiet, dark and cold.. even with all the lights on. It was surreal having a makeshift hospital for a werewolf set up in my kitchen but nothing had been normal since he showed up.

My eyes closed before I realized how exhausted I was.