Moonshifted by Cassie Alexander

didn’t care if you drowned, or the ones with the worst family members, because everyone else was over dealing with them. I stood in the doorway of my assigned room and looked inside.
    There were rosaries hanging on all the IV poles. An entire Latino family was in here, but most of the noise came from one older woman crying, wailing the ancient refrain of Why God, Why. Everyone at the hospital wanted answers from God, and He was never around to give them. She looked up at my entrance, and I could see where her tears and overzealous use of Kleenex had completely wiped away one of her makeup eyebrows. An older man was pacing beside her, and a younger woman stood at the head of the bed, petting my patient’s cheek. The nurse I was replacing was across from her, programming an IV pump.
    “Hello?” I knocked on the doorway, and the nurse inside came out.
    She kept her report brusque and devoid of emotion. Seen it all, done it all was the motto of the trauma ICU nurse. Innocent bystander syndrome. Gangbanger fight. Gunshot wound to the spine. Paralyzed now, and losing sensation as the swelling continues. On pressors to keep his blood pressure high.
    The trauma from the gunshot, the bullet’s cavitations, or the subsequent swelling had done an odd number on his spine. It had already rendered him unable to move, and as his injury progressed his ability to feel was being stolen away from him, one centimeter at a time. The outgoing nurse and I checked the IV drips together and probed along his side. When we found the spot where feeling ended, we drew another dot with a purple Sharpie, like we were turning him into a connect-the-dots paper doll, one dot after the next. The wailing in Spanish didn’t stop.
    I took advantage of the old nurse leaving the room to leave myself, co-signing the chart, rifling through the history and progress notes.
    Truth was, I was hiding.
    In nursing school we went to some cultural classes, but they weren’t so much about learning about other cultures as they were Being Nice to people with different beliefs. That part had worked so well that I could now Be Nice to vampires, so surely I could deal with anything here. But part of me always remembered that time I’d asked a patient if he was frijoles, instead of frío.
    I read the chart for a bit, trying to look official, and found out what I already knew: Javier Rodriguez, male, aged eighteen, was inside. And this would be the last night he had feeling below his neck.
    I closed the chart, said a silent prayer hoping that the doctors had already answered all of the hard questions in eloquent Spanish, and went inside.

 
    CHAPTER SIXTEEN
    Javier had short dark hair and wide shoulders. He was dressed in a hospital gown and had a plastic collar on, protecting his neck from any pressure or torque.
    Standing over him and stroking his hair was his sister—or maybe his girlfriend. She was strikingly beautiful. High, precise brows over wide, heavily made-up eyes; lips outlined in red, with the lipstick fading in between, from time spent kissing Javier’s forehead. Her straight black hair spilled down the bed to his armpits.
    “Hi. I’m Edie, I’m going to be your nurse for the next four hours,” I said over the sound of his crying mother. He grunted.
    I ran the blood pressure cuff, took his temperature, felt for pulses, listened to lungs. A small dressing beneath his right clavicle was stained with the color of old blood. I took a Sharpie and drew its boundaries, just in case it opened up again.
    “Are you in any pain?”
    Javier flicked dark eyes toward me, then back at the ceiling. “No. Never.”
    The woman standing beside him nodded and resumed petting him. His mom kept sobbing, wordless sounds.
    “Is there anything I can do for you?” I asked him, then included the room at large.
    “Café,” said the not-crying woman. She was definitely the girlfriend. I knew from the way I saw her look at him now.
    “Certainly,” I said, and retreated out