Chapter 6
Alette, 10 weeks later
“Is the coast clear?” I ask as I unscrew the vent cover with my stolen mini-screwdriver. It’s a calculated risk. Just asking would be enough to send a hospital staff member racing to the nurse call button, but I always like to announce myself before joining a patient in their room. After walking in on a vampire feeding on his wife, snow monsters mating, a naga peeling off his own shedding skin, and an ogre whose meal tray was late, I’ve learned my manners.
“Yes, dear,” answers my favorite patient to visit. Millie May Mills is the kindest, sweetest monster I’ve ever met. “Why are you climbing through the vents again? I thought you said you were under Dr. Stein’s protection.”
“Liam is on the rampage again,” I reply, slapping the dust from my patient gown.
“Must be going around like a flu. Y’all just missed Dr. Stein fussing over my wing. I can’t believe my surgery is tomorrow—not a moment too soon,” she says, giving me the side eye. That’s something I love about Mrs. M. She can discern by the tone of my voice whether or not I want to talk about something, and she doesn’t pry.
“Why’s that, Mrs. M?” I ask as I rest the vent cover against the wall. While I will probably end up telling her about how my holistic efforts are failing, it will be on my terms. I’ve got to warm up to her before explaining my diagnosis and the treatment plan I insisted on trying. We aren’t close enough yet. Maybe when I know she won’t try to take over like my parents, Pack Leader Grant, Liam, and even Dr. Stein have.
“My butterflies will pass over the sanctuary soon. I must be there to guarantee them safe passage through West Virginia,” she says with a sparkle in her eyes.
She pats the comforter at her feet, and I don’t hesitate to join her. Mrs. M is the soft, compassionate mother I wish I had. Her three sets of twins visit her throughout the day to show they care, while I seethe with envy in the ventilation shaft. Why couldn’t I have been adopted into a Mothman family? They all live in the Appalachian Mountains of the human realm, with the more moth-like members living in the forest with Mrs. M. The human-presenting ones are their conduit to the resources of the human world.
Best of all, there is no pack leader.
“Tell me more about West Virginia,” I beg, grabbing her wrinkly hands.
“There’s nothing left to tell, pumpkin,” she says with a laugh. “You’ve heard about everything from the majestic Smoky Mountains to the humble coalfly. While I don’t have any fresh stories, I’m glad you visited. Dr. Stein asked about you—”
“Oh, Mrs. M, not you too!” I wail and throw my arm over my eyes in a fake swooning gesture. “I thought you understood.”
“What I learned from him is that you have the same horrid disease that took my Horus. When were you going to tell me?”
Never? I can’t believe my condition reached her. Who else does Dr. Stein talk to about me? Will I be guilted by all the friends I’ve made in the hospital? I’ll have to stop making friends, which will ruin my existence.
“Guilt colors you pinker than the underside of an opossum, little miss. Don’t play poker. You will lose your shorts in the first hand,” she says with a raspy giggle. I love her colloquialisms; they make her sound exotic. She’s a classy lady with a style that I’ve never seen, making me curious about her area of the human realm. Her kids even bedazzled the sling holding her broken wing until her surgery. How I wish I could leave with her family!
“I liked being your friend without my issues getting in the way—”
“Can you live without them getting in the way? Don’t sugarcoat it. I loved my Horus through the worst of his flares until they consumed him. Don’t look at me with pity. Horus gave me six children to keep me company until it’s my time to join him. They hadn’t invented the surgery Dr. Stein wants to give you when my Horus passed. Why won’t you hear him out?”
“Because I’ve heard about the surgery from my parents, my pack leader, other weres…it’s been shoved down my throat for years. I just want to live happily in my whole body.”
“Are you happy sneaking around a creepy monster hospital?”
“Honestly…” I stammer as she lowers her glittery bifocals halfway down her nose to peer over them at me. “I know that look. I’ll be honest, I swear. I’ve never had the friends, the freedom, and the joy in the pack that I’ve felt here. This is the closest I’ve ever felt to belonging. Sure, half the patients look at me as lunch, but the other half are wonderful people.”
“But they aren’t people.”
“More like people than the werepack,” I reply with a shrug. “I have no future there, Mrs. M. I don’t have the inborn allegiance to the pack leader. I sneak onto the human internet every second I can. It’s as if my life began when I escaped from my wheelchair.”
“I remember when the internet was my only lifeline to the human world, too—before I tried to kidnap Horus,” she says with a distant smile. “That was a long time ago.”
“Then you understand how talking to actual, real-life friends is a treat, even if it’s in a hospital gown that blows open at the worst moments. The werepack consists of nothing but a bunch of bullies—”
“Okay, you don’t have to convince me to release you from that smelly old pack. You’ve told me all about how unfair it was for you in the forest—you talked my ear off about your trials,” she says with a throaty chuckle.
“It’s less obvious here that I don’t belong,” I say with a sniffle.
“Oh, honey,” she replies, rolling her bed desk over her lap between us. As she passes me her box of tissues, she removes the lid of the two dinner trays. “There, now, dry those tears. Dr. Drake left your dinner tray from Dr. Stein since she knew you’d visit me. There’s noodle soup if you can stomach the grease, gluten-free crackers if you can’t, but I added a piece of strawberry pie that I’m sure will disappear first.”
“Oh wow, thank you,” I say, peeling the cling film from the slice of pie.
“Little thing, you have a sweet tooth bigger than Texas,” she says as I shovel a big bite into my mouth. “Never metsomeone who ate so much sugar. I know it’s not the colitis because my Horus’s palate was as salty as his attitude.”
