“I don’t understand,” she says, gazing up at me with teary eyes. “He’s a little boy who was alone in the dark while hisparents fought for their lives. I did what any other woman would do—”
“He’s Ruslan Von Popescu, heir to the vampire throne. Lucien, his father, is King of the Vampires. I’ve transplanted bone marrow from his human mother to his vampire father many times—too many times. Lucien’s next infection will make Ruslan the vampire king. You see, vampires die young. They have a genetic disease that Lucien and I have fought with stem cells, medications, and now transplants.”
“I had no idea,” she says with a shiver. “I saw a lonely boy, crying for his mother.”
“Even the fiercest monsters on my staff were too scared to comfort him,” I say with a shiver of my own. If my surgery hadn’t been a success, Ruslan would have lost himself to grief and bloodlust. What would I have done if I found her shredded by a vampire child?
“I didn’t think about him being a monster. You must think I’m stupid.”
“Brave, compassionate to a fault, more loving than any human I’ve met, maybe a little impulsive…but not stupid.”
“Well, thanks for that.”
“I admire your bravery, Alette,” I confess. When she shivers again, I raise my arm between us to rest it on the back of the bench. “In that moment, when I found out it was you who comforted Ruslan, I felt a bone-chilling fear I had never felt before. It would hurt me deeply to lose you before I got the chance to… I want your light to shine on me the way it shines on the patients you visit, Alette. Everyone is happier after spending time with you. I want to give you something back. Ruslan could have taken the chance from me.”
“If this is a ploy to get me onto your operating table—”
“It’s a ploy to get you to spend more time with me—Frank—the human man who’s tired of being alone but doesn’t know how to connect with people the way you do. With you, I want to be more than The Cold Dr. Stein.”
She gasps and searches my face for sincerity.
I hold my breath. I’ve never laid my feelings bare like this. Waiting for her to accept or reject me is torture, but I don’t know what else to do. What else can I say? I want to save her life—not to add her miracle to my list of accomplishments—but because I want the chance to love her.
“Scoot closer to me, so I can keep you warm,” I say brusquely, when the silence stretches to an uncomfortable stickiness between us. “I didn’t think it would get this cold so quickly...and your gift is in the way.”
“My gift?”
“I should have brought flowers,” I snap, then feel my face heat as I realize what just flew out of my mouth.
“No, anyone can bring flowers,” she says, as she takes the box onto her lap. My heart gallops triple-time when she presses against my side and lowers my arm from the back of the bench of rest beside her. “I want the strange and wonderful gift in this box. Anyone can guess a woman would want a delicate, perfumed gift. What is in this box is heavy and smells terrible, so it must be thoughtful.”
“I made it for you. Well, I made several, but this is a prototype for this conversation,” I blubber, feeling ten inches tall. Of course Alette would want something delicate and pretty like her. Her jaw drops as she opens the box, and I shrink into my skin, wishing I had a snail’s shell to hide my face. “Yousaid something that struck me. When talking about the J-pouch, you said you didn’t want to be incomplete…that you would feel something was missing. I mean, I’d be removing most of your intestines, so you’re right, a bunch of you would be missing. You said you didn’t want plastic, metal, or a—”
“Poo bag,” she says with a giggle. “I don’t want to carry around bags of poo.”
“It wouldn’t be as bad as you think, but I’m going to let that argument die. I want to give you the life you deserve, in the body you want. So I did some research of my own…in the monster realm. I found a species of gremlin that coughs up its intestines, which I could recode as your tissue with your stem cells. I got the idea from this old book from the 1920s that I found in the basement. It’s called the “Enhancement of Modern Man” by Dr. Leopold Guett.”
“They knew about stem cells in the 1920s?”
“No, but he was crazy enough to surgically enhance people and animals, guessing that they were there to help. He probably thought they were mini-angels,” I say with all the excitement and enthusiasm I had when I found the book. “Alette, your gift is a box of new intestines. Organic. Living. Part of you. I can’t give you the human realm’s medicines with the sensitivity of a human man, but I can give you a new digestive system built from monsters…as I rebuilt myself into a monster.”
“You aren’t a monster, Frank,” she says with a sob. She slides the box to the side to twine her arms around my neck. “A monster wouldn’t have dedicated his brilliance to the whining of a brat.”
“Wanting agency over your body doesn’t make you a brat.”
“Liam would disagree with you.”
“Liam wants you to live. That’s all. He puts too much faith in a cold man like me.”
“We all do,” she whispers. Her large eyes see deep into my soul and sear away my doubts. I can be her hero. I can do this for her. “Can you really give this to me? Make me whole? Take away the pain, the flares, the nights crying on the bathroom floor?”
“I want to try,” I whisper, leaning closer to her lips with the sudden urge to kiss her. “I want to give you the happiness you give everyone else. Please let me try. There’s nobody I would work harder to save, Alette. Please let me give you the life you’ve never had.”
Sparks fly behind my eyelids when our lips meet. A simple press against her softness, and I’m lost. She will live, eat, and digest without pain, if it takes everything I am. This hospital is better for her being a patient, so it’s only fair that it helps her, too. We owe her for the privilege of her light, her compassion, and her sweetness. I can only hope my meager gifts can repay her, for I’m a greedy man, and I want more than just a taste of her affection. Her kiss unfurls an innocent blossom in my heart that I thought long dead.
Do I care if she loves me for the life I can give her, if this is the love she gives?
It’s dumb to believe the romance blooming under the stars, in an enchanted butterfly garden, will last. Once I heal her, she will find her place in the human realm. She will make their world a better place just by existing in it…like she has Haunted Health. My wrists cross behind her to cage her in my embrace as if I can hold onto the peace she offers. I can only hope she’s changed me to share warmth as readily as she does. Cherishing every moment she gives me, I promise to give her the parts of me I’ve kept from the rest of the world.
