Then all of it comes at once.
Joanne on her back on the kitchen floor, barely moving, gray hair spilling across the linoleum. My mom straddling her, mouth smeared with blood. Not the mixture of blood and vitamin C and water that’s forming a puddle on the floor near Joanne’s hand. Just blood.
Joanne’s blood.
“Holy shit,” Veer breathes, and then she’s pushed the cooler back into my arms and she’s moving, and I need to be moving too.
I’m still with it enough to shove the cooler onto the counter before I rush up behind my mom, hands under her armpits, haul her away. Barely. I’m terrified of her and myself and of looking down at Joanne and seeing just what’s been done to her. My mom writhes in my arms. Her bones shift under her skin.
“Call 911,” Veer barks. “First aid kit.”
She’s on her knees next to Joanne, checking her airway. My mom howls, guttural and furious. The back of her head clips my chin.
First aid kit.
I keep one arm around my mom and lunge for the cupboard under the sink. Right next to our sharps container. My arm erupts in pinpricks of pain. My mom’s dragged her fingernails down the length of it. No, not fingernails. Claws. Her hands are grotesque, one moment huge and menacing as the animal inside gains the upper hand, the next collapsing back into a fistful of withered fingers. She’s an old woman. She’s so strong. She’s screaming, or maybe I’m screaming. Maybe both.
“Under the sink,” I shout to Veer, and hope that’s enough. I need both hands and all my strength to keep hold of my mom. Her screaming mouth turns snoutlike and dripping, curved fangs sickling out of her gums, and I catch her by the neck just in time to stop her from taking a bite out of my arm.
Then I see her eyes.
Their gray depths are formless and terrified. Tears streak down her cheeks as the planes of her face shift and warp.
How can I blame her for what she’s done?
She howls again, claws erupting from her fingers, reaching for my face this time. I shove her into the bathroom and slam the door and expect her to come for me, to start battering her way through it, but it goes quiet inside.
I call 911 with slick fingers and sprint back to the kitchen for a vial from the cooler. If she attacked Joanne, it means she’s hungry. The first aid kit is scattered around Veer. She’s pulled her shirt off, pressing it to Joanne’s neck, speaking low and quiet.
“Stay with me,” I hear, and then her voice goes loud and commanding. “She good?”
No, my mom isn’t good. She hasn’t been good and she never will be, and I can’t say that now, because there’s a woman dying on my kitchen floor and Veer is the only reason she might make it to the hospital.
“Got her in the bathroom,” I tell her, which is the best I can do.
“Good.”
The dispatcher cuts in from my phone, crisp and unhurried. “911, what’s your location?”
I rap out the address as I stumble back to the bathroom. “My neighbor is here, she has some kind of neck injury. Level I. She’s bleeding a lot.”
“Can you describe what happened?”
“I don’t know. I just got back from out of town and she was…”
I don’t know how to finish the sentence. He assures me an ambulance is already on its way.
I find my mom crouched against the toilet, a shrunken version of herself with frenzied eyes, her exposed arms draped in a grotesque quilt of scratches. Saliva froths over her lower lip, adding pinkish bubbles to the blood still streaking her chin. But she’s not transforming anymore. She’s gotten enough control back.
“What’s happening?” she whispers. Her eyes are wide, terrified. “Is everything okay?”
I can’t tell her. I’m not going to tell her.
I rip a disposable syringe from its plastic sheath. “Give me your arm.”
She shrinks back, her frail arms wrapping reflexively around herself. My mouth goes ashy.
“Hey, Mom, it’s me.” I try to soften my voice, paste a smile on my face, tense my lips to keep my teeth covered. “I know you’re hungry. I just want to help.”
