Copyright © 2020 Kaizer Wolf

Originally Published: November 15, 2020

Submitted on Scribblehub: July 16, 2021

 

Innocent Devil's Harem | Chapter 19-1: How to Handle My Newest Girlfriend Waking Up

When Avery abruptly fell unconscious from having my blood injected into her arm, her heart rate dropped too, until the monitor was showing fifty-four beats per minute.

I was also a little surprised it happened so fast, at least glad that this confirmed it was in fact my blood that caused the change. I assumed the major difference, from when it happened to Gabriella, was the fact that I didn’t inject it directly into her bloodstream, instead getting it in her tissues.

Essentially, it took longer for the blood to do its job in Gabriella’s body, whereas this dose got circulated through Avery’s bloodstream with a single beat of her heart. I wondered if that also meant her transformation would be faster.

However, I wasn’t the only one who noticed the significance of Avery’s sudden unconsciousness.

When I pulled out the syringe, Serenity abruptly stood up and grabbed her purse, like she was going to leave.

“Well, clearly I’m not going to be transforming anytime soon,” she stated matter-of-factly, walking around the end of the bed and over to the med cart. She then grabbed the second syringe and put it in her purse.

I looked at her in surprise. “What are you doing?” I asked seriously.

She gave me a hard look. “What do you think, Kai? Did you really think I would want to stay normal after finding out your secret? After finding out I could be like you too?” Her expression dropped then, suddenly vulnerable. “Unless you don’t want me to be like you,” she added quietly.

I took a deep breath. “Okay, yeah.” I sighed. “I’ll make you like me,” I reassured her, only to realize I should remind her of what that would really mean. “If you really want me to,” I added. “But it might mean you have to quit your job if you struggle to look normal.”

She shrugged. “If I end up looking like Gabriella does, then it won’t really be that big of a deal.”

I frowned, giving her a look.

She sighed. “But yeah, I get it. And yes, if that’s what I have to do, then I’ll quit. But I want to be with you Kai, in every way possible.”

I ran my fingers through my hair as I considered that. “Okay,” I replied simply, unsure of how else to respond. I felt like it was a big decision, but Serenity seemed like she’d already made up her mind, and I wasn’t going to deny her what she wanted.

She was literally everything to me, having always been there for me, even when the worst happened, and pretty much the one person who I could never deny.

Serenity simply nodded, only to point toward a red box on the wall. “But you should get rid of that needle. Just pop it in the sharps container.”

I walked over to do as she asked, and then turned to face them again, focusing on Avery’s unconscious form. “So now what?” I wondered, suspecting that she was going to be out for a while.

Gabriella replied. “Now, I’ll stay here until she wakes up. And if she’s not herself when she does, then I’ll slap her, or do whatever it takes to get her to snap out of it. You can stay if you want, but I don’t mind if you two want to go home.”

“Gabriella,” Serenity said in surprise. “We aren’t going to abandon you here. I mean, if we have to leave because it gets too late, and they kick us out since they have rules for only allowing one visitor overnight per patient, then that’s one thing, but we can hang around to keep you company until then.”

My fiancé sighed. “Well, I really need to get a hold of my mom anyway, and I kind of figured you two might want some alone time together to talk everything over. A lot has happened just in the last few hours.”

Serenity frowned at that, seeming pensive. Of course, Gabriella and I hadn’t mentioned the ‘succubus’ thing to Serenity, so she had no idea about that, instead likely focused on the last part of my fiancé’s statement – us having a lot to talk about.

She then looked at me. “What do you want to do?” she wondered.

I focused on Gabriella as I replied, just wanting to make sure she was alright with my decision. “I’d like to hang out for a while to make sure everything seems fine.” I gave my attention back to Serenity. “And then, yeah. We can probably head home. We do sort of need to talk, and I still need to open that chest.”

Serenity nodded.

“Only problem,” I continued, looking back at Gabriella. “Is that, when we leave, you’ll be without a car.”

She shrugged. “It’s not a big deal, Kai. You can just pick me up if needed, and worst case is I could just get my mom to pick me up. Might have to do that anyway in the event she doesn’t want to discuss things on the phone.”

“Okay, sounds good,” I agreed simply, moving closer to lean against the wall next to where she was sitting, since we planned on staying a little while.

Serenity also returned to her seat and shifted it more toward me, considering Avery was no longer involved in the conversation. However, it seemed no one had anything to say at this point, all of us falling silent for a handful of minutes.

The silence wasn’t uncomfortable though, instead feeling kind of nice just to be around each other. It also felt like there wasn’t a lot of personal things we could discuss here without it affecting my skin, but I was perfectly fine with just hanging around with the two of them.

However, as I began thinking more about Avery and her getting better, I realized we might have another problem we hadn’t thought of. “What do we do when she does wake up?” I wondered. “I mean, it’s probably not a good idea for them to run tests on her after she’s magically healed.”

Serenity sat back slightly as she thought about it, only for Gabriella to respond.

“Honestly, she should be able to refuse treatment,” my fiancé commented. “And if she can move again, then they can’t deny her request to be discharged. I will just need to keep people out while Avery looks different, but that might not be a problem if it happens in the middle of the night. I think the medical staff only check in on people every couple of hours, so their patients can sleep, which gives us a lot of leeway for her to try to look normal again.”

“Will you be able to stay up?” I wondered.

Gabriella nodded. “Yeah, I think I’ll be fine. I mean, do you have an issue with staying up if you want to? Because for some reason I feel like I could stay awake for days if I needed.”

I frowned, realizing she had a point. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. If I’m determined to stay awake, then usually it’s not an issue. And there’s no reason to think you can’t do that too, especially since you feel that way.”

Gabriella nodded, not responding this time as she glanced at Avery.

I could hear people walking by in the hallways, not really paying too much attention to the commotion, so even I wasn’t anticipating for the male nurse to return, with him knocking on the door before popping it open.

We were all surprised when he had a bag of blood in his hand. “Her numbers are a little low,” he explained politely. “So the doctor decided to order this.” He paused when he focused on her. “Oh, did she fall asleep?”

“Yeah,” Serenity said right away. “Just a little bit ago. Does she have internal bleeding or something?” she wondered.

He shook his head, moving over to the med cart to punch in a code and grab some supplies. He didn’t even seem to notice the syringes were missing, which probably was due to him having three or four patients and not really paying that much attention to a common object. Not to mention, there were other medical staff around.

A nurse’s assistant, or even a doctor, might have come in and grabbed them.

“No,” he replied. “There was no serious hemorrhaging, as far as they could tell on the scans. Honestly, she might have just recently had her period or something, and didn’t take enough iron. It’s not too unusual for women to have lower numbers than what we prefer, though the doctor wants to make sure she doesn’t drop any lower from an unknown bleed.”

“I see,” Serenity said simply in response.

I frowned at that, since I knew Avery had been on birth control for a while now, or at least hadn’t had a period in almost a year and a half, but didn’t comment.

He continued to speak as he laid everything on the bed next to Avery’s hand. “I need to grab a chair, since I’ll be in here for a while. I have to stay at the bedside when giving a blood product. It can take up to an hour for this much,” he added.

Serenity nodded again. “No problem.” However, once he left, she sighed heavily. “Well, I guess this is a good thing.”

“Yeah,” I agreed quietly. “If she might end up needing blood anyway, then maybe she can shift back to looking normal right away.”

“And maybe she won’t even have an episode like I did,” Gabriella added.

We were then all quiet again when he returned.

Gabriella decided to use the opportunity to step into the hallway and try calling her mom, likely just intending on keeping things vague to avoid anyone overhearing her. In the meantime, after the nurse got the blood hooked up to Avery’s IV, he then tried to strike up a conversation with us, casually inquiring about our relationships.

I decided to just stick with saying that Avery was my classmate from school, as well as one of my best friends, as well as explaining that Serenity was also my friend when he asked.

Unfortunately, he then focused on her, being overly curious as he asked her what she did for a living, and then seemed to get really interested when she told him that she was a detective.

But Serenity was used to talking to strangers, and had no problem keeping him entertained, without getting too personal, while he jotted down information on a piece of paper every handful of minutes.

When Gabriella came back not long later, she seemed like she was in a good mood, but just kept her whispers to me vague, saying that she and her mom were going to talk as soon as they got the chance tomorrow.

Of course, I suspected that they would talk sooner if Avery woke up before the hospital’s arbitrary curfew for visitors set in, but I knew we shouldn’t plan for that to happen.

After that, we both fell silent again while Serenity continued to converse with the male nurse.

However, the blood transfusion didn’t take as long as he was expecting, and he was done after only forty-five minutes, seeming surprised that it hadn’t taken a full hour. He told us the doctor would likely want more labs to verify the amount was enough to raise her numbers, but I wasn’t worried about them seeing anything abnormal in her bloodwork.

After all, it wasn’t like they would be studying it. Instead, they would only be checking for specific things, probably having a machine or an overworked tech doing the test on ‘just another tube’ out of thousands.

 

Copyright © 2020 Kaizer Wolf