Changing

Chapter 7

I sighed, my submission smothering me, and stepped disheartened into the room. 

Mr. Buchcowski followed me in, snickering at my expression. 

He strode passed me to sit in one of the chairs facing the big machines. 

I stayed ridged by the closed door, taking huge breaths to steady myself, while my eyes flickered around absorbing my surroundings. 

Bonnie had not moved. She continued to lay dead still on the cold, hard, metal table. The only thing marking her as alive, was her heavy panting. 

Beside her panting, there was another noise that, at first, I couldn’t place. It sounded like a faucet dripping water. Drip….drip….drop….

Then my eyes zeroed in to the IV stuck into her arm. The dripping sound was coming from it. The liquid inside was thick and yellow, not clear. 

Like a hospital, monitors surrounded her and were strapped to different places on her body. The lights, red, blue and green flashed at me. A beeping I registered as her heartbeat was coming from one of them.

But the rhythm was wrong…too fast. And it hitched in strange ways. 

This bothered me, what was wrong with her? Why don’t they do anything to help her? 

She crocked a little as the monitor recorded a stumble in her heartbeat. 

I pushed off from the wall, abruptly anxious. 

No one else reacted to the uneven beeping. It didn’t matter to them. 

Mr. Buchcowski continued to watch me from his position on the chair. He looked amused and half his mouth was curled up in a wry smile. 

But I could barley spare a glance in his direction, my whole being was focused on the limp wolf on the table.   

Her body jerked and she whimpered. Her heart shuddering, pausing, and restarting again. 

Dread, bleak and cold, sucked at my chest. Ice flowed from my chest to my fingers and toes. My hands turned numb with the cold. And I shuddered violently, though I was sure that the temperature in the room had not changed. 

I took stiff steps. It took all I had to make my legs move forward, all my muscles were locked in place, frozen. I stumbled once catching myself, before I could fall to the floor. I didn’t look to see what had saved me. I didn’t care. All my thoughts and feelings were focused on Bonnie’s contour. 

Her image became blurry and it was a while before I realized I was crying. I realized it, but could not move my hand to whip the tears away, so they slipped silently down my face and fell broodingly to the floor. 

Someone coughed behind me covering a laugh. 

Each step seemed to take eternity, but I finally made it to Bonnie’s side. I stared down at her, unable to utter a sound.  

I heard him clear his throat behind me, then he said in a mocking tone, “I bet you want to know the reason we brought you here.”

I didn’t respond, didn’t move on inch. I was too far gone to care. 

He continued, “We brought you here to protect you. The outside world is cruel to people different from them, so to keep you safe, we bring you and your kind here where no one can hurt them. We help them become normal again.”

His words had no meaning; I could not register them into my numb mind. They passed over me like the wind passes over a blade of grass.  It pushed at me, like the grass, trying to change me, but I bent with it and recovered into my normal position, unaffected by the attempt.