For a long moment, I couldn’t breath.
So this was how it was going to end? With Kari bleeding out in the middle of nowhere.
No, no this is Kari we’re talking about. This can’t possibly be how it ends. She said she could totally take Rex. She swore that she’d kick his ass. Was that all lies?!
She can’t just give up!
She can’t!
She owes me.
A red hot flame ran through me, building.
She owes me for making me this way.
Into burning fury.
She owes me for ruining my life.
She can’t just run away now!
Into white hot rage.
That Bitch!
For a split second I thought of marching over there and slapping her for doing this to everyone.
“We’ve got some strong vitals!”
I blinked and staggered at the medic’s words.
In an instant the scene burst into activity. 
The EMT’s were sliding and tripping over the slaughter house floor to get a trauma board over to Kari. Jiro riding with Kari in the ambulance because no one wanted to have to tell him to stay behind. 
Marion radioing in to the station to let everyone else know that Kari was en route to the hospital, because we were well out of the range of the televoxus spell of the city, so there’s no way mobile phones would get reception out here. 
It took me a while to get a ride from an officer heading back to the city. Everyone else had a job to do, places they needed to go, I was the only one that didn’t belong. But I finally found someone who agreed to swing by Mors General Hospital to drop me off.
There was still a ton of evidence to collect. There was still a huge scene to process. There was a sprawling area to canvas, bodies to ID, and reports to write. 
But none of that was my job anymore, so I silently sat in the passengers seat and watched the mountain forest turn into sleepy suburbs, into too busy slums, into downtown urban twilight. And then we pulled up to the curb in front of the hospital.
After talking to about a half a dozen nurse’s desks, and being rerouted even more times, I finally found where they were hiding her. Kari was being treated in the magical trauma unit. Hearing that alone was good news. That meant that her most severe injures were magical rather than physical in nature. Does that mean that the bleeding had been stopped? There had been so much blood at the crime scene, does that mean Kari wasn’t as injured as we thought? Maybe the blood she was covered in wasn’t even hers.
I was pointed down another sterile hallway, and found more than just Kari in the hospital room. Jiro was there, that was no surprise, but Noah and one of the twins was there too.
Damn, had I been delayed at the crime scene looking for a ride back to the city for that long?
I nodded to everyone in the room. They were all clustered around a hospital bed. Kari seemed to just be sleeping.  Someone had cleaned her up and she was wrapped in a pale blue hospital gown, a flimsy white blanket thrown over her lap. 
At first glance she looked perfectly fine, a few small bandages here and there, but no machines to keep her breathing or her heart going. If I wasn’t paying attention, I would expect her to wake up at any second. But if you actually looked, actually knew Kari, it was clear something was very wrong.
Her breathing was too slow, her face too slack, her lips too pale.
Kari wasn’t bleeding out, but she was not okay.
“What have the doctors said?”
Jiro raised his head at my words, his face looked literally gray, his eyes were pinched at the corners, and his mouth was pressed into a grim line.
“The physical damage isn’t life threatening, but the reason why Kari isn’t waking up.”
He shook his head.
“They still don’t know. They’ve called in an expert, and are still waiting for some test results to get back.”
I nodded, and took my spot around Kari’s bed like the rest of them, to silently wait for the news. As time passed the twins would trade off staying with Tina out in a kids lobby down the hall. No one was sure if it was okay for Tina to see Kari like this, so at this point we figured it would be better to keep her distracted.
Hours passed before a doctor finally showed up. It was late into the night by then, and the woman looked like she’d had a long day.
Haven’t we all.
Jiro was the first to speak when she entered the room.
“Is there any word on Kari’s condition?”
The doctor was looking down at some notes on a tablet and nodded. She sighed, tapped the screen a few times, and finally raised her head to look at us.
“You are Miss Volka’s family?”
Jiro nodded.
The doctor gave us a tight smile.
“Okay, well, the good news is that Kari’s physical body should be able to make a full recovery very soon. Most of the blood and uhh extra tissue on her wasn’t her own, and she only needed topical treatments.”
Jiro’s voice had a growling tone.
“We were already told that hours ago. And what do you mean physical body, what other body would she have? If she’s not injured, than why is she still unconscious in a hospital bed?”
The doctor winced.
“That’s what is complex about Kari’s condition.”
The doctor pressed her hands together, as if in prayer.
“Okay, first, I hope you all remember your elementary anatomy. You remember that there are three forms to your ‘self’, right? There’s your body, your mind, and your spirit. Your body connects to your mind via the brain, your mind connects to your spirit via the psyche. That’s why people can use magic. They’re just regular people with more spiritual energy than average and they can use their psyche to manipulate the natural spirit energies that float all around us in the ether. That’s what we call ‘magic’, it’s really just natural ethereal spirit energies.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Yes, we all learned this in fifth grade, why are you bringing it up now?”
The doctor’s smile turned grim, her lips just a thin pressed line.
“Well, it’s about Kari’s condition. Her body is perfectly fine. She just has some minor injuries. No broken bones, no internal organ damage, no head injuries or brain damage of any kind. We’ve done extensive psyche scans, and her mind seems to be intact and functioning within normal perimeters too.”
The one twin in the room huffed.
“If she’s not injured, than why isn’t she waking up?”
The doctor nodded.
“We believe it’s a problem with her spirit. Kari’s spiritual energies have been showing erratic fluctuations. From the graphs I’ve seen it looks like Kari’s spirit is running around in circles a mile a minute. And with all these irregularities in spiritual levels, her psyche simply can’t keep up, it can’t connect. And if her spirit can’t connect with her mind, than the whole system breaks down. Once it gets over the shock of the disconnect, her body might be able to move a little. Maybe open its eyes or even walk, but it won’t be . . .”
The doctor flapped her hands around as if trying to find the right words.
My jaw tightened, but I forced the words out anyway.
“Kari.”
I looked down at the too pale face of the person laying in the hospital bed.
“That’s what you’re trying to say. It won’t really be her.”
The doctor slowly nodded.