Feral High, Ch. 10 (Patreon)

The grim, monotonous beep of the heartrate monitor filled the oppressive silence of the hospital room.  Erie Heen sat slumped forward in her uncomfortable, seemingly too-small padded chair.  From over her crossed, burly, scar-padded paws, she watched the gentle rise and fall of her daughter's chest on the crisp, clean hospital bed.  There was something so final and fatalistic in seeing the drastic difference of someone healthy and active just that morning, followed immediately by the seeming lifeless, corpse-like stillness of laying there on that bed.

Kenzi's dyed-pink comb of hair looked wilted and deflated.  Gone were her punky clothes and piercings, replaced by the drab, flat pale white of the gown she wore.  Even her usual, fluffy-framed bulk was diminished somewhat as she lay there, more still and quiet than Erie could remember her daughter having ever been in years.  Try as she might, she could not keep her surging heart and Aggression levels, caused by fear, to spike in intensity every time that droning beep of the machine her daughter was hooked up to seemed to dip even slightly.  She had to constantly remind herself that it was normal, that they were out of the woods, and keep in mind what the doctor had told her.

Even so, it had been touch and go for a while there.  The intubation to keep Kenzi breathing had been horrifying to see again, and even though they had since removed it as her lungs leveled out, Erie could not help occasionally reaching out to stroke her daughter's limp paw just to reassure herself that Kenzi was going to pull through.  The medics had informed her that they had barely gotten to her in time, having rushed her from a containment cell at the police station to here thanks to the one phone call from a mall security guard who had been involved in the incident.

The mother Hyenid tried to console herself, excuse herself for not being there to help.  She had already gone through the hardship of overcoming the immediate anger of being called, yet again, about an outburst of Aggression and Frenzy in public, only to discover at the mall that it was her own daughter responsible.  After their talk that morning, she had wanted to give her daughter hope, and herself as well, that her condition was not something Kenzi should feel ashamed of.  Her emotions had quickly been assuaged and replaced with something entirely new when she learned the full story behind the episode: that allegedly a group of Leonids had antagonized her into going Feral.

As she ever did, the Alpha Hyenid kept replaying the immediate events after in her mind after hearing this horrifying story.  She was beyond angry to hear about someone going out of their way to harm and harass her daughter, known publicly to have HAP, and rushing back to the station in barely controlled rage and despair.  The Chief himself had even counseled Erie upon her return to the Precinct, eventually convincing her to allow someone else to handle the young and frightened teenager's interrogation for such a serious charge.

No one was charging her daughter thankfully for the event, only the Lions would be potentially be facing time, as Antagonization-Aggression was almost as serious a charge as being an accessory to attempted murder.  She had not even stuck around to watch, allowing two officers she trusted to do the questions while she sped away to the hospital to try and be there for her daughter who the doctors had rushed to try and save from a wrongful and potentially deadly injection of EPD.  Now here she sat, watching her daughter slowly breathing on the bed, and unable to do anything but blame herself for it all.

Hyperactive-Aggression-Disorder was to this day not an entirely understood condition, an offshoot of Alphism, and the unbalanced hormones and dangers it posed always seemed to be present.  Erie would never forgive herself for this, even if she knew it wasn't exactly her fault.  Still, when one's only child was suffering from a condition outside of their control and even 1% linkable to something hereditary, Erie being classified as on the Alphism spectrum, it was impossible to dismiss such thoughts, no matter the research or the kind words of others...

Again, she felt herself reaching out to brush her thick pads across the fur of Kenzi's paw.  It was like an anchor, reaffirming that everything was hopefully going to be okay.  She remembered the last time she had seen Kenzi like this, and to see her again like this, reduced from the strong if troubled youth to such a pathetic, miserable state made her breathing ramp up.  Her eyes grew misty and she sniffed hard.  Leaning up from her chair, she gently brushed some of her daughter's hair from her eyes and pressed a kiss to the girl's brow.  There were no words she could say beyond that action.

Kenzi moaned softly in her sleep and Erie quickly sat back down.  "...non?" she breathed hoarsely.

Unsure what that meant, Erie nonetheless smoothed more hair out of her little girl's face.  "I'm here, Kenzi...I'm here," she breathed softly.  "Mom's right here."

Kenzi slurred the same word, sounding like a muddled 'mom', before she fidgeting in place.  Her expression almost lightened for a second as if she was coming to, then a deep rasp for breath had her collapsing back onto her pillows.  That single movement had seemingly drained her of whatever flagging energy she had left.  She didn't even cough, just wheezing softly on the bed.  Beneath her eyelids, her eyes flickered back and forth.  She tried to lift a paw but it flopped back onto the bed.  Again, she muttered that word, sounding more like a name but not one Erie recognized.  Then she collapsed completely back into her stupor and lay there unmoving.

Erie watched for a handful of torturously drawn out seconds, senses peeled and screaming at her as she waited.  Just as she was about to scream and go rushing out of the room for a medic, her daughter took in another deeper, more relaxed breath, and resumed her exhausted slumber.

Paws shaking, Erie tucked her daughter back in more securely before she slumped back into her chair again.  She combed thick, clawed fingers back through her dark mane of bristly hair atop her head.  A lot of things could have gone worse, and far too easily.  She gave a silent prayer of thanks to the Spirits to have spared her daughter, giving no mind as to ask for some relief and solace for her own heartache and inner torment.  Kenzi didn't deserve this: to be treated differently by others.  To lay there on a hospital bed, previously struggling to even breathe.

Soft tears dotted her spotted cheeks and the hulking Hyena bent slowly forward in her chair, taking deep, shuddering breaths to try and calm herself.  A rustle from down the hall of quickly shuffling footsteps disturbed her mental pondering and again replaying of the hours past.  It was a busy hospital after all, with nurses and doctors rushing here and there, but those feet sounded different: lighter, smaller, and more hurried.

Then the door to the room opened and she sat up straighter in the chair.  "It's this room," explained a large Anthro hospital security guard, a burly Bovine with a thick accent.  He wasn't looking at Erie or the room in general.  For one brief, infuriating moment, Erie thought it would be another reporter come looking for a story about the events of the day.  She'd already brushed off several and barely contained her outbursts of Aggression when doing so, and that had been before the mental and emotional exhaustion setting in beyond her initial reaction of fear, anger, worry, and everything else.

Instead, to her shock, as the Bovine stepped out of the way, a creature she had not been expecting in the least hurried inside.  It was a Human, short frame and slender of build with short brown hair and dark eyes.  He didn't even seem to register the occupants of the room save obviously for the person on the bed.  He hurried over in a rush, moving faster than Erie would have expected, and gently touched Kenzi's other paw, clasping it between his long-fingered but comparatively tiny hands.

"Kenzi..." the human whimpered, stroking the fur.

Then and only then did he look up and see the wide-eyed expression Erie wore.  His own eyes went wide as well, nearly as big across as saucers.  Even so, he didn't let go of Kenzi's paw.  Then, to her continuing shock, he spoke.  "Officer... Heen...right?" he breathed.

Her ears went straight up and she stared at the Human touching her daughter so intimately for several seconds.  At first, her Alpha mind began to take charge and she felt the building Aggression inside of her exhausted frame rising.  She wanted to demand he remove his touch from Kenzi, demand who he was and why he was there, what was a Human doing here at all for that matter.

Then, thanks to her training in the Black Legion security branch before her days as a Police Officer, the wheels began to turn, even sluggishly delayed as they were.  She had trained extensively in pattern recognition and interrogation work in her military service.  There were not many admitted Humans to the area, since Cohabitation was still rather new.  He was young, barely a year or so younger than Kenzi, so he was probably in school.  No Humans schools out this far, and no reason for his connection to Kenzi other than knowing her from an outside source.  The familiarity of his being willing to touch her meant they were close, as Kenzi's condition made her actively hostile to nearly everyone other than her apparent close group of limited friends.  He was wearing casual civilian clothes, not ones meant for school.  As her daughter had been when admitted but not the attire when she left the house for her apparent date.  Her date at the mall.  Where she had been antagonized.

All of these realizations took barely a second for her to categorize before they culminated in an undeniable conclusion, even one as baffling as it was.  More pieces slotted into place even as she took a deep breath in, calming her initial rush of Aggression before she allowed herself to speak.  "You'd be the Human then," she growled.  "The one admitted from the Integration act."

The boy nodded.  He still hadn't let go of Kenzi and his worried glance flickered once toward her before back up at Erie.  This confirmed more.

"Anon, was it?" she asked.  Another nod.  "So you..." she breathed out long and slow.  "Would be the mysterious boyfriend."

Immediately, Anon's face went bright red and he ducked his face down, hiding behind his hair for a second but his fingers noticeably tightening their hold but gently on her daughter's paw, which still had yet to respond at all.  "Y-yes...Ma'am...I mean yes, Officer," he babbled softly.  He looked back up at her once and then immediately away again, noting obviously that she had yet to look away even once from him.  "I...didn't know she'd told anyone really about...me but...yes."  He took a deep breath and finally met her eyes again.  "I'm Kenzi's boyfriend."

Erie Heen settled back into her chair, lance-like gaze never wavering as she studied the Human's bizarre features.  She wasn't used to Humans much, no one out here in the Provinces were.  She'd only interacted with a handful ever, and only one in the immediate past enough to not be too shocked at how different they looked and acted from an Anthro.  Even that man had been odd to her from his own kind, but even so she remembered how intense his training had been during her days as part of the self-defense classes before fully entering the Black Legion.

This Human was so drastically from that one that it took her a second longer than it would have normally to process this.  She had always been a quick study however and she filed it away for later inspection.  She was, admittedly, more than a little distracted by everything else currently going on to ponder on this one detail.

"How is she?" he suddenly asked, tearing her away from her pondering.

Erie glanced once at Kenzi who had still not moved beyond her soft breathing.  "Stable," she grunted.  She withheld anything else, still studying the Human intensely.

A deeply settled weight seemed to fall off of Anon's slender shoulders, barely half as wide as Kenzi was, and he finally started to relax from the frantic, tense energy he had carried in with him.  "Thank every god and spirit..." he muttered.  He seemed like he wanted to lean in and possibly kiss Kenzi's comatose muzzle but paused at Erie's hardened gaze and leaned back.  He started to even let go of the Hyena girl's paw.  "Sorry I..." he muttered, averting his gaze.

Erie was about to tell him that it was fine, if awkward, withholding other choice words that she blamed on the tenseness of the situation, when to both of their surprise, Kenzi's paw latched slightly tighter onto Anon's hand.  It was not a strong hold or motion by any means, but the reaction at all made Erie's jaw nearly drop.  Anon froze stiff as well, still holding onto Kenzi as she now held onto him but weakly.

"...non..." she rasped out once again.  Her nose fluttered and the softest of crinkles came to her muzzle and brow.  A smile, tiny as it was, flickered across her face.  Then her paw loosened again and she flopped her paw back down out of the grasp.

Anon sniffed audibly and shakily walked over to the only other vacant chair in the room.  He never once looked away from his girlfriend asleep on the bed, but Erie for once was unable to tear her eyes away from what she had just seen, truly and uniquely baffled beyond words.  The Human seemed to notice the intensity of such a gaze after he had wiped his cheeks with his sleeves, hands shaking somewhat, and looked back up to meet her bright eyes.  His expression was just as drained as hers no doubt was.

"...What?" he asked sheepishly.

Erie snapped back out of her shock.  She had no idea why, but she smiled down at the Human.  Her doubts at the seeming impossibility of the otherwise infallible truth of her assumptions melted completely away.  "Spirits by grace..." she muttered.  At his curious expression, she chuckled.  Tension sloughed off of her broad frame in an instant and she looked down at Anon with a sudden, intense, glowing fondness that she had no ability to explain but no need to.  "Well I'll be."

He grinned slightly, no doubt confused, then returned his gaze to Kenzi.  Erie did so as well.  Now that her senses were allowed to unsharpen themselves from their razor-like intensity yet again, she noted that, above the Human's odd, flowery aroma that smelled of sweat, adrenaline, and deodorant, was the soft but undeniable afternotes of Kenzi's own unique musk.  It was barely noticable and only if one was familiar enough with the source as say, a mother would be, but it was there.  Truly, Kenzi and this Human, Anon, had a bond.

They sat in silence for a minute or so, watching Kenzi doze.  Erie was unable to not spot the small but obvious ways that only now had her daughter relaxed since Anon had come in.  Even unconscious, it was noticeable.  More and more, she felt herself glancing at Anon, noting that he still had yet to look away from her daughter.

Just as she finally opened her maw to voice a question, the door to the room again slid open.  Instead of the security guard stationed outside, this time a labcoat-wearing doctor entered.  Her gaze flickered up from her clipboard and she blinked once to see the two visitors.  Her nametag read "Zubang," and her graceful, Canine features, were marked by an equally looking exhausted air.

"Mrs. Heen," the doctor stated matter-of-factly, addressing her directly at first.

"Doctor," Erie responded curtly, abandoning the question she had been about to ask Anon.

"Your daughter's condition is..." she paused then and glanced once at Anon.  She quirked an eyebrow.  "Young man...this is a delicate situation.  I'll have to ask you to wait outside as this is a family matter."

Anon sat up straighter, immediately looking worried.  "Is it bad?  Is Kenzi going to be okay?"

"I'm not currently able to share such details with you, sir," Doctor Zubang sighed.  "Not without consent of a family member."

Immediately, Anon's face flashed desperately up at Erie's and she met his eyes only once.  Ordinarily she would have immediately refused but given the situation, she only smiled gently and nodded, placing one huge paw on his back.  He flinched only slightly at the weight of even such a casual gesture.  "Feel free, Doctor," Erie huffed.  "Anon here is special to my daughter.  He deserves to hear the news."

Immediate relief washed over the Human's admittedly cute if bizarre features and even Zubang seemed mollified.  She adjusted her glasses on the tip of her dark muzzle.  "Very well.  Mackenzie here is lucky that we got to her when we did.  Such a condition as hers must be treated with care, especially with events such as today."  Erie nodded, continuing to keep contact with Anon's shoulder so he would feel hopefully consoled.  She had heard this prior anyway, as well as much worse.  Then the Doctor flipped a page on her notepad and smiled if only a little.  "However, we have successfully stabilized the toxins and administered the proper medication.  She should come around in a few hours or so once her Aggression fully returns to normal, but we want to keep her overnight just to be sure."

"Understandable," breathed Erie with a heavy sigh.  She felt Anon trembling underneath her paw and she rubbed his back once up and down before finally retrieving it.  "She gave all of us quite the scare."

"A scare would be the least of it," the Doctor quipped.  She walked over and checked Kenzi's readouts with a clinical eye.  Her tail and ears twitched as she did, glancing once at the comatose Hyenid and then over at the pair of them.  "Mental readouts are a bit...odd at best however."

"What does that mean?" Anon immediately asked, sounding worried all over again.  "That's good right?  Or is it bad?"

Both women couldn't help give out a huffing chuckle before the Doctor turned back to look at them.  "It's nothing to concern yourself with, young Human," she growled gently.  "It was just momentary lucidity at best.  Like a waking dream.  Not uncommon in Frenzy victims given their intense and often unbalanced chemical emotional levels.  The only oddity about it was the frequency.  She had near coherence the machine says.  Ordinarily, this would be a cause for concern, as HAP can cause relapses in even unconscious victims."

Anon still looked clueless, so Erie took over explaining.  "Kenzi's condition," she started to say.

"Hyperactive Aggression Disorder," Anon jumped in with.

Erie nodded, unsurprised that he knew by now given his relationship with her.  Reports about a Human being involved at the mall now made total sense with everything else she had learned.  She could not help her soaring pride in her daughter's rage finally rising for a legitimate reason: the defense and fear for her chosen partner, even as serious a situation as it was.  "It causes all of the proteins produced by Aggression to cause what Humans might deem an allergic reaction inside of Kenzi.  Primal instinct in Anthros traces back to our days on Ahn, our homeworld, and the events of the supposed sickness that forced us to translocate from our 'dimension' to the parallel one here, being Earth, over a thousand years ago."

Anon listened raptly.  What was common knowledge for Anthros growing up would be a challenging curriculum for any Human, and easy to get lost in.  Even Erie, having served in the Black Legion underneath one of the only existing and still living Royals on Earth who was alive and well to see the transition between planetary gateways, didn't fully understand the entire process.  The only reason she knew all of the technical, medical talk was from the research into her daughter's condition years prior.

She continued speaking while the Doctor busied herself by checking out Kenzi's other vitals.  She wasn't the kind to hold back information, especially since, even if Anon obviously cared deeply for Kenzi, he was still the root of why apparently she had gone through this most violent of episodes today.  She didn't blame him at all, in fact she was endlessly grateful for his intervention on her behaf, otherwise she might truly have not made it.  Nevertheless, it was necessary to prepare him with exactly what Kenzi had gone through.  Cold analytics had always helped her in the old days, and she hoped they would help him too.

"This 'instinct' is the source of our emotional connection to others of our kind.  It causes signals for other Anthros, alerting them to when one of us might be undergoing intense trauma, emotional duress, or pain: almost what you might call a 'smell'.  Every Anthro has this primary function, and the stronger the Alphism gene is inside the Anthro, the stronger these 'smells' affect others around us."  She felt like she was giving a college lecture, but it helped distract her from the emotional strain of the day.  And, somehow, this Human's own scent was somehow pleasing, calming even.  She had no doubt why even Kenzi would be able to allow him so close and even call him her boyfriend.  "You know what Alphism is, yes?"

"The...teachers covered it briefly in school and I have a friend who says she's an Alpha," Anon admitted.  "I also checked out a book from the library about it but I hadn't had time to read it.  It's...pretty much the genetic connection between the Anthro tribes that link them back to the Royal clan that uplifted your collective species into sentience, right?  Makes them bigger than other Anthros of their breed on average."

Erie's eyes widened a touch, one of her scarred eyebrows lifting.   Doctor Zubang also looked suitably impressed.  "That's the long and short of it yes.  But the Alphas aren't just bigger.  They're laced with the Royals genes, causing them to be naturally more in command of others when their Aggression come into play.  Unfortunately, the fallout is that, not every subject on the Alphism spectrum, which is hereditary in our bloodlines and unless cultivated among the ruling Clans, eventually breeds itself out, responds well to this introduction of uncommon protein and adrenaline production."

Anon might as well have been taking notes for how he never wavered save for occasional glances at Kenzi as another nurse joined the room, making the small space seem much more crowded.  The nurse then left with the tests the Doctor had taken, and Zubang herself resumed the explanation.

"HAP proteins latch onto these primal chemical reactions and the body attacks itself trying to root out what it thinks is a foreign reaction.  This shuts down primary brain function as blood-flow is restricted by muscle growth and surges in adrenaline.  Doing so causes the body to completely start to slowly asphyxiate as oxygen is gradually deprived from the brain, and outside the Anthro exhibits irrational surges of rage, violent tendencies, and primal fear for survival.  The usual only method for properly sedating them is to render the afflicted Anthro senseless but the body doesn't stop producing these chemical reactions even afterward.  Normal Anthros,even in the throes of Frenzy can be calmed once no longer conscious, most often achieved through the use of emergency injection of EPD."

"But...Kenzi was injected with that, wasn't she?" Anon asked quietly.  He seemed lost in memories of earlier, recounted to Erie by the security who had provided her the full report.  "And that can kill HAP victims..."

"Unfortunately...yes," sighed Doctor Zubang.  "Even Alphas don't handle such well, but they so rarely go Frenzy or Feral that they rarely are injected.  Given that EPD was genetically engineered barely a few years ago, the introduction of it into their systems causes complete shutdown of bodily functions, sometimes inducing comas, brain death, or organ failure.  And there is the risk that even a victim of HAP can still go feral while underneath such.  There is some research taht suggests the body functions outside of the mental faculties that bind it to civility and sentience, returning the body alone to our primal days on Ahn before being uplifted.  However, without brain function, the subject most often expires swiftly."

Anon's eyes had gone wide during the explanation, shockingly never getting lost in the technical jargon.  He looked at Kenzi again, who still had not moved again and still surprisingly wore that tiny, barely noticeable smile.  Erie would not have been surprised to see him become fearful, but instead, he reached out and brushed her paw again with a hand once the Doctor had nodded it was okay.  The reaction was immediate.  Kenzi's heartrate and sensors beeped a little stronger and her body twitched momentarily at his touch.  Everyone tensed before, to their shock, Kenzi's smiled widened if only by an inch or so.

Kenzi made a pleased, if gargled by throat strain, noise.  "An....on..." she whispered.  He stroked her furry knuckle and she softly sighed, rolling her head slowly to the side facing him.  Her breathing deepened and she seemed to relax fully.  For the first time since arriving, Erie saw her daughter completely at peace, breathing as if asleep rather than unconscious.

Doctor Zubang looked as surprised as they did.  "That is...interesting," she noted on her clipboard.  She spared Anon a searching look before she nodded.  "I need to run some tests and require the privacy of the room."  Erie stood and brushed Anon with a paw, which caused him reluctantly to let go of Kenzi's and they both crossed to the door.  "Why don't you both go get a refreshment from the lounge?  I will have a nurse call you both back in soon," the Doctor promised, closing the door after them.

Now back outside the room, Erie tucked her paaws into the pockets of her uniform.  She nodded down once at the rather tiny seeming Anon, her gaze searching him.  "Well, I'm hungry, I don't know about you," she growled softly, making sure she and the Human were out of the way of any bustling hospital staff.  "And this place seems hectic.  I could use a powerbar or a soda, and you could too from the look of you."  Anon ruefully nodded, looking glum and glancing back over and over at the door they had just left.  "My treat," Erie prompted with a chuckle.  "And while we are there, you can tell me all about how much better my daughter is doing.  I believe now more than ever I have you to thank for that, Anon.  I'll even show you some of her baby pictures I have on my phone~"  She drawled this last part off in a singsong, placating voice.

Anon looked up at her and smiled softly.  "I'd...really like that ma'am."  They both chuckled, despite their exhaustion, and together they made their way to the hospital lounge to get something to drink, snack on, and a place to sit while they began to talk.  More and more, Erie began to really like this young Human.  He really was changing the world around him, her's, and most especially her daughter's.