Living Dead in Dallas

getting their car fixed. And what if they’re hurt? Don’t you have to pay their hospital?”
    Luna had managed to unbuckle herself, and she twisted when she fell to the roof that was now the floor of the car. With a suppleness I could only envy, she worked her head out of the open window, and then began to brace her feet against whatever purchase she could find. Gradually, she began to wriggle her way out of the window. One of the purchases happened to be my shoulder, but I didn’t even peep. One of us needed to be free.
    There were exclamations outside as Luna made her appearance, and then I heard her say, “Okay, which one of you was driving?”
    Various voices chimed in, some saying one, some saying another, but they all knew Sarah and Polly and their henchmen were the perpetrators and Luna was a victim. There were so many people around that when yet another car of men from the Fellowship pulled up, there wasn’t any way they could just haul us off. God bless the American spectator, I thought. I was in a sentimental mood.
    The paramedic that ended up extricating me from the car was the cutest guy I’d ever seen. His name was Salazar, according to his bar pin, and I said, “Salazar,” just to be sure I could say it. I had to sound it out carefully.
    “Yep, that’s me,” he said while lifting my eyelid to look at my eye. “You’re kinda banged up, lady.”
    I started to tell him that I’d had some of these injuries before the car accident, but then I heard Luna say, “My calendar flew off the dashboard and hit her in the face.”
    “Be a lot safer if you’d keep your dash clear, ma’am,” said a new voice with a flat twang to it.
    “I hear you, Officer.”
    Officer? I tried to turn my head and got admonished by Salazar. “You just keep still till I finish looking you over,” he said sternly.
    “Okay.” After a second I said, “The police are here?”
    “Yes, ma’am. Now, what hurts?”
    We went through a whole list of questions, most of which I was able to answer.
    “I think you’re going to be fine, ma’am, but we need to take you and your friend to the hospital just to check you out.” Salazar and his partner, a heavy Anglo woman, were matter-of-fact about this necessity.
    “Oh,” I said anxiously, “we don’t need to go to the hospital, do we, Luna?”
    “Sure,” she said, as surprised as she could be. “We have to get you X-rayed, honey bunch. I mean, that cheek of yours looks bad.”
    “Oh.” I was a little stunned by this turn of events. “Well, if you think so.”
    “Oh, yeah.”
    So Luna walked to the ambulance, and I was loaded in on a gurney, and with siren blaring, we started off. My last view before Salazar shut the doors was of Polly and Sarah talking to a very tall policeman. Both of them looked very upset. That was good.
    The hospital was like all hospitals. Luna stuck to me like white to rice, and when we were in the same cubicle and a nurse entered to take down still more details, Lunasaid, “Tell Dr. Josephus that Luna Garza and her sister are here.”
    The nurse, a young African American woman, gave Luna a doubtful look, but said, “Okay,” and left immediately.
    “How’d you do that?” I asked.
    “Get a nurse to stop filling out charts? I asked for this hospital on purpose. We’ve got someone at every hospital in the city, but I know our man here best.”
    “Our?”
    “Us. The Two-Natured.”
    “Oh.” The shapeshifters. I could hardly wait to tell Sam about this.
    “I’m Dr. Josephus,” said a calm voice. I raised my head to see that a spare, silver-haired man had stepped into our curtained area. His hair was receding and he had a sharp nose on which a pair of wire-rimmed glasses perched. He had intent blue eyes, magnified by his glasses.
    “I’m Luna Garza, and this is my friend, ah, Marigold.” Luna said this as if she were a different person. In fact, I glanced over to see if it was the same Luna. “We met with misfortune tonight in the line of duty.”
    The doctor looked at me with some mistrust.
    “She is worthy,” Luna said with great solemnity. I didn’t want to ruin the moment by giggling, but I had to bite the inside of my mouth.
    “You need X rays,” the doctor said after looking at my face and examining my grotesquely swollen knee. I had various abrasions and bruises, but those were my only really significant injuries.
    “Then we need them very quickly, and then we need out of here in a secure way,” Luna said in a