The hospital was in a near state of panic as word spread the "attack" on Rick. Many of them were worn out by the nonsense that had gone the previous weekend in which a rogue werefox had essentially forced the transformation on two normals and taxed the staff to try and save the life of the second victim. The issue with Rick though, was the fact that the one that had clawed him was a werecheetah, which put much of the handling of his case in the hands of head of the hospital's genetics lab, Kathy Tucker. But from what her husband had told her over the phone, the pregnant werehorse was not in a particularly good mood.
"That GIRL is bound and determined to fray my last nerves!" Kathy growled in frustration and barely remembering not to clinch her fists and crush her cellphone in her hand.
"Doctor Tucker!" her nurse said urgently, "easy... think of your baby!"
Kathy paused and looked over to her main nurse/assistant and then rested her other hand on her womb. She was obviously pregnant, but Kathy wasn't far enough along yet that she'd need to take time off because of her pregnancy.
"Easy?!" Kathy snorted, "my husband's bratty sister... and a member of YOUR pride just attacked the young man that was with him this morning and he's now sitting on a likely death sentence... WHY SHOULD I BE "EASY"? WHY?!"
Her nurse followed Kathy as she paced the area in the lab. Many of the tests were still running and Kathy knew there were other tests she wanted to run, just to see what the full effects would be in a controlled sample that wouldn't endanger anyone's life. It was expected that it would take a day or two to have full answers, but now that didn't matter in the face of what had happened.
"You know..." Kathy grumbled, her nostrils flaring in irritation, "I should have put my hoof down with her when she asked to become a were. She didn't have to become one of us as Frank and I were already married!"
The nurse stayed quiet on that. Frank and Kathy Tucker had had a wonderful courtship and according to what she'd been told, Kathy and revealed her inner mare to Frank while visiting him in Montana. As the story went, he actually proposed on the spot as Kathy as a werehorse had combined Frank's two great loves, Kathy and horses. To make things more amusing was that Frank also made the toast at their wedding with promise of breeding rodeo stars, which most took as a reference to their past experiences in rodeos. Then a year after Frank became Kathy's stallion, his parents were killed in a car crash on icy roads leaving a ten year old Diane with no one but her older brother to look after her. From there, stress rapidly followed over the next four years. Diane was rebellious, and jealous of the fact that their parents had lavished such attention on Frank when he and Kathy married. When Samantha Twist introduced Diane to the truth behind Moon Lake and that Frank and Kathy were werehorses, there had been some debate over whether or not the town's rules applied since a member of the Tucker family was already a were, namely Frank, himself. At first things had been calm.
That calmness didn't last long. Diane, unlike Frank, had little interest in ranching and largely refused to help run the ranch, even with the few small things that Frank asked her to help with. She had some interest in track, but rapidly found herself unable to win spots on the track team when competing against the weres that were on the team already. It was at that point when Diane asked to be allowed to become a werecheetah in order to be able to race the Moon Lake track team. Thinking it'd be a way to get Diane some discipline and break her rebellious habits, Kathy had asked her nurse to go through with the transformation ceremony. It did little in that regard, as while Diane was soon able to race the weres, other elements of her rebellious personality ended up getting her kicked off the track team for missing practice, team meetings, and being inattentive at school. And with a foal on the way, Kathy was running out of patience for her husband's younger sister.
"We can't change the past, Doctor Tucker," her nurse answered, "better to focus on curing Mr. Plunkett for the moment."
Kathy brought her hand up to rub her head, "if we even can... we don't even have full answers on what will happen with him with regards to his extra chromosome. The best we have is a theory."
Kathy then glanced to her nurse, "and a theory we'll have to try... did you talk to the blood wing... and the order NORMAL blood, type O, and taken from a woman?"
"Yes, doctor," her nurse answered, "the technicians should be on their way..."
"Good," Kathy sighed, "because we need to isolate ONLY the chromosomes that determine gender and put them into a saline solution and give it to Mr. Plunkett intravenously. That MIGHT allow him to ride out the transformation until it completes physically..."
"We could add the hormone injections prescribed for other transgendered people," the nursed commented, "that could help as well..."
"It could," Kathy sighed again, "but that is the best we can do... to essentially medicate in the hopes that his cells go through the transformation and the virus goes into natural dormant state in the host."
"And once the transformation completes, he'd then be in the clear, if things work right," the nurse answered, "and the first MALE werecheetah."
"A little less excitement on that would be appreciated," Kathy answered, "we may have more time with him... as his transformation will be delayed... or at least the cell rejection will be delayed... but we aren't likely to have a lot of time... and I won't be comfortable with this until Mr. Plunkett is safe and well... or I've crushed that girl's head with one hoof!"
The nurse ignored Kathy's anger at Diane's behavior, as much of it was born out of an extremely tense situation. The were-virus was only active when new were was in their first transformation and would continue through the completion of the transformation. Once completed, the virus went dormant. It remained infectious to any normal, but it no longer affected the new were. So in pure theory, all Kathy had for a solution to Rick's problem was to provide enough of a "chromosome injection" in the hope of it continuing to delay the rejection of the virus by his Y-Chromosome long enough for his transformation to be completed. Once that happened, the virus would go dormant and as such wouldn't be a threat to Rick's life. All of it was theoretical and the best that Kathy had.
If it were a controlled experiment using blood and tissue samples, Kathy would be very interested in the results and even just as excited about the possibility of a male werecheetah. But it wasn't a controlled experiment and Rick's life hung in the balance. All they had to fix it were theories. About all they knew was that if it worked, Rick would remain male. The samples and tests on Rick's blood that were initially taken didn't destroy Rick's Y-Chromosome or change it into a third X-Chromosome. Once the virus reached that Y, the Y rejected it and the entire cell died. The extra X might delay the worst consequence of Diane's actions, but so long as that lone Y-Chromosome was there, Rick would be male. That was a very basic principle of genetics that not even the were-virus could change. If Rick truly wished to be female, surgery and hormone therapy would be the only option available to him. Kathy would even be willing to pay for the surgery and hormone therapy to make it up for her in-law's actions.
"How long do you think we have, doctor?" her nurse asked.
"Based on the initial tests we ran on the samples he provided..." Kathy gave a sigh, "we have about six hours before the first signs of cellular decay appear in his body... And that's assuming we don't treat him, or that Diane doesn't agree to complete his transformation."
"And how will that work?" her nurse asked, somewhat nervously, "the guy looked to be in his late thirties. And while normals do tend to get a bit younger in appearance when they join our society... they don't go all the way back into childhood... and shoot... for those that join our society in their teens and twenties show no signs of their aging reduced whatsoever."
Kathy nodded. Were aging was a complicated thing. From conception to about age twenty, weres aged at the same rate as humans. Once they turned twenty, their aging dramatically slowed to fit the rather lengthy lifespans weres had. The reasons for this were purely theoretical as scientists hadn't yet figured out for sure what controlled normal human aging for sure. They ran tests, of course, but for the moment, nothing definitive had come about. And the tests on aging had been extensive and included samples from all weres and all their respective chromosomes. And while human blood samples showed some signs of becoming more healthy and "younger" when exposed to the were-virus, there had been NO sign of anything that would indicate that the were-virus could turn an adult into a child, especially when weres who had been born weres didn't have their first transformation until they hit puberty around the age of fourteen.
"I know," Kathy sighed.
"So... we'd have a potential statutory rape case when Diane complete's Mr. Plunkett's transformation," her nurse continued, "as Diane is only fourteen."
"You completed Diane's transformation," Kathy answered.
"I welcomed her into my pride, but my younger sister actually did the transformation as both her and Diane are the same age," her nurse answered.
"This keeps getting better and better," Kathy groaned.
"Doctor Tucker," a voice came from outside the door.
She turned to see a man standing outside the lab door.
"The ambulance has picked up the victim and is on the way," the man reported, "it should arrive in a few minutes."
"Once he's gone through admittance in the emergency room, make sure he's placed as close to the lab here as you can," Kathy instructed, "He's going to need injections of the X-Chromosomes and Estrogen just to have a chance of surviving what's going to happen to him."
The man nodded.
"What's the status on the blood that I'd ordered?" Kathy asked to him, hoping he had an update for her.
"They're still collecting it," the man answered, "Your order was pretty specific... normal... woman... Type O... we don't have to many of that specific blood samples on hand. To many of Moon Lake's residents are weres... and often were blood types match the animal species that their were side is based on."
"Get an order to the main hospitals in Seattle or Spokane... even try Portland, Oregon if you think you can get the samples here in time," Kathy instructed, partially sounding desperate, "We can't let him die..."
"Of course, Doctor Tucker," the man nodded.
"We can't let him die," Kathy said weakly.
Her own nurse came close and patted Kathy's back softly, if only to assure that they wouldn't, even if neither of them knew what would happen.