Chapter 26 – Corvus #2
Sparrow looked up like a deer caught in the headlights, with her mouth stuffed full of french fries and another fistful at the ready, ketchup packet hovering over the greasy bundle.
“Huh?”
The doctor tapped the clipboard in his hand. “A word?”
She swallowed a massive lump of fries and cleared her throat. “Uh, yeah. Sure.”
She dropped the fries back into the bag and wiped her palms on her hospital gown, swiping the back of her hand over her ketchup stained lips.
She stood.
“No,” Rook said, the dead calm in his tone worse than if he’d shouted. He turned his head on a swivel toward Ava Jade and pointed at the chair behind her. “Sit down.”
Surprising the hell out of me, she did as she was told, her eyes widening at Rook’s sudden need to take charge. “I think we’d all like to hear whatever you have written down on that clipboard, Doc.”
The doc fumbled with the clipboard before uncomfortably loosening the neck of his button up shirt, his gaze furtively darting between Rook and Ava Jade. “Well there’s patient confidentiality to be considered here, Mr. Clayton. I have protocols?—”
“Fuck your protocols.”
“AJ?” Grey asked, speaking up.
She didn’t look at him when she replied, and I realized she hadn’t looked at him at all, or really even spoken to him since I woke up.
“Is this okay with you?” he asked, and I watched his fist curl into my blanket behind his back with a knot in my gut.
Sparrow sighed. “Yeah,” she said, though she didn’t sound sure. “It’s fine.”
The doc closed the door behind him and flipped a page on the clipboard.
“Well, we’ll start with the x-rays. You’ve sustained a stable pelvic fracture, but judging by the fact you’re walking, I assume, without much discomfort, we’re happy to keep an eye on it for now so long as you don’t do any strenuous activity or running for a while. ”
By the slight pursing of her lips I knew she’d already broken that rule, and for the first time since I woke up my critical mind kicked into a higher gear, demanding to know every detail of how my brother’s saved her.
Finding that out would be first order of business after the doc finished giving us a list of Sparrows injuries… and everything we would do to Drake before we killed him.
“The second and third degree burns you sustained on your left forearm appear to have only damaged minimal nerve endings, but that coupled with the slight loss of muscle will make recovery a bit of a challenge. I’d expect full use of the arm and all numbness in the area, as well as any restricted movement in your hand and fingers from the nerve damage, to be gone within a couple weeks at most.”
My inner beast skulked within, and I could see its siblings in my brothers’ eyes, thirsty for blood.
“Scarring?” Grey asked.
The doc’s downcast gaze scraped the floor as he nodded. “Yes. Even with the skin grafts we applied, I expect there will be lasting scarring.”
“Is that all?” Sparrow asked, her breathing low and shallow.
“Well, there’s just one more thing, but I’m not sure if it would be better discussed in private.”
Rook let out a low growl and the Doc licked his suddenly very dry lips, flipping another page on his clipboard. It was then that I realized what other sorts of tests they would’ve run.
My Sparrow had been drugged, and that bastard had touched her. What if, after I jumped, he hadn’t stopped. What if…
“The results of the rape kit performed by Nurse Fellows were difficult to determine, but she remains confident that you were not violated by the assailant.”
The room seemed to sigh as one, but it didn’t change anything. I was still going to feed the fucker his own dick.
“There’s something else,” Rook pressed, his face hard and pale in the light.
Too pale. A sheen of sweat slicked over his brow, and I recognized the tremble in his hand, but I couldn’t focus on any of that right now because Rook was right.
There was something else. And it was clear the doc was hesitating to say it.
The doctor abandoned his clipboard, letting it drop down to his side as he fixed our girl with a sympathetic stare. “There is.”
He swallowed.
“Due to the trauma you sustained to your lower abdomen, it appears as though your ability to conceive may be significantly reduced, if not altogether eliminated. I’m so sorry.”
I didn’t hear him offering for her to come to him with any questions, and I didn’t hear him leave.
Not really. It was like hearing something in another world, because in this one, my Sparrow stared dead-eyed after the doc, her lips parted as she processed how what Drake had done to her would impact not just the here and now, but the rest of her fucking life.
Rook crossed the room, kneeling in front of her, his hands on her thighs.
“What do you need, Ghost?”
The strain in his voice promised to make Drake his most macabre piece of artwork yet, but at least he said something. At least he could go to her. Speak to her.
I couldn’t choke out a sound through the dam in my throat, cutting off my air supply. Making my face hot and full.
Grey watched Rook comfort our girl for another moment before turning his attention back to me with torment clouding his eye. I could see the same helpless torture he suffered reflected back.
There wasn’t anything we could do. Nothing except kill the bastard who took this from her.
“He dies,” I promised Grey in a low voice. “ Slow .”