CHAPTER 19
MARGARITA
I hauled Damon’s massive frame through the rusted bulkhead of the freighter hold, my boots slipping on the slick metal grading.
His body was a dead weight of muscle, dense bone, and rapidly draining blood, and my lungs were absolutely burning from the effort.
I shoved him through the threshold and threw my entire body weight against the heavy steel door.
It groaned on its rusted hinges, the sound grating right down to my molars, before slamming shut with a finality that echoed through the cavernous space.
I collapsed back against the cold steel, my chest heaving, gasping for air that tasted heavily of stale diesel and metallic rust. The darkness of the ship swallowed us whole, leaving only the rhythmic, driving drumming of the rain battering the hull outside.
My clinical brain was screaming at me that this wasn't a safehouse, it was a literal steel tomb, and locking us in here was a fantastic way to ensure neither of us ever saw daylight again.
I fumbled frantically for the door bolt behind my back, my fingers slipping on the thick, oily grease of the latch.
I swore under my breath, wiping my hands on my already ruined scrubs, before finally shoving the deadbolt home with a hard clank.
Damon was completely silent in the pitch black.
"Don't go out yet, Damon," I gasped, pushing off the door and dropping to my knees beside his hulking shadow. "Stay with me, you bastard."
He didn't answer. His knees suddenly buckled, and his dead weight dragged me right down with him.
We crashed onto a stiff, dust-caked tarp spread across the floor.
The impact sent a cloud of acrid grit directly into my mouth and eyes.
I choked, my own limbs trembling so violently with sheer fatigue that I could barely coordinate my hands.
I dug my heels into the floor and managed to roll his heavy shoulders onto his back.
He was just too damn large for me to handle efficiently, and I was actively fighting his physical mass while my own strength bottomed out.
I wiped a thick smudge of black grease from my cheek with my shoulder, knowing I was leaving a dark smear across my face, but I didn't care.
"Help me. I can't move you if you're dead weight," I ordered, my voice cracking slightly. I leaned over him, trying to catch the sound of air moving in his chest over the storm outside. "Damn it, breathe."
I grabbed the collar of his blood-soaked shirt and ripped it open, the expensive fabric tearing with a sharp, sickening rasp.
I jammed a small medical penlight between my teeth, clicking it on.
The beam shook violently as I aimed it down at his abdomen, and the sight waiting for me almost made me vomit.
The surgical site I had meticulously closed back at my clinic was a total ruin.
The stitches had been entirely shredded by the violent, unhinged escape through the subway tunnels.
Active, dark blood welled up from the jagged tear with every single shallow beat of his heart.
"Everything's gone. The whole line is shredded," I muttered around the plastic of the penlight. I spat the light into my hand, frantically tilting it to assess the depth of the tear. "I need light. I need more fucking light."
I grabbed my medical bag and upended it over the tarp, shaking it like a lunatic.
It was a completely hollow gesture. The sterile packs were gone, lost somewhere between the subway shafts and the shipyard.
The vials of lidocaine were smashed to pieces, the glass grinding against the nylon bottom of the bag.
All I had left tumbling onto the dirty canvas were a few loose rolls of dirty gauze and a pair of blunt trauma shears.
That was it. I was staring at a liver that was basically begging to give out, and I had absolutely zero tools to fix it.
I squeezed a dry surgical sponge in my fist, my knuckles turning white as the realization slammed into me.
I was a surgeon stripped of everything that made me a surgeon.
"Where is the lidocaine? Please tell me I didn't lose the lidocaine," I whispered frantically, digging my blood-slicked fingers through the bottom seams of the bag. "Nothing. I have nothing."
I cursed myself for not grabbing more supplies from his fortress before the mercenaries blew it to hell.
Every second I spent panicking was a second Damon spent bleeding out on this filthy floor.
I dropped the bag, pushed myself to my feet, and sprinted into the dark hallway outside the hold.
My boots clanged aggressively on the metal deck as I kicked open the rusted doors to the old crew quarters.
My penlight beam darted wildly over rotted mattresses, overturned chairs, and discarded maritime uniforms. I was a rat scavenging in a dump, hunting for anything that could even remotely serve a medical purpose.
I shoved a rusted metal locker over, the heavy steel screaming a god-awful screech as it hit the floor, hoping some sailor had hidden a stash underneath.
"Come on, give me something. Anything." The smell of mildew and wet wool was suffocating, and the crunch of broken glass under my combat boots was the only response I got.
My mind was racing through the absolute worst civil war medicine tactics—the brutal, unsterile butcher jobs I used to read about in med school and think, I would rather die than do that to a patient.
Well, my patient was currently bleeding out on a tarp, and my aesthetic right now was purely survival.
I tore into the galley, pulling open every drawer I could reach.
Wedged behind a rusted-out industrial stove, I spotted a corroded first-aid tin.
I jammed the trauma shears under the lid and pried it off.
Inside was a half-empty bottle of cheap, high-proof vodka, completely untouched by time, and a spool of heavy-duty, translucent fishing line.
I yanked open a nearby drawer and found a sailor’s old sewing kit.
Inside was a single, thick, curved upholstery needle.
I stared at the items in my hands. These were the tools of a serial killer, not a doctor.
The fishing line was incredibly abrasive, the needle was thick enough to punch through leather, and the vodka was a pathetic excuse for an antiseptic.
I uncorked the vodka and took a quick, burning swig right from the bottle just to shock my nerves into cooperating.
The cheap alcohol burned a trail of fire down my throat.
"Fishing line. It'll have to be enough," I said out loud, entirely unhinged by the reality of what I was about to do. I grabbed the supplies. "This is going to kill him if the wound doesn't."
On my way back through the quarters, I spotted an old brass Zippo lighter sitting forgotten in the breast pocket of a rotting coat.
I snatched it, flicked the flint, and a steady, golden flame erupted.
It was a tiny miracle in the damp, freezing dark.
I grabbed a relatively clean rag from a counter, shielded the small flame with my curved hand, and hauled ass back to the hold.
My shadow stretched long and distorted against the riveted metal walls, trembling with every step.
When I knelt back down by his side, I laid out my pathetic 'surgical' tools on the rag. Damon was awake. His dark eyes were fixed directly on me, the pupils blown wide and black. He was conscious, but the light in those eyes was flickering precariously.
"I have fire. I have a chance," I told him, trying to keep my voice flat and authoritative as I snapped the Zippo shut and set it down. I leaned in close, wiping sweat from my eyes with my forearm and leaving a stark, bloody streak right across my forehead. "I'm back. Stay with me."
The silence between us was heavier than the steel walls. He didn't speak. He just watched me with that cold, predatory gaze that was slowly being eaten alive by fever. He looked at the fishing line. He looked at the upholstery needle. He knew exactly what this was.
"You're going to want to be unconscious for this, Damon," I said bluntly. My face was inches from his. I wasn't going to lie to him. "There's no lidocaine. There's no sleep. I have to sew you up right now."
His heavy jaw tightened, the muscles ticking under his pale, scarred skin. He gave me a single, minute nod.
The psychological toll of knowing I was about to inflict absolute torture on this man was making my hands shake. I grabbed the bottle of vodka. Damon’s hand twitched, his thick fingers curling violently into the dirty tarp as he braced himself.
"This is going to be hell. Don't move. If you move, I'll slip, and then we're both dead," I ordered, my voice devoid of anything except clinical desperation. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
I tipped the bottle and poured the vodka directly into the open, bleeding ruin of his abdomen.
Damon’s entire massive body arched completely off the tarp.
The muscles across his chest and stomach corded like steel cables snapping under tension.
A guttural, animalistic sound ripped its way out of his throat—a raw, vibrating growl of pure, unadulterated agony—but he didn't pull away.
I slammed my hands down on his shoulders, using every ounce of my body weight to keep him pinned to the floor so he wouldn't thrash and tear the wound wider.
"Hold him! God, just hold still!" I screamed at him, biting my own bottom lip so hard the sharp, metallic taste of my own blood flooded my mouth. The sizzle of the alcohol hitting raw tissue was a sound I would hear in my nightmares for the rest of my life. "Breathe through it, Damon. Breathe."