Chapter Twenty-Three
Mortal Wounds
Oliver was trapped in a nightmare. That was the only explanation for what was happening. Any moment now he would wake up in bed beside Felipe, and there would be no blood or wounds or mangled corpses in the yard. Scalding his hands with half boiled water, Oliver scrubbed them with soap and watched Gwen and Mr. Allen through the kitchen window as they covered the bodies of the dead investigators from the New Jersey Paranormal Society with old horse blankets. Oliver sighed. He would have to deal with the dead too. Someone needed to see if there was an obvious cause of death and catalogue all the damage they did while trying to stop them. The paperwork was going to be horrendous. Tears burned the backs of Oliver’s eyes, but he stuffed them down. Once again, he had inadvertently involved Gwen in something she didn’t sign-up for. After Felipe was stitched up and the dead inspected, he could go to bed and have a long, guilt-ridden cry. Doublechecking that he had all the instruments he needed boiling on the stove, Oliver steeled himself and returned to Felipe’s side.
He tried not to let his feelings show even as the color drained from his face. For a fleeting moment as Felipe lay across the kitchen table with his eyes closed and blood leaking from his wounds, Oliver saw him on the autopsy table in the lab. It could have been their reality so many times before. His heart lurched, and Felipe’s warm brown eyes met his as if he could read his thoughts. My light in the darkness . He couldn’t let it go out.
Oliver gave him a smile that didn’t reach his eyes and pushed back the dark thoughts. Felipe looked horrible, and no amount of positive thinking could change that. The blood loss from the wound on his arm had made his skin so ashen that his dark circles looked more like two black eyes. Oliver spent nearly every hour of the day with Felipe. He knew the color of his skin, the cadence of his heartbeat, the rush of air from his lungs, and now, nothing was right.
The bleeding had slowed once Oliver had put pressure on the bullet wound and Felipe stopped moving long enough for it to clot. As he lay on the table waiting for Oliver’s tools to be sterilized, Felipe had insisted on putting pressure on the stab wound himself with his good hand. The blood on him, on their pajamas, on the table, that was all upsetting, but what bothered Oliver most was how calm Felipe was. While Oliver had only briefly seen the wounds, he knew they were bad. Someone else would have been writhing in pain or going in and out of consciousness, yet Felipe merely looked exhausted and resigned as he lay watching him from the tabletop. Catching Oliver staring, Felipe waved at him with his injured arm.
“Don’t move your arm,” Oliver said loudly enough while facing Felipe that he could hopefully hear him or at least read his lips.
“My eardrum is mostly healed now, Oliver. You don’t have to yell. All I need is half a dozen pieces of jerky and a few hours of rest for everything else to catch up. I’ll be fine.”
As Felipe gave him his most disarming smile, Oliver realized he was testing his bleeding arm in order to try and sit up again. Before he could put weight on it, Oliver laid a hand on his chest and gently forced him back down.
Felipe stared up at him with his brows knit in confusion. “Oliver, I’m fine.”
“You are not fine! This is anything but fine. This is my worst nightmare come true, Felipe. Seeing you like this: bleeding and with injuries that could—” Oliver nearly put his clean hands over his face but caught himself. To Felipe, this was normal, but Oliver knew a hundred ways these sorts of injuries could kill someone. He needed to fix this. “Let me see your stomach.”
Felipe shook his head. “Check the arm first. It’ll be quicker. My stomach isn’t bleeding that bad.”
Oliver wanted to argue with him that the blood was probably pooling inside his abdominal cavity because he was lying down, but Felipe didn’t appear to be getting worse. Sighing, he took the scissors from his bag and cut Felipe’s sleeve from his wrist to his sternum. As he peeled back the fabric, Oliver did a doubletake at the giant bruise blooming across his clavicle. In all the chaos, he must have missed that injury. When he lightly pushed on it, Felipe’s jaw tightened. Fractured, at least. Felipe wouldn’t like it, but he was getting a sling for that arm. Carefully peeling the gauze and fabric away from the bullet hole, Oliver was relieved to find the bleeding between both wounds had slowed to a trickle. If a major blood vessel had been damaged, it seemed to have healed or clotted shut.
“It hit the muscle, not the bone,” Felipe said tightly as Oliver probed the wound with a careful finger. “I felt the bullet pass through, and it doesn’t hurt like there are any pieces left behind, bones or bullets. I’ve had that happen before. I know what it feels like.”
It took a second for his mind to catch up with what Felipe said, and while he was correct, he didn’t like what he heard. Grabbing the supplies from his bag, Oliver carefully cleaned and disinfected the wound. How many times had Felipe been shot that he could tell if a wound had bullet fragments in it by feel alone? After forty years of injuries, Felipe didn’t have a single scar, yet the damage done to Felipe’s body was evident now that Oliver knew where to look. This kind of calm was what doctors only saw in the chronically ill. They could brush off things that would have felled healthy people because they had grown accustomed to the pain and dysfunction within their bodies. Instead of being chronically ill, Felipe had been chronically injured. Oliver didn’t want to think about all the times Felipe must have dug a bullet out himself or set his own bones. How many injuries did it take for it to become the norm? Oliver’s stomach clenched at the thought as he pulled the needle, forceps, and tweezers from the pot of hot water. Felipe shouldn’t have gotten used to this. It didn’t need to be this way.
“Oliver, you don’t have to do that,” Felipe said as he threaded the needle, “they’ll heal on their own.”
“Most wounds will heal on their own. That doesn’t mean I’m going to let you bleed all over yourself until it does. As it is, we’ll need to buy Mr. Allen a new table.” Sighing, he dragged the oil lamp closer and sat beside the table. “I’m sorry, but this is going to hurt. If I had any morphine or chloroform with me, I would let you sleep through the worst of it. Can you hold still for me?”
Felipe nodded and stuck his arm out with a wince. Oliver tried not to upset his collarbone as he adjusted his upper arm, so he could get a better view of the bullet hole. The stitches should have been painful. Another man would have had to be held down, but as the needle slipped through his skin, Felipe merely stared at the ceiling without making a sound. Letting his mind trail to the tether, Oliver found everything on Felipe’s end was oddly muted. In the past, Felipe had gotten upset with him for withholding his feelings from him, but Oliver didn’t think he was doing it on purpose. When he watched Oliver work from the corner of his eye, there were still pulses of concern and what felt like guilt. Oliver doubted the detachment was due to blood loss since he still seemed sharp, and the implications of that brought the anger he had felt when he found him sleepwalking surging back to the surface. Releasing a tight breath, Oliver secured the bandage and stepped away to wash his hands and bathe his tools in carbolic acid.
“Don’t feel bad about not bringing any anesthetic. They don’t really work on me anyway.”
Oliver’s hands froze mid-rinse. “What do you mean?”
Shifting his hips, Felipe suppressed a hiss and pressed harder on the wad of gauze under his hand. “Ether, chloroform, morphine. They’re like alcohol. They just,” he waved his injured hand dismissively, “blow through me. You would have to give me enough to knock out a horse for it to do much, though they might work better now since I can get hungover. Even so, I don’t know how long it would last.”
“So you have had to endure every injury without any pain relief?”
Felipe started to shrug but caught himself. “It isn’t that bad. Most injuries heal so quickly that I don’t need it. Those that don’t… Well, you get used to it, and it goes away soon enough.”
You shouldn’t have to get used to it , Oliver wanted to scream. All the times Felipe had been shot or stabbed or whatever other horrors Oliver didn’t want to imagine had he just carried on like nothing happened as long as the wound healed? When Oliver had been recovering from the stab wound and subsequent surgery, Felipe had been adamant that he needed rest and had even told off the head inspector when he wanted him back in the lab before he was healed enough to work. Felipe knew pain. He knew what it felt like to look outwardly healed and be exhausted and hurting because the inside was still a mess, and he had done everything in his power to keep Oliver from suffering. Why had he never done that for himself?
If he wouldn’t, Oliver would.
“Let me see your stomach.” When Felipe didn’t remove his hand and a clot of guilt slid across the tether, Oliver eyed the wad of gauze suspiciously. “Felipe, what don’t you want me to see?”
Felipe closed his eyes and swallowed hard. “I thought I could get them back in on my own, but I can’t.”
“Get what back in?” he asked, though he already knew. Pulling Felipe’s hand away, Oliver lifted the gauze and bloodied nightshirt to reveal a glistening, red loop of small intestine protruding from the wound. He had seen intestines hundreds, if not thousands, of times, but seeing the insides of the person he loved on the outside was different. Steadying himself against the table, Oliver said, his voice sharpening with every word, “You’ve been eviscerated. Why didn’t you tell me you were eviscerated? Why did you tell me to work on your arm first if you knew you had been eviscerated?”
***
Felipe stared up at Oliver. He opened his mouth to speak, but nothing he could say would stand up against the molten fury roiling off his lover. While Oliver wasn’t the type to be angry for long, his rage burned hot and fast before dissolving into tears, and Felipe knew the more quiet and controlled Oliver was, the more furious he was. Right now, he looked like he was using every ounce of self-control to keep from verbally flaying him or grinding his molars to dust. Oliver shook his head and gestured to the forlorn loop of intestines.
“You could have perforated your bowels! Or strangled them! You still might have.” Oliver pressed the back of his hand to Felipe’s forehead. “Are you having cramps or abdominal pain? Do you feel like you might vomit?”
Felipe quickly shook his head, but Oliver turned his face toward him and stared directly into his eyes. “ Felipe , I mean it. You had better tell me right now if you have any sort of pain or strange symptoms.”
“I’m not lying! My intestines are throbbing a little, and the wound hurts, but that’s it.”
“You had better be telling me the truth.” For a long moment, Oliver merely stared into his eyes before turning back to the wound. “I hate that I feel like I can’t trust you. You didn’t tell me about the sleepwalking. You didn’t tell me your bowels were coming out. And you didn’t tell me you broke your clavicle. Yes, I noticed. The giant bruise was hard to miss. If you thought you were sparing me, Felipe, you were sorely mistaken. Now, I can’t help but worry about how many other important things you have conveniently left out. ”
“I wasn’t trying to lie to you.”
When Felipe gave him a pleading look, Oliver rolled his eyes and bent closer to inspect the wound. He had never intended to lie to Oliver. He didn’t want to worry him over nothing, but it wasn’t about him, not really. Admitting he had been sleepwalking or that his wounds hadn’t healed meant his body was doing things he could no longer control. His whole life he had kept a tight leash on his needs. Felipe Galvan didn’t need to sleep or take a break or stop the bleeding, and while he had chosen to stop taking long-distance cases that would put Oliver in danger, this was different. In this, he had no choice. His body didn’t work the way it was supposed to. Rolling his injured shoulder, Felipe rode out the flare of pain until it faded into focus. What good was he to Oliver or Gwen or anyone if he shattered now? Letting his head fall back against the table, Felipe watched Oliver dab antiseptic across his skin and exposed intestines. Despite the anger battering the tether, his touch was gentle and sure. A familiar voice decades old told him to get up and keep going, even if he cut himself on the pieces. Oliver would never let him do that.
Watching Oliver’s lips thin in time with a flare of anger across the tether, Felipe said, “Oliver, please believe me. I wasn’t trying to lie to you. I thought the sleepwalking was a one-time thing that would stop on its own.”
“And your intestines?”
“I admit that wasn’t my best idea. I thought I could get them back in, and by the time you saw the wound, it would have been barely more than a scrape. That’s what would have happened in the past.”
“But we aren’t in the past, Felipe, and right now, you’re seriously hurt. Hold still. I need to make sure you didn’t perforate your bowels.”
Felipe bit his lip and forced his body to unclench as Oliver’s fingers slipped inside him. He stared at the tobacco-stained ceiling, but it did little to distract from the feeling of fingers wiggling around his intestines. “I know you said the rain check was for when Gwen and Mr. Allen next went out, but this is not where I thought you would put your fingers. ”
Oliver gave him a look that could kill grass. “Now is not the time.”
Christ almighty, Oliver really was pissed at him. As Oliver pulled his hand out, Felipe let out a groan of relief. Oliver’s presence hovered at the end of the tether as if checking his pulse or mood before he gingerly prodded at the loop of intestine.
“The last time something like this happened the wound started to heal too quickly, and I had to reopen it to get my intestines back in. If you have to do it, just be quick about it. I’ll be fine.”
Oliver stared at him for a long moment. “I’m going to pretend you didn’t say last time because that means you’ve been partially eviscerated before, and I can’t deal with that right now. But no, I don’t think I need to widen the wound. Relax your hips and stomach as much as you can for me.”
Felipe shut his eyes and drew in long, slow breaths. One by one he forced his muscles to loosen. His partner’s hands rested on his hips, gently rubbing them until Felipe’s body let go.
“Good, just like that,” Oliver coaxed as he held the wound open with one hand and helped the intestine slide back into place with the other. How many times had Oliver said that exact thing at an equally vulnerable moment? Tears prickled the backs of Felipe’s eyes against his will as he followed a crack in the plaster. Thank god it was Oliver and not someone else doing this. If it was anyone but him, Felipe didn’t think he could take being laid bare like this. A body in need of tending was vulnerable; it was at the mercy of the hands that cared for it, and until now, they had only ever been his own. People who supposedly loved you could hurt you as easily as a stranger, but Oliver’s hands were gentle and sure as they lightly patted his innards to make sure they were properly in place. Even with the constant tide of anger, he never took it out on him.
Oliver stepped back and regarded the wound with a frown. “Felipe, I think I’m going to have to put a few stitches in your muscle wall. I’m afraid that if I don’t, your skin will heal first, and your intestines will herniate. Then, we’ll have to do this all over again. It isn’t going to be comfortable. I have to— I have to separate it from the skin first.”
A dark wash of guilt wound beneath Felipe’s heart. “Just do it. I can handle it.”
With a resigned nod, Oliver washed his hands, grabbed another needle from the pot, and sanitized it. Felipe braced himself as Oliver’s fingers slipped beneath his skin. His toes curled, but the agony quickly peaked and joined in with the chorus of screaming nerves. At least when everything hurt, it was easier to let it recede into the background. Turning his attention back to Oliver, Felipe found him studying his face against the tether.
“It shouldn’t be this way, you know,” Oliver said, his voice tight with suppressed anger again. When Felipe didn’t say anything, he shook his head. “You shouldn’t have to endure this. This shouldn’t be normal to you.”
“What else am I supposed to do, Oliver? I’m a self-healer.”
“Not throw yourself on the nearest sword! God, Felipe, last night I was so confused as to why you were upset with me when I mentioned going into the Dysterwood again. I thought you were just afraid, but now, I get it.” Oliver bit his lip as he picked up the needle and forceps again. “You thought I was going to hurl myself into danger alone like you do. Unlike you, I was going to talk to you before we did anything. I was going to plan everything out with you and Gwen.”
“Oliver—”
“No, let me finish. None of this should have happened. You didn’t have to get stabbed, but you pushed me out of the way even though the dead inspectors weren’t touching me. For someone hellbent on not letting me get hurt, you somehow missed that, didn’t you? They were trying to kill you, not me, and you played right into it.”
“I was trying to protect you!”
“I never asked you to! If I wasn’t clear, never hurt yourself in my name again. Felipe, I love you, but you can’t keep doing this. You can’t keep hurting yourself for other people.”
“I can take it.”
“No, you can’t. Felipe, look at you,” Oliver pleaded, gesturing to the wound with his tweezers. “Maybe you thought you could in the past, but those days are over and done with. You can’t heal like you once did, and I will not lose you because of some— some martyr complex.”
Anger flared in Felipe’s breast, but he held to it as tightly as he did the pain.
“Whatever it is you did, you’ve done your penance.” Oliver’s breath hitched as he put in another stitch. “I don’t even know how you managed to survive all these years. Did you not realize how horrific your injuries were? You shouldn’t have been shot enough times to be able to tell if you have bone fragments lodged in a wound, and you certainly shouldn’t have had to stick your own guts back in. If I think too hard about all the injuries you’ve mentioned in passing, I feel sick. The worst part is that there are still so many I don’t know about, and all I can think is why did no one try to stop you?”
At the crack in Oliver’s voice and the moisture in his eyes, Felipe tensed.
“You have been so lucky, Felipe. Not all mortal wounds are bullets to the head or heart. All it would have taken was a broken bone making a blood clot or a nicked intestine to kill you. The way you’ve constantly thrown yourself into danger makes it seem like you have a death wish, and I can’t help but think maybe you still do.”
As Oliver carefully lined up the edges of the wound and stitched them together, he fell silent, but across the tether, a maelstrom of worry, sadness, and love battered against Felipe’s heart. Felipe didn’t know what to say. His ability to kill and not be killed had been his saving grace for his entire life. If he didn’t have that, what good was he to anyone? Cutting the string of catgut, Oliver laid down his tools and wiped at his face with the back of his hand. Turning to Felipe with bloodied hands and tearstained cheeks, Oliver’s steel grey eyes locked on his.
“I can’t do this again. We don’t know your limits now, and I don’t ever want to find out. If I lose you— If I lose you a second time, that’s it. I can’t bring you back again no matter how much I want to.” Oliver bit back a wet sob as his hands trailed to where the tether hung beneath his heart. “Please don’t make me bear that pain. I don’t think I’ll survive it.”
The protests died on Felipe’s lips at the desolation written across Oliver’s features. Felipe scrambled upright, ignoring the bruised pull of the stitches and the fireworks of pain in his arm. Grabbing Oliver’s bloodied hand, he kissed it and pulled him into an embrace. Silent sobs racked Oliver’s form as he clung to him, careful to avoid all the places he hurt.
“Please don’t leave me,” Oliver whispered into his hair.
“I won’t. I won’t. I promise.”
Felipe shut his eyes against Oliver’s bloody pajamas and let Oliver hold him until their eyes dried and the first rays of sunrise peaked over the trees. At a knock on the kitchen door, Oliver wrenched himself away from Felipe with a sniff.
“Come in,” he called, his voice thick but steady as he resolutely faced the sink.
Poking her head in, Gwen immediately eyed Oliver’s hunched shoulders with a quirked brow. When her gaze landed on Felipe’s bloodied chest and the equally messy table, she grimaced. “Is everything all right? I thought I heard yelling… or crying.”
“It was both, but we’re fine now,” Felipe replied with a wince at the unfamiliar tug of the stitches as he swung his legs over the side of the table. “Oliver was giving me a stern talking to that I probably deserved.”
“I see. And the crying?”
Drawing in a long sniff, Oliver tilted his head back as if he could drain the tears into his sinuses. “It’ll pass. Gwen, can you please get Felipe some clean clothes. Whatever you can find is fine but no jacket.”
“Will do. I actually came to tell you that Mr. Allen and I moved the dead investigators into the stable in case you want to take a look at them later. He also wanted me to warn you that Lucien or the mayor might stop by if anyone heard the gunshots.”
“I don’t know how they couldn’t have. That will be fun to explain.” Wiping his eyes, Oliver groaned. “Thank you, Gwen. Please pass on my thanks to Mr. Allen… for everything. I don’t think I can face him right now.”
With a tight nod, Gwen left them alone again. Oliver’s shoulders drooped as he let out a sigh and washed his hands for what had to be the fifth time. Wetting a wad of gauze with the water from the kettle, Oliver returned to Felipe’s side and wiped the blood from his skin in slow, careful strokes. His hands shook with spent emotion, but as he wiped a streak of blood that somehow ended up on Felipe’s cheek, his red rimmed eyes fuzzed as if seeing some fleeting nightmare. Felipe pressed Oliver’s ringed hand over his heart and kissed him. He hoped Oliver could feel through the tether that he meant it, that he wouldn’t go anywhere. He had asked Oliver not to go where he couldn’t follow, but for Oliver, he would stay. He would always stay.
At the click of the kitchen door opening and closing, Felipe pulled back to find a pile of clothes waiting on the counter and Gwen nowhere to be found. Motioning for Felipe to stay put, Oliver grabbed the shirt from the pile.
“Did you bring a second set of pajamas?”
“No, but I didn’t expect to be fighting in them.”
“Me neither. Well, if all goes well, we won’t be here for more than a few days. I’ll see if the general store has anything tomorrow. Let’s at least get you into a shirt and clean trousers. Watch your stitches and collarbone.”
Felipe shrugged off the shredded shirt as Oliver put a wad of fresh gauze over the stitches on his stomach and wrapped them as best he could. Oliver held out the fresh shirt, but as Felipe tried to maneuver his battered arm into the sleeve, dizzying, white hot pain shot through his shoulder.
“You’re definitely getting a sling,” Oliver said as he worked around his sore arm.
Felipe nearly said it wasn’t that bad, but whatever was left of his dinner nearly came up as he lowered his arm. Oliver gave him a knowing look and offered him his trousers as he dug around in his gladstone. He had just gotten them on when Oliver motioned for him to hold his arm out. As Oliver wrapped the oversized handkerchief around his elbow and tied it behind his neck, Felipe deflated. If he wanted to move it and make things worse, he could, but now, he had a constant reminder not to. At least it took some of the pressure off his shoulder.
“I can help you with the autopsies if you want,” Felipe said as Oliver adjusted the sling. At Oliver’s pointed look, Felipe sighed and rolled his eyes. “Or I can stay inside the house and sit quietly with the dog.”
“That’s more like it.”