Chapter 42 Harper
HARPER
“Inmate down! Level-one response! We need infirmary open NOW!”
The radio crackled with urgency, and my training kicked in before my brain could catch up. I was already moving, keys jangling against my hip as I sprinted down the corridor toward the security checkpoint.
Dr. Mercer appeared at my side, her orthopedic shoes squeaking against the linoleum. “What do we know?”
“Fight in the yard,” a CO panted, jogging ahead of us. “Six on one. He’s nonresponsive.”
Six on one.
My stomach turned, but I shoved the dread down deep, where it couldn’t slow my hands from gloving up as a stretcher burst through the infirmary doors.
Whoever got assaulted, his face wasn’t a face anymore.
It was a topography of trauma. Swollen flesh in angry shades of purple and red.
One eye completely obscured by edema. Blood matting hair to scalp, pooling in the hollow of a collarbone, soaking through prison orange until the fabric looked crimson.
My clinical brain cataloged the injuries. Facial contusions. Possible orbital fracture. Laceration above the brow, requiring sutures. Potential intracranial hemorrhage, given the mechanism of injury.
But it was my heart that noticed the tattoos first.
The intricate lines crawling up forearms. Disappearing beneath torn sleeves. Curling around a throat that was already bruising.
No.
My gaze dropped to his chest. To the pendant resting against bloodied skin.
No, no, no.
Knox.
The world narrowed to a pinpoint. Sound muffled like I was underwater. I watched Dr. Mercer’s mouth move, watched the COs transfer him to the exam table, watched his head loll lifelessly to one side.
But I couldn’t hear anything over the roaring in my ears.
Knox Blackwood. The man who noticed my scars. The man who kept showing up in my infirmary with wounds that were self-inflicted, then became an orderly, just to check on me.
My designated protector, whose heart I’d broken.
He wasn’t moving.
“Harper!” Dr. Mercer’s voice sliced through the fog. “Gauze. Now.”
I blinked. My hands were shaking.
Get it together. He needs you functional, not falling apart.
I grabbed the gauze from the supply cart, my fingers clumsy as I ripped open the packaging. The sharp scent of antiseptic burned my nostrils. Fluorescent lights were too bright, too harsh, illuminating every terrible detail of what they’d done to him.
“Bring me restraints,” a CO barked toward the door.
My head snapped up. “Excuse me?”
“Protocol for high-risk inmates during medical treatment.”
“He’s unconscious.” The words came out sharp. Brittle. “He’s not a threat to anyone right now.”
“For now,” the CO said, already accepting the metal cuffs from another officer. “He wakes up swinging, that’s a problem.”
“It blocks our ability to assess his extremities for vascular compromise. If there’s a circulation issue in his wrists and we can’t see it because of the cuffs—”
“Harper.” Dr. Mercer’s voice was a warning. “Gauze.”
I handed it over. Watched her press it to the gash above his brow. Watched blood immediately bloom through the white fabric, crimson spreading like watercolor.
And then I watched the CO shackle Knox’s wrists to the rails of the exam table.
Click. Click.
His ankles came next.
Click. Click.
Four points of restraint. Like he was an animal. Like he was something that needed to be caged, even when he was too broken to open his eyes.
Something cracked inside my heart.
“Did anyone see a shiv?” Dr. Mercer asked.
“Didn’t see one. Fists and boots. One of them got him in the head pretty good. He went down and didn’t get up.”
Dr. Mercer’s jaw tightened. “We need imaging. Head and chest. Call EMTs for transport.”
“On it.” A CO disappeared through the door.
I forced myself to move. To function. Scissors in hand, I cut through his prison orange, peeling the blood-soaked fabric away from his body. The shirt came off in pieces, revealing the full extent of the damage.
His torso was a canvas of violence.
Fresh purple and red bloomed everywhere. His ribs on the left side were already swelling, the skin there so dark, it looked almost black. Boot prints. Someone had kicked him while he was down. Repeatedly.
“Possible rib fractures,” I heard myself say. The clinical voice. The professional mask. “Left side, ribs eight through ten. We need to rule out pneumothorax.”
Dr. Mercer nodded, pressing her stethoscope to his chest. “Breath sounds diminished on the left but present. No obvious tracheal deviation. Let’s get him stabilized for transport.”
I reached for the blood pressure cuff, wrapping it around his bicep with hands that refused to stop trembling. The Velcro was loud in the quiet room. His skin was warm beneath my fingers. Alive. He was still alive.
For now.
The cuff inflated. I watched the numbers climb, then fall.
Along with my heart.
“BP ninety over sixty,” I reported. “Tachy at one twelve.”
Low blood pressure. Elevated heart rate. His body was in shock, struggling to compensate for trauma it couldn’t understand.
“Get a line in him,” Dr. Mercer ordered. “Normal saline, wide open.”
I gathered the supplies on autopilot. Tourniquet. Alcohol swab. Eighteen-gauge needle. My hands knew this dance. They’d performed it thousands of times.
But they’d never performed it on him.
I tied the tourniquet around his arm, and watched his veins rise beneath tattooed skin. Good vasculature. Easy access. I could do this in my sleep.
So, why did my vision keep blurring?
I blinked hard. Swabbed the insertion site. Found the vein by touch and slid the needle in on the first try. Blood flashed into the chamber.
“Good stick,” I muttered to no one. “Securing line.”
The saline bag went up. The drip started. I adjusted the flow rate and taped everything down, my movements mechanical, precise, completely divorced from the chaos happening inside my chest.
Knox groaned.
The sound was low, guttural, dragged up from somewhere deep in his unconscious mind. His head turned slightly on the pillow. His unswollen eye flickered beneath the lid.
“He’s coming around,” I said.
Dr. Mercer moved to his head, penlight in hand. “Knox. Knox, can you hear me?”
Another groan. His right hand twitched against the restraint, chain rattling against metal.
“Knox, I need you to open your eyes.”
His lid cracked open. Just a sliver. Just enough to reveal the silver-blue iris underneath, hazy and unfocused. His gaze wandered the ceiling, the lights, the faces hovering above him.
And then it found me.
For one infinite second, everything stopped.
“Harper.” My name on his lips was barely a whisper. Broken. Rough. Like he’d been gargling glass.
“I’m here,” I said, and I didn’t recognize my own voice. “You’re in the infirmary. You’re safe.”
His eye closed again. His body went slack.
“Pupils equal and reactive,” Dr. Mercer announced, clicking off her penlight. “GCS is eight. He needs a CT. Where are those EMTs?”
As if on cue, the doors burst open. Two paramedics in navy uniforms wheeled in a transport stretcher, their boots loud against the floor.
“What do we have?”
“Thirty-five-year-old male, assault victim,” Dr. Mercer rattled off. “Multiple blunt force traumas to the head and torso. GCS eight. Possible TBI with loss of consciousness, possible rib fractures left side. BP ninety over sixty, pulse one twelve. He’ll need head and chest imaging.”
The paramedics nodded, already moving to transfer him. After the CO uncuffed him, I helped guide the backboard beneath Knox’s body, supporting his neck, trying not to look at the way his face had swollen even further in the last ten minutes.
“Watch the restraints,” the CO said.
The paramedics secured Knox to the transport stretcher, strapping him in with practiced efficiency. The chains clinked as they adjusted around the rails.
I did one final neuro check. Penlight in his eye. Pupil constricting appropriately. Good. Still responsive. Still there.
“Pupils equal and reactive,” I reported. “Four millimeters bilaterally.”
“Got it.” The paramedic made a note. “We’re rolling.”
They started toward the door. I followed.
“Harper.” Dr. Mercer’s voice stopped me three steps in. “Where do you think you’re going?”
I turned. “Someone should monitor him in transit. If his neuro status changes—”
“The EMTs are more than capable of monitoring him.”
“They don’t know his baseline. I do. I’ve treated him multiple times. If his pupils change and they don’t have a reference point—”
“You’re not riding in that ambulance.” Dr. Mercer’s expression was unreadable. “It breaks protocol.”
Heat flooded my cheeks.
She held my gaze for a long moment. “Your shift ended five minutes ago. Go home. Get some sleep. He’ll be back in our infirmary by morning if the imaging is clear.”
The stretcher was already disappearing down the hall. I could hear the wheels squeaking, the chains rattling, the distant sound of Knox groaning as they jostled him through a doorway.
“Which hospital?” I called after the paramedics.
“Mercy Harbor!”
The doors slammed shut.
I stood frozen in the middle of the infirmary, my scrubs spotted with his blood, my heart pounding against my ribs like it was trying to escape.
“Go home. Get some sleep.”
Right.
I stripped off my gloves, shoved them in the biohazard bin, and grabbed my keys from my locker. My hands were still shaking. My vision was still blurry. I probably shouldn’t be driving.
I drove anyway.
The ambulance had a head start, but I pressed the accelerator and watched the speedometer climb.
At a red light, I fumbled for my phone. Scrolled through my Contacts with trembling fingers until I found the number Faith had given me.
It rang twice.
“This is Blake.”
“Blake.” The name came out on an exhale. “It’s Harper.”
“Harper?” His voice warmed with recognition. “Hey, is everything okay? You sound—”
“No.” I gripped the steering wheel with one hand, phone pressed to my ear with the other. The light turned green. I hit the gas. “It’s Knox. He needs your help.”