Chapter Thirty-One Pax #2
I kept pressure on Aria’s abdomen, leaning down low as I swung over the stretcher at her legs to get to the other side.
Jill scooted around her front, coming to rest on her knees on Aria’s injured side.
She nudged my hands away and peeled back the sopping fabric.
“Oh God,” she wheezed beneath her breath, blinking one long blink before she swallowed hard and leaned forward so she could inspect it.
It was still gaping. Flayed open wide. But it looked like maybe it’d begun to clot. Like maybe the singe of the tendril had cauterized it in some way. I almost laughed at the thought that any of this bullshit could be counted as a benefit.
“It’s deep,” Jill muttered as she pulled it apart and prodded inside with a gloved finger. It was like she could hear the shouts of questions that whirred through my mind, like she thought I deserved to know the answer.
The outcome.
“It hit the small bowel.”
“Can you repair it?” I begged, back to hanging on to Aria’s limp hand. My other arm was curled up around her head so that I could hold her the best that I could.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. Dread pooled in her being, her breaths shallow and dragging with her concession. “I’m not a surgeon. She needs to be in an emergency OR.”
“But there’s a reason you’re here,” I grated through the clench of my jaw. “A reason you were led here. You wouldn’t have set all this up if you didn’t understand it. You know what’s going to happen to her if she shows up there like this. You can do this. You have to do this.”
Grooves cut deep into her forehead, and she nodded like she was trying to reassure herself; then she started tossing out instructions to Dani and me, asking for different supplies, half of them things neither of us had heard of.
“You, find her pulse in her neck. Watch the clock on the wall across from you, and every thirty seconds, I want you to tell me how many beats, okay?”
Dani bobbed her head, and she came forward, her fingers searching for Aria’s pulse. Her pale gaze met mine when she found it, though there was a foreboding in it.
A dread seeded so deep we were drowning in it.
Sweat drenching her brow, Jill moved quickly.
Fear rolled and banged against the metal walls of the van.
A pressing and pulsing slammed into me with every errant beat.
So thick in the enclosed space that it was difficult for any of us to move in it.
Timothy remained completely quiet in the front, though I could feel the weight of his gaze as he kept peering through the rearview mirror at the commotion happening in the back.
Nausea convulsed in my gut as I watched Jill using a curved needle she held in some kind of metal tongs to sew up Aria’s insides, the fingers of both hands deep in the wound.
Not because I was squeamish at the sight of blood, but because my entire fucking existence couldn’t stomach the thought of Aria not being in it.
Stay with me. Stay with me. We need you. This world needs you. You can’t give up. Your purpose is too great for that. Do you feel it, Aria? It calling for you? I silently pleaded as I kept hold of her.
The numbers Dani muttered every thirty seconds became a mark that promised Aria was still alive.
Though I knew she was. I could feel her, even though she was distant and drifting with each passing second.
Jill kept working, carefully yet efficiently placing stitch after stitch. Tying up all the meaty tissue that was exposed, then pulling the skin together to make a jagged, mangled seam.
She gasped when she placed the last suture, air rushing from her lungs as she sank back for one blink of relief before she was grabbing the stethoscope and placing it over Aria’s heart at the same second that she started throwing out instructions again, looking at Dani first. “I need bandages from the box near the rear of the bed over there, and a blanket.”
Then she turned to me. “Get another bag of blood from the cooler. Pull the tab out of the old one and attach the new. Do you think you can do that?”
“Yeah.” I scooted on my knees on the metal floor to where the cooler was in the corner.
I reached in and grabbed one and did as she instructed, fumbling with the tube as I tried to change it as fast as I could.
The whole time, she continued to listen to Aria’s heart, inhaling sharp breaths that she tried to keep controlled.
Fear rebounded when I turned around and saw the gloom that colored her face.
Crushing.
Excruciating.
The way whatever was in her eyes sucked the hope out of me.
I moved right back for Aria, taking her hand again and placing my other palm close to the spot where Jill still had the chest piece.
She stilled, frozen, before she whispered, “Don’t move your hand.”
Confused, I asked, “What?”
“Don’t move your hand. I think she feels you. When you touched her, her pulse grew a fraction stronger. It’s not possible, but . . .”
My fingers splayed wider, like I might be able to grip Aria’s spirit and keep it on this plane.
In this reality.
“None of it is possible, though, is it? This? Us? You coming here and knowing what we were going to need? Being here in the exact spot and at the exact moment that we needed it?”
“No,” she murmured as she sat back. Her warm brown eyes searched my face from where she remained kneeling.
“No. None of this is possible. But it was too powerful to ignore. It was like I was being called to something. Something that was irresistible, even though I knew it was completely insane and reckless.”
“That’s exactly what it is . . . It’s irresistible,” I agreed.
Dani remained quiet, her gaze jumping between the two of us as she passed a box of large bandages to Jill. “Here.”
“Thank you,” she said.
It must have been the first time Jill really looked at Dani. At her eyes, which were the same color as mine and Aria’s.
So pale they were nearly white.
Otherworldly.
Jill held her gaze for one beat as another layer of acceptance rolled through her before she dug into the box and placed a large bandage that covered half of Aria’s abdomen; then she had Dani help her cover her with the blanket.
“What do we do now?” I asked, my words shards as I uttered them into the sudden silence that took over the van.
Everything was too fucking still after the frenzy.
Disquieting and unnerving.
Jill slumped back against the opposite wall. “We wait.”
I knew exactly what she was implying.
Wait to see if she would heal.
Wait to see if she would survive.
“We should probably get her someplace where it’s warm,” she added.
“Do you think it’s safe to go back to my house?” Worry saturated Dani’s question.
“No place is safe, Dani.” It had been proven time and again, and that threat was only growing. Getting worse with each twisted fuck Ambrose sent our way.
I didn’t know how we were going to survive more of them. If we were even surviving at all. Because without Aria . . .
My throat nearly closed off.
“We should take her back there then,” Dani said.
And hope that no one else comes for her tonight.
I could almost hear her saying it even though she left it off.
“Do you want to leave your car here or drive it back?” I asked.
“I’ll drive it back. I’ll follow you guys.”
“Okay.”
She pulled the latch to the double doors. A cold blast of air gushed in, cut off just as quickly when she jumped out, then secured the doors.
I met Timothy’s eyes through the rearview mirror. His expression was both sharp and soft. Overwhelmed and staunch. A silent promise that we were all in this together.
A second later, he put the van into gear and slowly pulled back onto the road.
I remained at Aria’s side, touching her in every place I could, hand still splayed wide over the quiet but steady thud of her heart.
Still on my knees, I leaned forward and rested my cheek on her shoulder while Jill’s stare burned into the side of my face.
“What’s happening?” she finally asked, her voice held on a tremulous whisper.
My chest knotted with trepidation over what had transpired tonight.
I was utterly unable to wrap my head around the fact that Kruen had been here. Part of me wanted to ascribe it to some sort of hallucination. That all of it had been a fabrication of our minds.
Some kind of fucking sorcery Ambrose had cast, which I was sure was the case, but I was also pretty sure it had become a thread in this reality. That he’d brought them here. How, I didn’t fucking know.
I breathed out a sigh riddled with a boatload of uncertainty. “Think this already fucked-up world is about to completely go to shit. It seems our two worlds are merging.”
“Two worlds.” It wasn’t a question. It was a deliberation. A pondering of transience and death and things everlasting.
Her brow pinched as she turned her soft gaze to Aria. “What are you?”
“Did you read her chart?” I asked.
She gave me a clipped nod. “I did.”
She said it like she hadn’t given herself permission to believe what was written in it.
“Then you know.”
She blinked through the disbelief she was grappling with before she whispered, in a tone that sounded like acceptance, “Laven. I saw that word written in her chart, along with . . .”
She slightly shook her head through the riot of doubt and wonder. “That when you sleep, Aria believed that you fought a war to keep us safe. A war that none of us know is happening.”
It was why Aria had been institutionalized. Because she hadn’t been able to keep that truth from flooding out.
“It’s true. Everything she said, it’s true.” I swallowed hard. “And I’m afraid that war has come here.”