Chapter 59 Sloane #2
I make the incision—a bold, deep line about four inches long—horizontally across her abdomen on her right-hand side, and everything changes. This always happens when I operate. The world narrows to a pinpoint. Everything else fades, leaving a cold, clinical calm in its wake.
It takes time to inspect Lexi’s abdominal cavity.
There’s a lot of blood, and I have no nursing team to provide suction or swab.
I have Zeth, though. He moves unhesitatingly, bolstering my confidence.
When he applies pressure with the torn shreds of towel, clearing away the blood so I can see what the hell I’m doing, I’m not worried that he’ll damage her.
In another world, in another entirely different reality, Zeth would have made an excellent surgeon. He is completely fucking bombproof.
I soon begin to find shrapnel. The relief is like a punch to the gut.
I could cry as I tweeze the sharp shards of metal from my sister’s stomach.
As soon as I lay eyes on her right kidney, that relief vanishes, though.
This is where I remove the largest bullet fragment from her body.
It’s nestled in among the ruins of the organ, completely and utterly destroyed.
“Fuck. Fuck.”
Zeth holds his hand over mine, fixing me with that look again. He can see the mess just as well as I can, but he’s not frozen with fear. “She’s still breathing, Sloane. She has a heartbeat. And she still has another kidney, right?”
“Right.” But it’s not as simple as that. Removing a kidney is a massive surgery. People die on the operating table all the time during this kind of surgery, and that’s under sterile, controlled conditions, too. But what choice do I have? None.
So I do what I have to do. I remove the mangled organ, stitching it neatly with a regular needle and thread from the sewing kit, and then I cauterize the wound.
After that, it’s a case of cleaning out her abdominal cavity and sewing her back up.
I take a look through my supplies, and I don’t find what I need now.
Zeth watches me search, expression even. “What is it? What do you need?”
“I need to find something to use for a blood transfusion. We’re the same blood type. She lost so much. She’ll need more blood if she’s going to make it to a hospital.”
Zeth just grunts at that. “They’re not gonna let you take her to a hospital, Sloane.”
I stop rifling and look up, my heart lurching into my throat. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Your sister was shot. Hospitals are obliged to report gunshot wounds to the police.”
“Yes, I’m well aware of that, Zeth. I work in a fucking hospital.”
“Right. So none of the people here are gonna want that kind of attention. If your sister talks, the cops will come down on this place in two seconds flat. Jacob’ll never allow that. They’re gonna want her to recover here. If she gets an infection—”
“THERE IS NO IF, ZETH!” I grab the first thing that comes to hand—the vodka—and hurl it at the wall.
The glass bottle splinters into a thousand pieces, detonating like a grenade.
Zeth doesn’t even flinch. After everything I just did?
After Alexis pulling through all of that?
“There is no if. There is only when. They need to open her back up and fix the hack job I just did on her insides! If she survives that, she’s gonna need nuclear-grade antibiotics, a whole mountain of painkillers, and at least two blood transfusions.
Otherwise, all of this has been for nothing.
” I cover my face with bloody hands, trying to catch a breath.
“And as for drawing the cops’ attention, I think it’s a little late for that. ”
Zeth comes to me, placing his hands on my shoulders. “What do you mean?”
“She was shot with a Glock 22. A.40 caliber. You know who uses guns like that, huh? I’m sure you do. You’ve probably had a couple pointed at you in the past.” I shove him away from me, dragging my hands through my hair.
Zeth narrows his eyes, staring me down. “Yeah. Cops.”
“Not just cops. The FBI carry Glock 22s. The DEA carry Glock 22s. I see them on the hips of nearly every agent who walks through the hospital doors. If these friends of yours have that sort of attention already focused on them, if federal agents have been fucking shooting at people, then they’re already looking for Jacob and this fucking MC that’s just rolled up out of nowhere. ”
“You’re exactly right, darlin’.”
The voice startles Zeth almost as much as me. Our reactions couldn’t be more different, though. I flinch away from the stranger in the doorway. Zeth pulls a gun on him.
The stranger—a tall, lanky guy dressed in leathers—doesn’t seem to mind. He takes a slow step into the room. “The cops are looking for us,” he says. He peers past me, looking at Lexi, lying in a pool of blood on the table. “Is she alive?”
Zeth looks like he’s about five seconds away from shooting him in the face. I move in between the two of them—one GSW victim in this kitchen is enough for today. “Yes. But barely. She needs proper medical attention. Do you know her?”
The guy shrugs. He must be in his late twenties, early thirties, dirty-blond hair, and obviously not one of Jacob’s men.
He’s from the MC, then. He confirms this when he walks farther into the room, going to stand by Alexis, and I see the embroidered patch on his jacket.
Widow Maker. The icon stitched into his leather is of a woman, head bowed, crying.
She looks like some grunge version of the Madonna.
“Yeah, I know her well enough,” he says.
“I should. She is the boss’s girl, after all. ”