CHAPTER 29 ELODIE #2
I stare down at Caden while I clean the wound and the surrounding skin and wait.
I don’t know much, but I know if there’s no spouting, it’s a good sign.
He’s lost a lot already, but the blood seeping from his stomach has slowed.
His skin has gone almost translucent. If there’s no more bleeding and we have blood to give him, he might make it.
I squeeze my eyes shut. How do I fucking know if that’s good enough?
Why can’t Alfie be here right now? He’d know what to do.
“What are you doing?” Fiz says from behind me, scaring the life out of me.
“Look,” I point to Caden’s stomach, “no more bleeding. It’s good. I think.”
“Okay, well, can you stop fucking staring and stitch the fucking hole in his gut then, please? Or do we hook him up to this first?”
I look behind me and see he is indeed holding a hospital drip bag full of blood, a long tube, and a sterile pack with a needle in it.
“Why do you even have this?”
“Clearly for emergencies like this. Now what do we do first?”
I look back at Caden, the pallid hue of his skin, the rapid rhythm of his chest. “Blood,” I say, “we do the blood first.”
“Okay, great. Here.” Fiz shoves the bag in front of me.
I look at the instruments in horror. “I can’t, you do it.”
“I can’t poke him with a needle. You do it.” He extends the stuff closer to me.
“Neither can I! You do it!”
“No, you don’t understand.” Fiz has a wildness in his eyes. “I can’t.”
He’s more invested in the patient than I am, the stakes are higher for him if he messes up. But then if I mess it up, Fiz will murder me in a heartbeat. He holds the power here. Fuck’s sake. I practically growl at him as I take the equipment from his hands.
What if I fuck it up? What if I kill him?
I worry my lip between my teeth as I take Caden’s arm. I watched that Higgins guy hook me up to a drip just days ago. It’s the same process, right? I can do this.
You can do this, the darkness whispers.
I take a deep breath and start scanning the crease in Caden’s arm.
“Do you know how to find veins?”
I clear my throat. “I grew up around addicts,” I say blankly, already disassociating. “I’ve seen a needle or two go into an arm.”
I swear Fiz shudders beside me.
It’s hard to concentrate with him breathing down my fucking neck, but something tells me he won’t back up if I ask him to. “Connect the tube to the bag,” I say. There’s movement behind me that tells me he’s doing it.
After long, endless seconds, I find a vein. I think.
I take the cannula and bring it onto Caden’s skin.
I’m pretty sure all the air goes out of the room.
I fight off the shiver when the needle breaks Caden’s skin. All the moisture in my body evaporates.
I hold my hand out. “Tube.”
Surprisingly, Fiz obeys.
I connect the tube, and we both follow the trail as the blood flies down the long wire and into Caden’s arm.
Everything goes still. What if it’s not compatible blood? Shit. I didn’t even think about that.
I resist the urge to palm my forehead or tear my hair out. But after a paralysing moment, nothing happens.
“I guess that means it’s fine,” I say, almost silently.
“Great. Now sew him up.”
I whirl around. He’s holding the bag up. “Get the IV pole to hook that onto.”
“Start sewing him up then.” Fiz balances the bag over one of the high-backed chairs and darts back out.
I grab the embroidery needle and thread, staring at it. There’s no way I can sew this man back together. One poke with a needle was more than enough. I’ve contributed more than enough.
Fiz comes back in a flash and puts the bag onto the IV pole, then turns to me. “Well? What the fuck are you waiting for?”
I extend the needle and thread to him. “You do it. I can’t do any more.”
Fiz jerks back like I’d offered him a live rattlesnake. “I told you, I can’t.”
I start to buckle under the overwhelming stress of it all. “I can’t fucking sew him up!”
“Fucking do it, Elodie.”
“He’s your friend, you do it!”
The gun’s back out. “You will sew him up, and you’ll do it right now.”
“Alright, alright! Just stop sticking a fucking gun in my face!” Swearing my disapproval under my breath, I take the needle and thread, and it takes me several attempts before I get it through the hole.
Once the string’s ready, my hand freezes above the gash.
It starts shaking uncontrollably. What the fuck am I doing?
I can’t stitch someone’s body back together.
Tears fill my eyes, blurring my vision, but I still see Caden’s face.
His lax features that have always been so tight and taunting.
He has no idea what I’m doing, what’s happening to him.
If he did, would he refuse? Would he even want me here?
Why am I even helping him when all he’s done is bully me and hurt me?
A warmth comes across my hand and I’m pulled back from my spiralling thoughts. Fiz has come beside me, his hand covering mine holding the needle.
“It’s okay, princess, you got this,” his voice is so tender now, a gentle caress of soft lips on my ear.
“I can’t.”
“You can,” he whispers, his body close to mine behind me, his breath fluttering through my hair. “I believe in you, you can save him.”
His other hand comes to rest on the small of my back, and I suck in a large breath.
“Please, save him, Elodie. I need him.”
A tear spills over as I blink and falls down my cheek as I stare at this man, incapacitated and helpless. Possibly dying.
“Princess,” Fiz starts circling the hand on my back. “Be the hero. Just think, if you save Caden’s life now, he’ll owe you forever. A life debt.”
I choke on something caught between a laugh and sob. I sniffle and with a steadier hand, I lower it down to Caden’s skin.
It’s cold and damp. Fiz doesn’t move from his position, only strokes his hand from mine up my forearm, as if anchoring me, letting me know I’m not doing this alone. I’ll take the comfort that comes with it, there’s no time to rebuke it.
I press the tip of the needle into the skin, and I hear both of us hold our breath.
It breaks through with a pop that makes my spine stiffen, but Fiz’s massaging softens it again.
It actually becomes quite easy after the first few, trying to stay focused on the laceration and not the terrifying tattoos around it.
The rise and fall of his chest are still rapid, but at least he’s alive.
The gash strikes through his grim reaper tattoo, right through the skull, and from my not-so-tidy sewing, no matter how meticulous I try to be, the tattoo will never be neat again.
But maybe the canvas will survive long enough to get it retouched.
Fiz lets me go when Caden groans and his head rolls to the other side. He rushes over to him on the other side. “Cade? Bro? Can you hear me?”
He only responds with a strangled grunt.
Fiz strokes his wet hair back from his face in the same gentle way he rubbed circles on my back. “I’m here, Cade. Stay with us.”
With Caden’s face clear, I can see his furrowed brow. He can feel me prodding and poking him.
I stay silent, worried that if he hears or even senses me, then it could be game over. He might reject me, and right now, I’m his only hope.
Sarge hadn’t moved from my other side either, but once Caden moves his head, Sarge leaps right onto the table and starts licking at his bloodied face.
Caden groans again, but his eyes never open.
Finally, I get the skin sewn back together. He doesn’t move again. I check his pulse, it’s still fast, but it’s there. My body collapses into the chair next to me, feeling too heavy to hold upright.
Fiz does the same on the other side.
The silence that fills the room is swollen with relief and exhaustion.
Fiz pulls his phone out. “Higgins will be here soon.”
My body goes rigid as Sarge hops down from the table and pads up to me. I grip the chair tight. But all the brute does is come up to my seat, nuzzles his nose into my leg and then returns next to Caden.
A ghost of a smile plays on my lips. You’re welcome.
“What even happened tonight?” I say, looking at the blood coating my fingers.
“Job gone wrong,” Fiz says. “We got details that the place would only have three men. Quick in and out. We knew where the gold was, where the men should be stationed. Everything, like usual. But we walk in and there’s ten of them. Ten fucking tanks.”
I blow out a long breath. “If that’s the case, then one stab wound is a fucking miracle.”
Fiz plays with his lower lip with a finger and thumb, staring at Caden. “It was my fault.” It’s quiet, almost to himself.
“Why?”
“I fucked up,” he says, not looking away from his best friend.
“Caden said to back off when we saw how many of them there were. He always worked with strategy, patience. But not me. I got cocky, as usual. Too cocky.” He pauses, closes his eyes.
“We’d taken out five of them already. But then the knife was coming at me.
Cade jumped in front of me.” His eyes pop open, as if the flashback is too much to bear.
“He fought him off good. I went to jump on the guy, then got hauled back by another, while Caden struggled to get the knife from him.” His eyes glaze over with the memory.
“I got him off me easily, but then I was pinned to a wall getting pummelled by four of them. Helpless to get to him. Bob got one guy who was on me, he did amazing. By the time I got them off me, the knife had already penetrated.” He clicks his tongue, sighs.
“I just stood back and watched the knife go through him.”
Looking at him now, despite his friend’s blood splattered all over his clothes, he’s come away unscathed from fighting off four guys at once. Even I must admit that’s impressive.
“You didn’t just stand back, Fiz, you were held. By four guys, no less.” I don’t know why I’m attempting to comfort him. Don’t understand this twisting feeling in my stomach at watching the guilt consume Fiz’s face.
“I didn’t get to him quick enough. Sarge had the guy’s leg in his jaw and yanking him away from Cade, but…” His chin wobbles a bit. “It should have been me. I deserved it.”
The number of venomous thoughts I want to throw at him right now. Yes, you did. Caden deserved it too. You both deserve worse. But none come. I don’t have it in me to kick a man while he’s down.
“You’re both alive, Fiz, you both made it home.
That’s all that matters now.” I push up and start collecting the items back into the duffle bag, desperate to distract myself from this weird, horrible feeling stirring my insides to mush.
I do not care about him. Nor his best friend unconscious on the dining room table.
Fiz remains silent the whole time, staring at his friend. Once I start walking away, duffle bag slung over my shoulder, he scrapes his chair back on the floor and calls me. “Wait.”
I turn around, watching Fiz barrel towards me with a harsh look on him. I think he might threaten me again, force me to stay with him or something. I’m amping up to fight, but what he does knocks me back. Literally.
He grabs my face in both his hands and crashes his lips onto mine, pushing me back several steps with the force with which he collides into me.
It’s not romantic, it’s not sexual. It’s heavy with gratitude.
Dripping in relief. A chaste kiss you’d maybe want to give a surgeon for a life-saving operation, but my belly still swoops.
I don’t close my eyes. He does, though. His lips are rough and dry.
His tongue never enters my mouth. Nor does he move to kiss deeper.
His lips just glue to mine for several seconds and I’m too completely dumbfounded to move away.
This is Fiz, for crying out loud. There should be a bite coming, or a wild tongue, or something.
But it’s just a desperate thank you. He can’t say the words, so this is his way.
He breaks the kiss and presses his forehead to mine, eyes still closed, still cupping my face. “Good job, princess. I’ll make sure to tell him it was your handy work.”
“Uh, sure,” I say, because I have no idea what else to.
He steps away from me, dark eyes opening again and still no obscenity. No lust or menace. Tiredness, maybe, but definitely gratitude.
Wow, the boy does have feelings. I give him a crooked smile and leave the room. I’ll never tell anyone that my stomach jerked or my heart skipped at the contact. It’s just from lack of affection. That’s all.