Chapter Thirty-Eight
Mal
Knowing that the baby was injected with Rook's radioactive green serum, I didn’t have hopes for its survival. My first priority was keeping Bunny alive.
The IV the nurses had hooked her up to, siphoning her pain meds through her antecubital fossa, should have been taking effect by now.
“Does it still hurt?”
Bunny weakly shook her head at my inquiry. Her eyes fluttered shut, and she began mouthing the words to the song.
Hope lifted my chest. This was a good sign.
Inhaling deeply, bracing myself, I put the blade to her skin and ran it across, opening her up. I worked carefully, making sure to do everything exactly as I was supposed to, all the while Rook continued to run his mouth in the corner of the O.R.
“I have more experience with this. You’ve never done a C-section before. You need me.”
“The only thing we need from him is to shut the hell up.”
I chuckled darkly at the mad thing’s joke while telling the nurse to turn the music up to drown out Rook’s incessant complaining.
Should have bitten his tongue off, not his nose.
The thing in my ear laughed manically. “Sorry, Doc. It was my first time running the show. Baby’s first bite.”
The music rolled through me, steadying my hands and calming my rioting heart. After what felt like an eternity, I reached inside and removed the infant from his mother.
I wasn't exactly a god-fearing man, but I'd still prayed—to whatever would listen—that Bunny's baby would be alright. It was alive. But it was as I'd feared.
The poor child hadn't been able to handle the drug, and it had mutated and warped into something unfortunate.
Swallowing deep, I slowly pulled the baby from its mother's womb, and as I lifted it to the light, gasps filled the room. The nurses fled to the outer edges of the space, staring at the newborn in horror.
"Someone help me!"
No one moved, no one dared take a step toward me, let alone get close enough to assist with severing the umbilical cord and cleaning the child off.
Fuck.
"You want to help so bad?" I said snidely to my father. "Get over here."
He sprang into action. There were no cries from the child, but it was very much alive.
Bunny cried out at the sight of it. Shit, I hadn't meant for her to see it.
As if triggered by its mother's voice, the infant came to life, screaming and kicking, but no one in the room was relieved. The nurses watched in silence that rivaled that of a funeral.
The baby's veins were pumping wildly and practically glowing that same toxic hue as the serum it had been injected with. When his eyes slid open, my lungs slammed together, leaving me gasping. Its eyes were a demonic green. Bright and piercing.
“Aw, it’s kind of cute.”
While the other side of me seemed to soften to the demonic boy, the nurses all muttered amongst themselves, some of them offering up prayers and making the sign of the cross over their chests. Others simply sobbed from sheer terror.
"Dr. Rook... I— I don't feel good." Bunny sounded so frail.
"Probably has something to do with the gaping hole in your stomach, girl."
"She was talking to me," I growled at my father, pushing him aside while handing him the baby so I could attend to Bunny.
"I'm here, Bunny. We're going to get you closed up and back in bed.
I'll even let you recover in my bed. No cell.
No orderlies. No nurses. You'll have my personal attention.
We can even move the record player from my office so you can listen to whatever you like. "
Bunny stared blankly at me, her eyes glossing over. The corners of her mouth quivered with the faintest smile. Then, without much warning at all, her eyes rolled back into her head, and she went limp. There was no time to act. She'd been alive one minute, and gone the next.
"Get the defibrillator!"
No one moved.
"Now! We could still save her!"
"Mal—" Rook reached for me with one hand, with the screaming baby tucked in his other.
"Don't you fucking touch me!" I snarled, jerking away from him. "This is all your fault."
“All his fault? No Mal. You're to blame too. You shouldn't have let him live. If you had killed him when you first found out she was pregnant, he never would have had a chance to give her the Treatment. Let me take over. I’ll fix this.”
“Fix this?” For the first time, I responded to the monster out loud. “Can you bring Bunny back to life? Can you make these last two years as if they never happened? Can you make it so that I became a painter, instead of a discarded doctor that can’t even save myself, let alone my patients?”
I was shouting, while my vision went in and out, as the demon within pushed for control. When my vision flickered back, I jerked my attention up to see every eye in the room on me. All of them, looking at me like I was every bit as insane as I felt.
“No,” the mad thing answered. “But I can avenge her.”
“Everyone out!” When the staff began to file out of the room, my father—with the baby still in his arms—I added, “Not you.”
Reluctantly, he obliged, lingering in the middle of the O.R.
“Give him to me,” I demanded.
“No.”
“Give me the fucking baby, Father.”
“You have no use for him,” he said dryly, regarding me like I was nothing to him. I was nothing to him.
“No use? Fuck you. I’m going to raise my sibling, and you’re going to get the fuck out of here.”
“Raise him? He’s a monster. What, are you going to keep him in your bell tower?”
Was I? My brows knitted with confusion as my gaze dropped to the baby in his arms. It had gone frightfully quiet again. Its eyes were closed, its skin pale, and the veins no longer glowing.
Dead.
Then I noticed the imprint of a hand around its throat.
Rook had strangled it while I was distracted with Bunny.
“Why…? Wha—” I could barely process everything that was happening. One tragedy after the next. I couldn’t keep up. I couldn't stand it. “Why did you kill him?”
“I don’t need him alive for the tests I’d like to run. Better if he’s dead, actually.” The bastard laughed, fucking laughed. “We don’t need a crying, shitting mutant around here.”
My vision turned black as rage possessed me like a demon. The mad thing inside me was taking over, spreading through me like poison.
It wanted to take over, and for the first time…I let it.
I reached for the bloody scalpel abandoned on the surgical cart and whipped around, swinging my arm in a sweeping motion. Rook’s eyes expanded with shock. Still holding the baby, he leaped back to avoid the weapon.
He wasn’t fast enough.
The blade sliced across his throat so deeply that I’d severed his carotid artery. Blood sprayed in a gory fan, coating everything in close proximity. Pulling my surgery mask around my neck, I grinned at him—uncaring that his blood was in my eyes.
His mouth gaped, opening and closing like a fish out of water, gulping for air. He staggered, and before he could collapse to his knees, I tossed the scalpel on the floor beside him, stepped forward and took my brother from his arms.
He reached for me, or the baby—I wasn’t sure which, and I didn’t care.
When he fell forward, lifeless in a pool of his own blood, I turned and left the room. A passing nurse stopped, her face chalk white as she looked to me, then peered into the surgery at the body.
“He couldn’t handle the death of his baby. That or he was so disgusted by it, he killed himself. Whichever is easier to believe. Have the bodies brought down to the morgue. Barbara Reed will be buried beside her baby on the grounds.”
“And your father, Doctor?”
I pulled my mask back over my face so she couldn’t see me smile. “Throw him in the incinerator.”
The day of Bunny’s funeral was a miserable one. Rain pounded down on me as I watched the first coffin lowered into the ground. I had to have one special-ordered because of the small size. We’d never had to bury an infant before.
The gravestone was a simple one: a sleeping lamb carved from granite, curled up in the grass beside Barbara Reed’s grave.
Her coffin was pine. I wish I could have afforded something better. But since my father’s death, I had taken over the asylum’s accounts and had spent our budget on new equipment that would improve the lives of all our patients. I knew she’d understand.
I’d opted to bury them close, away from the overcrowded cemetery that lay at the edge of the property. I liked the idea of seeing them from my office window. Ever since Bunny had come here after turning her stepdad into meatloaf, I’d felt responsible for her.
I would blame myself forever for not protecting her better. And I’d live with the bitter knowledge that she probably would’ve been better off in prison.
The gathering for Bunny’s funeral was a pitiful one. An invitation had been sent to her family, but no one showed. Only the funeral director, the priest, and her primary nurse, who’d taken a shine to the girl, came.
The rain fell hard, rendering the priest practically inaudible.
Once the service was done, I placed Bunny’s doll on top of her coffin. “I hope there’s plenty of sunshine, lollipops, and roses wherever you end up, Bunny.”
When I turned away from her grave, all but one man had left. I hadn’t noticed him approach during the funeral; he must have come from behind. The curtain of rain was too heavy to see his face. It was probably one of Bunny’s male relatives. At least someone showed up.
“Thank you for coming.” I raised my voice to be heard over the rain, trudging across the green to greet him. “How did you know Barb—”
The words crystallized in my throat as the noseless face came into focus.
I blinked once. Twice. Half a dozen times. Was my mind playing tricks on me? Was I experiencing psychosis?
“I slit your throat. I watched you die.”
My father flashed me a malevolent smile. His bandages were off, the wound at the center of his face completely healed.
“Your body was cremated,” I went on, my throat tight. “I have your ashes in an old coffee mug you fucking hate.”
He lifted a bushy salt and pepper brow. “The one that says I love medical malpractice?”
I nodded, mouth agape. “Yeah.”
“I always hated that mug.”
“It’s a funny mug,” I told him, brows furrowed, my jaw nearly on the ground. “So, what’s happening right now?”
“I’m about to show you.” He reached behind him and pulled something he appeared to have stuffed in his belt. I blinked and found myself staring down the barrel of my grandfather’s 1949 Luger pistol.
Rook’s scowl contorted into something awful as I made no move—not even a flinch—when he aimed the gun at my brow. “This is the part where you beg for your life.”
My eyes narrowed into lethal slits. “This is the part where you’re going to be disappointed because I’m not fucking doing that. If you’re going to kill me, kill me.”
“Oh, I’m going to kill you, boy. I’m going to kill you over and over until I’m bored with it.”
The bang of the gun going off at point-blank range was like an explosion in my ears. Total darkness took me.
Then nothing.