Chapter 35 #2
She kneels in blood beside Cherry, both hands pressed below the ribs as one guard cuts the remaining restraint. Across the front, her black dress has turned red. Over her wrists and knees, blood shines, and by leaning sideways rather than forward, she protects the flat lower curve of her stomach.
“Entry below the left ribs,” she tells the medic. “Exit through the upper side. She was conscious after impact, breathing fast, and she can move both legs.”
The information arrives clearly despite tears running down her face.
Cherry’s skin has become gray, and each breath catches high in her chest while blood bubbles faintly near the exit wound.
The medic places a seal over the side, then packs gauze around Katie’s hands without removing their pressure. “Keep exactly where you are.”
Another medic cuts Cherry’s shirt along the side without rolling her spine, checking the exit while asking whether she felt her legs after the shot, and Cherry moves one foot weakly against the concrete.
The response can’t guarantee anything beyond the next minute, yet Katie repeats it twice so the team records the movement.
Blood pressure falls as they prepare the stretcher, and a second line enters Cherry’s arm, followed by oxygen over her mouth and warming sheets under her body. The team works around Katie’s hands because releasing pressure too early would allow the abdominal bleeding to surge.
Katie nods.
I stop beside her without touching, partly because our argument remains between us but chiefly because any interruption could release the wound beneath her palms.
“Igor?” she asks.
“Gone through the gate Ivan left open.”
Her eyes close for one second. “You stayed.”
“Cherry needs evacuation.”
No speech can carry the rest while blood continues escaping between her fingers.
Katie looks toward the service gate where Igor disappeared, then back at me. She understands the choice without requiring a declaration, though understanding can’t make Cherry’s skin less gray beneath the oxygen.
The medical team transfers Cherry onto a rigid stretcher, keeping Katie’s hands in place until another medic can replace the pressure. When they lift, Cherry cries out, then reaches blindly until her fingers find Katie’s wrist.
“Do not let them cut my bra,” she whispers.
Katie laughs through tears. “It is already full of bullet holes.”
“Expensive.”
“You stole it from wardrobe.”
Cherry’s mouth moves without enough strength for another answer.
The ambulance waits inside the west gate with its doors open. Katie climbs in beside the stretcher before anyone can stop her, giving the trauma medic the injury sequence again as he connects fluids and oxygen.
I catch the rear door. “I will follow.”
Katie looks down at her blood-covered hands. “Do not lose us.”
Her plea is about more than the road.
“I won’t.”
The ambulance leaves with a Dymov escort clearing traffic ahead. I enter the pursuit car I abandoned, but order the driver toward the hospital instead of the northern road where Igor disappeared.
For the first mile, our route follows the ambulance closely enough that traffic repeatedly gives Katie back to me through its rear windows.
Blue lights wash over her torn black dress as she sits sideways beside Cherry, keeping an oxygen line clear while answering the medic’s questions.
One shoulder is bare, and blood has dried from wrist to elbow like an opera glove made for some obscene ceremony.
Then downtown traffic closes between us, stretching red lights and rain across the glass until the ambulance becomes only a pulse of color ahead.
I can’t know whether any of it is hers.
Boris calls the ambulance team through the secure channel. They confirm Katie has no visible injury, no bleeding, and no sustained abdominal pain. Relief gives me permission only to continue fearing Cherry.
Boris sits beside me, one hand pressed to his earpiece. “Ivan’s route change is documented in the shared system. He entered the freight yard at eight forty, left at nine fifty-eight, then altered the south response at ten oh one.”
“He knew the route change would leave the south gate exposed.”
“Yes.”
“Keep Ivan under observation. Nobody approaches him until the phone, route record, and safe-house leak form one verified chain.”
Boris turns toward me, having expected an execution order, perhaps because I would have given one before Katie watched Sergei die.
“Understood.”
The ambulance reaches the hospital four minutes before us. I enter through the emergency doors as trauma staff pull Cherry’s stretcher from the rear, with Katie walking beside it while maintaining pressure beneath a medic’s hands.
The corridor smells of antiseptic and hot blood, while staff cut the rest of Cherry’s clothes as they attach monitors, leaving the stolen bra she tried to protect in pieces under the stretcher. Katie stares at it once before forcing her attention back to the surgeon.
Blood has dried across her forearms, and her face looks pale enough that I signal another nurse toward her, but Katie refuses to stop until Cherry crosses into the surgical bay.
The trauma surgeon examines the wound as the stretcher moves. “Upper abdomen and flank. Prepare blood, chest imaging, abdominal imaging, then surgery.”
Katie catches the edge of the stretcher. “Will she survive?”
The doors begin closing between them.
“I cannot promise that,” the surgeon says.
Cherry disappears behind the glass with Katie’s blood-covered hands still reaching after her.