Burn (12 page)

Asshole.

My body is sore from the sex we just had, sorer in some places than others. I strip off again, considering burning my clothes when I catch the smell of him all over them, and I take the hottest shower in the history of showers. The door starts hammering not long after I’m finished cleaning up, but I’m damned if I’m gonna come running out of the bathroom just because he’s decided he wants to see me now. I pointedly ignore the hammering until I hear the heavily accented voice hollering through the door.

“Hawthorne! Ms Hawthorne!”

Hawthorne? Oh, yeah right. That’s the dentist title I gave to myself when Julio asked my name. Naomi Hawthorne. The door rattles on its hinges, sounding like it’s going to come off them any second. What the hell is going on out there? I clamber out of the shower, wrap myself in a towel and open it up.

A short, overweight Mexican guy stands on the other side, chest heaving, with a gun in his hand. I begin to slam the door closed—I’m not getting shot to death in the bathroom of a Mexican brothel—but the guy jams his foot into the gap.

“Ms Hawthorne! Come, please! Help. Your help!”

My help? Adrenalin suddenly kicks in. Crap. Zeth did want to beat that guy to death after all. He must have attacked him or something. I let go of the door, shoving past the little Mexican man, and grabbing at the fresh clothes I put out on the bed. “Out! Get out!” I point to the door, glaringly furiously at the man; he takes the hint and hovers in the half-open door with his back to me while I get dressed.

“Okay, where is he? Show me.” He’s probably already killed that other guy by now. I don’t know why they think I can possibly stop him, but still…he’s been saying this whole time how we need to keep our heads down. How we need to not cause a disturbance, and now he’s gone and done—

I stop dead in my tracks. The fat little Mexican guy hasn’t been leading me to Zeth. He’s lead me out into the front courtyard in front of the villa, where a number of the girls from the other house are standing a circle, holding onto each other and crying, while a man on his knees is performing CPR on a body on the ground. It’s a girl. She’s wearing white sneakers and tight blue jeans, and her shirt is red. No, no her shirt’s
not
red. It’s white, but the front of it is saturated in blood. Absolutely drenched in it. The guy performing CPR stops, gasping, looking down at his hands like he doesn’t know what to do, why the girl’s not waking up when he presses down on her chest. Instinct kicks in, then. I hurry forward and shove him out of the way, not paying any attention to the startled gasps that escape the onlookers as he falls sideways. I drop to my knees and grab hold of the girl’s shirt, lifting it up.

The source of all the blood is instantly visible. A gunshot wound, just below the underwire of her bra. I roll her toward me, craning over her to check the back—is there an exit wound? No. No exit wound. Shit. And she’s been shot in the worst place possible. These days, bullets are designed to shatter inside a person, breaking into pieces to cause maximum damage to internal organs. And the internal organs close to this wound are the most fragile and most important of them all: The heart. The lungs.

“We need to get her inside. On a table.” I look up to find a dozen strained faces watching my every move. On the outskirts, I see a familiar face; it’s Michael. He’s lost in the bustle as three of the men, members of the same biker gang as Cade, hurry forward to get the girl inside. I still haven’t ascertained whether the woman’s even alive; I grab hold of her lolling arm and walk with them as they take her inside. With my index and middle fingers, I search for a pulse, find it, weak and tachycardic but there, and then—

A strangled gasp slips free from my mouth.

Oh, no. Oh, no, no...
The small star-shaped birthmark on the inside of her wrist is more than familiar to me. It’s engrained in nearly every childhood memory I have. I’ve seen it a thousand times before. I’d recognize it anywhere.

I never looked at the girl’s face, but I know it’s her.

I know it’s Alexis.

They’ve laid Alexis out on the massive kitchen table, and there are maids running everywhere squealing and crying and speaking in Spanish. The guy from before, the one who was performing CPR on her, stands beside the table, hands prepared and ready to begin compressing again.

“Get the fuck away from her!” I bulldoze my way through the people who have followed us in and shove the guy away. “She has a pulse, you idiot!”

“She isn’t breathing, though!”

“She
is
fucking breathing. She’s unconscious because she’s lost too much blood.”

The guy staggers back, running his hands through his hair, smearing blood all over his face. “Jamie’s gonna kill me. Jamie’s gonna
murder
me,” is all he says, over and over again. He’s distracting the shit out of me.

“I need….” Fuck, I have nothing that I need here. I left my medical bag at my parent’s place. I didn’t think for a second I was going to be doing any medical work here. In hindsight, that was really dumb, but there’s nothing to be done about it now.

“What? What do you need?” The guy’s gone ghostly white, his hands shaking like crazy. “Tell me and I’ll get it for you. Come on!” He’s panicking, just like me.

“I need a plastic bag, duct tape and a sewing kit. I need alcohol, prescription drugs, boiling water, towels, tweezers. The sharpest knife you can find. Go.”

Fucking back-alley surgery on my potentially dying sister… that’s what this is turning into. I’m struggling to breathe. There’s a reason why doctors never treat family members, and my racing heart is part of that reason. I’m losing my mind, and trauma surgery is an art form. Not many people can do it—it’s all about remaining calm in the face of extreme pressure, blocking out the chaos, the shouting and panic taking place around you. Your hand needs to be steady one hundred percent of the time. Right now, my hand is shaking so bad I don’t think I could pick up a pen.

“Tell me what happened. Tell me exactly what happened so I can visualise.” The guy that was here a moment ago has vanished, on a mission to find the items I asked for. Another guy steps forward, late twenties, wearing a smart shirt and a tie of all things. He’s wearing skinny jeans, which seem just as out of place as his tie. “Soph got shot,” he mumbles, scrubbing his palms against his jeans. His hands are covered in blood. I want to smash him in his face.

“I can fucking see that she’s been shot, asshole! What kind of gun was she shot with? From how far away? From what angle? ”

The guy just looks at me blankly. It’s a woman who provides the answers, a tall blonde with piercing green eyes. “We were at a meet. It went bad. We copped heat and had to run. Soph got hit with a Glock 22. A .40 calibre. The shot came from about twenty feet away, from the side, like this, but from high up.” She moves to my left, lifting her hand in the shape of gun, aiming it directly at my chest.

So she was shot from a distance, down and to the right. The bullet could be anywhere, could have torn absolutely anything apart. A sense of sheer hopelessness washes over me.
If
we were in a hospital,
if
I had a surgical team,
if
I had a sterile environment and life support machines and
time
, there
might
be a chance I could save Alexis. As it stands, in a domestic kitchen with none of those things…

“Here, I got everything you asked for.” The guy returns; he is indeed carrying all of the items I’ve asked for in his arms. He dumps it all out on the table next to Alexis, whose shallow, rapid breathing, almost unnoticeable, has quickened since she was brought inside. Her body is in massive shock. And if I do this, if I cut her open, I’m about to make it ten times worse. It could kill her.

The alternative is that I just leave her to die on this kitchen table, though, and that seems infinitely worse than not trying at all.

“Naomi?” Zeth’s larger-than-life frame fills the doorway, his face utterly blank as he takes in the fiasco in front of him. A number of the people in the kitchen turn to see who this newcomer is, but the others remain staring at Alexis. Soph, the guy called her. They know her as Soph—the girls mentioned a Sophia last night in the other house—and they all seem to care about her. “What’s going on?” Zeth asks. His voice is like a grounding rod; his presence has a strangely calming effect on me. My hands quit shaking quite so hard.

“I need the room to be cleared,” I say, my voice sounding methodical and in control. I’m not, but at least I sound like I am. Zeth nods, and I turn to my patient, snatching up the plastic bag and the duct tape. I tear the bag using my teeth and I lay a square patch of it over the wound in Alexis’ chest. I fix it in place, making sure the plastic and the duct tape form a perfect seal.

“This is her, isn’t it? What are you doing?” Zeth’s voice is the only one in the room, now. I hadn’t noticed everyone leave while I worked, but I’m thankful for the silence.

“Yeah. This is her.” I quickly tell him what the blonde told me, while I hold my hands over my mouth, watching and waiting. I count to twenty, with my hand resting on Lexi’s chest, checking to make sure she’s still breathing.

“Sloane?”

“I need to find out if her lung’s been punctured. If it has, air will be escaping through her lungs. The plastic bag will inflate as it leaves the wound.” Another five seconds. Ten. Alexis is still breathing, but the plastic doesn’t inflate.

“Her lung’s fine,” I say, ripping the plastic bag and tape from her skin. Shame I can’t do a similar sort of triage test to tell if her heart’s been grazed. The tachycardia could mean that it has, but it could also just mean that she’s in shock. Which she definitely is.

“Now what?” Zeth’s not panicking. His eyes are fixed on me, steady, focused and alert.

“Now I have to try and find the bullet.” I press down Lexi’s stomach, waiting to feel the firmness that signals peritonitis—that there’s an internal bleed somewhere. I don’t feel it, though. This means I can just follow the trajectory of the wound with the tweezers I’ve been given and hopefully, if fate is on our side, I’ll find the bullet and not have to open her up to assess the damage visually.

Zeth reacts swiftly and decisively, handing me what I need when I ask for it. I run into problems pretty much immediately. The tweezers are too short; they’re regular cosmetic ones and only reach a couple of inches into the wound. The alcohol they’ve given me to sterilize with is fucking schnapps. I have to send Zeth in search of something with less sugar and added crap; he comes back with high-grade Russian vodka and I feel like kissing him. But then, Lexi worsens further, topping everything off with agonal breathing—gasping, labored breaths, a desperately bad sign that tells me either her heart is under massive strain or she’s in renal or liver failure.

“Fuck. I don’t know what to do. Fuck!” I’m cracking. I can’t fucking do this. She’s going to die. I’ve been worried for years that she’s dead, but she hasn’t been, and now the most colossal irony of all is that she’s dying right in front of me and I can’t do a fucking thing about it.

Zeth takes the tweezers out of my hand and stalks around the other side of the kitchen table, grabbing me by the shoulders. “Sloane. Sloane, look at me.”

I don’t. I can’t. I’m staring at the pallid face of my baby sister, watching as death closes its fist around her slight frame. I know I’m crying but I can’t feel the tears. Can’t feel my rasping breaths. My body isn’t my own at the moment; it’s been taken over by a force way greater and far more powerful than me: grief.

“Sloane!” My ears ring as my head whips around. Zeth slaps me so hard I see stars. The look on his face is grim and determined. “Sloane, she’s dying. You have to think. What do you need to do?” He shakes me hard.

“I don’t know which part of her is damaged inside. It could be…it could be her heart. But then it could be…her liver. Or her kidneys. I don’t
know.
”

“Okay, well, we have to use logic. Her lips are turning blue. What does that mean?”

“Hypoxia. Lack of oxygen to the brain.”

“And what causes that?”

“Cardiac arrest. Punctured lung. Massive strain on other organs.” Anything. It could be
anything
.

“It’s not a punctured lung, we already know that. And trajectory of the wound is down and away from the heart, so it’s unlikely to be damage there, either. Cardiac arrest could come from damage to the liver and the kidneys?”

“Yes. Caused by excessive bleeding.”

“Okay. So either way we need to open her up, Sloane. We need to see what part of her is bleeding and we need to fix it.” He hands me the knife the kid found for me—mercifully it’s a scalpel. And a sharp one at that. I have no idea who this belongs to or why they have it, but it’s a small mercy. If the only instrument available to me were a vegetable knife then I would give up here and now.

“You can do this, Sloane. All you need to do is concentrate.”

I’m glancing wildly around the room, trying to think something I can do, anything, to prevent the need to cut into my sister. But there’s nothing. Absolutely nothing I can do. Zeth takes my face in his hands and holds me still, locking me in his steady gaze. “You’ve got this,” he says.