“Take off your jacket and throw it over a chair. I’ll see if I can find you a gown and gloves.” She departed, murmuring to the nurses.
One of the entry doors swung open. The porters entered, carrying the woman with the macerated foot on a stretcher. She came past him at waist level, her eyes wide with fear, the gauze padding on her foot soaked with blood. An intravenous needle and tubing was taped to the back of her left hand and a bag of clear fluid lay beside her on the stretcher. He held her gaze until the porters entered the operating suite.
“Word of advice?” Mariana said, handing him a filthy gown, a clean-ish face mask, and a used pair of gloves. “Keep some emotional distance. Empathy makes it harder, especially once the patient starts screaming. If you pass out, you are no use to the patient. Keep this in mind: Taking the foot will save her life.”
He nodded, feeling the pit of his stomach drop out.
“The gown ties in the back. Suit up—gloves and mask—and go on in. Once I scrub, I’ll be in to cut.”
Chapter 11
The windowless operating room was dark except for the bright circle of light cast onto the patient by a lantern hanging from an IV pole. The woman lay on an operating table—narrow, the width of an adult torso, no rails. Two nurses, one on each side of the patient, tightened a broad strap around her hips. Moving with wordless teamwork, never taking their hands off the patient, they threaded a second strap under her arms and secured it. They lifted the patient’s arms off her belly onto the two hinged wings of the table and strapped them down. Finally, the wings swung perpendicularly out from the body, locking into place, completing the macabre crucifixion-like tableau.
Mariana bumped the door behind Daniel and entered the room back first, hands in air. “Come closer,” she said, turning toward the patient. She walked toward the right side of the operating table.
He joined her, elbow to elbow, not daring to touch anything—though the patient was so filthy, sterility seemed impossible. The woman’s intact leg, he now saw, was tied tightly at the calf, but her injured leg, painted with orangey-brown disinfectant, was free to allow manipulation.
A shiver ran up his spine.
The nurse at the foot of the table rolled an instrument tray closer. He glimpsed an array of instruments, some of which were familiar from visits to his dad’s operating room: hemostats, surgical brushes, curved needles and silk, a scalpel. And a hand saw. Over to one side of the tray, a lit can of Sterno sat a bit apart, with thin metal rods the length of a crochet hook glowing red at the tips.
“What’re those?” he asked.
Mariana followed his gaze to the blue flame. “For cauterization. Stops bleeding in the smaller blood vessels.” She pulled on a pair of sterile surgical gloves. “I need help manipulating the leg while I amputate the foot. When I tell you to hold her, immobilize her. She’s going to panic, kick hard. It’s going to take force to keep her still. You will bruise her. It can’t be helped.”
He nodded, jaw muscles tight with determination.
She switched from English to check if the nurses were ready. The nurse at the patient’s head gave a one-word reply that the nurse at the lower extremities echoed.
“Okay,” Mariana said. “Let us begin.”
He grasped the woman’s thigh above her knee, one hand on each side and tightened his grip.
Mariana nodded, and the nurse pulled off the blood-soaked padding.
The patient cried out. Her leg jumped with unexpected force. He tightened, too late to keep her immobile.
Mariana caught his eye. “And that’s nothing,” she said, picking up the scalpel. “Try bracing your hip against the table. Bear down.”
He pressed his sore hip into the table and pushed down so hard on the woman’s leg he feared snapping the bone.
“More,” Mariana said.
He tightened more.
Mariana grasped the right leg as if she were preparing to slice a loaf of French bread. The patient jumped, crying out, but the leg did not move. “Good, Daniel. Let’s do it.” She lowered the scalpel.
The patient bucked. Screamed. Writhed in agony. He held her with barbaric force. “Jesus,” he muttered, his stomach sour. “Oh, Jesus.” He’d never overpowered a woman before. He felt savage, brutish.
Mariana cut quickly, working seamlessly with the nurses, who anticipated every need, quickly handing her hemostats, cauterizing rods, and other instruments.
On the periphery of his consciousness, he saw Brenna come in. Moving silently, she taped the surgery, her face a grimace behind the lens.
Mariana worked efficiently, her concentration absolute. Finished with the scalpel, she handed it back to the nurse and held her hand out.
The nurse placed the saw in her waiting hand.
He flinched reflexively, inadvertently nudging Mariana’s shoulder.
She paused, saw hovering over the shattered bone. “Daniel. What kind of information do you need for your interview?”
The unexpected question jarred him. “What? Oh. Umm…” It came to him, what the surgeon was doing. Distracting him. Okay. “Well. Tell me about your patients.”
She positioned the saw over the bone. “Eighty percent are civilians,” she said, drawing back the blade to make the initial groove the saw would follow on the power stroke. “Most of the wounds we treat are from shells and bullets.” Her voice was calm and clinical as she pushed the blade forward with force. “As you can see, massive tissue destruction is characteristic. Even with debridement the wounds always get infected because foreign material gets sucked in behind the shrapnel.”
He concentrated on her voice, forcing himself to tune out the screams, the patient’s frenzied thrashing, the rhythmic sound of the saw biting through bone, the thud as the bottom half of the woman’s leg hit the floor. All he wanted was to run out of this chamber, this city of horrors. But he tuned that out, too.
When the surgery was over and the patient taken to the recovery area, he stood, dazed, in the circle of lantern light, grateful for the silence. At some point, he realized, Brenna had left, but he didn’t know when.
Mariana spread her hands on the blood-drenched edge of the operating table, stepped back to stretch, and hung her head with exhaustion.
She did this every day. Many times over. Depleted as he felt, he couldn’t imagine how she survived this life, if not for the love for the people in her care. He felt humbled, standing in her presence.
She straightened, peeled off her gloves and tossed them in the stainless steel bucket that now held the amputated foot, shoe and all. “You did great,” she said. “Most people would have ended up on the floor.”
“For a minute there, I thought I would,” he admitted. “Thanks for the distraction.”
“Do you remember anything I said?”
“Honestly?”
She smiled, then turned serious. “And you? Do you have anything for your pain?”
He shouldn’t have been surprised she’d read his body language as well as her patient’s. “Pills. In my jacket.”
“I’ll get you some water. Then…I still have others upstairs, waiting.”
“Bring them on,” he said, though the last thing he wanted was more of this.
Hours later, it was over. Mariana hugged him, an arm around his waist, after he’d stripped off the gown, mask, and gloves. “Nap time for me,” she said. “I’ll take you back upstairs.”
He rubbed his brow. “Actually, I need a few minutes. I don’t suppose there’s anywhere quiet that I can—”
“The back staircase. No one uses it now that the northern wing has been destroyed. I sit there sometimes myself.”
“I’ll follow you.”
She took a candle and led him through the rear exit of the surgical unit to the ground level of the staircase. “Right here. It’s private. One flight up, the door exits at the end of the hallway where the stockroom is.”
“If you see Brenna, would you tell her where I am?”
“I will.” Mariana
hesitated. “Personal question. You’re attracted to her?”
He leaned against the wall, butt resting on his hands, and studied the floor, gathering his thoughts. “I’m drawn to her, powerfully, but—”
“But—?” she prompted.
“Kavsak is intense. Brenna is a woman that every man covets.” He quirked a corner of his mouth, shot her a glance. “I’ve been celibate for two years.”
“It is difficult to distinguish what is artificial from what is authentic.”
“Yeah.” He paused. “I see glimpses of great spirit, you know? Of kindness and generosity. Her fragility—life has touched her. It implies emotional depth. But, still. Trying to see the real her? Smoke and mirrors. Reflections on glass.”
“She has shields,” Mariana agreed. “I am not convinced Brenna was ever truly domesticated. She was young when she lost her mother. And her father…well. Whatever taming may have occurred, the war has undone. But she is dedicated, unwavering in what she commits to. Honorable, guided by her own sense of justice. She has heart—more than most people imagine.”
“It’s rare to find a smuggler who isn’t interested in money?”
Mariana chuckled, then turned serious again. “I fear that Brenna has been clinging to Kavsak so long, she doesn’t know how to let go.”
Brenna dug in the camera bag that Jasha had retrieved for her from the car and pulled out a small flashlight. Its light was dim, but sufficient to take the stairs by. She twisted the doorknob, descended the stairs, and found Daniel sitting at the base of the wall, his jacket in his lap, his eyeglasses folded in his hand. He was sound asleep.
She crouched, set the bag and camera on the floor and lifted the glowing light so she could see him better. A small dry sound cracked in her throat. He looked so beaten. She could see his age tonight, the lines that appeared at the corners of the eyes and mouth when a forty-something man was exhausted.
Her heart tumbled crazily, filled with pride in him for his courage in the operating room. It had been difficult for her to film the surgery, but Daniel had felt the patients’ agony in his own hands. It had to have been gut-wrenching for him. Beneath his unpretentious manner, he was a tough, disciplined, morally courageous man.
He was the man she had stopped believing existed.
She knelt back on her heels, her eyes poring over him. He was grimacing, his expression as pained as it had been in the surgical suite. She lifted her hand, feather-light, to the deep vertical lines between his brows. The backs of her fingers scarcely skimmed his skin but the contact felt electric, as if all the attraction she felt for him were concentrated in that small imprint. Slowly, softly, she smoothed the worry lines, smiling when they eased.
Daniel stirred. His eyes opened slowly.
She snatched her hand back.
His nostrils flared briefly. He took a steadying breath. “Don’t stop,” he whispered, his blue eyes riveted on her.
Her fingers curled inward, hiding in her palm.
He reached forward, caught her elbows with his fingertips and tugged gently, bringing her toward his chest. His eyes drifted to her mouth.
He was going to kiss her! Her heart started banging. She shot to her feet.
“Morgue is next.”
He got up. Came toward her.
“Two hundred fifty bodies in a facility built for ten,” she said, stumbling backwards. “No refrigeration, and the drains are clogged with bits of tissue.”
He advanced, crowding her as gently as if she were injured wildlife.
Bosom rising and falling, face burning, she backed into the wall.
“Well,” he said, tipping his face to one side to study her. “Interesting reaction.” He slid his palms around the nape of her neck and tipped her face so she had to look at him. “Is that because you don’t want me to kiss you—or because you do?”
Her breath hitched.
Raptly attentive, he scrutinized her face, her eyes, the corners of her mouth for signs of acquiescence. He dipped forward, bringing his lips within a breath’s distance of hers, hovering but not settling.
She swayed, drawn to him—and afraid of the pull.
He followed in sensuous chase, keeping scant distance between them, mesmerizing her.
She caught her breath. Parted her lips. I don’t know.
Ever since she’d met him, she had been slipping along the shoulder of a crumbling mountain, inexorably sliding down the incline into his arms. He’d eased past her barriers with simple acts of kindness, waiting with arms that promised shelter. He wakened her heart, made her want to share her soul.
But Kavsak was circling him, waiting with sharp talons and razor beak. No, no, no, she thought. She couldn’t risk attachment again.
And yet.
Her hands left the cold wall and clasped his waist, to push him away or draw him nearer, she didn’t know.
The sexual ache spreading through her was pulling her as irresistibly as the moon pulled the tides, as gravity pulled Newton’s apple. It had been so long since she’d experienced intimacy. It could just be sex, she told herself. She could separate the physical from the emotional. Before Ari, she had done it all the time. She tucked her chin against her chest and haltingly leaned into Daniel, lost to the pull, a touch-starved coward standing way too close to an enticing man.
He slid his face alongside hers with a low sigh. Inhaled the scent of her. Pressed light kisses into her hair, her temple, her ear. Guiding her face with gentle hands, he brought his mouth down on hers. Lips pressed to lips, he encroached by increments, savoring her without hurry.
This wasn’t the kiss she had expected: hard, possessive. It was a tendril slipping through her, winding through her core, tugging at her, gathering her to him with surreptitious strength, curling its way down her lower back to a breathtakingly-vulnerable erotic zone.
His hands slid down her neck over her shoulders and landed softly on her breasts. His thumbs circled her nipples, trapped beneath her snug sports bra. “Too tight,” he murmured, tugging her shirt from her waistband, slipping his warm hands up her torso, easing toward the back, seeking the tiny hooks.
“In front,” she whispered, aiding and abetting her own fall down the slope.
The backs of his fingers nestled between her breasts. He released her. “Better,” he groaned, capturing her in his hands, his thumbs skillfully provoking her nipples to aroused peaks, his kisses in the hollows of her neck mimicking the tempo of his fingers, catching her up in erotic rhythm.
She hesitated fractionally, frightened by what she was allowing. But her hands set a course of their own, traveling over the ridges of his muscled chest and shoulders, exploring the contours of his solid torso.
His body skimmed hers, his eyes dark with wanting.
She circled her arms around his back, pulled him forward. He brought his mouth down to hers again with exquisite gentleness, his lips sensuously grazing hers, stoking her.
A soft moan escaped her. She closed her eyes. Just feel the pleasure of body meeting body, she told herself. Keep your distance. Emotion devastates. Especially in this city.
Deepening his kiss, rousing her long-dormant craving, he drew her against the hard plane of his body. Even with his jeans and her cargo pants between them, she felt him clearly. She tipped her hips forward, instinctively seeking more intimate contact.
He groaned, caught a shuddering breath, traced light whorls down her spine with his fingertips, moving lower and lower, until her clothing deterred him. He tugged at her belt buckle, the button of her pants, her zipper, freeing space for his hands. His fingertips roamed down her back, tracing their sensuous pattern in the sensitive trough just above the curve of her bottom.
She felt the heat rising off him, mingling with her own. Her palms followed the trench of muscles down his back, clutched his buttocks and pulled him closer. She wanted this connection—needed it with more hunger than she had realized. She’d been alone for so long.
He hooked his thumbs over her waistband and her p
anties, slipped them down the curve of her hips and let them fall to her ankles. She bent over, bracing herself on his forearm. Yanking at her shoelaces, she kicked off her boots, pulled her feet out of her pants, and turned to him.
She fumbled with his belt, popped the steel button on his jeans, traced his bulk with the backs of her fingers, reveling in his sheer maleness, arousing herself as well as him. She eased his zipper down, grasped his pants and the tops of his boxers, and slid his clothing to the floor. He was so engorged he stood straight up, his skin so taut it glistened.
He would fill her as she had never been filled before.
He captured her bottom in his palms, tipped his naked hips forward. Pelvis to pelvis, he incited her. His hands joined the conspiracy, drawing her tightly, releasing her in synchrony with the advance and retreat of his hips. His urgency heightened, his body hiding nothing of his growing desire for her.
She lifted her knee, wrapped her leg around him, clinging to him for balance.
He grasped the base of his shaft and dipped the head of his penis into her warm crease. Her breath caught with an involuntary gasp, released with a formless moan of pleasure. His flesh was hot. She opened herself, offering greater access. He pressed forward, gliding down her intimate tissues, soaking himself in her slickness. Press in. Press in. She couldn’t catch her breath to invite him.
He grimaced, the meeting of aroused flesh so exquisite he seemed scarcely able to endure it himself. And still he drew back, trailing her wet path, arousing her, teasing her. He pressed against her, crossed her tender nub this way then that, caught the edge of the orgasm she was building, and retreated. Ripples of pleasure popped on the periphery of her senses, building a wild need. Each time he neared her moist center, she tipped forward, desperately trying to draw him wholly inside herself. He teased her with partial incursion and withdrew. He was preparing her, she realized. She would need to be fully wet to take him in.
“Now,” she whispered breathlessly. I’m ready.
Day Three Page 16
