Chapter 16 - The Surgeon's Needle
The private medical wing in the lower level of the Hart Manor looked like something out of a high-end research hospital.
While the city of Chicago woke to news reports of a “multi-vehicle gas main explosion” on the Michigan Avenue bridge, two private trauma surgeons were working under high-intensity surgical lamps in the basement of Lake Forest.
I refused to leave the corridor.
I sat in a hard vinyl chair, still wearing the ruined, torn emerald velvet gown, my bare arms covered in Gabriel’s blood. Mrs. Gable had tried three times to bring me tea, tried to convince me to go back to the carriage house to check on Eli, but I couldn't move.
“Eli is sleeping, Clara,” Mrs. Gable said gently, placing a warm wool blanket over my shivering shoulders. “Leo is standing outside his bedroom door. The boy is safe. You need to wash your hands, child.”
I looked down at my hands. Gabriel’s blood had dried under my fingernails, dark and crusted.
“He took the blast for me,” I whispered, my voice hollow. “He threw himself over me. The shrapnel tore his back to ribbons.”
The heavy double doors of the operating room swung open.
Dr. Chen, a stern, gray-haired surgeon in green scrubs, walked out, pulling his mask down around his neck. He looked exhausted, but his eyes were clear.
I jumped to my feet, the wool blanket falling to the floor.
“Doctor?”
“He’s stable, Miss Vance,” Dr. Chen said, offering a weary, respectful nod. “The shrapnel shredded the trapezius and cracked two ribs, but missed the spinal column and the pleural cavity. He lost nearly three pints of blood, but his heart is like an engine. We’ve closed the lacerations and started a transfusion.”
I let out a ragged breath that sounded like a sob, burying my face in my bloodstained hands.
“Can I see him?”
“He’s coming out of the anesthesia now,” Dr. Chen replied. “Ten minutes. Then he needs to rest.”
I didn't wait. I pushed through the swinging doors into the recovery room.
Gabriel lay on a narrow hospital bed, stripped to the waist, thick white bandages wrapping his entire torso. An IV drip was connected to his right arm, slowly pumping dark blood back into his veins.
His face was colorless, the scar on his cheekbone standing out in sharp, stark relief.
I walked slowly to the side of the bed, my bare feet silent on the linoleum.
As I reached the bedside rail, his eyelids fluttered open.
The slate gray of his eyes was cloudy from the morphine, but the second he saw me, the monitor beside his bed gave a sudden, rapid series of beeps as his pulse spiked.
“Clara,” he croaked, his voice barely a rasp.
“I’m here,” I whispered, reaching out and gently wrapping my fingers around his cold, uninjured hand.
He squeezed my fingers with surprising strength.
“You’re covered in blood,” he said, his brow furrowing weakly. “Are you hurt?”
“It’s your blood, you idiot,” I said, a tear slipping down my nose and dropping onto the white hospital sheet. “You almost died on that bridge.”
“I’m not... that easy to kill,” he murmured, his thumb moving slowly over my knuckles. He looked at the ruined velvet of my dress, then up at the dark circles beneath my eyes. “Salvatore Moretti... signed his own death warrant tonight.”
“Forget Moretti,” I choked out, leaning closer until my forehead rested against the edge of his mattress. “Just heal. Please, Gabriel. Just heal.”
Gabriel reached up with his free hand, his fingertips trembling slightly as he brushed a strand of tangled auburn hair away from my face.
“Clara,” he whispered, his voice holding an intimacy so raw it shattered the last defenses around my heart. “When that car hit us... the only thought in my head was that you couldn't die. Not you. Not Arthur’s girl.”
I lifted my head, my eyes meeting his.
“I’m not going anywhere, Gabriel,” I promised him. “I’m staying right here.”
A look of profound, uncharacteristic peace washed over his hard features. His hand slipped from my hair to cup the side of my neck, his thumb resting over the racing pulse beneath my jaw.
“Then we fight them together,” he whispered.
May you like
And as the morphine pulled him back under into the healing darkness, his fingers never let go of mine.
***