Page 31 of Break For Me
The truck hits a deep pothole, jarring my spine. Killian’s head shifts heavily against my thigh. I steady him with my free hand, my fingers automatically finding the pulse point at his carotid artery. Sixty-eight beats per minute. Stronger than it was at the cabin. The fluid resuscitation is holding.
I check his abdominal dressing. It’s intact, though the edges are damp with sweat. The drain is clamped and coiled against his side. His breathing is deep and regular, the sedation finally wearing off in stages. His eyelids twitch with the early architecture of REM sleep.
He’ll live. Barring a catastrophe—sepsis, a blown suture, a bullet through the rear window—he will live.
I look through the small rear window of the cab. I can see the back of Rocco’s shaved head in the passenger seat. He’s leaning heavily against the headrest, his thick neck corded with tension. His left arm is braced against the center console. The fresh gauze on his hand is already saturated, a dark stain spreading down his wrist and dripping onto the gearshift.
Garrett drives the way he does everything—focused, mechanical. He’s done combat evacuations before and it shows. The road is two lanes, unlit. The trees press in on both sides like the walls of a corridor that is narrowing, suffocating us in the dark.
The gun sits cold against my hip. I keep my index finger extended along the frame. The metal is warm now from my bodyheat, a detail I wish my brain would stop registering. It feels like a living parasite, feeding on my warmth.
The motel appearsout of the dark like a fever-induced hallucination.
It’s a single-story, L-shaped building with a buzzing neon sign that’s missing three letters:MO_EL. The parking lot is cracked asphalt, holding two other vehicles, both rusted out and older than I am. The office window glows a sickly yellow, a beacon of despair in the night.
Garrett kills the engine. The silence rushes in, heavy and ringing in my ears.
"Wait here," he says.
He goes inside. I watch through the grimy window. The man behind the counter doesn't look up from his newspaper. Cash changes hands. No ID. No questions. This is a place where questions are a professional liability.
Garrett comes back with a key. It’s an actual brass key on a cheap plastic fob with the room number worn down to a ghost.
"Room 12. End of the row," he says.
He drives the truck around to the back of the building. We park in the deep shadows, away from the weak road lights.
The room is exactly what the decaying exterior promises. It smells of stale cigarette smoke, industrial cleaner, and a profound, lingering despair. Two queen-sized beds with coverlets the color of nicotine stains. A television bolted to the dresser. A bathroom with a door that doesn't lock and a showerhead that’s calcified to a single, useless angle. The carpet is the kind that absorbs sound and ugly history in equal measure.
We carry Killian in first. Garrett takes the legs, I take the head. We shuffle through the narrow doorway, careful not tojar the fresh incision. We settle him onto the bed nearest the bathroom.
I reconnect the IV line to a new bag of saline. I hang it from the curtain rod using a wire hanger bent into a hook. I check his vitals. Stable. I check his dressing. Dry. I adjust the drain tube. He sleeps through all of it, his body committed to the business of repair.
Rocco comes in last.
He walks through the door under his own power, which is an achievement that would be impressive if it weren't so profoundly stupid. His skin is the color of wet cement. His left hand drips a trail of blood across the filthy carpet—a dotted line from the threshold to the second bed.
He sits heavily on the edge of the mattress and stares at the wall. His expression is vacant, inward. It’s the look of a man whose body has filed its final appeal and been denied.
I close the door. I lock it. The deadbolt is flimsy—a single good kick would take it off its hinges. But the sound of the lock engaging produces a sensation in my chest that I can only describe as structural. Something settling into place. Something closing.
We are in a room. The four of us—the patient, the medic, the enforcer, and me.
Garrett positions himself in the chair by the window. He lays the shotgun across his knees. His eyes are on the dark parking lot. He will watch the perimeter.
I will watch the bodies.
"Sit still," I tell Rocco.
I walk over to him. He doesn't look at me. He’s staring at a water stain on the wallpaper that looks like a skull.
"I need to look at your hand," I say.
He holds it out. The movement is stiff.
The sutures have torn. Four of the seventeen I placed, the ones along the ulnar border where the tissue is thinnest, have pulled clean through. The wound is gaping open in that section, the edges ragged and angry. The wound bed oozes a steady seep of dark blood.
I open my bag on the bed beside him. I arrange my instruments on a clean towel. Forceps. Needle driver. Suture—4-0 nylon, the same gauge I used the first time. Saline. Gauze. Betadine.
