Page 4 of Break For Me
Chapter Two
ADRIAN
The copper tangof blood is heavy in the air.
It is thick enough to coat the back of my throat, masking the sterile, chemical bite of the sevoflurane and the sharp, acidic scent of the disinfectant used to scrub the theater.
The bullet fragmented on entry. It carved a jagged, spiraling path through the external oblique muscle, shearing through the fibers like a hot iron through wax. It nicked the inferior epigastric artery before lodging against the tenth rib. It sits there now, a piece of lead shrapnel burrowing into the bone.
The soldier on my table is twenty-six, maybe twenty-seven. He has Bratva ink crawling up his neck—stars and thorns that tell a story of violence I have no interest in reading. His skin is waxy and grey, the color of wet parchment.
"Pressure is ninety over fifty," Yuri says. He’s the anesthesiologist, a disgraced former resident who drinks vodka between procedures to keep his own hands from shaking. I can see the sweat beading on the rim of his blue scrub cap. "He’s sliding, Adrian. We’re losing volume faster than I can pump in saline."
"Suction."
My voice is a flat line. I don’t recognize the sound of it anymore. It’s a tool I use, like the Metzenbaum scissors or the Bovie. The surgical tech clears the field with the suction wand, a wet slurping sound echoing in the silence.
The bleeder finally reveals itself. The torn artery pulses weakly in the cavity like a severed worm. I clamp it with a forceps.Click.
My fingers don't shake. I haven't allowed them to move of their own accord in three years. Not since Baltimore.
The fragment is embedded deep in the periosteum of the rib. I work the blunt-nosed forceps around the lead, feeling the metal scrape against bone. The vibration hums up the instrument, through my wrist, and settles in my elbow.
I pull. The lead comes free with a soft, wet sound—the sound of tissue letting go. I drop it into the steel kidney basin.Clink.It sounds like a coin dropped into a collection plate.
"Irrigate."
Warm saline floods the cavity, washing away debris and clots. I run a gloved finger along the wound track, tracing the path of the trauma. The tissue is ragged, but it isn’t necrotic. No bowel perforation. No splenic involvement.
The man is lucky. If you can call taking a nine-millimeter round to the gut during a botched warehouse raid luck.
I begin the closure. It’s a ritual of layers, a slow reconstruction I’ll probably see undone within a month. Peritoneum first. Then the fascia. Then the subcutaneous tissue and finally the skin.
I place each suture exactly four millimeters apart. Three millimeters from the edge. My hands move with a mechanical rhythm.
A machine could do this. That’s the goal. Machines don't feel the heat of the blood soaking through their latex. Machines don'tnotice the "Anya" tattoo on the patient's forearm, written in a script so desperate and amateur it had to be a lover’s hand.
I don't notice it either. If I notice the tattoo, I notice the man. If I notice the man, I notice the life. And if I notice the life, I remember the girl in Baltimore.
I remember the way her small ribs felt under my hands as her heart quit. I remember the smell of her strawberry shampoo mixed with the iron of the hemorrhage. I remember the silence of the monitor after the flatline.
I tie the final knot and snip the silk. The ends are exactly two millimeters long.
"Antibiotics. Ceftriaxone and metronidazole for seventy-two hours," I tell the tech. I don't look up. I'm already mentally leaving the room. "Change the dressing every twelve. If his temperature spikes above thirty-nine, call me. Not Yuri. Yuri will be asleep."
I strip my gloves. The latex snaps against my skin. My hands underneath are pale and scrubbed raw. They are the only part of me that still functions according to the original design.
I walk out of the theater without looking at the face of the man I just saved.
The clinic has no name. It doesn’t exist on any map. It’s a renovated brownstone on East 72nd, wrapped in the skin of a high-end wellness center.
The floors are white marble, polished to a mirror finish. The lighting is recessed and soft, a glow that is supposed to be calming but feels like a lie. The abstract art on the walls cost more than the autoclave in the basement. It’s a beautiful cage, but the bars are still there, hidden behind the crown molding.
I wash my hands in the staff bathroom. The soap is bergamot-scented, a sharp, artificial citrus that burns my nostrils and clings to my skin for hours. I scrub until the skin is tight and pink. Then I scrub again.
The man in the mirror is a stranger I’ve been living with for three years. I see the sharp jaw, the high cheekbones, the glasses that hide the hollowness in my eyes. I see the grey at my temples that wasn't there before that night in Maryland.
He used to be an attending surgeon at Johns Hopkins. He used to believe that a clean conscience was a prerequisite for steady hands. He used to believe he was a god in a white coat.
