Page 85 of Break For Me
The infirmary is perfectly quiet.The attending physician has already gone home for the night. The clinical suite is empty except for the glowing monitors, the expensive equipment, and the two of us.
He helps me onto the paper-lined exam table. The simple physical effort of climbing from the car to the medical suite has cost me the absolute last of my reserves. My arms shake. My legs shake. The broken rib clicks loudly with every single breath.
"Lie back. Carefully."
I lie back. The paper crinkles loudly under me. The fluorescent light is a harsh, white plane above my face. I close my eyes against the glare.
His hands arrive. Warm. Sure. They palpate my left chest wall. He finds the fracture site instantly. I know he finds it because his long fingers pause.
And I feel the tremor. Through his fingertips. Into my ribs. His hands are still shaking.
"Sixth rib. Displaced. The fracture ends have shifted—I can feel the override." His voice is clinical, but there is a distinct, heavy weight beneath it. "I need imaging to confirm it, but the displacement is lateral. No pneumothorax. You're incredibly lucky."
"Lucky isn't the word I'd use."
"Lucky is exactly the word I'd use. The rifle round hit the plate carrier directly over the fracture site. Without the carrierabsorbing it, you'd have a flail segment and a collapsed lung right now."
He wraps me. Wide elastic bandage, figure-eight pattern. The tight compression stabilizes the rib. His hands circle my thick torso. The extreme proximity brings his face very close to mine. I can see the deep exhaustion lines around his eyes. The fatigue in his jaw. The dried blood flaking on his collar—Dmitri's, mine, I don't know. The blood has become a communal substance.
His fingers fumble the tape. A tiny misstep—the adhesive folds on itself. He peels it apart and tries again. His jaw tightens. The tremor is worse now that the adrenaline has nowhere to go. These are the same hands that drove an elbow into Dmitri's radial nerve. That found the anatomical snuffbox and pressed until a man screamed. These hands ended a life tonight by knowing exactly where to hit.
He secures the wrap tightly with medical tape. He pulls back. His hand comes down and rests on my shoulder. It is not diagnostic. It stays firmly in place after the physical examination is completely over.
The fingers tremble against my trapezius.
Elena appears in the doorway twenty minutes later.
She's changed out of her pajamas. Rory found her something to wear, a borrowed sweater that is far too large in the shoulders. Her hair is damp from a shower. She's been crying again—the redness around her eyes is fresh.
She crosses the room slowly. She stops exactly three feet from the exam table. She looks up at me the way you look up at a tall building.
"Does it hurt?" she asks.
The question is so simple. So incredibly civilian. So completely outside the brutal vocabulary of my life. Nobody asksme if it hurts. The standing assumption is that pain is simply a given. A constant.
"Yeah," I say, my voice rough. "It hurts."
She nods slowly. She reaches into the oversized pocket of the borrowed sweater and pulls out a small chocolate bar. Cheap gold foil. She holds it out to me.
"Rory showed me where the vending machine is down the hall. I thought you might want something. I don't..." She pauses. Her lower lip trembles violently. "I don't know what else to do."
I take the chocolate bar. The foil crinkles loudly in my right hand. The gesture is so incredibly small and human that something happens deep in my chest that has absolutely nothing to do with the broken rib. Something stubborn loosens. Shifts.
"Thank you," I say.
She looks at me. She looks past me at Adrian, who is still standing right behind me with his hand resting heavily on my shoulder. His fingers are resting on my trapezius muscle with an unconscious, effortless intimacy.
Elena sees the hand. She sees the placement. It is not clinical. It is possessive. Familiar.
Her eyes widen slightly. The realization arrives. She looks at her brother. Her brother looks calmly back at her. A silent, volumes-deep conversation passes rapidly between them.
Elena nods. A small, incredibly private gesture.I see. It's okay. We'll talk later.
She turns. She walks to the door. She pauses on the threshold.
"Adrian?"
"Yeah."
