Page 23 of Break For Me
That implies breaking me was on the table.
I press my palms flat against my knees. I start to count. In for four. Hold for four. Out for four.
The counting doesn't stop my hands from shaking. It hasn't worked in days.
The routine assemblesitself out of grim necessity.
Killian improves. Slowly. His vitals stabilize. The fever breaks. His color shifts from the waxy grey of a corpse to something approaching human.
I change his dressings. I monitor the bloody output from the drain in his abdomen. I adjust his antibiotic schedule based on the limited supply Garrett managed to stockpile from some unknown source.
Killian drifts in and out of consciousness. When he’s lucid, his green eyes scan the room with a feral, suspicious intensity. He looks like a wolf caught in a steel trap. He doesn’t speak. He looks at me as a function, not a person.
Garrett handles the night shifts. He sleeps on the floor beside Killian’s table during the day. He keeps a shotgun propped against the sawhorse, always within arm's reach.
Garrett is quiet. His politeness is measured, cautious. He knows I am simultaneously indispensable and completely expendable.
Rocco is the problem.
He refuses to rest. The morning after Alessandro leaves, I find him on the porch. He’s splitting firewood with a hatchet.
He’s doing it right-handed. His left arm is cradled protectively against his ribs. The fresh white gauze on his palm is already spotting red from the violent vibration of the impact. He’s stripped to the waist despite the biting morning cold.
His breath fogs in the crisp air. Each powerful swing of the hatchet sends a visible tremor through his injured forearm.
I watch him from the doorway. He knows I’m there. He doesn't look up.
He swings. Splits. Kicks the halves off the stump with his boot. Swings again.
The rhythm is punishing. It isn't about the wood. It’s a compulsion. He’s using his body to outrun the static in his head.
The gauze on his palm turns from pink to a saturated, weeping crimson. He doesn't stop.
"You’re bleeding through the dressing," I say.
"I’m fine."
"You’re not fine. You’re reopening a deep laceration that took seventeen sutures to close. If you tear the repair, I will have to re-close it under conditions that make the first time look like a luxury suite at the Four Seasons."
He swings. The hatchet buries itself deep in the stump. He leaves it there, the handle quivering.
He turns and looks at me. His expression is a hard mix of raw contempt and pure, bone-deep exhaustion.
"I’ve been sitting on that cot for two days. I don't sit."
"Then stand. Walk. I don't care. But if you keep swinging that hatchet, you will lose the use of your fingers. I will not be responsible for the outcome."
He stares. I hold his gaze.
My adrenal system is betraying me. My heart hammers against my ribs. But I keep my voice perfectly level and my posture rigid. The only authority I possess in this place is clinical. If I let that crack, I have nothing left.
He pulls the hatchet from the stump with a grunt. For one terrifying second, I think he’s going to swing it at me.
Rationality says he needs me. Rationality says he was told not to break me. But my body takes a half-step back before my brain can stop it.
He drops the hatchet. It thuds heavily into the dirt. He walks past me into the cabin.
His shoulder clips mine as he passes. The contact is deliberate. He wants me to feel the sheer weight of him. He wants me to know that the space between us exists only because he allows it to.
