Page 70 of Break For Me
My hands do not shake. They have not shaken since the floor of that auto shop, since the moment a man put his palm against my back and told me to breathe.
I repair the tendons. I debride the damaged synovial sheaths. I irrigate the wound thoroughly with warm saline.
The work takes hours. I don’t count them. The minutes pass in the focused, consuming quiet of a surgeon performing the procedure he was born to perform. The patient on the table is the man I was born to perform it on.
I close the wound. Layer by meticulous layer. The fascia first. Then the subcutaneous tissue. Then the skin. I use interrupted sutures, 5-0 nylon. I tie each knot with the specific spacing and tension I’ve been perfecting since the first night in the cabin.
The wound closes for the fourth time. The suture line is clean, perfect. The repair is the best work I have ever done. It is better than my work at Hopkins. It is better because the stakes are personal in a way medical school never prepared me for.
I dress the wound with sterile gauze. I apply a custom splint to protect the repair. I remove the drapes.
The monitor beeps its steady rhythm. His vitals are perfectly stable. Heart rate sixty-two. The resting rate of a body so conditioned to trauma that even general anesthesia can’t push it below sixty.
I step back from the table. I strip my gloves, the latex snapping loudly in the quiet room. I look at my hands. They are clean, steady, and unmarked. They are the hands that rebuilt his nerve, his tendons, his palm.
The scrub nurse begins the wake-up protocol. I leave the operating room to wash my hands.
He wakesup in a bed that has sheets.
The infirmary has four private rooms. Rocco is in the one farthest from the hall. It was a decision I made. He needs the quiet.
The room is clean, smelling faintly of bleach and clean linen. There is a single window with heavy curtains. A bedside table holds a glass of water. A comfortable chair sits beside the bed, which I have occupied for the duration of his recovery.
His eyes open. The transition is gradual this time. It is not the explosive, combat-ready emergence I’ve learned to brace for. Slow, foggy surfacing. His body has finally been given permission to rest.
His pupils adjust to the low light. His gaze moves across the ceiling, traces the IV pole, and then drops. It finds me.
"Hey," he says. His voice is rough, hoarse from the intubation tube. But it is soft. A word I have never heard from him without a sharp edge.
"Your nerve repair is intact," I tell him immediately, keeping my voice level. "The flexor tendons are debrided and healing. You’ll need occupational therapy for six weeks, but you’ll regain full function."
He looks at his left hand. It is splinted, thickly bandaged, and elevated on a pillow.
He flexes the fingers. Gently. The movement is extremely cautious. The fourth and fifth digits respond. They are sluggish, but the neural signal is traveling. The muscles obey the command.
He stares at his fingers for a long time. The silence stretches.
"You fixed it," he says.
"I fixed it."
He turns his head on the pillow and looks at me. His face is different in this light. The bruises on his jaw and cheek are fading to yellow. The nasty split on his cheekbone is now justa thin pink line. He looks years younger without the tension pulling his features tight.
"You need to go," he says.
The words arrive without preamble. The same blunt delivery he always uses.
"The Russians think you turned," he continues. "Or died. You’re off their radar. Alessandro can set you up. New identity. Relocation. He has enough money to put your sister somewhere safe. You disappear. You start over. You go back to being a doctor."
"I am a doctor."
"A real doctor. In a hospital. With a license. A life that doesn’t involve stitching up monsters in cabins in the woods."
I look at him. The man on the bed. The monster he keeps calling himself. The hammer. The dog. The man who caught a knife blade in his bare hand to protect me. The man who blew up a building to cover my escape.
"No," I say.
"Adrian—"
