Doc let out a shaky breath and peeled his eyes open. His hands shifted, and something rolled out from underneath one of them. On instinct, he lunged to catch it, only to plop down onto the cold floor, his knees buckling under his weight.
His fingers closed on a small, heavy object, and he stared at it in wonder. A bullet.
I did it. He slipped the bullet into his coat pocket.
Once again, the beeping pulled him out of his head. Slow, it was still too slow.
“Tiffany!” His dry throat produced little to no sound. He cleared it and drew all of his remaining strength, pouring it into a single word, “Tiffany!”
The door flew open, revealing the nurse’s pale face. Doc propped himself up against the wall. “Blood,” he breathed. “You got two minutes.”
“I’m on it.”
Closing the doors behind her, she dashed to the nurses’ room, only to run out a second later, empty-handed. “That was all we had,” she said, eyes pointing at the empty blood bags next to Pain’s gurney.
She crossed the room and peered at him. Doc thought she said something, but the room tilted.
A second later, it all went black.
Chapter 27
The waiting room doors opened, and Dave sat up straight when he saw Tiffany.
“We need B-positive! Marco, get back here!” she yelled, before turning to Skull. “Brad, Aidan, Miguel—find them.”
“They’re all out working,” Skull said, shaking his head.
Marco hurried past them with a scowl and disappeared through the waiting room doors, bumping into Tiffany.
She ignored him and looked around, scowling. Her lips moved, as if going through a mental list, until her eyes fell on Dave.
She blinked. “You’re O-negative, right?”
“Shit, yes!” He jumped from his chair.
The others followed them, Ryan catching up to Jane, Skull saying something in his rumbling voice.
“Just these two,” Tiffany said, shutting the infirmary doors in Jane’s face. “The bed on her other side,” she told Dave, pointing at Pain.
Marco stood over her, unmoving. Dave avoided locking eyes with him as he walked across the room and sat on the bed next to Pain’s gurney.
Tiffany went to Pain next and flipped her over, all pale skin and dark blood, while Marco reclined on his bed. Her hands moved with professional confidence as she drove a needle into the crook of Marco’s elbow, the heart rate monitor providing a grim soundtrack. Dave barely registered what happened next, and how his own flesh was pierced with a needle, because his eyes were glued to Pain.
Blood was everywhere.
She lay on her back, her face turned toward him. Half of it was covered in drying blood, more seeping from the shallow wound on her temple. Her gear lay heavy upon her, soaked through.
Dave twisted his head to the side, searching for Doc. A small sound tore from his throat when he found Doc unconscious on the floor.
Dave looked up at Tiffany but caught Marco’s stare instead. Shut up about it, Marco’s eyes said. Tiffany’s focus was only on Pain. Dave opened his mouth, then snapped it shut, realizing that the nurse knew what she was doing. She had probably checked on Doc already.
Silence hung heavy between them. Dave listened to Pain’s heart rate monitor, his own heart thumping three times faster in his chest. If she didn’t make it…
He forced himself to focus on Tiffany’s hands as they worked on a flesh wound just above Pain’s hip. Although it didn’t look life-threatening, it was still bleeding. But it only took Tiffany a couple of minutes to stitch it up, and she moved on to the head wound.
“Is she going to make it?” Dave dared to ask.
“She’d better,” a male voice said to his left.
He turned, finding Doc sitting up against the wall, eyes open. Dave’s breath caught in his throat when he saw Doc’s hair. “What happened here?”
Doc’s weary gaze rose to him, if only for a second, before he switched his attention to Tiffany and Pain again. “You asked me to save her—I saved her.”
“How?”
“It’s a long story.”
“But… your hair,” Dave said. He’d been so relieved that Pain was alive, he hadn’t even stopped to think how it happened.
Doc’s eyebrows twitched, his hand rising to feel at his head. “What, did it fall out?” Dave shook his head, eyes wide. “Thank God. We’ve got enough bald fuckers here already.”
Doc got up with a grunt. He shuffled to Tiffany’s side, grasping everything he could reach for support, then paused and stared at Dave. “What’s he doing here?”
“We didn’t have time,” she said. “He’s O-negative.”
“Oh. Right.” He frowned at something, then shrugged and turned back to Tiffany.
She looked up at him, eyes troubled. “You shouldn’t be up. Get some rest, I got this.”
“I have no doubt about that,” Doc said. “How long have I been in here alone?”
“Eight minutes and forty seconds,” Tiffany answered without missing a beat.
“Wow,” Doc mouthed. “Felt like hours. Well, you guys can start praying she’s not brain-dead,” he said with disturbing casualness, and walked away. He paused by the mirror, whistling. “Jesus, Tiff, did you see this?” His fingers ran through the silver hair on his temple. “There’s something you don’t see every day.”
His voice receded into the background as Dave processed what he’d just heard. Brain-dead. He hadn’t even thought about it, that it might just be her body that Doc had saved. And the way he had said it…
Dave blinked, yanking himself out of his head. His eyes locked for a moment with Marco’s dead stare, and he could read the same worry in them. Or maybe, Marco had been thinking about it all along, having dealt with this before, unlike Dave.
Tiffany grumbled something under her breath, clearly not happy about Doc’s lighthearted comment. He seemed like
