Total pages in book: 180
Estimated words: 168587 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 843(@200wpm)___ 674(@250wpm)___ 562(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 168587 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 843(@200wpm)___ 674(@250wpm)___ 562(@300wpm)
“Get me the nurse who is here and assigned to her,” I snap at him. He turns and runs out of the room.
I lay her lifeless body back down, tucking the blanket up underneath her and running my hands up and down her to warm her up. “I’m here, Lake. I’m here.”
The door opens, and the guy returns with another man wearing blue scrubs. “You can’t be in here,” he growls, looking at her and then to us.
“Is her jaw broken?” Gavin asks.
My head swings to him. “Why the fuck would you ask him that?”
“Is her jaw broken?” he asks again, looking up at the man in scrubs.
“No,” he finally answers, squaring his shoulders as if he’s getting an attitude.
Gavin looks back down at her chart. “Then why is her jaw wired shut?”
“What?” I snap. I turn back to my wife and pull up her top lip, and my heart stops at what I see. It looks like braces. Individual brackets on her teeth with wires running up and down diagonally, keeping her upper teeth tied to her lower teeth.
“She was biting,” the guy responds. “Drew blood.”
I lift my head to look at him.
“Restraints?” Ryat growls. “She’s sedated, for fuck’s sake.”
“She was combative.” He lifts his chin.
I grab the nearest thing to me, which is a silver tray sitting on top of a rolling cart, and raise it, slamming it into the side of his face. “I’ll show you combative.”
He’s thrown backward where he falls to the floor, landing on his knees, and I kick him in the face, blood splatters everywhere. I pick him up by his hair and slam his face into the end of the footboard, making it rattle. Falling to the floor, he cries, holding his now busted face.
I stand to my full height, breathing heavily. My adrenaline racing. Gavin walks over to Lake and looks at her mouth. “Can you get them off?” I ask, trying to calm my racing heart.
“Yeah. There doesn’t seem to be any screws. It looks to only be on the outer surface of her teeth. But I’m going to need help.”
“Meaning?” I shout, fisting my already busted knuckles.
“Meaning, I’m going to need an OR. A private one. I can’t take her just anywhere if we don’t want whoever dropped her off here to find out where she went.”
“The Cathedral isn’t an option.” Ryat sighs.
There is a triage set up there underneath the building, but Gavin is right. We can’t take her anywhere that a Lord could possibly find out we have her. And any other hospital will have too many eyes on us. Even if Blackout was still a standing structure, the basement wouldn’t be equipped with everything he’d need for her surgery. It barely had enough when she was stabbed.
“I know a place,” I say, pulling out my cell and sending a text.
ME: I need your help.
He responds immediately.
Anything you need.
“Transport isn’t going to be easy. We need to keep her sedated for now. If I wake her up, she’ll be in a lot of pain,” Gavin goes on. “Not to mention she can’t open her mouth right now to talk. She’ll get upset, and the last thing you want is her sobbing while her mouth is wired shut.”
I kick the guy again just as he was trying to get to his feet.
“I can get you an ambulance,” the man who helped sneak us in offers.
“No. They’re equipped with GPS. That way dispatch can send the closest unit when an emergency occurs.” Gavin shakes his head. “Ryat will just have to drive us.” He looks at the guy. “I need a bag. Get me supplies. So that I can take what I need for her to get us there.”
“Be right back.” The kid runs out, obviously knowing what Gavin is going to need.
The guy on the floor moans in pain, and I kneel down beside him. “Who brought her in?” I demand.
“I don’t—”
“Who the fuck brought her in?” I grip his hair and shove his face into the floor.
He spits out blood. “A man…” he cries. “He carried her in.”
“Who the fuck was it?” I shout, my heart pounding and body vibrating with a rush of adrenaline. I want to slit his throat, but that would be too easy of a death for him. Plus, I need information, and right now he’s my only option.
“I … don’t know.”
“What do you know?”
“She was kicking and screaming. He forced her onto the bed while he had us restrain her. She was screaming for help.”
I punch him again because I can. “Go on.”
“She bit him. Deep enough that he needed stitches. He hit her so hard it knocked her out.” He spits blood out onto the floor. “He demanded the doctor wire her jaw shut and sedate her. She’s been out ever since.”