Scythe & Sparrow (The Ruinous Love Trilogy, #3)(6)

There are no lights on in the clinic. Nothing to indicate anyone is inside except the faint smear of a bloody handprint on the door handle. A motorcycle with a dented fuel tank lies on its side in the grass. The key is still in the ignition, the polished chrome engine ticking as it cools. A black helmet painted with orange and yellow hibiscus flowers sits discarded on the walkway to the door.

I clasp a hand to the back of my neck, my skin slick with sweat. I look down one end of the road. Then the other. Then back again. There’s no one else on the street. I take my phone from my pocket and grip it tightly.

“Fuck it.”

I turn on my phone’s flashlight and stalk toward the door. It’s unlocked. I pan the light across the floor where it reflects on a bloody boot print. A streak of crimson paints the tiles in a long track that snakes through the waiting room. It passes the reception desk. Curves down the hallway like a horror script. This way to your violent death.

And like any idiot in any horror film ever made, I follow it, stopping at the mouth of the corridor that leads to the exam rooms.

There’s no sound. No smell aside from the astringent burn of antiseptic that clings to the back of my throat. No light except for the red emergency exit sign at the end of the hall.

I guide my flashlight to follow the blood on the floor. It leads beneath the closed door of Exam Room 3.

With a single deep breath, I follow. I hold that breath as I press my ear to the door. Nothing comes from the other side, not even when I push it open and it meets resistance. A boot. A limp leg. A woman who doesn’t stir.

My thoughts snap like a glow stick. From darkness to light. I hit the switch for the overhead fluorescents. Urgency and training propel me into the room, and I drop to my knees beside the woman lying on my exam room floor.

A makeshift tourniquet made from her shirt is tied around her right thigh. A fresh one from the cabinet is loosely knotted just beneath it, as though she couldn’t tighten it with her waning strength. Medical supplies are scattered across the floor. Gauze bandages. Sterile cloth. A pair of scissors. Blood trickles down her calf and pools on the floor. The scent of pineapple and banana is a sweet contradiction to the broken bone that pokes through the torn flesh of her lower leg. Her leather pants are cut all the way up to the wound, as though she got as far as exposing the fracture and couldn’t bear it anymore.




“Miss. Miss,” I say. She’s turned away from me, her dark hair strewn across her face. I press my palm to her cool cheek and turn her head in my direction. Rapid, shallow breaths spill past her parted lips. I rest two fingers against her pulse as I tap her cheek with the other hand. “Come on, miss. Wake up.”

Her brow crinkles. Thick, dark lashes flutter. She groans. Her eyes open, inky pools of pain and suffering. I need her conscious, but I hate the agony I see painted in her features. Regret twists like a hot pin lodged deep in a cavern of my heart, a feeling I learned to shut away a long time ago so I can do my job. But somehow, when her eyes fuse to mine, that long-forgotten piece of me comes alive in the dark. And then she grabs my hand where it rests on her throat. She squeezes. Locks me into a moment that feels eternal. “Help,” she whispers, and then her hand slips from mine.

I stare at her for just a moment. A heartbeat. A blink.

And then I get to work.

I pull a wallet from her jacket and dial 911 as I stride from the room to grab ice packs from the freezer. I relay the details of the woman’s license and condition to the dispatcher. Twenty-six-year-old female, unconscious, possible motorcycle accident. When I return to the exam room, she’s still unconscious, and I place the ice packs and my phone on the counter so I can hook her up to the blood pressure monitor. Lower leg open fracture. Blood loss. Hypotensive blood pressure. Her pulse is climbing.

I’ve gotten a line in for an IV and tied a proper tourniquet around her leg by the time the ambulance arrives. But she still doesn’t wake up. Not when the paramedics fit a brace around her leg. Not when we lift her onto the gurney. Not even when we load her into the back of the ambulance and the motion jostles her. I take her hand and tell myself it’s so I’ll know if she wakes up.

And eventually, she does. Her eyes flutter open and latch onto mine, and regret pierces me again. The paramedic across from me fits the oxygen mask to her face, and the plastic fogs with her increasingly rapid breaths as the pain settles into her consciousness.

“I’m Dr. Kane,” I say as I squeeze her hand, her palm cool and clammy. “You’re on the way to the hospital. Is your name Rose?”

She nods in the emergency neck brace.

“Try to remain still. Do you remember what happened?”

She presses her eyes shut, but not fast enough to veil the flash of panic in her eyes. “Yes,” she says, though I can barely hear her over the wail of the sirens.

“Was it a motorcycle accident?”

Rose’s eyes snap open. The crease between her brows deepens. There’s a brief pause before she says, “Yes. I … I hit a slippery patch and crashed.”

“Do you have any pain in your back or neck? Anything else aside from your leg?”

“No.”

The paramedic cuts away Rose’s makeshift tourniquet and a fresh waft of pi?a colada floods my nostrils. I lower my voice and lean a little close when I ask, “Have you been drinking?”

“Fuck no,” she says. Her nose scrunches beneath the mask, and she reaches up to lower it despite my protest. “Are you, like, a real doctor?”