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Had it worked?
This was not the problem I had to solve. Frustrated, I removed the eyeglasses.
Maybe I should give up and walk away—I’d been so good at running from my problems. But that was cowardly. The least I could do was stay and witness his passing.
Or until the CIA moved him.
Slumping into the chair beside his bed, I reached for his hand. The bandaging left nothing but his fingertips free, and that was where I touched him—skin that felt warm, living.
“Keep fighting.” My mouth and eyebrows twitched as I fought a battle of my own with my emotions.
His heart was still beating—there was that. And his mind was untouched by fire.
For the next forty-eight hours, the staff worked around me, making preparations for his move. No one was happy about it. Their mutterings of objection interspersed between their gloomy forecasts. His kidneys would never make it. Infection should’ve set in by now. They didn’t know why his muscle tissue hadn’t been eaten into more than this. As a result of shock, cascades of chemicals had been set in motion. You couldn’t cook someone and not kill them.
And yet, he lived.
A day more.
A day more.
Everything kept ticking.
Ticking down to the time to move him.
I had more than enough time to think about things I’d rather avoid. Like Chester. That name alone made me feel ill. The SK was somehow a cleaner name, a pure evil killer, not a person who’d fucked with me for years, probably laughed every time I came to see him or asked for help. I’d asked him to help track himself down. He must have got off on that.
Motherfucker.
I was still angry, yes, and in some of my darkest moments, I replayed how I’d killed him. Maybe it shouldn’t have, but remembering felt good.
No, it felt better than good. It felt strong.
And strong made me hope.
I spent hours thinking and studying Val.
Double guilt. Yvaine and now Val. If Yvaine hadn’t been my friend and almost lover, if Val hadn’t decided to partner up with me.
If...
Things would be different.
Guilt was for losers.
The hours and hours of pondering cracked something inside me. To hell with guilt. I went to the bathroom, washed my face, dried it, took some very deep breaths while watching my pale face in the mirror, then I went to look at the man who needed me.
I could swear I saw a change in Val the morning before the staff meeting when they said a few hallelujahs about what his body was doing. Miraculously, Val’s face was clean of major burns, and so I was able to glimpse something in his expression. It was so fleeting I couldn’t even read it as it had rippled under his features. His eyes were closed; somehow his lungs had seemed to escape serious damage and his breathing seemed unencumbered. They’d switched him to mouth breathing through a tube instead of the hole in his throat and...his skin was apparently healing from burns it shouldn’t be able to. Burns that should’ve scarred him for life.
Hope.
I didn’t let the staff shatter that hope when they explained that if only his kidneys weren’t failing, or his liver, or his clotting and immune systems; if only the other consequences of such massive injuries weren’t taking their toll...he might live.
And anyway, tomorrow they were moving him.
I needed a miracle.
After all, modern medicine wasn’t helping.
