Page 99 of Well Aware

By the time I got outside, Merrill was waving Lysander out with a wave of her hand.

“I have both kids,” she said as she saw me head to the door, too. “Love you.”

I blew her a kiss over my shoulder and got into the cruiser that was waiting practically at Beau’s front door.

“Hey,” I said to Gentry as I got inside. “What’s going…”

He took off before I could finish my sentence, but that wasn’t why my voice trailed off. It went quiet due to the two people in the back seat of his cruiser, handcuffed and looking worse for wear.

“What’s going on?” I asked shakily. “Is Beau okay?”

“Beau’s fine,” Gentry silently seethed beside me. “Koen’s not.”

My stomach sank. “Is that who I’m going to the hospital to…”

“No,” he growled. “Koen’s dead. It’s Ida Bell.”

My heart sank all the way to my toes.

“Oh, Gentry,” I whispered. “I’m so sorry.

He nodded only once, his body stiff and his eyes only on the road.

Likely, he was forcing himself to remain professional when he really wanted to fuck the two people up in the back seat.

The ride was quiet, and we arrived at the hospital in record time.

I got out with a quiet “thanks for the ride.”

Then I went to the surgery floor and got ready.

I’d done this hundreds of times with a teacher, but never on my own.

Sure, there had been several times there’d only been an instructor there to watch and observe, but there’d always been someone with me to make sure I didn’t fuck up.

I should’ve had that person there a few more times as I oriented myself at a new hospital, but that wasn’t available today.

After scrubbing in, I got everything I needed set up, then waited for the patient to arrive.

She did with a flurry, nurses and doctors fluttering around everywhere as they prepped for an emergency surgery.

“…radiologist confirms broken femur, ribs, ulna, clavicle all on the right side. We got Ortho on the way?”

“I’m here.” A doctor walked in looking overly tired. “What do we have?”

Ida Bell got moved to the table beside me, and I got to work, my eyes flicking over her battered and bruised face that had looked so alive yesterday and so broken today.

After talking with the team and deciding what kind of sedation that she would need, the surgery began.

By the time the surgery was over, over eight hours later, I was mentally exhausted and physically drained.

That’d been the worst surgery I’d ever experienced.

I’d participated in emergency surgeries before, but none quite as bad as Ida Bell’s.

There’d been multiple times that they’d lost a pulse on Ida Bell throughout the surgery, and she’d bled out twice as they repaired the multiple injuries that she’d sustained. And as I looked at her bruised and broken body, I wondered how she would ever be the same again.

When I got out of surgery, I found Lysander waiting with a cup of coffee in his hands and a Danish from the coffee shop in town.