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Icarried her to the bed, laying her out on top of it. The doctor approached her cautiously, and Irina stilled in place. Her body froze solid, those vivid, sad eyes filling with fear.
“Irina, my name is Doctor Russo. Now that you’re all cleaned up, I need to have a good look at you. You’ve got some pretty serious injuries that need tending,” Doc said, his eyes wary as he approached. Whether he could sense the rising panic in Irina’s mostly limp body or responded to the tension in mine, he paused when his knees touched the end of the bed.
Irina looked at him, unwilling to take her eyes off of him. “You’ll need to remove the towel,” Doc said, staring at the spot where she clutched it to her chest with her good arm.
Slowly, she glanced down at the fabric clenched in her hand, her bottom lip trembling before she raised her eyes back to his and shook her head.
“Irina, honey, he needs to see you,” Ivory murmured, stepping out of the bathroom and into the bedroom.
“Go get her some clothes,” I instructed. “One of my shirts and a pair of sweatpants. Separates so she can cover parts of her as he finishes. She doesn’t want to be exposed again.” Ivory nodded, fleeing the room to do as I ordered. She disappeared into the hallway, turning toward the back of the house where Don and I called home.
“What’s most urgent?” Doc asked me. “Her stomach?”
“I think so,” I agreed, thinking back to the canvas of pain her body had become. The risk for internal bleeding was high considering the extent of the bruising on her ribs, even aside from the bleeding wounds carved into her belly.
“Okay, we can keep your lower half covered for the time being, Irina. But I need to feel your belly, and I have a feeling you might need some stitches. Can I have a look?” he asked. I glanced down at the plush white towel covering her body, the red stain from the fresh blood since getting her out of the tub raising my anxiety.
The bleeding wasn’t stopping. Wasn’t clotting or healing over.
He’d cut her deep enough to scar in a way that she would always be marked.
When Irina shook her head again, Doc connected eyes with me and nodded. He’d seen the blood, seen the extent of it, and shared the same fears I did. Considering the filth she’d been in when I found her, and the filth I’d seen in that basement, the risk of infection was high.
The risk of severe blood loss was high, too. There was no way to tell how much she’d already lost.
I stepped away, giving the doctor space as he touched tentative fingers to the edge of the towel. He pulled it back slowly, watching her face for a reaction as she screwed her eyes shut and tried to tune him out. The moment the cool air touched her bare breasts, she jumped up to a sitting position in spite of the pain it must have caused her.
“Irina!” I yelled, lunging forward as the doctor touched a gentle hand to her shoulder and tried to guide her back.
“No!” she screamed, the agony in her voice like a knife to my chest. It plunged inside, the pain echoing through me as if I felt it myself. She dug her nails into the doctor’s hand where he touched her, drawing blood with the ferocity of her attack.
I climbed into the bed behind her, drawing her into my arms and wrapping them across her chest. She kicked her good leg, dislodging the towel entirely until she was naked. The doctor stepped back, giving me a moment to pin her in place. “Shhhh,” I soothed, my voice breaking as she began to tremble in my grasp. “I won’t let him hurt you. I promise you; nobody will ever hurt you again.”
She turned, burying her face in my neck as she pressed her legs together the best she could. The tremble in her body worsened, turning to soul-wracking sobs that rocked my body along with her. My world spun on its axis, narrowing down to the feeling of her in my arms. To the feeling of her trauma, of everything she’d survived, trapped in one person and not knowing how to cope.
The words she spoke next would be the ones that ruined me. That took every broken part of me and shattered them into millions of pieces, knowing that nothing in my life could ever be the same.
“Just let me die,” she begged, the words murmured against my skin. She sobbed loudly, flinching away from the doctor’s touch as he prodded and pressed on her stomach. Feeling for fluid beneath her skin and a collection of blood that might warrant surgery, he shook his head with a relieved breath when he drew them away. Grabbing tools from his bag, he wiped, numbed, and cleaned the area while her body shook.
Doc went to his bag, grabbing a syringe and drawing fluid into it while he looked toward me. Irina’s eyes were wild, trapped in her face pinched with fear as he handed me the syringe. “A sedative,” Doc explained. “For what comes next.”
I nodded, leaning forward to touch my mouth to the top of her head as I held her still with one arm pinned across her chest. She jolted in my grip the moment the needle touched the skin on the side of her neck, whimpering when I penetrated her flesh. “I’ve got you, cuore mio,” I murmured, trying to reassure her through the desperate cries she emitted.
Eventually, her sobs stopped. Her breathing calmed, steadying out until it became almost robotic, too rhythmic to be natural. I glanced down at her face while Doc gave her a painkiller and then finally began to stitch up the wounds on her stomach.
Her eyes were blank as she stared at my throat, the life gone from them as the doctor continued through his exam. He cursed as he realigned her dislocated elbow, her body flinching even when her face didn’t react. He dealt with her dislocated knee cap, her entire body jerking in response to the distinctive snap that realigned it. He put a compression brace on it to help stabilize it while she healed.
All the while, I kept my eyes on hers, waiting for some sign of my Butterfly.
But the Irina I loved was gone, replaced with a vacant shell of a woman who no longer existed. Everything light about her, everything beautiful about her soul was just...gone.
Doc spread her legs, going through the motions of the pelvic exam. He grabbed his instruments, stitching between her thighs while I closed my eyes, unable to look at the damage they’d inflicted. Thinking of the brutality she’d survived would get me nowhere. Not until the day came when I could avenge her.
When he finished, Doc stripped the exam gloves off his hands and leaned back, dropping into a chair at the foot of the bed. Ivory draped the towel over Irina, offering her privacy until I could get her dressed, but she didn’t even seem to register the fabric against her skin, the sedative making her eyes drift closed slowly in spite of the pain she must have felt.
“I’ve seen a lot of damage in my years with the Bellandis,” he murmured, wiping a hand over his face. “A lot of beatings. Never in my life have I seen brutality like that,” he added, standing from the chair.
He left the room, gathering his things on the way out. Ivory helped me maneuver Irina into the clothing she’d gathered from my room, and the hope that my Irina would return, once she had the safety of clothing and no strangers around, her withered and died.
Like a butterfly on the first frost, frozen and falling to the ground never to move again, she stared at the wall, her head never moving from the way it landed as I laid her back. I positioned Irina’s head on the pillow and gently draped the covers over her.
Her eyes drifted closed again, and Irina finally slept, with me watching at her side. Hoping that she’d be brave enough to wake up. That she wouldn’t fade away in the night, her body following her heart.
She had to come back to me.
She had to.
