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A paperclip attached to the pages in one of the folders.
I mean, fine. I will admit it. I hadn’t ever picked a lock before. But I figured that if you could pick a handcuff lock with a bobby pin, then there was no reason you couldn’t pick it with a paperclip.
Feeling marginally better, I eased the tension in my shoulder, only to realize that to pick the lock, I was going to need to lift my other arm up. You know, the one near my shoulder that was screaming in pain since I hadn’t accepted the damn pain medicine.
Exhaling hard so I didn’t have any breath to cry out with, I yanked it up as quickly as I could, feeling the bile rise up my throat at the pain that assaulted my system.
But after a minute, it slowly became less blinding, giving me enough focus to unwrap the paper clip, then start poking around in the handcuff hole.
I guess a part of me thought it would be like that time I’d accidentally locked myself out of my own damn bathroom and I jammed a toothpick in the little hole and it popped the lock open.
It wasn’t like that, but after a minute or two of working at it, I felt a click that had my heart soaring as I yanked my arm free of the cuff.
It fell like dead weight to my side, pins and needles making my entire arm feel useless as I hobbled back toward the cabinets, trying to look through the remaining drawers until my good arm stopped tingling so I could lift it to look in the cabinets themselves.
My fingers had just closed around a bottle of something when the door swung open behind me, making me jerk around to find Surgeon standing there, his brow raised.
“What are you going to do? Disinfect me to death?” he asked, lips twitching in a way that had no right to be as appealing as it was, given the circumstances. His chin jerked toward the cuff still attached to the ring in the wall. “How’d you get the cuffs off?”
His tone had been curious, conversational. Not angry as far as I could tell. Which is probably why the truth slipped out.
“Paper clip.”
“Nice,” he said, nodding.
“You’re not putting it back on me. I just got feeling back in my arm.”
“And used it to try to find a weapon,” he said. “I took the pointy shit out with me. Most people can get out of cuffs if you give them long enough.”
Well.
Way to burst my bubble.
I’d been kind of proud of getting out of them.
Not that it mattered now.
He was back.
And I was not free.
“Why don’t you have a seat?” he said, waving toward the exam table.
“Is that a suggestion or a demand?”
“You lost a shitton of blood today. Don’t see you staying on your feet for too much longer. Gonna get lightheaded fast.”
He wasn’t wrong about that, and I was even more agitated with him for that fact.
“Why should I sit down? I want to go home,” I said, trying not to let the whine slip into my voice, but I wasn’t sure I succeeded.
I was too damn old to whine.
But I was exhausted, in pain, and quite literally scared for my life. I was entitled. Just this once.
“That’s what I’m back to talk to you about,” he said, jerking his chin toward the chair.
A part of me didn’t want to obey.
