Breathed through it. Shallow. Ribs protested even that small movement.
Something tugged at my right arm. Followed the sensation, IV line running to a bag hanging from... a coat rack?
Saline. Antibiotics visible in the secondary line. Someone with medical knowledge had set this up. Not so recently, judging by the fluid levels.
My attention dropped to my torso. Bandages wrapped around my side, shoulder immobilized in professional binding. Clean work. Skilled hands.
Whose hands?
Tried to remember. Blank space where memory should live.
Panic spiked through the fever heat. Forced it down. Panic didn’t solve problems. Information did.
Since when do you think like that?
That felt wrong. Someone else’s voice in my head. Clinical. Assessing everything as though it were a mission briefing instead of,
Instead of what? How should I think?
No answer.
Started compiling what I knew: Severe injuries. Professional medical care. Unknown location. No memory of how I got here.
The woman.
Where was she now?
My head turned despite the pain, scanning. Empty chair near the bed. Indent in the cushion, recent weight. Kitchen area, small, utilitarian. Single room, open plan.
Not a hospital. Not a cell. Some sort of apartment.
My attention snagged on the woman asleep in that chair.
Collapsed was more accurate. Head tilted at an angle that would leave her neck screaming, arms wrapped around herself, exhaustion carved into every line of her frame. Dark smudges under her lashes, visible even in dim light. Blood, dried brown,smeared across her cheek, her palms, soaked into her coat sleeves.
My blood.
The realization came with strange certainty. That was my blood on her skin, my damage marking her.
She’d been trying to clean me up. Trying to save,
My lungs tightened. Made inhaling harder than the rib damage did.
Shoved it down. Focused on facts.
Small frame, maybe 5’6”, reddish hair. Small build but nothing that suggested combat training. Her palms showed old scars, work scars, not fight scars. Nurse, maybe, or someone with a medical background. Her positioning in the chair was defensive but not strategic. Protecting me or protecting herself?
Couldn’t tell.
But she was vulnerable like this. Completely open. If she was my captor, she was shit at it. If she was my savior...
Why would anyone save me?
That landed bitter. Felt true in a way I couldn’t explain.
She shifted in her sleep, face turning toward me. Younger than I’d thought. Maybe early thirties. Something about her features struck me as,
What?
