Too many people were living proof of that. Marlow now, unfortunately, one of them.
Coming out the other side in this condition wasn’t easy.
But not impossible.
I’d worked worse before.
Snagging a pair of shears off of the medical tray, I hooked the sharp ends under the hem of his shirt and dragged them upward. The cloth cut clean, barely any force behind my guiding hand. Claudia reached for the looped ends of the scissors, taking them from me the moment they reached his collar.
Two tongs replaced the scissors, both pinching the pieces of fabric and parting them without dirtying my sterile hands. Blood covered the man’s olive-toned skin, smeared in strange patterns. A macabre take on children’s face paint. Or closer to Avery’s slasher films he secretly loved?
Tongs were replaced with alcohol wipes. Dragging them down from chest to torso, cleaning up the mess left behind from the transit over here from Edgewood. Something rolled underneath the cloth. A gold glint catching the operating lights above when pulled back for an examination.
I froze immediately.
Twin gold chains wrapped around a curvy waist. Braided together with small, red gemstones woven in between like flowers growing on a vine. Accentuating his feminine frame.
“Dr. Montgomery?” Violet said.
My attention snapped to his face, half covered by the oxygen mask.
Well-maintained brows. Dark hair just long enough to brush over his cheeks and cover his ears. Pulled back during the day? A flush to his cheeks. Long lashes that fanned over high cheekbones. A peaceful expression resting on his pretty face.
An officer… wearing a waist chain?
Hazing ritual? Humiliation tactic? Toxic work environment forcing him to prove his worth?
Voluntarily done?
I sucked in a breath. The thought going straight to my cock.
An impossible fantasy. The men in blue were too prideful. Too egotistical, to appreciate something this pretty—a thing like this meant to make the body look like a delicate work of art.
I looped a finger under one of the dainty chains stained in blood, rolling them between my pointer and thumb a few times. Well made. Not some costume piece.
Real?
“Dr. Montgomery.”
I’d have to break it. He’d need a CT scan once we were done. High contrast to make sure I didn’t miss anything when sewing him up.
What a shame.
“Dr.—”
With a quick and sharp pull, the chains snapped easily in my hand, a silver pan quickly coming into view to deposit the pretty pieces into to be disposed of later, along with the other trash collected, once they were pulled free from around him.
He suddenly looked naked without them.
Focus.
Scalpel to the area, pull the skin apart to check for nicked organs, cauterize the vessels, sew him back up. Good as new.
Routine. Standard. Nothing different than a car accident coming in with the same wounds, needing pieces of glass lodged in their abdomen taken out and sewn back up like it never happened. Barely a scar to remind them of it afterward.
No knife was kept in this wound, though.
Why take it out? Wasn’t that police academy 101? Life skills 101?
