The president drifts nearer, watching my hands like he’s waiting for me to make one wrong move so he can punish me for it.
I don’t look at him. I don’t give him that.
I reach for the suture kit on the bed, tearing it open with fingers that want to tremble. I lay out what I can, needle driver, forceps, thread, curved needle, sterile packets that aren’t as sterile as I want them to be.
My heart hammers with the unfairness of it. I should be in a hospital. I should have a tray.
A surgeon who I hand tools to not me being the one to use them on flesh.
Imaging.
Consent forms and sterile drapes and a crash cart right outside the door.
Instead, I have a tarp on a bedroom floor and guns behind me. I swallow hard.
Think smart. I keep silently repeating it like a prayer. I can’t save him if I’m dead.
I can’t get to Grandpa if I’m dead. I can’t get back to Miles—God, Miles—if I’m dead.
The president’s words from earlier come back like a slap, if you want to live to fuck your Hellion again.
The vulgarity of it makes my eyes sting with rage. Miles isn’t a toy. I’m not a toy. Our bodies aren’t a joke they can use to remind me I have something to lose.
Something to love. The thought of Miles worrying—of him riding highways with panic in his chest—tightens my throat until I can barely breathe.
I look down at my hands.
Blood.
Not a lot, but enough.
Duke groans again and my stomach flips.
I press my lips together and start prepping the wound the way I would if the world made sense—cleaning the surrounding skin, applying pressure, assessing what I can assess.
“Peaches,” the president says again, sharper now.
“I said I’m working,” I reply, and my voice comes out steadier than I feel.
He takes a step closer. Then another. I get the last knot in the stitches when I pulled from behind away from the patient. I watch another man step in to apply dressing before the President slides the blindfold back over my eyes, yanking me further back away from the scalpel and needles before I feel my arms pulled behind me, then the cinch of the zip ties on my wrists and ankles again.
Dammit. I missed my window. I resign myself to defeat but fight back the tears. Even if these are my last moments breathing I refuse to let these bastards see me cry.
And then. A sound.
Not from inside the room. From outside the house. A low rumble. Like engines. My whole body freezes. The air around me feels tense. For one beat, no one breathes.
Then a voice somewhere down the hall, “You hear that?”
Boots shift on the floor around me. I want to slide the blindfold off but I don’t dare.
Engines again. Closer this time. Multiple. The hairs on my arms lift.
Hope is dangerous.
Hope gets you killed.
But it blooms anyway, bright and desperate, because I know that sound. I don’t even have to see him.
