“After, you’ll have to let the stitches heal, if you go out there and start running around, they will open back up and you’ll bleed out.”
“Stay home and watch TV.”
“This pack.” She inhaled the tops of the cigarettes. “It will buy you two days. Then, I’m kicking you out and you are ripe fruit for picking whoever is on the other side of the line. Got it?”
“Yes. Please heal me. I can see my grandmother.”
I woke up after fainting from being operated on without sedative help and found that I had slept for almost two days. Blood loss and lack of a transfusion had given me a momentary coma.
Day six.
Over halfway of the Execution Battle.
I wondered if Tommy and Fiona were holed up safely in a home. I wondered when Magnus was coming.
One of Doctor Death’s assistant guards gave me a glass of water and I sat up on my bedtable, rubbing my head, yawning to the window.
“Gah!”
No, it was not Dig Graves.
Vil.
The mountain man. The one whose brother was killed by my brother apparently. Not exactly, but people were dramatic. From out of the window, he stood just outside on the edge of the line, narrowing his eyes in on me and where I had slept. At his back stood a cluster of other inmates twitching with irritation and training their weapons on me.
“Don’t worry.” The man who handed me the water patted my shoulder. “They can’t hurt you in here, they know the rules.” Relief sunk down my shoulders. “Not for another four hours.”
“What?”
He pointed to the clock upon the wall that ticked. “You got four hours until your time is up.”
Tick. Tick.“Four hours?”
“Yup.” He chucked his thumb to the door. “Then we throw you out. Unless you got more cigarettes?”
“I know knock-knock jokes?”
He left.
Tick Tick.
“You’re no longer dying.” Doctor Death crossed her leg on her wheely chair. “Well, you are dying, we all are, but you’re not quickly dying.” She eyed the mob just outside who had come with sharpened weapons all directed at me. “Well, not for another three hours. I have fixed you. They might undo you.”
The wound on my side was patched with a menstrual cycle pad. The stitches let me know of their agony every time I moved. “Thank you.”
“You need to stay lying down, at least for another day or two. You’ve lost a good amount of blood; you’ll faint pretty damn quick.”
I sprung up my brows. “You’re saying I can stay here for another day or two?”
She laughed and lit up a cigarette. “Hell no, I’ve done my job, there’s no reason for you to be in here. You know the rules. In three hours, you go out there and you make it your own problem.”
I knew I could not argue Soulless rules and so I did not. “Thank you again.”
“By the way, I had to take out your clode implant. “
“Clode implant?”
“The blade in your arm was right next to it. When I pulled it out, the implant came out too.”
