His gaze jerked to her direction and she nearly fell on the floor again. His wide eyes were cloudy and laced with red. “Please don’t leave.”
His words nearly broke her in half. Careful not to startle him, she trailed the edge of her fingers down his temple and jaw, soothing him like she would a wild kitten. “I’ll never leave your side.”
Her touch seemed to calm him somewhat, so she kept it up.
“I—need—you.” A violent tremor took hold, causing his words to come out in a shaky staccato, but nothing could detract from the heart-wrenching message.
She wanted to wrap herself around him like a blanket and never let go. “I need you too. You have to fight this infection. Don’t give up. Do you hear me?”
“Yes,” he said.
God willing he was both lucid enough and strong enough to follow her instructions. “I need to get you back on the bed. I can’t do it by myself. Can you help?”
For the first time in a long, long while, his eyes glistened with comprehension as he glanced from her to the bed and nodded. He got onto his hands and knees and crawled across the floor, threw his good shoulder onto the bed and then collapsed onto his back. The bright red blood stains on his once crisp and clean bandage sent a poison dart of alarm straight through her system. She ran to him. “I need to check your wound. Hold still if you can.”
Reaper didn’t respond. He had passed out.
She gently peeled back the edge of the bandage. Half the stitches had torn loose and bright red blood oozed from his wound. It felt like all the hard work Mira had done in the hospital had just been completely destroyed.
“Oh, what have we done?” Caroline gasped.
There was no way she could get him back to the hospital and she was too scared to leave him here like this. If the infection didn’t kill him, surely a predator would smell his blood and attack. Hot tears burned her eyes and plunged down her cheeks. What was she supposed to do now? She couldn’t let him die. She wouldn’t. But it felt like fate was out to destroy them both. She collapsed against Reaper’s abdomen and sobbed, giving in to self-pity.
Exhaustion battered her body and her mind. Any adrenaline had long since worn off, and her fumes had burned up. It was all she could do stay awake. Fighting off the tears she was desperate to shed wasn’t even on the agenda. “I wish my dad was here. He’d order a helicopter to air evac us out of this hellhole. He’d get you the best doctors on the entire planet.”
But she hadn’t seen her father in months and she missed him something awful. She’d give anything just to see him and tell him that his only remaining daughter was okay. He must be worried out of his mind.
And she hadn’t seen Reaper use any type of radio or phone. Which meant that her father didn’t know she was alive.
Maybe that was for the best. If Reaper didn’t make it, her chances of survival were nonexistent.
She wasn’t so sure she’d be able to live with the guilt anyway.
Despair and hopelessness tried to pull her under, but Caroline lifted her head and roughly wiped away her tears. Reaper wasn’t going to die on her watch, not until she had exhausted every possibility.
Vain attempt or not, she ransacked the small satchel from Mira, but she’d already gone through it. She knew what was in there. Now that she’d used the antibiotics, there was nothing left beyond a couple of bottles of water and the small stock of food.
Caroline froze on the spot. Needles. Reaper had had an entire pack on him. Maybe he had some kind of field medical kit strapped into one of the pockets lining his black cargo pants.
She practically ran across the room and fell to her knees at his side, ripping open every pocket she saw. Finally, she struck gold on the fifth one she tried. Inside was a small army green kit, equipped with a few fresh squares of gauze, a needle and thread, and a packet labeled iodine. Tucked into the back corner, almost out of sight, was a pinky-sized pile of packaged white powder labeled clotting agent.
Caroline stared at the small kit splayed out in her hands with renewed hope.
She had been complete shit at sewing dresses in her old home ec classes in high school. Sewing up flesh was bound to turn out even worse, but there was no one else here to do the job.
She extracted the hook-shaped needle and threaded it. Then she bent over Reaper’s wound, bracing herself for the heroic task of stitching him back up.
The ragged edges of his skin lay open and bleeding, topped off by the tiny remaining black threads that had remained in place. Should she stop where the other stitches started? But then wouldn’t the old threads just unravel with his movement?
More blood seeped out and her thoughts shifted into overdrive. Mira had disinfected the wound first and then stitched it up, and common sense told her she’d need to remove those last two stitches that were barely hanging on before re-stitching him.
She took the small set of shears out of Reaper’s all-purpose kit and snipped the soaking wet threads, pulling them free with a vomit-inducing tug.
Swallowing back the bile, she reached for the iodine and poured some into the wound. Reaper didn’t even flinch, mercifully staying unconscious. Next, she took one of his other gauzes and mopped up the excess disinfectant before resuming her position just above his wound with the needle in hand.
She could do this. It was just like sewing two pieces of material together. She’d watched Mira do it in the hospital—she had simply inserted the needle and pulled the thread through, winding a running line down the edges of his skin and pulled it tight and then she tied it off.
Only he wasn’t a dress; he was a real live breathing human being.
