Tammy didn't wait for further instructions. She was already yanking open cabinets, her hands moving with the kind of muscle memory that comes from years in the ER. I hit the sink hard, scrubbing like I could wash away the voice in my head screaming about liability and medical boards and all the ways this could go catastrophically wrong.
But then I glanced back at Ardin—really looked at him—and that voice went silent.
"Okay, big guy," I said, snapping on gloves with more confidence than I felt. "I need you to hold him steady. The local will help, but this is still going to hurt like hell, and he might fight us."
He moved to the head of the gurney with surprising grace for someone his size, those massive hands settling on Ardin's shoulders with the gentleness of someone cradling something they deemed precious and breakable. "My name is Ruka," he said, his voice low and steady.
"Jordan." I swabbed the wound site, my hands already falling into a familiar rhythm. "Nice to meet you. I wish it were under better circumstances."
The squeak of wheels announced Tammy's return before I saw her, the portable X-ray machine rolling through the doorway like a mechanical herald of bad news. Ruka's eyes locked onto it, his entire body going rigid.
"I need to see exactly where that bullet is," I explained, catching his expression. "Going in blind is a good way to turn this from bad to worse."
His gaze flicked from the machine to me, then back to Ardin. After a beat, he nodded once.
Tammy positioned the X-ray arm with the efficiency of someone who'd done this a thousand times. "Everybody back," she ordered, gesturing toward the corner where she'd already set up the portable lead shield. "That means you too, Jordan. Behind the shield."
We retreated behind the shield, though Ruka looked like it physically pained him to put even that small distance between himself and the boy. His whole body thrummed with barely contained energy, a coiled spring waiting to snap.
"This'll only take a second, sweetheart," Tammy said to Ardin, her voice softening. "Just need you to be really still for me, okay?"
The boy's only response was the rapid, shallow rise and fall of his chest.
The machine hummed. Clicked.
"And... there." Tammy was already pulling up the image on the tablet, bringing it over before the sound had fully faded.
I studied the screen and felt something in my chest unclench. The bullet glowed white against the grayscale of bone and tissue, wedged between the third and fourth ribs about two inches deep. Close—God, so close—to the lung, but not breaching it.
"Okay," I breathed. "Okay, this is doable."
Ruka loomed over my shoulder, close enough that I could feel the heat radiating off him, his scent something like pine and woodsmoke. "That is it?" His voice cracked slightly. "That small thing?"
"Yeah. See here?" I traced the outline with my finger. "It's lodged in the muscle tissue. Missed the lung by maybe half an inch, didn't clip any major vessels. Considering everything, he is incredibly lucky."
"Lucky." The word came out like gravel scraping against stone, bitter and sharp.
I prepped and administered the local anesthetic, my hands moving through the familiar motions while my mind raced ahead to the extraction. Ninety seconds—that's all the time I could spare for it to take effect. Every moment counted.
The forceps felt cool and precise in my palm as I positioned myself over the wound. One breath. Two. Then I began.
The bullet had burrowed in at an angle, nestling itself between ribs like it belonged there. On the X-ray, it looked almost innocuous—a bright spot of metal in a sea of gray. In reality, it was a ticking time bomb of silver and lead.
My first incision was careful, controlled, widening the entry wound just enough to see what I was working with. Ardin's whimper cut through the sterile air, his small frame going rigid despite the numbing agent.
"I know, sweetheart," I murmured, keeping my voice low and steady. "Almost there."
Standing at the head of the gurney, his large hands settled over Ardin's shoulders, Ruka had gone statue-still, every muscle locked tight. His jaw worked like he was chewing glass. Those molten-gold eyes never wavered from Ardin's face, but the waves of barely-contained tension rolling off him were palpable.
"Talk to me," I said, probing the wound with the forceps, feeling for that telltale resistance of metal. "How did this happen?"
Silence stretched between us, broken only by the soft beep of monitors and Ardin's labored breathing. I was beginning to think he wouldn't answer when his voice rumbled out, rough as sandpaper.
"He was playing. In the valley below our village."
"Playing?" The forceps made contact—solid, unmistakable. Got you.
"He likes to explore the creek bed, search for smooth stones." Each word sounded like it was being dragged up from somewhere deep and painful. "I heard the shot."
