PART I
STORM CROW
ONE
THE MAN’S FEMUR WAS BROKEN CLEANLY IN TWO. UNCONSCIOUS,HEseemed more asleep than in pain, but there was enough blood seeping from the open wound, red muscles peeled back from the surgical cut, to turn stomachs. Luckily, Thia’s was made of iron.
Riley, her best friend and the intern next to her, was not so blessed. He turned away from the table, one brown hand flying to his pink-painted mouth as he let out a half-amused, half-tortured “Hooo my god,” under his breath.
Thia might have laughed under other circumstances, but her attention was too fixed to the procedure. Both mere high school students, she and Riley were stuck to the far wall, permitted to view but not interfere.
Dr. Bowen, the surgeon administering the procedure, held out a hand to the assisting doctor on her left. “Screws.”
Thia shifted her notebook and clutched her pen a little tighter. “Brace yourself,” she whispered out of the side of her mouth.
The assisting doctor eyed the wound with a grimace. “We’re lucky there’s no damage to the femoral artery with that break.” He paused and looked at the two medical interns—those who had actually completed med school, unlike Thia and Riley, who were part of an advanced, prospective pre-med high school program. “What can you tell me about injuries to the femoral artery in relation to a broken femur?”
The intern closest to the table raised a hand. “Without proper treatment, a patient could bleed out in as little as three minutes, depending on the severity of the injury.”
The doctor nodded, and Thia scribbled the answer as quickly as she could. “He’s lucky. Working out in the fields, he didn’t have three minutes.”
The man had somehow managed to run himself over with his tractor while stopped to clear a fallen branch out of its path. It was an hour before someone had found him, and another to reach the hospital.
The surgeon raised her drill, and the doctor fell silent.
Beside Thia, Riley closed his eyes, blowing out a slow breath. Itwasawful, the whine of the drill, high and grating as it dug into bone. But that didn’t bother Thia. No, it was her mind that plagued her, reminding her of everything that could go abruptly and horribly wrong. The surgeon could damage his nerves. The bones could fracture further from the surgical instruments. She could hit that artery he was so lucky to still have intact.
Riley said Thia had a tendency to catastrophize, but then, someonehaddied in their first week. Her fears were entirely founded.
Then it was over. The screws were in place. Thia expelled a long breath as the surgeon began to close the wound. She hoped the bones weren’t misaligned. And that he stayed infection-free.
Riley slumped back against the wall, wearing a weary grin. “Remind me why I’m doing this again?” he whispered.
She joined him, the thick ridge of her mahogany braid cushioning her head as she leaned back a little too hard. “To save lives?”
He chuckled softly. “Right, that.” He rubbed his forehead, wiping away some of the shine.
The doctor dismissed them, and she followed her friend out the door and down the hall to the dressing room.
“So, for the bonfire,” Riley started, glancing back over his shoulder as she scrambled to keep up with his much longer legs. “Everyone’s meeting at nine. Pick me up?”
Thia chewed the inside of her cheek, smoothing her bushy locks, even though they were still neatly confined. Riley lived for the bonfire—the welcome party their class threw every year during the first week back from summer holidays. She, on the other hand, did not. She wasn’t shy, not with Riley by her side to smooth the way with his exaggerated charm, but most of her hobbies were the solitary sort, at her desk, with a computer. The bonfire was something she’d agreed to when Riley told her she was going to die of a vitamin D deficiency, and she was inclined to believe him. Topeka was a sunny city, but that was a moot point if you never went outside.
Now that it was upon her again, she was regretting saying yes. She had an extra credit report due in three days that she’d barely started. Not to mention her grammy hated when she went out late.
They reached the dressing room, and Riley held open the door, only to release it abruptly and fish a buzzing phone from his pocket.
“Hey,” she reprimanded, catching it just before it smashed her nose. “Asshole.”
He ignored her and brandished the screen. “Chelsea will be there.” Chelsea. Thia’s crush, if you could call it that, when they’d had a total of two conversations and she wasn’t even sure if the girl was gay.
“How’d you even find that out?”
He held the phone back up to his face, skimming the rest of the message. “I have my sources.” He tossed her a grin before twirling away to his locker.
She turned the key in her own and ran a hand over the photo of her parents she’d taped to the inside, as was her ritual. Her mother was in a cap and gown, having just graduated medical school at the University of Kansas, vibrant red hair a splash against the navy fabric. Her dad’s arm was slung around her waist, pale cheeks beaming a secret smile that foretold of the proposal he would make later that night. They’d died only a few years after that. Grandma Winnie always said it was the last day everything was perfect, save for when Thia was born.
She reached for her backpack as her own phone buzzed. She registered her grammy’s text, then caught sight of the time. “Shit.”
