Chapter 5 - The Night in the Lab
For the next four hours, the stone walls of Dante Russo’s private bunker felt like an alternate dimension of clinical survival.
I cut open my own neat stitches, irrigating the infected cavity with sterile saline while Dante gripped the metal bed rails until his knuckles turned white.
He refused general anesthesia again, choosing to stare at my face while I worked tirelessly to remove the necrotizing edges of the wound.
"You're remarkably calm for a woman whose apartment was just shot to pieces," Dante whispered through clenched teeth.
"If I panic, my hands shake," I answered without looking up from the exposed tissue.
"And if my hands shake, you bleed out into your peritoneal cavity, Mr. Russo."
His breathing was harsh, but his eyes never wavered from mine, studying every movement of my forceps and needle holder.
"My family has owned the transportation ports from Milwaukee to Gary for fifty years," he murmured softly.
"Yet the only person who can keep me breathing tonight is an ER nurse who makes twenty-eight dollars an hour."
"Thirty-two dollars an hour, actually," I corrected dryly, placing the final deep retention stitch.
"And after tonight, I’m billing you fifty times that amount for hazardous duty."
By 3:00 AM, the redness had begun to recede from his abdomen, his core temperature dropped to normal levels, and his pulse stabilized.
May you like
I discarded my bloodstained gloves, collapsed onto an adjacent stool, and buried my exhausted face in my hands.
A warm hand touched my wrist—gentle, deliberate, and surprisingly warm compared to the cold steel around us.
