Deadly Valor

Danae looked over her shoulder at the sound of the back door rattling, her fingers pausing on the keyboard. The clinic was closed, and she was alone in the back room. Was it Sierra? The lock was tricky, maybe her key was stuck again.

She stepped toward the door, only to jump and bite back a scream as it suddenly burst open. A masked man came through it, his arm wrapped around another man, who was bleeding heavily from his side.

The first man’s gaze locked on Danae. She backed away instinctively, heart in her throat, and it almost stopped beating when his gloved fist flashed up to point a gun at her. She stared at it in shock, a burst of terror streaking through her.

He kicked the door shut behind him and advanced on her. “You’re going to stop the bleeding so I can get him out of here,” he told her in a low, menacing voice, only his mouth and eyes visible, narrowed to slits in the mask holes. “Patch him up, right now.”

He shifted his grip on the wounded man. Now,” he barked when she didn’t move.

She jerked and turned blindly for the supply shelf at the side of the room. He was blocking the back door, and she’d never make it to the other one across the room before he shot her. She was trapped. Had to do what he said, and then hopefully he’d leave.

Her hands shook as she reached for various things on the shelves, accidentally knocking boxes and supplies to the floor.

“Hurry!” he snarled, dragging the bleeding man toward the only flat surface in the staff room—the desk she’d just been working at. He swept an arm across the surface, sending her laptop crashing to the floor and scattering papers everywhere.

Some stupid reflex made her bend to pick some of the papers up. He snarled at her, snatched a crumpled blue receipt from the top of the fistful she’d grabbed. “Move,” he commanded, stretching the bleeding man onto the desk.

Struggling to stay calm, Danae hesitantly moved closer and got her first look at her patient, who didn’t have a mask on. He was young, maybe in his mid to late twenties, with short, dark hair and a few days of growth on his face. He was still conscious, but barely, his light green eyes unfocused, mouth slack.

Panic welled up. She was a vet tech, not an ER doctor. “What do you want me to—”

“Stop the fucking blood before he bleeds out,” the first man snapped, lifting the pistol to aim it right at her head.

Her insides shriveled as she gingerly approached the wounded man from the other side of the table, too many thoughts flooding her brain all at once. There was no way for her to escape without risking getting shot. No one around to hear her if she screamed for help, and the staff room didn’t have a security camera. Nobody knew what was going on. Nobody was coming to help.

She licked her lips, frantically gathering her racing thoughts and focusing on the task at hand. She needed to seem calm even if she wasn’t. Couldn’t risk doing anything to aggravate this situation or set the man off. “Pull his shirt out of the way,” she said, surprised her voice wasn’t shakier.

The man pulled the hem of the shirt upward, revealing what had to be a gunshot wound through his friend’s lower ribcage. And she noticed a heavy black tattoo on the back of the gunman’s wrist, moving up from his concealed hand to disappear under the sleeve of his jacket.

She pulled on surgical gloves and pushed the rising tide of fear aside, forcing her brain into work mode. Just do what you can to stop the bleeding. “Turn him so I can see if there’s an exit wound.”

“There is, and it’s bigger.”

The visual verified what he’d said. And a sudden, sinking sensation took hold. “He’ll have internal damage. I’m not a veterinary doctor, I’m a tech, and he needs surgery. Even if I stitch up the wounds, it won’t—”

“You stitch him up right the fuck now, or I’ll put a bullet through your head.”

God… She thought of Finn, of never seeing him again, and a new wave of terror broke over her. “Just…calm down, okay? You’re scaring me, and I can’t thread the suture needle when my hands are shaking like this. Put the gun down.”

He lowered it slightly but didn’t put it away. “Exit wound first,” he ordered, turning the man farther onto his side. The wounded guy groaned and started to squirm. “Stay still. She’s going to help you.”

Trying to keep her hands steady, she injected the edges of the wounds with lidocaine first, then cleaned up the edges and prepped the suture needle. It took her three tries to get it threaded with the needle-driver, and all the while more blood was spilling onto the surface of the desk, spreading out in a pool. The sight of blood didn’t usually faze her, but right now her stomach was churning.

It took eight stitches to close the exit wound, and four for the entry. By the time she was done, the man was barely conscious, his breathing choppy. She didn’t know how much blood he’d lost in total, but he was in really bad shape.

“Give him something for the pain, and then something for infection, just in case,” the man holding the gun ordered.

She grabbed some hydromorphone and Amoxicillin from the shelf, prepped syringes for both while guessing at the dosage for someone the patient’s size and injected him. Then she packed gauze pads on both wounds and taped them in place around his ribs.

“That’s the best I can do,” she said, stepping back. What would he do now? Leave. Please just leave, she prayed. “But he needs to go to the hospital.”

He fixed her with a hard stare, and the angle of his head allowed her to see the color of his eyes for the first time. Pale green, like the other man. Were they related?

Then he raised the weapon at her again, and every drop of blood in her body congealed, a scream of denial building in her throat. He was going to shoot her dead here in the middle of the staff room, even though she’d done everything he’d told her to.