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ADRIAN

PRESENT

“ W hat the fuck is wrong with you?”

I flicked my glare to my patient’s face before continuing with the resection of his abdominal wall.

I could answer him, but I didn’t see the point.

Would you ask what was wrong with a concert hall violinist or those kids who could solve a Rubik’s cube without having to peel off all the stickers first?

I didn’t think so.

Talent was talent. And I was… talented. Just in a way that wasn’t as pretty as others. Which made my particular skill set underappreciated but not any less impressive, despite what some people might tell you. And they would tell you.

I wasn’t oblivious to what the rest of the world thought of my work. What words they used to describe me in the various media outlets, even if they didn’t know it was me.

Butcher, bastard , and who could forget…

“You sick son of a bitch!”

Ah, I was particularly fond of that one. Especially when it was followed up by the sound of their screams.

“Ahhhhhh!”

Hmm, just like that.

My patient let out another high-pitched wail. Collapsing against the metal slab as I tugged the lower portion of his bowel free and deposited it into the collection pan.

I tilted my head and watched the organ slosh around in its juices before finally settling itself at one end of the steel tray like a discarded sausage link someone’s mother forgot to grab off the meat counter—and thanks to the obstruction I’d found in the inflamed segment of the fucker’s colon, it was about as useful as one too.

Sure, I could have put him under but then I’d miss those screams. The look of horror and panic on his face and the way his body squirmed against the table.

I sighed as I wiped the excess blood from my fifteen blade and set it aside. I guess you could compare me to a butcher, depending on which end of my scalpel you were standing on. A more accurate term would be brilliant . It wasn’t easy to do what I did. It took a certain level of… finesse.

So, yes, I’d been called a lot of things over the years.

But never liar.I wouldn’t tolerate being called a liar.

I didn’t lie. Bent the truth, teased it in a way that it reflected more positively in my direction.

Of course. That was just good bedside manner.

It wasn’t my fault people preferred what they wanted to hear over what I was actually saying.

This won’t hurt… much.

You’ll feel better in no time.

Who really needs two kidneys? The second one is just excess.

But straight-out lying? That was lazy and unimaginative. Which circled right back to that brilliance I mentioned. I mean, why toss out the whole body when you could just as easily cut away at what was ailing it?

Though I had to admit there was a time when I sank to that level of…

mental perversion.The day I rose my hand and swore to do no harm.

Just ask the fucker presently strapped to my table.

Cursing my name and begging for his life—or maybe he was begging me to end it?

It was hard to tell with the blood sputtering from his mouth.

I suppose you could say he was gurgling?

I paused to listen to the sound. A wet, bronchial cough. His airway restricted and his lungs probably filling up with fluid.

He wheezed out a breath, and I glanced down at the bright-red dots he’d expectorated all over my white scrubs before three quick taps had me looking up at the glass partition and signaling for whomever was on the other side to come in.

The door slammed open, and a large figure contaminated what should have been a sterile workspace.

I couldn’t yell at the kid, though. It wouldn’t get me anywhere if I did.

Donnie was another one of my projects. He and his brother.

Patients who became colleagues and then more like family.

Blood threw them away while a stranger saw their potential and used it to their advantage.

Which was much better than the other option of letting them rot away in whatever hole he’d found them curled up inside.

I was that stranger and it was this hole . This facility before I’d turned it into so much more. It was my professional obligation after all.

“G-girl had this with her, b-boss,” Donnie grunted, his forced speech a byproduct of the damaged connection between his frontal lobe and the thalamus. There were times when he could control the stuttering; there were also times when he could barely communicate.

Pity I hadn’t gotten to him sooner.

Neuromodulation,microscopic limb repair and reanimation—hell, I’d tried shit that looked like it came straight out of a science fiction novel. I’d done it all, and none of it was of any use to the lump of human meat in front of me.

The problem with extensive brain damage was that it was often irreversible.

I’d spent years studying the neuropathways, experimenting with tissue regeneration and signal redirection, but the result was always the same.

Misfiring connections and sensory delays with little to no improvement in symptoms. The brain was just too complex an organ, and medicine hadn’t advanced enough to figure out a way to successfully complete a cerebral transplant that didn’t result in personality disruption.

In laymen’s terms, Uncle Joe might look like Uncle Joe, but all the intricacies that made him, well, him were tied to the discarded organ not the empty cavity that housed it.

“B-bugs says it’s for you.” Donnie shook the package in my direction. The backyard lobotomy had also affected his ability to read, which had him relying on his brother far more than he should. Trauma-bonding and codependency.

But what did I know?

My gaze caught on the box’s nondescript wrapping before sweeping up to the bubbly letters I saw scrawled across the top. I’d recognize it anywhere. A lot had changed, but her handwriting hadn’t. Neither had the spark I could still feel between us.

My lips curled into a grin as I tugged off my latex gloves and tossed them into the biological waste bin. I was a surgeon, not a monster. Couldn’t have those pesky little pathogens creeping their way out of my OR.

Two quick steps found me on the other side of the door, the lock clicking in place and my boots striding down the hallway with the package in my hand and Donnie in tow.

My patient could wait. I had more important matters to attend to.

Matters that included a certain dark-haired woman who’d been my obsession for the last decade and a half and the contents of the box she’d had her little assistant unknowingly deliver to my doorstep.

Poor girl didn’t realize she was part of the deal… or my colleague’s vendetta. She also didn’t realize how easily her boss would hand her over in exchange for a favor.

“Take that one to the basement. She’s Dr. Michaels’s problem now,” I instructed, watching as Donnie wheeled the prone figure towards the freight elevator, a mop of honey-brown tresses peeking out from the sack over her head.

The metal doors closed behind them and I flipped the little box in the air, listening as the tiny mummified shards rattled around inside, and strolled towards my bedroom for a shower. My steps much lighter with the knowledge my little lost lamb finally found her way home to me.

Took her long enough…