Page 38

ADRIAN

I glanced towards the glass partition, where I knew John was watching me.

My guess? It was for more reasons than one.

Sure, his bizarre fascination was nothing new, but he also didn’t want any of these fuckers seeing his face.

That was why I was here. It had nothing to do with my skill set, which was better than his with or without a license.

No, I was closed inside this room—alone, despite my inexperience and without a proper surgical team—because he wanted me taking the heat if something went wrong or if one of the patients didn’t respond well to being experimented on.

The kid on the table didn’t seem to care too much either way.

He was grinning up at me as I assessed his nerve response before flipping him onto his stomach, his blonde hair hidden by a surgical cap and his back littered with numerous scars.

Mine were from years of abuse, his were from failed attempts at fixing whatever damage he’d done to land himself in that chair.

His skin would heal over time; the darkened epidermis tissue would lighten until the incisions were barely discernible.

He had youth to thank for that. What he didn’t have was much of a chance of ever walking again.

I had to admit I got a sick thrill from the thought. From the idea of achieving the impossible. I just had to figure out a way to get there…

Today’s cut was meant to be more exploratory than anything else. The first look at what I was working with as the kid chatted away like I hadn’t just spliced him open.

His heart rate remained steady, his vitals never spiking above their resting values, as I suctioned the excess fluid away from his L-4, the fusion offset and bolted together with screws that could have been from your local hardware store.

Kid should have been more than paralyzed; he should have been in agony.

I’d need to chip away at the healing bone, without severing the spinal cord, and either replace the missing disc with a titanium plate—if I could smooth out the edges enough. Or find a way to salvage what was left of his vertebra and resituate the fusion.

Then again, if pain wasn’t a factor… there was nothing stopping me from replacing the L-4 and L-5 in their entirety. Hell, I could build the kid a brand-new spine if I could fabricate something that wouldn’t hinder his flexibility.

The idea bounced around in my head for a few moments, more the feasibility than the ethics behind it, before the clattering of metal had me focusing on the incision in front of me. Then the floor, where my patient had sent the sterilized surgical tray flying with a swipe of his hand.

“I’m booored,” he whined, his arms swinging along each side of the table as he twisted his neck to eye me over a shoulder. “Aren’t ya done poking around yet?”

The real answer was I hadn’t even begun to poke around yet .

But I didn’t think the truth would do any of us any good right now.

The kid needed an audience as much as he needed to be the center of attention.

Which meant today I was both surgeon and circus-goer while my patient slipped into his latest persona.

An annoying little shit with the persistence of a squirrel searching for a nut.

“So, you got a name, Doc?” he hummed, his arms now peddling forward like he was working on his front stroke.

“Everyone has a name, kid,” I replied as I used a few absorbable sutures to close up my small incision, followed by a couple of staples to secure them in place.

I’d barely finished before he was putting all his weight on his shoulders to roll himself over again.

It should have been painful, considering I went down to the bone, but the kid didn’t even flinch as he narrowed his glare at me.

“Yeah, and what’s yours?”

I didn’t know what he was after but I sure as shit knew it was something as I analyzed the innocent look on his face, distorted by the hint of a smirk he was trying his hardest to hold back. “The surgeon. I’m just your surgeon,” I told him with a shrug of my shoulders.

I discarded my cap, prepared to exit the mini operating room and leave him for one of the orderlies to deal with when the kid called out to me, “Aw, come on, Doc. Don’t make me disappoint your girlfriend .”

He could have been bluffing. Everything in me screamed that he was probably bluffing… yet something had me turning around anyway. “What’d you say?”

This time, he was the one shrugging. I glanced over at the glass partition—I had no idea if John was still there or waiting for me in one of the offices—before looking back at the kid again.

“I don’t know what you think you know,” I hissed so that only he could hear me, my arm shooting out and fisting his hospital gown. “But you need to forget it.”

He leaned forward and whispered back, “Marisela ain’t all that forgettable… at least her tits aren’t.”

I ground my teeth and shoved him aside before I spun towards the door, a little more force in my steps as I tore off my bloodied gloves and stomped down the hall.

I didn’t know how this kid knew who Marisela was or what she’d meant to me… I hadn’t told a soul. I’d barely acknowledged that shit myself… before it was too late. And now I had her ghost haunting me with the help of a mental patient who hadn’t been outside these walls in over a year.

It took two more steps for me to register what that meant.

Maybe she hadn’t been the body I’d tossed down that well… Maybe the MDMA was still messing with my head, distorting my memories so I didn’t even know what I’d done that night. But more importantly was the realization that… maybe she was here. At Briarwood.

I just needed to find her without letting anyone know I was looking for her. After that, I could figure out who the fuck’s blood I was really looking at under that microscope.