Page 54

ADRIAN

“ D o you think it’s possible?” The white surgical mask clung to my lips each time I sucked in a breath.

Usually I enjoyed the feel of it. The biting odor of the antiseptic tinged with the copper scent of fresh blood.

But right now, my mind was somewhere else.

Focused on someone other than the patient cracked open in front of me.

“Do I think what’s possible?” John huffed through the mic in my ear as the instruments in my gloved hands peeled epidermis from muscle and muscle from bone.

I’d forgotten he was listening from where he’d propped himself up in the adjacent room again. Always heard and never seen.

“Nothing. Just thinking aloud.” I shook my head and returned my attention to the mess of metal plates and protruding screws. Tracing a blue fingertip over each of the vertebra along the kid’s spine .

I’d already fashioned a few rough prototypes using a mixture of synthetic materials and ground cadaver bone.

The implant had to be sturdy but flexible.

Permanent but easy enough to repair or replace if needed.

This kid had become my passion project, when I wasn’t too busy burying my face between Marisela’s thighs.

Almost as if part of me thought that if I fixed him, I could fix her too.

And maybe I was that na?ve. But naiveté incited ingenuity and ingenuity was the foundation of progress. Right?

“You’ve got something up your sleeve, don’t ya, Doc?” The kid yawned, causing his chest to inflate and rise enough to have me nearly nicking an artery.

“Don’t move. Unless your idea of a good time is bleeding out on my table,” I grunted, and he moved again. Shrugging his shoulders just to spite me.

“Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t.”

The muscle relaxant must have been wearing off.

Which meant I had to either hold him down or stitch him up until I could mix together another syringe.

An IV drip would have been a better option, if I had a compliant patient and another set of hands to monitor the device for me. I didn’t have either of those.

“You’re all talk, you know that?” I shook my head as I started piecing the kid back together again. One layer at a time.

“Nope. I’m action too. A lot of tongue action. But according to you, that ain’t your thing.”

“Bullshit.” I tugged harder than I needed to, looping the first subcutaneous stitch before moving on to the next. “ You’re a smart kid. If you really wanted to take yourself out, you would have found a way to do it already.”

“Easy for you to say from that pedestal those two legs are standing on,” he muttered against the face-rest.

“Sure is. Easy for you too, with all those pills you got stashed in your room. Why not just take a handful and see where it lands you?” I lifted a challenging brow for no one’s benefit but my own.

It also helped push back some of the sweat that was beading across my forehead.

The hospital lighting was harsh and the room stuffy, so that even a few minutes in here had you feeling like you were sitting in a sauna.

“How do you know about those?” he asked me.

And the answer was… I didn’t. It was just an educated guess, considering how quickly he metabolized everything I tried to flush through his system. Kid wasn’t just immune to pain; he’d also developed a tolerance to most sedatives. It was probably why he didn’t consider overdosing an option.

He didn’t need to know how or what I knew, though. It was better to keep him on his toes— okay, maybe not the best choice of words.

“He’s gone, you know,” he whispered after a few more moments of awkward but pleasant silence.

“Who’s gone?”

“Whoever you had in your ear,” the kid clarified. “He ain’t listening anymore.”

“Okay.”

“I heard the door shut, followed by the swishing of his pants down the hall. ”

“Okay,” I repeated.

“ So now you can tell me what you’re really doing with my back.”

Like I said, the kid was smart. “What makes you think I’m doing anything?” I countered, and he shrugged another shoulder.

“I don’t think. I know. You’re taking measurements. None of the others ever took measurements. Just poked and pulled and sliced and screwed. And you’re being careful. None of them ever cared enough to be careful either. Which means you’re up to something.”

“And what if I am? You gonna rat on me?” I questioned him.

“Do I look like a rat to you, Doc?” he fired back.

“Nope. But you do look like someone who will do whatever suits him.”

“You’re not wrong.” He grinned. Even though I couldn’t see his face, I knew the way his tone changed when he was grinning. “And what suits me right now is introducing you to a friend.”

“I didn’t know you had any?”

“Oh, I have plenty of friends, Doc. Plenty of enemies too. But we can take care of those fuckers another day.”

We? It was on the tip of my tongue to say since when the fuck are we a we ? But I couldn’t deny that I was curious. Which also went hand in hand with that progress I mentioned.

“You know what? Why the hell not?” I tugged off one glove at a time before tossing them into the red bin. “Introduce me to your friend, kid.”

“Kaz, Kazimir Markov.”

“Hm?”

“That’s my name. Not kid ,” he corrected, his tone more level than I’d ever heard it before. More Russian too. Almost as though he had a slight accent he’d forgotten to hide. “But my friends call me Casper. Like the cartoon ghost. You should catch on, since you’re about to be one of ?em.”

“I’m about to be your friend? Or a ghost?” I attempted to clarify.

“You’re about to be my best friend. You’ll see.”