Page 248 of The Night Shift

Then I move my eyes.

I’m not dead.

My neck barely moves, but I manage to look down. Both my hands are a mangled mess. No nails. Every finger is bent wrong. Skin torn, nail beds oozing. Purple and black and red. Not fingers. Just meat.

I dry-heave. Nothing comes up. The pain has become numb.

Then I feelher.

Behind me. A soft breath near the crown of my head. I can’t see her, but I can feel her presence like a blade hovering an inch from my scalp. She steps closer and starts unwrapping the bandage around my skull.

The wet cloth peels away from my head with a sickening stick of dried blood and sweat. My scalp throbs. Each layer liftsheat and pain with it. I want to scream again, but I think I’ve genuinely forgotten how to make sounds.

“Do you know what this place is?” Holly says, her voice light and thoughtful.

I can’t answer. My throat burns. My body’s barely holding together.

She taps her index finger, very gently, against the center of my forehead. “This is where you thought of hurting him. The prefrontal cortex. The part of you that makes decisions. Plans betrayal. Creates delusions.”

She smiles. Teeth and blood.

My stomach drops. A fresh wave of panic tries to surge, but my body’s too far gone. All I manage is a wet rasp from the back of my ruined throat.

She moves to stand in front of me and reaches for something off the tray. I hear the pop of a vial. The hiss of a syringe filling. I try to twist my head away, but she grabs my jaw with gloved fingers and steadies me.

“Eyes on me, you fucking bitch. Did you seriously think I was going to let you die so quickly? I plucked out a man’s heart because Ithoughthe hurt Theo. You actually did. In front of me, no less.” She laughs. “I have to make it hurt first. I promised Audrey I would.”

She plunges the needle into my neck.

I jolt. My limbs twitch. The drug hits fast. Sharp and electrical. My heart pounds harder. I’m sweating instantly, vision sharpening at the edges, and my pulse hammers like a war drum in my ears.

I want to ask what the fuck that was, but the words don't come. They get lost in the shredded mess of my mouth.

She answers anyway. “Epinephrine. It’s going to keep you awake. Counteract the shock.”

She turns and picks up a drill. Not a big one. It’s small. I’ve heard her talk about them before. They use them in hospitals. Only this isn't a hospital, and Holly isn’t trying to save me.

She leans over my face, brushing another blood-matted curl behind my ear.

“Don’t worry. People only die from this if doctors aren’t careful. And as you already know, I’m very careful.”

I hear it before I feel it.

High-pitched, shrill, and wrong. It hums behind my ear, in the pit of my stomach. I can’t move. My head’s strapped tight to the table, my limbs too wrecked to fight, my mouth split open and leaking whatever’s left of my insides.

Holly stands just out of view, fingers steady, eyes bright. Focused. I think she might be humming. I can’t tell. She brushes a gloved finger over the shaved curve of my head.

The drill makes contact with my forehead.

It doesn’t hurt at first. Not in the way I expect. There’s pressure. Blunt, vibrating pressure, like someone pressing a jackhammer to my face while I’m still inside my body. My skin tenses. The bone resists. Then a crack.

A sound I’ve never heard before. Wet. Dense. Like splintering porcelain inside my own skull.

And then the pain arrives.

White-hot. All-consuming. A scream roars up my throat, tearing past what’s left of my stitches, raw and open and useless. My legs convulse. My bladder gives out. I taste copper and vomit and something sharp.

I sob through my nose, choking on bile and spit. I try to pass out.