Page 82 of Saint of the Shadows

Vincent’s eyes rolled into the back of his head, and a hissing sound escaped his lips as he passed out.

26

Count Your Blessings

The car weaved behind multiple secured entrances in the parking garage under the Varian Family Hospital. The SUV charged at a concrete wall. Marisol searched for her seatbelt. Without it, she hugged Vincent and braced for impact. If he wasn’t half passed out from his own wounds, Tobias should grab the wheel. Open your eyes, Tobias! Open—in a microsecond, the wall ascended magically, revealing a hidden world within.

Weak, incandescent lights illuminated a storage room. Rather, an abandoned storage room strewn with old hospital furniture, laundry carts of faded scrubs and hospital gowns, and other odds and ends yet to be explored. Why did Staci bring them to this forgotten place?

Tobias helped Marisol drag a gurney out from the pile, though he winced and limped as he did. After they opened the hatch of the SUV, theycounted to three and lifted Vincent onto the gurney. He flopped like a rag doll.

“How are his vitals?” Tobias asked.

Marisol pressed against the ulnar artery at Vincent’s wrist. His pulse, a beautiful, steady rhythm, lulled like lapping water, and his chest expanded gently as he breathed. “They’re good.”

Tobias opened drawers in search of supplies. He remarked that one drawer had a bloody handprint as he opened it and asked, “Do we need forceps the size of a watermelon?”

“No,” Marisol replied, joining him to search for supplies. The first one she opened had expired latex gloves and a thread and needle. Tobias found tape, gauze, and silver nitrate. She collected it in a plastic tub and set it near Vincent’s feet.

Tobias opened the latched handle of a buzzing refrigerator. From it, he fished out an old polka-dotted ice bag and held it against his swollen eye. Marisol tested a few pairs of gloves before she finally found a pair that didn’t disintegrate.

They needed water, but calcium and lime coated the basement’s only sink and choked access to the faucet. The only knob Marisol managed to turn was for cold water. She first sipped the water and then washed her hands with a dried-out block of soap that barely lathered.

Tobias flipped Vincent onto his stomach. From there, Marisol removed his souped-up wetsuit of a uniform, noticing small scars over his torso from bullet wounds and slashes. What had Ruthven doneto him? Gloves on, Marisol dried one gash with gauze. As she applied the silver nitrate, she winced as it cauterized the wound. But Vincent breathed and slept. Count on him for making perpetual pain beautiful. She repeated drying and cauterizing until the bleeding stopped.

She stitched him together. When the needle poked through his skin, she pictured him flinching. The pads of her sore fingers stroked affirmations. I will heal you, my love. I will make you stronger, they said. She stitched and caressed, sewed and gentled him until the sewn-up gashes looked like a large fist holding three drooping flowers. She wrapped the strange shape in gauze, binding it over his shoulder with tape. When she finished, Vincent resembled the city’s sorriest patient, tied in a hospital gown and a threadbare sheet tucked around him.

On the other side of the storage room, Tobias paced the perimeter and discovered an alcove with a shower head. He turned it on. The pipes puffed and shook before releasing a steady stream. “We got warm water.”

Marisol broke away from Vincent’s side, ripping up another hospital gown. After gathering the hot water in the plastic tub, she returned to Vincent and wiped his head with her makeshift rag.

While she worked, Tobias lugged a plastic-coated couch from the pile of furniture, hooking one arm under it as the other cradled his ribs. He plopped it across from Vincent’s hospital bed,wiped the seat, and collapsed into it, spreading his knees apart and stretching his legs. Settled, he ripped off his bullet-proof vest and loosened the zipper of his neoprene shirt.

Marisol ran the wet cloth over Vincent’s hair and dabbed away the blood in it. “We should get him upstairs for better care, though I’m not sure how we would explain him.”

Tobias rubbed at his chin. “If his powers work like they should, he just needs some extra time to repair. Who knows how long he hung there?” Scratching the back of his head, he muttered, “Or how long he tortured him?”

She gripped her chest in personal torment. How much longer would it have been if she hadn’t trusted her instincts? If Tobias hadn’t helped her? She’d clean the blood and grime from his face, neck, and arms until it washed away her guilt for doubting him or herself.

Tobias said, “You need a break, and not a chemically induced one.”

She bit her tongue and said, “Hm,” which stopped her from saying I’m fine, a lie so oft repeated, it came like a reflex.

“You could use a shower and a change of clothes. Trust me, you’re ripe.”

Seconds ticked by as she weighed wiping another smudge from his skin against smelling presentable. Draping the pink-stained rag on the bed’s railing, she pulled herself from Vincent’s side but hesitated after each step. Creating too muchspace between them, she feared, would somehow lose him again.

But her steps quickened until she made it around the shower alcove, where she found a travel-sized bar of soap among a stack of dust-laden supplies. From her hair to her toes, she scrubbed with the tiny bar of soap. A sudsy touch confirmed her neck was tender from Ruthven’s chokehold. Her own ice pack would be great. Though judging from Tobias’s bruises, he needed the world’s supply of them. She dried off with a bedsheet and changed into faded scrubs. Every pair was too big for her, so the pants pooled at her feet and the shirt slung off her shoulder.

When she rounded the corner of the shower, untangling her wet hair with her fingers, she watched Tobias sit next to Vincent in the hospital bed. He bowed his head, holding Vincent’s hand between his palms. Tobias touched his fingers to his head, chest, his left shoulder, and then his right before gently setting Vincent’s hand back on the bed. Praying. He opened his eyes and lifted his head. The moment he saw Marisol, he scrambled back to his spot on the couch.

She padded across the basement and joined him, sitting a cushion away. “I needed that.” She tugged at the shoulders of her shirt. “Only wish I could wear my clothes. For once.”

Tobias opened his mouth, making nothing but a glottal sound. Was he embarrassed because he had been praying? Tension ratcheted with each dripof the faucet, marking the silence like a metronome. The pause between the droplets begged for conversation.

He leaned forward, resting his elbows against his knees. His focus honed on Vincent. “Why’d you change the plan?”

The plan to spring Vincent? She tilted her head. It seemed obvious to her—to save Tobias too.

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