Page 77 of Lamb

“For me, it was.”

“That’s going to need stitches, Marisela,” he chastised like a disapproving father. I already had one of those, and we knew how things ended with him.

“Then let’s hope your hand’s gotten steadier over the years.” I gestured to the scar on his abdomen. The one I’d left there. And by the time I’d dropped my hand back down on the armrest, Adrian was in front of me, snatching me up by the wrist and dragging me out of his office. Along the hallway, making a left, and then swinging us inside an empty exam room.

He grabbed me at the waist, picking me up and plopping my ass on top of the table. Muttering to himself as he removed alcohol pads and gauze from various drawers and cabinets before slapping them down on a metal tray next to a sterile needle and a package of sutures. Irritation tightening the muscles of his back as he hunched over the counter.

The thing was, I could have stabbed him. It would have felt good too. At least momentarily. Seeing him so spun up was much more entertaining, though. There was a reason jilted wives keyed their husbands’ cars. Men liked keeping pretty things intact.Thiswas just our version of that… without having to get an insurance adjuster involved.

“And here I thought surgeons were known for being stoic,” I mused, my leg throbbing in the best way even as the blood continued to pool beneath my ass.

When Adrian turned to face me again, the aggravation was gone. But so was the concern. His grip on my thigh neither rough nor gentle as he grabbed the base of the scissors and yanked them free. I knew enough to avoid the femoral artery. That didn’t mean I still couldn’t bleed out, especially once nothing was there to staunch the flow anymore.

But instead of putting pressure on the wound, Adrian stepped back, locking the door behind him as he aimed his glare at me. As wordless as he was judgmental.

“So what’s the plan, Dr. Lambert? Teach me a lesson? Stand there and watch until I bleed out on your table.”

He crossed his arms over his chest, his mouth pressed into a thin line and his pupils dilated. “No, not until you bleed out.” He shrugged a single shoulder. “Just until you’re too tired to fight me.”

90

ADRIAN

Iglanced down at my watch, then back up at Marisela’s face. Twenty minutes after dislodging the scissors and she was already exhibiting significant pallor. Her lips starting to turn blue, her breaths shallow, and her eyes struggling to stay open.

My disgruntled little patient was declining fast. The blood loss affecting her much more rapidly than it should have been, even if I took into account the alcohol she chugged for breakfast. The baseline dehydration and anemia working to my advantage as cortisol and epinephrine flooded her system. Increasing her anxiety and in turn her blood flow.

Her body was doing everything it could to protect itself. Unfortunately, those same measures were only helping to expedite her quick descent into hypovolemic shock.

She had the ability to put an end to this battle of wills, if she politely asked me to stitch her up. Her pride wouldn’tallow her to do it. Which was fine. One of us had all the time in the world, and it sure as hell wasn’t the one with a gaping wound in their thigh.

“Fuck you…” she mumbled under her breath, her words slurring in a way that had me pushing off the wall and stepping forward to sling her over a shoulder.

I could feel the warmth of her blood seeping through my shirt as I carried her back down the hall, stopping at Bugs’s door and pushing it open with the tip of my shoe.

He peered up from his computer screen, both handsthankfullyin full view as he glanced from my face to Marisela’s ass, which I just now noticed was bare, the material of her skirt bunching around her waist and exposing everything she didn’t have underneath it.

“Went that well, huh?” He smirked.

I crossed an arm over my chest, using my palm to cover her. “I have some things to take care of. Keep an eye on Casper. Make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid,” I grunted.

“I’m not his keeper,” Bugs replied, reminding me just how young he was and old I fucking felt.

“No. You’re not. You’d do well to remember you’re not Donnie’s either,” I stressed before adding, “That doesn’t make it any less of a team effort, though.”

He nodded once, his fingers slamming against the keyboard as I clicked the door closed again.

These kids were gonna be the death of me. If my little lamb didn’t get to me first.

I flicked on the light, taking several long strides until I was standing in the middle of the room. Padded walls, no windows, a few medical devices essential for ensuring our guest’s comfort, and a single metal-framed bed off to one side. A cell originally designed to quarantine well-off tuberculous patients while everyone else was lined up on thin cots along the main floor.

It was then used to confine the sanitorium’s criminally insane in the 1950s after the epidemic became less widespread and expansive units were no longer needed. Briarwood offered the land and space most of the asylums didn’t, and so the focused turned from overall health to full-on confinement. A dumping ground for the city’s lost and unwanted souls, until Hare and Burke decided the most dangerous residents would be better off hidden away in the basement.

That was before I’d found them, of course. Before I’d helped reinvent this place from the inside out. Making it lessBedlamand moreDr. Frankenstein.

Now we used these rooms as private accommodations. These walls for research and development. The former patients having all been transferred to other facilities or lost in the shuffle of mismanaged paperwork. Patients likeDonnie and Casper and Bugs and a few others who stayed behind or escaped.

I didn’t care to track them down. Treating the mind was never of interest to me. It wasn’t the vision I saw for Briarwood after I took over. Not as a surgeon specializing in reconstructive medicine. In transformation. And I transformed those boys, eased what was ailing them even if it was for my own benefit.

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