Page 97 of Bones
“Trey.” I barely managed to get the word out. I couldn’t keep my heavy eyelids open.
“No, Bones, please don’t?—”
Blissful dark swallowed me whole again.
* * *
I jolted back with a cry when pain shot through me like lightning. Someone had picked me up, my broken arm lying limply across my stomach. My head rolled and came to rest on a solid warm chest. I panted through my teeth as I tried to contain my scream of pain.
“Hold on, darlin'. I got you.”
I managed to roll my head back to look up. The freezing slush had plastered Trey’s hair to his face, and emotion rolled through his eyes like a storm as he stared down at me.
“Get her to the clinic.” I heard Mac’s voice in the background. “We’re right behind you.”
Trey started moving and every step felt like agony. I vaguely heard him murmuring gently to me, but then everything went dark again.
* * *
Somebody screamed and as I gasped in a breath, I realized it was me. Trey held my shoulders down as someone else tried to maneuver my broken arm back into the right position.
“She needs a healer,” someone cried.
“Sheisthe healer!” somebody, maybe Griz, snapped.
Someone moved my broken arm again, and I strained against Trey’s hold, a hoarse scream ripping out of my throat.
“I’m sorry, Bones,” Trey said in a low voice laced with panic.
“Get a narc,” someone yelled and panic sliced through me.
“No!” I wheezed.
I’d been thirteen years old the first time I broke that arm, and that’d been my first experience with narcs. I still didn’t fully understand what happened to me while drugged, but I did know I would rather endure terrible pain than go through that again.
I choked, coughing as I struggled to get a deep breath that wouldn’t come. My lungs seized in agony, and my brain flashed back to Brimstone choking me in the muddy pit.
“What’s wrong with her?” I heard someone demand.
Collapsed lung,some very removed part of me thought clinically.
“Bones, can you breathe?!”
I managed to focus on Sam’s anxious face above me, but I couldn’t get enough air to answer.
“Her lips are turning blue!”
I moved my eyes in a panic, searching faces until I found Trey. He had mud and blood smeared across his face, and he stared down at me with wide, horrified eyes. A tear rolled down my cheek as I stared back at him, slowly suffocating. Everything I’d done to push him away felt so fucking stupid now. The regret hurt as much as the pain. I couldn’t even say goodbye.
“No!” Trey’s eyes narrowed, full of fury and fear. “Bones, don’t you dare?—”
“Bones, can you try to heal yourself?” Someone grabbed my good hand. “Come on, what if you direct it through me? Like electricity?”
I strained to pay attention. I didn’t know. I’d never tried something like that.
“Try! C’mon, godsdamnit!” the voice ordered.
They squeezed my hand hard, and I tried to send that warmth up through my arm and into their hand. They wrapped their other hand around my broken arm, making me jolt in pain.
