Page 249 of The Night Shift
But I can’t.
The drug won’t let me.
My eyes roll back. Holly slaps my cheek hard.
I blink, gasping through my nose. My vision swims in and out.
The drill keeps going.
She angles the drill diagonally, shifting to follow the curvature of my forehead bone. It burns with friction. I feel like my head is being ground open from the inside, bit by bit.
I feel it down my spine. Down my toes. Down my teeth. I just want to die. I pray over and over again for my heart to give out. It doesn’t. The bitch made sure of that.
A pressure builds deep behind my eyes. My teeth ache. My nose starts to bleed.
“Almost through,” Holly murmurs. “Cranial thickness varies. Yours is particularly thick.”
A bolt of electricity zips down my left arm — sudden, sharp, like a nerve caught fire.
“Ah. There’s the dura,” she says, pleased. “Don’t worry. I’m not going through that. Not yet.”
My heart is pounding so hard, I think it might burst. I hope it does. But it doesn’t. My body is fighting to stay awake, to stay alive, tofeelthis.
And it does.
I feeleverything.
I feel the drill go back in. It feels lighter this time. She’s removing the bone. I feel the pull. The vibration. The cool air hitting raw bone.
I sob. I scream. I beg.
There’s no language left in me. Just sound.
She leans in close to my ear.
“This is the part of your brain that made you believe you could take him from me,” she whispers. “That you could hurt him and get away with it.”
Her breath brushes my skin.
“Now feel as I take that away.”
I try to say I’m sorry. I don’t know what comes out. Just wet, rattling noise.
A nerve twitch. Then another. My body jerks. Not by choice.
My body convulses. She’s in my head. And I don’t mean it figuratively. I mean:there is a hole in my skull and her fingers are physically inside it.
Her hand moves delicately, adjusting something. I feel the vibration through the wet bone that used to protect me. A pressure.
“I’m going to hurt you so much, Camille. I’m going to cut you into tiny fucking pieces and bury each part someplace so far that hell will freeze over before you manage to put yourself back together again.”
My body wants to seize.
Something clicks in her hand. She presses it down.
Pain detonates behind my eyes like a bomb buried in my skull. My whole face jerks forward as nerves seize. I hear a sound. My limbs spasm. There’s so much blood, it’s covering my vision. White flashes, then blood red.
Burning. My brain is burning.
