Page 13 of Skin Deep

Iwasgetting paid, just not on his dime. The hospital paid my salary, and that would happen whether I helped him or not.

I nodded to the woman. “I’d like to take a look if that’s all right. And before you tell me no because you can’t afford it, you should know that I’m also on staff at Best Face Forward. They provide reconstructive surgery to low-income people at little to no cost.”

His eyes brightened with hope. “And you think Shauna… You think they could make her beautiful again?”

I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from barking at him to stop being a dick about it. Beauty was transient. Chasing it was a waste of time. Eventually, we were all going to be rotting in the dirt, and the worms didn’t give two shits how beautiful our corpses were. This idiot didn’t seem to understand that his words might cut his wife deeper than the ripper ever had.

I swallowed my anger at his poor choice of words, hoping that’s all it was. “They might be able to help. It depends on a lot of factors. I can’t promise anything without looking first, but there are a lot of options to reduce or eliminate facial scars.”

He considered me. At first, I thought he was going to turn me away, but then he gave a subtle nod of his head and stood.

I moved to the other side of the bed and checked to make sure she still had a steady flow of pain medication before carefully unwrapping the bandages. It was technically too soon to do a proper assessment. That would have to wait until after the initial stitches and bruising healed and the swelling went down. I wanted to see the damage firsthand.

It took a while to remove the many layers of bandages and absorbent pads, but when I did it was difficult not to react to what I saw. Her face was so bruised and swollen, it barely looked like a face. The staples holding her together had been hastily done. Sutures would have left less scarring, but they would have been more expensive and time consuming.

I hated that money decided so much of a patient’s care. She should have had the same treatment as a wealthy woman, and it wasn’t right that she hadn’t.

Focus, War. Be mad at capitalism later.

Carefully, I probed around the cuts. It didn’t look promising. The ripper had made his cuts with precision and purpose, carving out large swaths of skin and muscle that might never grow back. There were places where her cheek had been cut to the bone and a large portion of her nose had been sawed away.

She whimpered and turned her head away from my touch, squeezing her husband’s hand.

“She shouldn’t go home, Mr. King,” I found myself saying coldly.

He hung his head. “I know. But what choice do I have? We can’t afford this.”

I pressed the call button for the nurse. Hannah and two others hurried in a moment later. “Need some assistance replacing the bandages,” I told her and she nodded, going to the sink to wash her hands.

I turned to the husband. “I know I’m not her doctor, but if I was, I would never sign off on this. You take her home, her risk of infection is incredibly high and the pain she’ll be in will be astronomical. There are some programs that might cover this stay. Has anyone told you about that?”

He shook his head and wrung his hands.

I sighed. “There’ll be a lot of paperwork, and I can’t promise everything will be covered, but she needs care you can’t provide at home. At least consider it.” I walked over to discard my gloves and wash my hands again. “Hannah will get you the paperwork you need,” I told him and left the room.

Before going over to the clinic, I stopped by the records office and bribed one of the clerks to make a small note in the King file to forward any outstanding bills to me. It wouldn’t change the broken system, and I wasn’t even sure it would help them, but I had to dosomething.

On the drive across town, I hit the call button. “Call Nikita Volkov.”

“Calling Nikita Volkov.”

The phone rang twice before a deep velvety voice with a slight Russian accent answered, “Warrick! Good to hear from you, son.”

I winced. Technically, that was true. He was my father by blood, but the man had barely lifted a finger to raise me. He was around, but he’d never done anything a father was supposed to do. I couldn’t remember a single time he’d tucked me into bed or come to any of my school functions. It was Yuri who taught me to tie a tie and how to shave. When I cut myself, it was Tatty who’d patched me up. The only thing Nikita had ever done was hire people to teach me to shoot and pay for my college. As far as I was concerned, he was an asset to be exploited and a sperm donor, not a father.

He didn’t have any right to call me son.

“What do you know about the Olentangy River Ripper case?” I asked.

There was a slight hesitation on his end before he answered, “Not much. Just what’s been in the papers. I don’t get all the details unless they arrest someone and that someone hires me. Why?”

I frowned. “So there’s no one on the case? No one is looking into this?”

“Well, you’ll have to talk to Yuri about it, but I haven’t heard anything, no.” There was the sound of him tapping some papers against his desk. “You could always bring it to the table, Warrick.”

I could, but if I did, I knew they’d use it as an opportunity to take the training wheels off. Yuri would hand the entire operation over to me to see if I could handle it, and I didn’t think I was ready for that level of responsibility. I’d been hoping someone else cared enough about it to at least be investigating on the side, but apparently it wasn’t even on my brothers’ radar.

“Speaking of bringing things to the table,” he continued a little slower, “I happened to secure some tickets to the Clippers game this Saturday. You should come.”

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