Page 54 of Healing Creek
“I’ll get it,” Saturn offered, moving quickly to the wall of neatly labeled compartments. There were a lot of them. “Shit,” he muttered, and pulled open one compartment after another.
Grace took calming breaths, one hand on Creek’s forehead and one on his shoulder. “Jupiter, can you make the whole in his tunic a little bigger around the puncture?”
Jupiter did as she asked without hesitation, fisting his hand in the material and ripping.
She met Mercury’s eyes levelly. “When I have the transfusion going and the sealer ready, you’re going to pull the branch out. As straight out as you can. Not too fast, but not too slow. We don’t want to do any additional damage if we can help it, but we also need to stop the bleeding.”
Mercury nodded.
Zachary was out of her line of sight now, but he was still hovering, so she would put him to good use. “Zachary, align the bones in that compound fracture.”
“I hardly think—”
Mercury stopped him with a growl. She was grateful. She didn’t think she could make that noise, but just then she really wanted to.
With the help of Jupiter’s strength, Zachary realigned the bones broken in Creek’s arm. Her love didn’t even moan. God, he was so weak. Her eyes teared up, but she took another deep breath and put all thoughts but what she needed to do out of her head.
Saturn came up to Creek’s side with the instruments she’d requested. She quickly ran the transfusion line. She took the sealer in the hand opposite the line and fixed her gaze on Mercury. “Are you ready?”
He nodded. It was as if they all stopped breathing at once.
“Go,” she whispered.
Mercury did just as she’d asked…a steady pull directly up to remove the branch. Blood sprayed up from the wound and splattered against her hand. She slapped the pressure sealer over the wound then adjusted the settings.
The pressure sealer would do enough to keep him from bleeding out any further but the wound was still an open and jagged hole. Grace watched her blood run into Creek’s vein.
If the others thought she had lost touch with reality, they must have thought Creek too far gone for her actions to make matters any worse. No one tried to stop her or even question her. They couldn’t know that her blood was coursing with the tiny medibots that routinely kept her alive, repairing cells genetically flawed by her parents’ manipulation gone wrong. Maybe she was crazy to think this would work. That the medibots could repair such catastrophic damage quickly enough to save him.
She’d done something similar when her sister had fallen and broken a glass when they were children, so she knew the principal was sound. But Creek’s genetics might be so different from hers it might not work for him at all. She could only hope.
She looked up to see grim faces all around. All except Zachary whose mouth was hanging open.
“You can treat him now,” she said, drawing his attention to her. “Just none of that making him comfortable nonsense. He’s going to recover.”
His mouth snapped shut but his eyes remained wide.
“A blood doubler,” she suggested. With so much damage to repair, anything they could do to help him would increase his odds.
As if he could read her thoughts, the medic jerked into action, getting the doubler and getting to work. Grace could feel her own blood loss beginning to take a toll. Her head was spinning, and darkness crept in around the edges of her vision. Her strength was drained, her body leaden. But every drop of blood she could spare would be less time her medibots would take to accomplish the repairs she hoped would save his life. Unfortunately, she could feel she’d already passed her limit. Grace quickly and sloppily stopped the transfusion and moved away to let the medic step in to continue the process of healing Creek. Somehow, he’d simply accepted that her blood would save him. A man of medicine should be more skeptical. Her brain wouldn’t allow her to focus on why that might be important. The heat of a hand closing around her arm drew her gaze to Mercury as he wiped a spot of blood away from her skin. She hadn’t bothered with pressure or a bandage. The wound was already closed.
“You heal faster than we do,” he said.
She tried to nod. She tried to speak. She could do neither. She heard him speak her name from somewhere far away. Her world tilted and she was held against a warm body. She was so cold.
“Jus’ need res’,” she tried to explain. Then she slept.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Haven,Umbria
EarthAllianceBetaSector
2210.201
Grace woke to a pinch on her arm and someone shaking her awake. “Huh?”
“We have to go,” the shadowed face above her whispered. “Come on.”
