Page 65 of Choosing Jenny
The pair moved the rocks until Longshot thought it was ready. Lanai shoved the large boulder, but it didn’t budge. Longshot reached for another stone from the other side of the boulder, and as he did, a snout squeezed through the small hole it left and snapped his right hand off above the wrist.
Longshot’s scream tore through the night. I flinched back in shock as blood sprayed across the rocks.
“Shit—” I lunged forward, but Deacon was faster.
Thinking more clearly than I was, Deacon immediately threw Longshot over his back and across his shoulders then bolted at full speed from the cave to the ship, with the rest of us hot on his trail. Rhonda clung to Longshot’s neck, hissing in panic.
Deacon ran straight to the infirmary. Ode was there to assess the patient, immediately giving Longshot jet injection after jet injection to stop the bleeding and his pain. Longshot fell unconscious, and I didn’t know if it was from the drugs, the excruciating pain, or blood loss.
Rhonda, scared and confused, slithered to me. I picked her up, letting her wrap around my arm. Half her body was brilliant red with his blood. Her small eyes were glued to Longshot.
Ode and Deacon worked fast. Longshot’s arm ended in a shredded stump, and while the bleeding had slowed, the damage was brutal. His hand was just…gone.
“Any of you his blood type?” Ode barked.
“He’s erspine-Q-A,” I told her. “I don’t know anyone that—”
“I am,” Drift said, emerging through the crowd gathered just outside the infirmary, holding out his arm. “Use me.”
Ode had them set up for a blood donation within minutes. She was faster and more capable than any doctor I’d ever seen, better than the palace doctors without question. Every move was a dance between her, her patients and her equipment. Calm, smooth, fluid.
Longshot stirred, his eyes fluttering to me and Rhonda. I came to his side, careful to stay out of Ode’s way. His voice was weak and raspy as he said, “Iwasthat hand.”
Then, his head went limp again as his eyes stared at nothing.
Panic gripped me until Ode explained, “The second dose kicked in. He won’t wake for another hour.” She pointed to the monitor Longshot was hooked up to. “If that thing beeps, then you worry, okay?”
I swallowed hard and nodded. “Thank you, Ode.”
“Are you going to cauterize him?” Deacon asked.
“Yes.” She turned around with a medical hand cannon. “You all may want to look away.”
I held his left, uninjured hand, and Rhonda wrapped around both our hands together. I looked Ode in the eye. “Do it.”
As she shot his stump, his flesh sizzled. The smoke scent was strangely familiar. Like roast kadakis ribs over a campfire.
I would never be able to eat them again.
CHAPTER 21
Tiger
Istood in the doorway of the infirmary, keeping out of Ode’s way inside and blocking the hall from anyone else trying to get in. Lanai Dea appeared, dragging the rucksacks Surge had pushed out of the caves behind herself as she came down the hall.
Everything had settled now. The initial chaos was over, the adrenaline fading.
Ode stared at her patients—Longshot on the table, unconscious and bandaged, and Drift still hooked to the transfusion line.
“Drift, I’m going to unhook you now—”
“Does he have enough?” the other man asked, concerned.
She nodded. “He’ll be fine.”
“He won’t be fine,” Mal said darkly, and I knew that he meant the loss of his friend’s limb. He still held Longshot’s good hand,with Rhonda wrapped tight around both of theirs. The strigella’s head rested on Longshot’s chest.
Ode sighed as she unhooked Drift and changed her answer to, “He’lllive.”
