Page 247 of The Night Shift
I start to sob. Or I try. Hot tears slip sideways down my face, trailing toward my temple, pooling against the table. I try to beg.
Please stop.
Please, I’ll be good.
Please, Holly.
But nothing comes out. Just muffled, animal sounds.
Holly straightens, and I hear it before I see it — a faint metallic clatter as she picks something up from the tray beside the table.
A pair of surgical pliers. Small. Thin. Precise.
My heart kicks into my throat.
She holds them up to the light, admiring the curve of them like they’re an art piece. “You touched him,” she says, almost conversational. “I don’t like people touching what’s mine.”
She takes my left hand first. Unstraps it slowly. Tenderly. Cradles it like she’s about to kiss it. Instead, she spreads my fingers wide and clamps the pliers around the edge of my pinky nail.
Terror surges.
She twists.
Pain detonates up my arm. Something wet explodes under my nail, and the sound is worse than the pain. Like wet paper being peeled off raw wood. I can’t scream. I can’t even breathe.
I taste metal in the back of my throat.
She drops the nail onto the tray with a softplink.
“One down, nine to go.”
The pliers clamp again.
My chest jerks with silent, voiceless sobs. I feel the cold metal bite into the edge of the nail, slick with blood now. It slips once. She readjusts and twists.
White-hot agony rips through my hand like she’s splitting every nerve. My body arches off the table, every muscle seizing. Blood spatters against the tray. I hear it land.
Plink.
“Two,” she whispers.
The next two come quicker. My flesh is torn. My hand is trembling so hard I can barely see through the blur of tears. I shake my head over and over, begging silently to God.Please. Please, stop.
She doesn’t.
Twist. Rip. Plink.
It’s not until she moves to my thumb that I really try to scream. The sound builds up in my chest like a bomb, desperate and feral. It crashes up my throat, hitting the stitches sealing my mouth shut and tears them.
A searing bolt of pain erupts across my cheek as the skin splits. Something warm and thick spills out. Not blood. Bile.
It surges up behind the scream, frothy and acidic, leaking out through the torn corner of my mouth. It runs down my chin, bitter and burning, mixing with the blood already soaking my neck.
“Oh, no,” Holly says sweetly. “You broke your mouth.”
The pain is too much. It’stoo much! My body jerks, convulses, then stills.
Darkness crashes in like a wave. I pass out. I don’t know how long I’m gone. But I wake up hoping I’m dead and this is hell. I wait for the part where I’m punished for all eternity in the fiery depths of hell. Anything, but her. Please, please, please.
