Whether he heard her or not, he kept moving.
By the time they reached the house, Rosa’s back screamed, Lily was trembling with effort, and Dominic had slipped into unconsciousness.
They got him onto Lily’s bed.
The room was tiny, warm, and painfully clean. Crayons in a chipped mug. A small cross above the door. Hand-drawn stars taped to the wall. A photograph of Isabella in a cheap frame on the dresser, forever thirty-one, forever smiling.
Rosa worked.
The years fell away from her hands the second she began. Clean the wounds. Flush what she could. Alcohol. Tweezers. Suture thread meant for fabric but strong enough for skin. Bandages torn from old sheets. Pressure. Prayer. Precision.
Dominic groaned once in his sleep and tried to roll away. Rosa shoved him flat again.
“Lie still,” she muttered. “You want to live, then stop fighting the people keeping you there.”
When she was done, he looked less dead than before.
That would have to count as victory.
“Will he live?” Lily asked softly from the doorway.
Rosa peeled off the stained gloves.
“Maybe,” she said. “If infection doesn’t take him. If he rests. If God has odd plans.”
Lily nodded like this was acceptable.
That night, Rosa fell asleep in the chair beside the bed. Lily stayed awake on a little wooden stool with her sketchbook open on her knees, drawing under the light of the lamp while outside the wind scraped bare branches against the siding.
Dominic woke after midnight reaching for a gun that was not there.
His hand hit only blanket and air.
The ceiling above him was water-stained. The room smelled faintly of cinnamon and bleach and crayons. His side burned. His stomach felt as if it had been stitched together by God’s angriest seamstress.
