Night In A Waste Land (Hell Theory #2) - Lauren Gilley Page 0,30

up, his chair creaking – but only to his chest, to keep him warm. A tech checked all his monitors, and secured an IV in his arm. Rose saw them prepare to wheel the gurney away – out of the OR and down a far hallway, to the recovery rooms.

A doctor came out in the act of untying his mask, his face lined and weary, but satisfied, she thought.

Tris stood, abruptly. Tense all over, as if he’d braced himself.

The doctor glanced between the two of them. “I was able to save the joint, and about two inches below that. It should make prosthetic attachment – if he chooses to have one – easier, eventually. We cleaned, cauterized, and closed the area with a skin graft from his back. If it takes, he should be ready for a prosthetic fitting in three months.”

Tris jerked a nod, and left the room.

The doctor lifted his brows, a single jump of whatever. He’d seen a lot, no doubt, in this line of work. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes and turned back to regard Rose. “You should get out of those wet clothes before you catch pneumonia.”

“Bacteria and virus cause pneumonia,” she said, flatly, stubbornly. “Not wet clothes.”

He smirked around the cigarette he’d just hung on his lip. “Yeah, but didn’t your mother ever tell you that?”

She stared at him until he gave another eyebrow shrug and went back into the OR, and through to the recovery ward, pneumatic doors sliding shut behind him.

Rose remained sitting – because she had to. Battling the conduits, helping get Gallo into the basket the helo sent down, the harrowing flight back: adrenaline had carried her through all of that, better than any external stimulant.

But now, after sitting so long, chilled to the bone, soaked through to the skin, the strain of all she’d done had caught up with her. For all that it had been raining, she was dehydrated, she knew, and that was making her full-body muscle cramps all the worse. Everything hurt. She was trembling internally, and the room tilted if she turned her head too quickly. She needed to eat, to take a hot shower; pop some aspirin and climb into bed.

But that meant getting up first, and though she could face a conduit without blinking, something as simple as exhaustion threatened to lay her low, now.

She gripped the edge of her chair – even her fingers ached, the joints sore and the tips raw from climbing – and was gathering herself, when the outer door slid open, and Lance stepped into the room.

She whipped her head toward him, ready with all her usual shields – but the room spun, her stomach lurched, and she felt herself sliding out of the chair.

“Whoa.” Lance appeared before her, blurry and see-sawing as her vision wavered. His hands were large and strong on her arms, and he lifted her easily to her feet – which by some miracle managed to hold her, though all her muscles screamed in protest.

She hissed in pain, and hated herself for the slip, but she didn’t seem to have much control of her body at the moment.

“Greer? Rose?”

She closed her eyes a moment, and when she opened them, she could at least see clearly – the notch between Lance’s brows, the worry plucking at his mouth, and pressed into the lines around his eyes. She took a deep breath, and even if it hurt, she steadied herself.

He steadied her, too, his thumbs, she realized, rubbing back and forth along her biceps.

“Why are you still sitting in here?” he asked. “You’re still soaking wet. Come on, you’ll–”

“Don’t say ‘catch your death.’”

He frowned. “You’re too cold,” he insisted. “I can hear your teeth chattering.”

He could? She guessed, upon self-reflection, that they were.

“I wanted – wanted to make sure – that he pulled – through surgery.”

His expression softened, and that was dangerous for reasons she refused to examine in her current state, or any state, really. “He did, thanks to you.”

She frowned at him, and she thought he almost smiled, but checked it.

“He was down for the count, and you stepped in and got the job done. Got it done impressively. There were two of them.”

“No thanks to you.”

She regretted it the moment she said it; it was petty, and unfair, and coming from her own fatigue and pain, and the ghost of grief that boiled up. Because when she’d heard Gallo screaming, she’d wondered if Beck was screaming now, down in hell; if