Total pages in book: 62
Estimated words: 78696 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 393(@200wpm)___ 315(@250wpm)___ 262(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78696 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 393(@200wpm)___ 315(@250wpm)___ 262(@300wpm)
And, by that point, I had a splitting headache that I was sure would turn into a migraine from hell in less time than it would take to snap my fingers.
A loud roar of what I assumed was thunder and not the machine sounded overhead, and I sighed when everything around me went black.
Seconds later, lights came on, and an odd, eerie, glow filled the room as the emergency lights blinked on.
The machine, however, was done for.
I assumed it wasn’t needed during a power outage, so I looked down the tube, pulling my head out of the lovely cage that held me still.
“Can I get out?” I called loudly.
Nobody answered, and I started to freak out.
I’d never been what one would call ‘claustrophobic,’ but being in this tube wasn’t really that great for my nerves in the first place.
So I started to shimmy out, using my heels for purchase until I was out of the tube and able to sit up.
And I wished I’d never come out.
Especially when I saw a man wearing a black mask and gray scrubs pointing a gun at me.
My eyes darted around, and I saw the bodies of the medical staff on the floor behind the glass of the observation room.
“W-what…”
I didn’t get to finish my sentence, because in the next instant, he pulled the trigger, and I fell backwards, hitting my head on the large machine behind me.
I raised my hand up to my head, wincing in pain as my hand met something warm and wet.
I pulled my hand away to look at it and saw red smearing my fingers.
“She’s done…” the man said, turning to someone beside him.
“The old man’s down, too. Took out Peter, Brady, and Paul, though,” whomever was behind him said. “And the other team’s about to breach the perimeter of the lake house.”
My heart sank.
And I watched as the two men left the room, unable to move a single inch from where I was.
I must’ve had a concussion or something from when I hit my head, because I couldn’t make my brain work correctly.
Couldn’t make my mouth speak the words that were screaming to get out.
The only thing that did seem to work were my eyes, and I watched the door for long moments after the men exited the room.
I wasn’t sure how long it was when I saw the door inch forward a couple of inches, and Carrick’s gray head pop through.
He was on the floor like me, and the moment he saw me, his eyes went wide.
I blinked at him, and he dropped his head to rest on the ground for a few long seconds before he started to painfully crawl inside.
There was something wrong with his legs. It was almost like they were broken.
His arm was at an odd angle, but nothing else looked wrong until you looked beyond his legs.
There was a smear of blood following behind him, staining the floor in dark red streaks as he pulled himself towards me.
“You alive?” He asked once he was within a few feet of me.
I blinked.
“That a yes?” He asked.
I blinked again.
“Good. Because if you’re not alive, we’re gonna have problems.”
I blinked again.
He nodded and rolled over to his back, painfully.
“Shot me in the back. And I broke my arm in the fall,” he muttered.
He must’ve read the question in my eyes, because I knew I didn’t speak it.
He pulled out his phone, and he spoke all of four words into the speaker before he passed out from what I assumed was blood loss.
There did seem to be quite a bit of it now…but it may be because I was bleeding, too.
“They shot us. Radiology.”
Shot us?
I wasn’t shot, was I?
I didn’t feel shot.
My head did hurt, though.
But that was because of the way I’d fallen back…wasn’t it?
I didn’t know how long I sat there, slumped against that machine.
Could’ve been two minutes…or fifty.
I didn’t know.
But I’d never been so happy to see a doctor in his white coat before in my life.
“Two in here, too!” He yelled.
I smiled.
Or at least I tried.
Because I knew I’d make it now.
I’d held on.
And Griffin would be here soon.
Chapter 21
When shit hits the fan, and everyone around you is losing their mind, find the silent guy. The one that looks calm enough to take a nap. He’s about to fuck something up, and you’ll want to follow him.
-Rule of Thumb
Griffin
“They shot her in the head,” I muttered in shock.
The doctor nodded his head. “Right. But as far as we can tell, nothing seems really wrong with her. The most damage was caused when she was thrown back from the force, and the following concussion. The bullet entered through here,” he said, pointing at a bandaged part of Lenore’s head. “And exited here.” He continued, pointing at the back of her head, just under her left ear. “But it missed her brain nearly completely, turning the moment it hit bone to travel along the curve of the skull.”
He demonstrated this by drawing a U shape in the air.
“It hit one part of the brain,” another doctor said from the doorway.
I immediately recognized the name.
He was the doctor Lenore had told me about…her cancer doc.
He held up a computer in his hand and walked swiftly into the room.
“I’m sorry to barge in like this. But when I heard about what happened to Lenore, I pulled her file of the scan she had this afternoon before the shooting happened, then compared it to the one you had done once you had the bleeding under control,” Dr. Parsons continued.
He stopped directly between the doctor that’d been talking to me, Dr. Jeffries, and I.
And on the computer were two scans.
One was what I assumed was this afternoon’s, and one that was the one Dr. Jeffries had just shown me.
After comparing the two, I couldn’t see a single difference.
“I hadn’t realized she was being treated for brain cancer,” Dr. Jeffries said.
Dr. Parsons nodded. “This is the mass I was treating her for, it hasn’t grown in well over a month. In fact, it hasn’t grown at all since I’ve started seeing her. From what we can tell, the mass is benign, but because of its location, it causes her to suffer from severe migraines on occasion.”