Chapter 1 - The Ten Thousand Dollar Patient
The glass shattered two feet from Clara's head, spraying fragments against the wall.
She didn't flinch.
She didn't run.
Clara calmly shut off the water in the en suite bathroom and dried her hands.
She walked back into the dark bedroom and found a broom and dustpan resting near the door.
Liam Mercer was panting on the massive bed, his face twisted in sheer agony and rage.
He had expected her to scream and run away, just like the six nurses before her.
Instead, Clara simply swept up the broken glass.
"If you throw the pitcher next, you'll pull your stitches," Clara said softly, dumping the glass into the trash.
"I don't want to resuture you at two in the morning, so let's skip the tantrum."
She pulled on a pair of sterile blue gloves and stepped closer to the bed.
Liam glared at her with pale, ferocious eyes.
"I told you to get out," he growled.
Clara reached for the adhesive edge of his abdominal dressing.
"And I told you I need ten thousand dollars by Friday to keep my brother from dying of leukemia."
She pulled the dressing back.
The smell of infected, necrotic tissue hit the air immediately.
"You have a raging infection," Clara noted coldly.
She picked up a bottle of saline.
"I have to clean this."
When the soaked gauze touched his raw skin, Liam hissed violently.
His massive hand shot out, grabbing her thin wrist with bone-crushing force.
"Don't," he commanded.
Clara looked directly into his furious eyes.
"You're pressing on a pressure point," she said calmly.
"If this rots, it hits your bloodstream, you go septic, and you die."
She didn't pull away.
"I need you alive until Friday. So let go."
Liam stared at her, searching for the fear he was so accustomed to seeing.
He found nothing but exhaustion.
Slowly, his grip loosened.
Clara finished cleaning the wound, set up an IV drip of broad-spectrum antibiotics, and checked the metal pins drilled into his leg.
Then, she pulled a leather chair into the corner, turned on a small lamp, and opened a paperback book.
"Turn off the light," Liam demanded.
"When I finish the chapter," Clara replied without looking up.
For the first time in five weeks, nobody ran out the front door crying.
But as Clara flipped the page, she noticed something chilling about the wound she had just cleaned.
May you like
The jagged edges and the depth of the laceration weren't from a car accident or a normal fall.
Liam Mercer had been brutally stabbed with a serrated blade, and whoever did it had twisted the knife on the way out.
