We stripped out of our pajamas and into clean light pants and shirts quickly. Sophie led me to the bell tower, where she and I set up the foam rubber mattress. Sophie got out her surgical kit and handed me a mask. "We may have to conceal who we are," she explained. "Leave it on."
The room set up, we headed down to the garage. The wait wasn't long, but in the few minutes between when we got down there and Mark came in, I could see the tremble in Sophie's hands. She was muttering to herself, most of it too low for me to hear, but in the cavernous silence of the four car garage, I could hear some of it. She was wishing, or perhaps praying would be a better term despite her professed atheism, that Mark was unhurt. Mixed in were some reminders to herself, like she was psyching herself up for what was to come. I understood, it’d been a while since she had done any serious medical treatment. I'd watched her keep her knowledge up to date with online simulators or other sorts of study materials, but that wasn't the same as the real thing.
Mark arrived with his passenger, who was hanging on his back loosely. For a few moments I thought perhaps he was awake until I realized that the reason his arms were so secure was because Mark had taped his hands together over his shoulders. Sophie and I helped Mark off his cycle and up the stairs, where we laid him down on the mattress.
"Genius boy over there started shooting the Gangster Disciple donut shop with a goddamned hopped up air gun," Mark said, telling us about the incident, "not knowing their tactics. But he didn't complain, took one in the back as I drove us off."
"He's been shot in the right lung. It's still inside, I need to get it out," Sophie stated, her voice eerily calm and filled with command. I'd never seen her when she was doing her internship at University Hospital, but knew instantly where she got it from. It seemed like a lifetime ago, but it came back to her in an instant.
She used her scissors to cut open the man's shirt, and as she peeled the cloth back, I felt like I'd been hit in the stomach. The hole in his back wasn't that big, it looked like something I could plug with my little finger, but as she and Mark worked together to clear the space for her to work, they exposed his upper body. An upper body I'd felt and explored very recently. I'd felt those muscles, and had run my fingers around the two little moles there on the lower back near the waistband, so close together that you could loop them in a figure eight if you wanted to.
I didn't want to believe it at first, but when his right arm was visible in the light, my brain went into panic mode. There, I could see the designs I'd traced after we'd made love, and I was sure if he was turned over I'd see the gryphon on his right pec. I lost all sense of time, paralyzed. I heard Sophie ask me to do something, but I couldn't move, could barely breathe as I watched her and Mark work.
I've said before I love Sophie, she's my sister, but I've never been in awe of her before. I'd seen her do some pretty cool stuff, but never anything awe inspiring. For example, she was great in the gym, but she wasn't on the level of an Olympic athlete. Her skill in martial arts and stick-fighting were impressive, but I was pretty sure Ronda Rousey could still kick her ass. What made me love Sophie was her mind and her soul, which while amazing, isn't exactly awe inspiring.
Those forty minutes though, she was a goddess, a primal force of nature that could not be denied. She was as forceful as the lightning that tore the sky apart when I was a little girl in Florida, as calm as an iceberg. She was Artemis, Apollo the Healer's sister. She was Eir, the Norse goddess of medicine. She was unstoppable, unflappable. She held life and death in her hands, and commanded both with the pure force of her will and her skill. In my entire life, I'd never both loved, feared, and revered a person as much as I did for those forty minutes. She held his life in her hands.
Finally, she was done. "He'll make it."
I felt like the entire world crashed on me with those three words. Tears and sobs tore from my chest, racking my body. Mark and Sophie looked over at me, Mark getting up while Sophie finished up her work. He pulled me into an embrace, his blood stained surgical gloves quickly marking the t-shirt I was wearing.
"Tabby, what's wrong?" he asked quietly, his voice full of concern and comfort. He was another rock, a strong rock that lent me quiet strength, enough that I could at least form an answer.
"It's him. It's him," was all I could say, burying my face in Mark's chest and sobbing like a child. I heard Sophie cutting with her scissors some more, and a gasp from Mark.
"Oh, shit."
They understood now, too. Lying on the mat was the man I'd made love with just the night before. Lying on the mat was Patrick McCaffery.
* * *