Chapter 3 - The Safehouse
Forty miles west of Chicago, deep inside the industrial warehouse district of Elgin, sat an unmarked brick building surrounded by rusted chain-link fences and overgrown weeds.
Ava pulled the armored SUV into the dark bay, the heavy steel door rolling down behind them with a loud, mechanical thud.
The interior of the building was a fully equipped private medical bay—stainless steel tables, surgical lights, oxygen tanks, and rows of refrigerated blood bags labeled with Roman’s rare O-negative type.
"He built a hospital inside a warehouse," Ava whispered in utter disbelief as she turned on the overhead halogen lights.
"Daddy brings me here when bad men are looking for us," Sophie said matter-of-factly, stepping out of the SUV and climbing onto a plastic chair.
Ava didn't waste a second. She activated the hydraulic lift on the medical gurney, wheeled it to the back of the SUV, and managed to transfer Roman onto the sterile sheet.
She wheeled him under the surgical light. His vital monitors were dangerously low—his blood pressure was 70 over 40, his oxygen saturation dropping fast.
"Okay, Ava," she whispered to herself, pulling on sterile latex gloves. "You did two hundred hours of surgical rotation. You watched Dr. Harrison do three laparotomies. You know how to do this."
She hooked Roman up to an IV line, hanging two bags of O-negative blood and setting the pump to maximum flow. As the red liquid flowed into his veins, a faint color returned to his hollow cheeks.
Then came the hardest part.
The knife had to come out.
Ava prepared a local anesthetic syringe from the supply cabinet, injecting it around the margins of the wound. She held a electrocautery wand in her right hand and a pair of surgical clamps in her left.
"Sophie," Ava said without turning around. "There's a television room in the office over there. Go turn on cartoons. Lock the door from the inside."
"I want to stay with Daddy," Sophie whined softly.
"Sophie," Ava said, her voice dropping into a tone of absolute command. "Go."
The little girl ran into the office, the door clicking shut.
Ava took a deep breath. She placed her gloved hand around the handle of the knife buried in Roman Black’s gut.
"If you die, Roman," she whispered to his unconscious face, "I'm going to kill you myself."
With one swift, precise, vertical motion, she extracted the blade.
Blood erupted from the wound.
Ava didn't freeze. Her instincts took over instantly. She shoved two fingers deep into the tract, locating the severed muscular artery, and clamped it with the surgical forceps. The spurting stopped immediately. Using the electrocautery wand, she cauterized the bleeding tissue, the smell of burnt iron filling the room.
She cleaned the cavity with sterile saline, packed it with hemostatic gauze, and began suturing the deep fascial layers using neat, precise mattress stitches she had practiced on pig skin in nursing school.
For two straight hours, Ava worked in total, agonizing concentration.
By 5:30 in the morning, the incision was closed, neatly bandaged, and covered with a sterile drain. Roman’s heart monitor hummed with a steady, strong 72 beats per minute. His blood pressure had stabilized at 110 over 70.
Ava collapsed into a stool beside the operating table, her gloves dripping with blood, her forehead resting against the edge of the mattress.
She began to cry. Not soft, gentle tears, but deep, racking sobs of exhausted, terrifying relief.
A warm, heavy hand settled gently on top of her head.
Ava lifted her face quickly.
Roman was looking down at her. He was still impossibly pale, his gray eyes shadowed by dark circles, but he was fully conscious.
"You're a nurse," Roman rasped weakly.
"I was a nursing student," Ava corrected, wiping her wet face with her sleeve. "And you almost died three times tonight, you arrogant idiot."
Roman’s lip twitched into a faint, exhausted smirk. "You have... a terrible bedside manner, Ava."
"You're lucky I didn't leave you on the rug," she snapped back, though her voice wobbled with emotion.
Roman reached out, his long, scarred fingers gently brushing against the side of her face, leaving a trace of faint warmth against her skin.
"Why didn't you?" he asked quietly, his gray eyes searching hers with a desperate intensity. "You don't know me. You know what people say about my name."
May you like
Ava looked at him, then toward the office door where his daughter was sleeping.
"Because a little girl called me at 2:17 in the morning," Ava said softly. "And I promised someone a long time ago that I would never let a child be left alone in the dark."
