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He moved again, this time toward the door, then stopped halfway. His fingers tightened on the gun. He looked like he wanted to shoot something, someone, but there was no one left to blame in this room.
“Eleanor,” Gael said suddenly, sharply, “give me more gauze, fresh, now.”
I scrambled to the kit, grabbing the unopened rolls and handing them to him with shaking fingers. My hands brushed his by accident, and I felt how cold his skin was, despite the sweat dripping down him.
He pressed the gauze hard against the wound, both hands shaking now. Blood oozed between his fingers, but slower this time. Sluggish. Maybe that was a good sign. Maybe.
“I have to close it,” he said. His voice was hoarse, like he’d been screaming into a pillow.
He took the suture kit. Unrolled the sterile needle. His hands were almost useless now, clumsy with panic and exhaustion. But he threaded it, somehow. I watched as he pierced her skin, the needle slipping in and out with agonizing precision, tugging black thread through raw, bleeding flesh. Each time he pulled, her skin puckered. Each stitch felt like forever.
Tina let out another sound, longer this time, almost like a sob. Her fingers twitched again. Her breathing came faster.
“She’s waking up,” I whispered.
“Not yet, not yet, not now…” Gael muttered, tying off another stitch.
Dominic had stopped pacing. Now he was at the wall, forehead pressed to it, the gun dangling at his side. I saw his shoulders shake once, maybe twice, before he forced himself still again.
When the last stitch was tied off, Gael collapsed back onto his heels. His hands were covered to the wrists in blood, his jeans soaked at the thighs from kneeling in it. He wiped his arm across his forehead, leaving a red smear behind. He looked at me then, just for a second. I don’t think he even recognized me.
I turned my head, swallowing the bile crawling up my throat.
For a second, the silence afterward was worse than the chaos had been. The kind of silence that feels swollen, like the room itself was holding its breath, afraid that one wrong sound might unravel whatever thread was keeping us all from falling apart.
Tina was asleep now, if sleep was even the word for it. More like sedated, her limbs slack, breathing shallow but steady. Gael had injected her with a low dose of Midazolam, then followed with a small drip of ketorolac for the pain. Nothing too heavy. Just enough to keep her from waking up screaming in agony, enough to help her body accept the sutures and the crude stitching without yanking her back into the horror of it. Her lips were parted slightly, dry, and every few minutes she let out a tiny sound, a faint moan, like her body still hadn’t gotten the memo that the worst was over. Each time, my head snapped toward her instinctively. I kept checking her chest to make sure it still rose.
He’d dressed the wound with gauze, antiseptic gel, and thick medical tape that stuck to her skin and curled at the edges. Then, carefully, he’d drawn the sheet over her, up to the collarbone, neat and tucked. That part felt almost tender, the way he handled her like something delicate for once, even if the blood still soaked the mattress beneath.
Gael peeled off his gloves with a soft snap, his fingers red and raw underneath. He rolled his neck slowly, exhaustion lining every movement now that the adrenaline had ebbed. Then he turned toward Dominic.
And for a long moment, no one moved.
Dominic stood near the bedpost, still. Still like a predator deciding whether or not to pounce, or maybe like prey pretending not to breathe. The gun hung loose in his hand now, but it hadn’t dropped. His eyes were pinned on Gael like he didn’t trust the air between them. Like he dared him to flinch.
“Dom,” I whispered, too soft, unsure if I even meant to say it out loud.
Gael didn’t push. He just stared back, quiet, his chest slowly rising and falling, waiting. Then he reached for a fresh pair of gloves from the med kit. Snapped one on. Then the other. Calm. Not threatening. Just waiting. We had told him about Dominic’s bullet wound and how he needed a redress after having to strain and stress all day long.
“I need to see it,” Gael finally said, low. His voice scratched like gravel. “To help with the redress.”
Dominic didn’t move. His jaw ticked once, twice. He looked down at the gun in his hand. Stared at it like it was a part of him he no longer recognized. Slowly, his fingers twitched. A shift in grip. Not surrender, hesitation. The longest five seconds of my life passed as I watched the war behind his eyes.
Then, finally, with painful reluctance, he crouched slightly and laid the gun down on the floor beside the nightstand. Not close enough for Gael to reach. Just... not in his hand anymore. That alone felt like a mountain had moved.
The silence thickened.
“Take off your shirt,” Gael said, standing still. Not demanding. Just stating what needed to happen next.
Dominic didn’t answer. He just turned his head to the side slightly, like he wasn’t sure if he’d heard right, or like he was trying to figure out if the command came with strings attached. His fingers went to the hem of his black long-sleeved shirt. He pulled it up slowly, wincing immediately. His abdomen twisted from the effort, and I saw the first flash of the wound.
My breath caught. Not at the sight of the wound, but at his face.
His eyes locked onto mine across the room. That unreadable look he wore like a mask, fierce and haunted all at once. My back was still pressed to the doorway, just one foot shy of stepping out. I hadn’t meant to stay, but my legs didn’t work the way I wanted them to.
He kept going, dragging the fabric up over his chest, the taut muscles flexing around the injury. Blood had dried in streaks across his ribs, down his side, and it stuck to the shirt, making it harder to pull off. He grunted quietly as he yanked it the rest of the way, and when he dropped the shirt to the floor, it hit with a soft thud, crumpling next to the discarded gun.
And then I saw it.
The wound. High on the right side of his torso, just beneath his ribs, wrapped but bleeding through. I dropped my gaze immediately. My stomach clenched hard.
I didn’t want to see this.
Not like this.
Not him like this, vulnerable, injured, stripped down in the room where life used to make sense.
Tina stirred and let out another low moan of discomfort. My heart jumped in my chest, and I turned toward her, grateful for the excuse to look away.
Her brow creased. Her head rolled slightly against the pillow, and I reached for the edge of the sheet, gently brushing the fabric higher against her collarbone, as if it could protect her from what had already happened.
I couldn’t stay here.
Not another second.
The ache inside me was thick and sudden, grief, or panic, or maybe just the need to run before I collapsed from the weight of all of it. Maybe I didn’t want to see Dominic bleeding. Maybe I didn’t want to see him being helped. Maybe I just didn’t want to be the one watching anymore.
My eyes darted around the room. To the stained sheets. The pile of blood-soaked gauze. The gun on the floor. Gael’s steady hands moving toward his instruments again.
And then back to Dominic—half-naked, wounded, watching me with that same look, like he already knew I was leaving.
I didn’t say a word.
I just stepped back, one foot over the threshold, then the other.
And I left.
My hand found the wall outside. Cold. Steady. Unlike me.
Behind the door, I heard Gael’s voice, quiet and firm.
“Don’t move. This is going to hurt.”
And Dominic, gravel-low: “Do your worst.”
The door clicked closed between us.
But the ache didn’t stop.
It settled deeper instead, like something sharp, something hollow, buried right beneath my ribs and expanding with every breath. My feet started to move before I could think, or maybe because I couldn't. The hallway stretched ahead in a tunnel of dim light, each step echoing faintly against the polished wood, a soft thud that matched the beat of my heart. Or maybe it was louder in my ears than in reality. Everything felt distant. Disjointed.
My stomach twisted. I could feel it climbing, an acidic burn slithering its way up my throat, making my mouth water with that awful warning taste. I swallowed hard, once, twice, pushing it down. Not here. Not now. I clenched my jaw and kept walking, the soft brush of my bare feet against the floor the only sound I could trust in that moment.
The hallway opened into the living room like a breathless sigh, wide and strangely still. The main lights were off. In their absence, the room had a muted golden hue, thanks to the low table lamps in the corners, one on the far console table near the window, the other tucked behind the L-shaped couch. Their light spilled out in gentle pools, illuminating slivers of the room while leaving the rest shrouded in a soft shadow. It was peaceful in that eerie, post-chaos sort of way, like the aftermath of a storm when the wind has died but everything is still trembling.
There was no sign of Isabella or Adam.
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