Chapter 29: Two Doors

Livia's POV

The first stretcher came into the greenhouse at nine-fifteen, and I did not look up from the man on the bench.

He was a Santoro soldier with a hole through his thigh.

I packed it, tied the belt, and said, "Next."

By nine-thirty I had five on the tile, and the glass walls were fogged with breath.

Outside, the hedge was still firing. Every few minutes a shell went off in the orchard, and the roses shook.

Two Corvi nurses worked beside me.

My hands were slick to the wrists, and they were steady.

I had told myself that on the long walk down the pier in my wedding dress. I had told myself it every night for nine days.

I would not stand up from the next patient.

"Door!" a nurse shouted.

I raised my head.

The east door of the greenhouse flew inward, and the burned-ear man filled the frame.

His left ear was a lump of shiny scar against his skull, and he had a pistol in his right fist.

He was breathing hard. He looked once down the whole length of the glass house at the wounded on the tiles, the nurses, the lamps.

Then he looked at me.

"Doctor Ardenti," he said. "Silvio would like a word."

Nobody moved.

A Santoro soldier on the nearest stretcher tried to raise himself, and the man shot him in the shoulder without looking.

The nurses screamed.

"Stay down," I said, sharp, to everyone. "Stay exactly where you are."

"Good girl," said the burned-ear man, and he crossed the tile and took me by the hair.

I let him.

He pulled my head back, and the barrel went under my jaw.

"Now we walk," he said. "Out the west door, through the stable yard, to the boat. You'll walk slow, and your husband will watch."

"He's on his way," I said.

"I know. That's why I need you."

On the instrument tray at my hip lay six clamps, a bone saw and a row of scalpels.

Keep reading free with an account. Start He Let Me Die for Her, So I Refused His Ring from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.