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“You've got it all worked out, then.” Luis looks like he isn't sure if he should be impressed or upset. “I should have been in here helping come up with the solution. I'm sorry if I made it more difficult.”
“You're here now, and we can't pull it off without you, brother,” says Jackson, reaching over to thump Luis' shoulder.
“I'll go call Tony,” says Lukas.
“Alright, I'll go ask the nurse's station to page the attending and get the ball rolling,” Dr. Franks says as he stands to leave the room. “Jackson, you should probably put your bandage back on and get back in bed. You have a shattered femur, remember?”
Once Dr. Franks is gone, everyone looks at Luis, who watches intently as the doctor leaves. He is breathing through his nose, cutting his eyes around at all of us watching him.
“I'm sorry, okay. But I don't know if we can really trust him in this situation. Not because I think he's a bad guy, quite the opposite. I don't think he'd sell us out for any personal gain. But how could he simply turn his back on what he just saw? How could he not be thinking about all the patients he could help with Six's magic blood?”
Micah moves to sit next to Luis. “You're probably right. I know I had a passing thought about how a miracle cure could change the world. I think it's part of thinking like a doctor. When you see as much pain, illness, and death as he probably does, it would be a natural thought. But I don't think that he would hurt Six to accomplish it.”
“Maybe not intentionally, but how can we be sure he wouldn't sacrifice her for the greater good?”
“We'll be as careful as we can, but he's here now and we need him. We wouldn't have even thought to use the plasma if it wasn't for him, or at least it wouldn't have occurred to us until after it was too late. Besides, what did you think you were going to do about it, anyway? The way you were looking at him was like you wanted him dead.” Micah looks at Luis with sympathy, trying to reason with him.
“If that's what it takes, I'd do it. Look at what we all did back at that lab to keep her and Bennet safe. What wouldn't you do to keep her protected from ever going back to a situation like that again? I admit, maybe I overreacted in the moment. The panic hit me and my mind felt like a ticking time bomb. I couldn't stop cycling through what could happen. I almost snapped.”
“We've been through a lot lately, especially these last couple of days,” I say gently. My heart hurts that he is so worried about me he'd drive himself crazy like that.
“It's not a good enough excuse for how I reacted to you and Jackson,” Luis says to Micah. “I can't say that I'm sorry about where my thoughts went regarding the doctor. But I'm usually better at controlling my temper. It's only really gotten out of hand once before.”
“Is that when you got arrested?” I don't mean to bring up sore subjects, but if he's opening up, I am curious.
“Yeah. I was breaking up a fight. Some assholes were fighting over this woman that hung out on the corner near the tattoo shop. It escalated, and I went a little overboard. Ended up hurting one guy pretty bad.”
“You were defending her,” I say.
“She was an old friend of my mom’s. They were fighting over who was going to have her first, and she was catching punches being in the middle of their bullshit.”
“So you have a habit of losing your temper coming to the defense of women. Some would say that's admirable,” Micah says, reaching to look at Luis' hand.
“I'm not sure that the violence I'm capable of could or should ever be called admirable.”
“The way you went all Rambo on those guards at the lab saved all of our lives. That feels pretty admirable from my perspective,” Jackson says while he tapes a bandage to his leg and covers himself up with the blankets again.
I think about the way Luis snapped Adley's neck like it was nothing. Admirable or not, that man didn't deserve to live. I never considered that the violence he committed, to do what needed to be done, might bother him.
Luis stares at his hand as Micah examines him. It seems he's done with that conversation, anyway.
“Broken?” He asks Micah.
Micah scoffs. “That's an understatement. Your hand is fucked.” He pulls a syringe from his shirt pocket. The plasma.
“Don't waste that on me,” says Luis, pulling away.
“There's more where that came from,” I remind him.
“And I made extra this time. I wasn't sure how much we would need ready for Bennet. There's still four syringes, and like our girl said, we can make more. Now quit being a stubborn ass and let me stick it in you.”
Jackson snorts out a laugh from his hospital bed. I giggle. Luis actually cracks a smile.
Just as Micah is finished injecting Luis with the plasma, Lukas sticks his head in. He nods when he sees Jackson safely back in bed before opening the door fully.
“We're all decent here,” Jackson calls out. “Micah just got done changing my bandages.”
It's a clever cover for his newly cleaned bandages and the fact that Micah has gloves on, but he adds in some awkward eye waggling that has Micah laughing and Lukas rolling his eyes.
