Page 133 of Beni

Those tears were falling again.

“I’ll be right back,” Tommaso said, quickly added, “keep her with you, Cam.”

“Okay.”

She suspected they were in the back hallways of the clinic, if only because the darkened space didn’t offer anything to suggest the regular patients would be using the area. The one door she could see a few feet down had a sign on it that said STORAGE in black letters.

The shouting continued.

August squeezed her eyes shut.

Not that it helped.

She didn’t open her eyes again until Tommaso’s voice echoed down the hall, reaching their spot where the two girls hugged one another before he ever did.

“Good news first,” he said, “it missed his heart by two inches. Bad news—the bullet hit a rib, broke it, and he lost a lot of blood. Joe is O Positive, so he was on hand to donate direct. We just have to let them get the bullet out, and—”

“While he’s awake.”

It wasn’t even a question.

August stared hard at Tom.

“They’re not equipped here to put him under safely, that’s all.”

Jesus.

“They have the tools on hand to take blood from Joe for him, but not to put him under while they dig a bullet out of his chest?”

“One doesn’t require a tube down his throat, given the severity, and monitors on his heart and brain while they work, August.”

Right, right.

She understood what Tommaso was saying. He made sense, too. It wasn’t that she couldn’t comprehend all of this, but rather … her mind was trying to deal with it all in the only way it knew how. By picking apart every little thing instead of focusing on all the things she couldn’t control here.

This wasn’t in her hands.

She couldn’t help.

“Someone has to call his family—his mom and dad, his brothers. His twin.”

Tommaso nodded. “We already have.”

Good.

As for her …

Well, she was just going to stand here and feel like she was dead already. What else could she do at this point?

“Hey.”

The greeting sounded like it came from so far away, but August felt the couch shift at the same time the word reached her ears. She felt the warmth of a man who looked exactly like hers a few doors down in the clinic, but nothing seemed real.

Now, she was just floating.

Sixteen hours later.

The whole clinic was closed for them. She wasn’t allowed to leave the space that was used as a waiting area, lest she wander too far and ruin the sterile environment they had set up. It was all over, now, and she watched them tote pail after pail of bloody water from the room—where Beni was currently recuperating—from her current position on the couch. It allowed her to look right down that hall and watch them move in and out of the room.