Page 152 of Bone Year

I descend the few steps out of the gallery, and Professor Bale nearly runs me over pushing a gurney, a mender on the other side of it.

“Miss Rose, join us. We can use an extra pair of hands.” He locks eyes with me briefly then hurries into operating room seven.

I see a flash of long blonde hair when I turn to follow him.

I clean my hands and gown up as fast as I can and push the door open with my back, entering the room. Bale and a mender are pulling instruments and potions from the cabinets, setting up a tray, and I look over at the patient and confirm it.

It’s Ellavee.

She’s not conscious. A jagged piece of dark wood, longer than my forearm and splintered at the protruding end, is buried in her below the ribs on her left side. Someone has already packed clean cloth around the entry wound to keep it stable, but it doesn’t look good.

At least it’s from a branch and not a twisted creature.

I take a step closer. I don’t see any corruption.

“Miss Rose, I don’t have a second healer who can hold the angles I need on a frame this small. You have the smallest set of hands on this floor.”

Mender Theo looks over at me, his eyes narrowing.

I swallow, thankful he doesn’t say anything about how miserably I failed at helping Nella.

“What’s the injury?” I ask, moving next to Ellavee.

“Impalement, left flank, below the costal margin. I won’t know what it’s hit until we open.”

“Spleen?” I ask, trying to remember demon anatomy. I do believe it’s slightly different from human anatomy.

“Possible. Possibly the diaphragm. The object is acting as a tamponade right now. We pull it out too soon, and she bleeds out.”

Mender Theo pulls the tray of instruments over to the table, ready to assist Bale in handing him whatever he needs.

Bale comes to the side of the table across from me, next to Theo, and meets my eyes.

“Maelis, this is your friend on the table, and that is going to make this harder. I need you to put that somewhere else right now so you can help me with this. Can you handle it?”

I nod quickly, not looking up at Ellavee’s face, focusing only on the wound. Where he packed the clean cloth, it’s already steadily darkening. Her abdomen is rising and falling shallowly. Her pulse is steady under my fingers when I press them to the inside of her wrist out of habit.

Demons run a slightly faster baseline than humans.

“Penetrating wound, left flank, below the twelfth rib. The object is angled medially and slightly upward. If it has gone deep enough, it has hit either the spleen at the upper pole or the diaphragm. Possibly both. If it had hit the splenic artery, she would already be dead, so I am hoping for a tear in the parenchyma rather than a vascular injury. If it has hit the diaphragm, we will see air movement in the wound.” I impress even myself with how I know all of that in the heat of the moment. All my studying is paying off. I need to stay focused.

“Good. What is your first cut?”

“A vertical incision parallel to the object. I open the wound around it. I do not pull it. I expose what it has hit.”

“Length?”

“Six inches. Down through skin, fascia, muscle layers. Slow. I do not want to nick the object and shift it.”

“Hand,” he says, and I reach out.

Mender Theo places a scalpel in my hand, and my heart starts to race.

“Ready?” Professor Bale looks at me and I nod, meeting his stare.

“Cut.”

I look down and cut.