Chapter 7 - The Thread and the Needle
The bone made a sound like an old dry fence rail snapping under an ox’s foot.
Victor didn't scream; he shrieked. It was the sound of a pig caught in a wire fence. His leg folded backward, his balance vanished, and as he hit the glass-strewn floor, the Glock flew from his fingers and skidded across the parquet toward the cold fireplace.
Damian didn't wait.
Even with his left arm hanging useless, even with his face gray with shock, the Cruz blood took over. He lunged from behind the chair, his weight coming down across Victor’s chest like a deadfall. His good hand—the heavy, scarred right hand—closed around Victor’s throat and didn't let go until the thrashing in the broken glass stopped.
Then the room went quiet again.
Except for the wind through the shattered French doors.
And the wet, whistling sound of Bruno’s lungs.
"Rosa," Damian breathed.
He was still kneeling on his brother’s chest. His fingers were bloody. He didn't look at Victor’s face; he was looking at the dog.
"He's hit," I said. My voice was strange and hollow. I dropped the iron poker. It clattered against the brass fender of the hearth with a sound that seemed to go on forever. "In the shoulder. He's bleeding, Mr. Cruz."
"The chest," Damian said, his head dropping forward. "Listen to him. Is it... is it sucking?"
I dropped to my knees beside the dog.
My nightdress soaked through instantly with Bruno’s blood. It was hot—terribly hot—against my shins. I pressed my palm against the wound on his ribs where the fur was matted and red.
No air was hissing through the hole. Just the thick, dark pulse of venous blood from the muscle.
"No," I said. "It's the leg. The shoulder is smashed."
Bruno turned his head.
His amber eyes were cloudy, filmed over with the gray shock of a beast that was looking into the dark valley. He didn't have the strength to lift his snout, but his tongue came out—dry, rough as sand—and touched the side of my thumb.
Just like he had with Sophia’s purple ink.
"Dr. Aris," Damian muttered. He was trying to stand up, using the arm of the chair to lever his bulk off his brother. "In his coat... his pocket. Call the number on the white card."
"Mr. Cruz, you're shot."
"Call the doctor, Rosa."
"He's a people doctor," I cried, the tears finally coming now—hot, salt tears that cut through the soot on my cheeks. "He won't touch a dog! He won't come for an animal!"
Damian stood up. He swayed once, his boots slipping in the red slurry on the parquet, then steadied himself against the mantelpiece.
"He will come," Damian said, "or I will put him in the cellar with Victor."
***
Dr. Aris was seventy years old, smelled of carbolic acid and old gin, and his hands didn't shake once.
He arrived forty minutes later in a Buick with chains on the tires, accompanied by two of Damian’s men who looked like they had spent the last half-hour dragging three bodies out of the shrubbery by the north gate.
He didn't ask about Victor, who was lying in the laundry room with three zip-ties around his ankles and an old linen sheet thrown over his head. He didn't ask about the shattered glass or the five nine-millimeter casings that had rolled under the sideboard.
He looked at Damian’s shoulder first.
"Through-and-through," the old man said, snipping the wool of the sweater away with heavy medical shears. "Missed the bone. Missed the artery. You'll have an ugly knot there when the weather changes, Damian. Like the one on your hip."
"Fix the dog," Damian said.
He was sitting at the kitchen table, his shirt off, his torso a roadmap of old violence—scars from knife-points, burns from battery acid, the puckered purple dents of birdshot.
"Damian, I'm a surgeon, not a—"
"Fix the dog, Aris."
Damian didn't look up from the table. His hand was resting beside a stack of hundred-dollar bills three inches thick.
"If the dog dies," Damian said, "you take the bus back to Evanston. In the storm."
The old man looked at the money.
Then he looked at the pantry floor, where we had carried Bruno on an old woolen army blanket.
Sophia was sitting at the head of the blanket.
She hadn't stayed in the room. Of course she hadn't. When the shooting stopped, she had come down the breezeway in her yellow socks, her hair wild, her thumb in her mouth. She hadn't cried when she saw the blood on the tiles. She hadn't screamed when she saw Victor’s boot sticking out of the laundry door.
She had simply sat down, taken Bruno’s giant, scarred head in her lap, and started singing that stupid cereal commercial.
*Tickles,* she had whispered when the dog’s tail gave that faint, dying twitch. *Tickles, Bruno.*
Dr. Aris sighed, picked up his leather bag, and knelt in the flour dust beside the child.
"Hold his jaw, little girl," the doctor said.
"He won't bite me," Sophia said.
May you like
"I’m not worried about you," the old man grunted, reaching for his curved needles and his heavy catgut. "I’m worried about my retirement."
***
