Chapter 3 - Night Terrors and Sterile Gauze
Two-thirty in the morning.
The penthouse was as quiet as a crypt, but it wasn't asleep.
Outside the panoramic floor-to-ceiling windows of the upper living room, the city of Boston was drowning in mist. The golden dome of the State House looked like a pale, ghostly eye floating in the fog.
I sat on a leather sofa in the hallway outside Calder’s master suite, a cold cup of black coffee balanced on my knee, reviewing the handwritten vitals chart I had demanded Chen provide.
Every forty-five minutes, a pair of Calder’s tactical guards walked the corridor. Soft-soled boots. No gear clinking. They nodded to me as they passed—not with the condescension typical of private security, but with the quiet, wary respect reserved for a bomb technician who had successfully defused a live charge.
Suddenly, a dull crash echoed from behind the double oak doors of the master bedroom.
A glass shattering.
Then a low, choked gasp.
I set the coffee down instantly, grabbed my trauma kit, and pushed through the heavy doors.
The room was vast, dominated by a massive king-sized platform bed framed in dark teak. The curtains were drawn back, letting the cold blue glow of the city skyline spill across the floor.
Rafe Calder was not in the bed.
He was on his knees on the hardwood floor near the nightstand, a shattered water tumbler glittering around his bare feet.
His right hand was clutched tightly against his ribs, fresh red soaking through the white dressing I had applied two hours ago. His entire body was shivering violently, muscles knotting and seizing beneath skin that looked slick and waxy in the blue light.
He was trapped in the dark.
"Rafe!" I rushed forward, dropping to my knees right beside him, ignoring the shards of glass digging into the denim of my jeans.
His left arm lashed out blindly.
The strike caught me across the shoulder—not a direct blow, but enough blunt force to send me sprawling onto my hip. He spun toward me, his slate eyes completely dilated, feral, seeing ghosts that weren't in the room.
"Clear the lane!" he snarled, his voice thick with delirium, lunging forward with his left hand clawed. "Get her in the vehicle! Move!"
"Rafe, stop!"
I didn't back away. I drove forward, inside the arc of his reach, sliding my left arm behind his neck and slamming my right palm against his uninjured left shoulder, pinning him against the heavy base of the bed frame.
"Look at me!" I yelled into his face. "Calder! Look at my eyes!"
He froze, his chest heaving like a bellows. His breath came in ragged, burning gasps that smelled of fever.
"Nora?" he whispered.
"It’s me," I said, my voice dropping back into the calm, hypnotic cadence of the field medic. "You’re in Beacon Hill. The Hawthorne is clear. June is in the suite downstairs. She’s sleeping. You’re safe."
"Not safe," he choked out, his head sagging forward until his burning forehead rested against the curve of my neck. "Never safe."
The heat coming off his skin was terrifying.
I reached up, wrapping my arms around his massive shoulders to keep him from collapsing onto the glass. He weighed an incredible amount, but I braced my spine against the platform bed, taking his weight, letting him breathe against my neck.
His massive hands came up, gripping the fabric of my scrubs at my waist, clinging to me with a desperate, crushing intensity that had nothing to do with syndicate power and everything to do with a man drowning in his own mind.
"I’ve got you," I murmured, my hand instinctively smoothing through his damp, dark hair. "I’ve got you, Rafe. Hold on."
For several minutes, neither of us moved.
The ruthless warlord of Boston was trembling against my collarbone, his heavy breaths burning against my skin, while I sat in broken glass holding him upright.
Slowly, the rigors subsided. The shivering eased into a dull, exhausted tremor.
"Fever spike," I said softly against his hair. "The tissue trauma triggered a systemic inflammatory response. We need to get you back into bed and start an antipyretic."
Rafe let out a long, shuddering sigh. He slowly lifted his head, his gray eyes inches from mine.
In the blue light of the Boston fog, the distance between us evaporated.
His gaze dropped to my lips, then back to my eyes. His thumb twitched against my hip, his grip loosening, but he didn't pull away.
"You’re bleeding," he murmured, his voice rough as gravel.
I looked down. A shard of the tumbler had sliced through my scrub pants, leaving a two-inch line of red across my knee.
"Occupational hazard," I said.
"You shouldn't be here, Nora."
"You paid fifty thousand dollars for me to be here."
"Not for this," he rasped, his eyes dark with something raw and unguarded. "I’m a monster, Vance. The things I’ve done to keep this city quiet... you’d turn that needle on me if you knew."
I looked into his ruined, exhausted face. I saw the scars. I saw the weight of every dead man he carried on his broad shoulders.
"I’ve pulled shrapnel out of eighteen-year-old boys who shot children in mud huts, Calder," I said quietly. "I don't judge the soul on the table. I just keep the machine running. Now help me get you up."
He used the bed frame and my shoulder for leverage, his jaw locked tight against the agonizing pull on his lateral chest. Together, we got him off the floor and onto the edge of the mattress.
I worked quickly in the dim light. I swept the glass away with my boot, retrieved a vial of IV paracetamol from my kit, and pushed it through his port. Then I peeled away the soaked dressing.
The debridement had held, but the sudden fall had torn two of the retention sutures near the lower border.
"I need to restitch this," I said, holding up a curved needle and silk thread. "I can’t use more lidocaine. Your liver is already processing maximum doses."
Rafe leaned back against the pillows, his slate eyes never leaving my face.
"Do it raw."
"You don't have to prove how tough you are to me, Rafe."
"I’m not proving anything," he said, reaching out with his left hand and taking mine, holding it loosely, his calloused thumb resting against the back of my knuckles. "Just don't look away while you do it."
I swallowed hard.
"I never look away."
I set the needle into the needle driver.
I leaned in close. The scent of his fevered skin, the cedarwood cologne, and the copper of his blood filled my senses completely. With a steady hand, I drove the steel needle through the margin of his flesh, pulling the wound closed with a tight, square knot.
His grip on my left hand tightened until my fingers went numb.
A single bead of sweat rolled down his temple. His jaw clenched so violently I could hear his molars grind, but he kept his slate-gray eyes pinned entirely to mine.
He didn't blink.
He didn't look down at the blood.
He looked at me as if I were the only solid thing in a world that was tearing itself to pieces around him.
When the final knot was tied and snipped, I smoothed a fresh sterile pad over the wound and taped it down.
"All set," I whispered, my breath mingling with his.
I tried to pull my hand back, but his fingers remained locked around mine.
"Stay," he rasped.
"Rafe, the protocol—"
"To hell with the protocol," he said, his voice dropping into a desperate, velvet growl. "Sit in the chair. Just... don't leave the room."
I looked at his massive, scarred frame lying beneath the sheets, vulnerable in a way no living person in this city had ever been allowed to see.
I pulled the heavy armchair from the corner of the room, dragging it right to the edge of the mattress.
I sat down.
I didn't let go of his hand.
Within ten minutes, the antipyretic took hold. His breathing deepened, leveling out into the slow, steady rhythm of natural sleep.
May you like
I sat there in the dark, watching the mist roll over the city, Rafe Calder’s iron fingers relaxed inside mine, wondering how in the hell I was ever going to walk back into a normal emergency room after tonight.
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