Chapter 7 - The Butcher's Table
The harsh fluorescent lights hummed overhead, casting a sterile white glare over the stainless steel room. Dr. Vance poured a generous amount of stinging antiseptic onto a gauze pad, his weathered hands moving with practiced, mechanical efficiency. Lily whimpered, her tiny body tensing up as Leo grabbed her small hands, pressing them against his chest while whispering soothing nonsense into her hair.
"Breathe, Lily. Just look at me," Leo begged, tears threatening to spill over his lashes once again. "Look at my eyes. Don't look at the tray."
Vance pressed the soaked gauze directly into the raw, torn flesh of the little girl's knee. Lily let out a sharp, piercing scream of pure agony that echoed off the cold metal walls, her back arching off the table before Leo pinned her gently back down.
"I've got you, I've got you," Leo chanted, his own heart shattering with every sob his sister emitted. "You're okay, baby girl. I'm right here."
Miller stood by the reinforced steel door, peering through the small wire-reinforced window out into the dark alleyway. His hand rested reassuringly near the bulge of a concealed shoulder holster beneath his trench coat. "Doc, how long on those stitches? We don't have all night. That SUV was only a few blocks behind us when we turned off the avenue."
"Skin isn't magic, Miller," Vance grunted without looking up, threading a curved needle with black nylon suture wire. "She lost a lot of tissue on that concrete curb. I have to clean the gravel out before I close it up, or she'll get septicemia by morning. Three more minutes."
"We don't have three minutes," Miller warned, his voice dropping an octave as a pair of distant car doors slammed shut out in the alleyway.
Leo froze, his breathing stopping entirely. He looked from Miller to the door, then down at Lily, who was whimpering quietly now, exhausted from her screaming. "They're here?"
"Quiet," Miller hissed, drawing a compact semi-automatic pistol from his holster and clicking off the safety with a sharp metallic snap. He flicked off the overhead fluorescent lights in the main room, leaving them illuminated only by the focused surgical lamp over the table and the dim green glow of an emergency exit sign.
Dr. Vance didn't flinch. He deftly drove the needle through Lily's skin, pulling the thread tight with clinical precision. "Almost done, little one. One more knot."
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Suddenly, a heavy, brutal kick smashed against the reinforced steel door, rattling the frame and sending flakes of old paint raining down onto the concrete floor.
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