Chapter 3 - SARAH’S KITCHENDeputies found Sarah forty-three minutes after Lily reached my porch.
Alive.
That word reached me first.
Alive.
Then everything else.
Unconscious.
Head injury.
Blood loss.
Possible internal injuries.
Severe hypothermia because the back door had been left open during the storm.
Marcus gone.
House in disarray.
Broken bottle on the kitchen floor.
Blood on tile.
A drawer pulled out.
One kitchen chair overturned.
They found Sarah near the refrigerator.
The first responding deputy later told me she was barely breathing.
She was transported to the same hospital.
I watched the trauma team bring her through.
For one second I saw her face.
Seven years vanished.
Sarah.
Older.
Bruised.
Blood matted in her hair.
Then doors closed.
I stood outside the trauma bay.
Useless.
I had opened chests during ruptured aortas.
Rebuilt coronary arteries.
Held hearts in my hands.
Could do nothing because she was my sister and therefore I was forbidden from being her doctor.
Correctly.
Still unbearable.
Dr. Maya Collins came out forty minutes later.
“Are you Nathan Pierce?”
“Yes.”
“She’s in surgery.”
“For?”
“Epidural hematoma and scalp injury. There’s also a fractured ulna and multiple older bruises.”
Older.
“How old?”
“Different stages.”
The hallway went quiet.
Maya continued:
“She has signs consistent with repeated trauma.”
I closed my eyes.
Seven years.
Marcus.
I had been right about him.
That thought arrived instantly.
May you like
Then shame immediately after.
Because being right about a man did not make me right about how I had treated my sister.
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