Chapter Eight
Madison
Hair moving off my face startles me awake. I pull the punch I intended to give when Cori’s sweat-soaked brow comes into view. Her sloppily wrapped hand rests on the bed beside me and she’s using her uninjured hand to move my hair aside.
“We need to wrap your hand,” I say in a throaty voice I don’t recognize as my own. The throb in my head is almost debilitating. Every part of me hurts.
“No, Mak, you need to let me go and worry about you.” She rests the palm of her good hand on my cheek. “He’s taken everything, and I’ll never work again. I don’t want to live this way and there’s nothing more he can do to me that will make it better or worse.”
Her gloomy conviction scares me and I cover the hand on my cheek, feeling the dreaded warmth of her skin. She’s running a temperature. “Don’t let that monster win,” I tell her. “He’ll eventually start cutting me up too, but we’ll both survive. I won’t give up and I refuse to let you give up.”
Tears slide down her face. She jerks her hand off the mattress when I move. The torn sheets are lying on Cori’s bed. Fernandez didn’t take them. He also uncuffed me while I was unconscious. I don’t want to know if he did anything to me while I was out. The last thing I remember is him pinching my nipple.
No, I won’t think about that.
I slide around Cori and grab the material off her bed in order to rebandage her hand. The room spins, but I manage to stay upright. I know I have a slight concussion from the blow to my head, but that’s the least of our worries right now.
Cori is now resting on my bed, her breathing shallow. I carefully sit down near her injured fingers and slowly remove the wrap she put on it while I was out cold. This time Fernandez cut off her pinky finger. The severed digit has ragged skin hanging from the wound and the knot of string Fernandez used before cutting it off is still tied around the base.
My brain fights attack mode. I’m injured and I need to give myself some time to recover. I will kill the three men who did this, but I need to be at my best to do it. My injuries don’t stop my imagination. Images of my bare hands squeezing the life from Fernandez’s throat fill my vision. Cori lets out a small cry and the image dissolves.
“Sorry,” I say before walking to the bathroom with a strip of sheet to get it wet. I draw slow, even breaths into my sore chest and think of all the ways a person can die. None of them are evil enough to punish Fernandez.
“They raped me again.” Cori’s lips tremble and then she sobs into her bent arm.
I walk back into the room and my hand goes to her hair. All I can do is soothe her while the tears of hopelessness fall. She can’t give up. I won’t let her.
“I need to untie the tourniquet on your finger and bandage your hand. It will hurt.” My words are soft and gentle, coaxing even. I slide my fingers down her hair, over her shoulder and allow them to travel down her arm so I don’t startle her. She doesn’t look up when I start working. I pull carefully at the string and unloop it from what’s left of her finger. The bandage on the other severed finger is a small section of folded sheet and it’s stuck to her skin. I use the damp sheet on the dried blood until I can lift the folded cloth off. Her hand is swollen and the signs of infection worry me. She’s already running a temperature. Her eyes, which are usually a sharp brown, are dull and lifeless, barely registering what I’m doing.
I dress the new wound with clean strips of sheet. I continue wrapping while blood leaks through several layers. When her hand is nothing but a large ball of white sheet, I rest it on the bed beside her and help her get as comfortable as possible on my mattress. After she’s settled, I lie beside her with one arm over her shoulder. We don’t talk. Keeping desperation at bay is nearly impossible, but I don’t allow my thoughts to move past killing Fernandez and his goons.
Thirty minutes later, Cori’s breathing deepens and I know she’s finally able to sleep. I’m unable to remain still, so I stand and walk around the room looking at every nook and crevice. There must be something. My eyes fall on the steel cabinet several times before I walk over and open the double doors. I get on the floor and look inside again. There’s a steel shelf that I noticed the last time. I start bending, prying, and pulling the metal. While I’m working, a plan forms in my head. It will either get us killed or out of here. Thirty minutes later, the shelf breaks off. I take it into the bathroom in case one of the men enters the room and bend it some more until I finally have a weapon.