Chapter 250: She Was Not Done Loving Him

DOVE’S POV

Dove could not tell how much of the blood on her hands belonged to Thorne, and she wanted the rain to stop touching him.

"A towel," she said as Edrik lowered him onto the clinic bed. "Please, somebody give me a clean towel."

The nurse pushed cloth into her hands and guided them where she needed pressure. Dove obeyed. She could be difficult later. Right now the man knew what he was doing, and Dove needed that more than she needed to pretend she did.

Thorne lay beneath the open window with his silver hair stuck to his forehead. His eyes found her, and he tried to lift a hand.

"Don’t," she told him. "You can fuss over me when we get out of here."

His fingers caught her sleeve anyway.

The room held three narrow beds and a sink supplied from a covered tank. Through the open doorway she could see the courtyard and the wet shoes of people waiting beneath the awning. Somebody outside was shouting that the red rain meant they had to abandon the building.

The nurse raised his voice without looking away from Thorne. "Then stop standing in our doorway and let us work."

Dove liked him immediately.

Edrik cut through the wet side of Thorne’s shirt at the nurse’s direction. His hands stayed steady. Dove watched them because she needed something steady to look at.

"Bag," she said.

He lifted the strap from her shoulder and set it on the chair beside her. She pointed to the two treatment bottles, and he understood without asking a question anybody else could hear.

Ash appeared in the courtyard. He started toward the room, then stopped when the nurse ordered the entrance kept clear.

"Hold that gate," Dove told him.

He looked at her hands, at Thorne, and then turned away so sharply she heard his boots scrape the floor.

With Edrik between the doorway and the bed, Dove opened one bottle. The nurse recognized the treatment from the small batches Dove had sold and let her use it while he worked. Dove emptied that bottle carefully, then set it apart from the unopened one.

She waited for the impossible improvement she wanted.

There was some. Enough that the nurse looked closely and adjusted the cloth. Not enough to make Thorne sit up and ask why everybody was staring.

*Sprout. More. Would more help?*

*I cannot tell you that more will repair this injury.*

*I’m not asking for a guarantee.*

She was. She knew she was, and the silence afterward hurt worse because Sprout did not dress the answer up as something cheerful.

Dove looked at the door, thinking of the pool in the private room and all the things she still did not understand about it. She could fetch more water. She could also waste time insisting that the thing she owned must be the answer.

"Tell me what you need," she said to the nurse.

The nurse gave her another task. Dove did it. Edrik stayed at the other side of the bed, keeping Thorne still when moving hurt him. There was nothing soft about his expression, but his voice was calm when he told Thorne what was happening.

"She’s here. Stop trying to get up."

Thorne breathed through his teeth. "Door."

"I’ve got the door."

Dove leaned close enough that Thorne could see only her for a moment.

"You don’t have to watch everything. I’ve got you, remember? We take turns."

His eyes closed briefly. She wanted to make a joke about his terrible timing, something normal enough that the room would become normal with it. Nothing came that did not feel cruel.

She kept holding his hand instead.

A doctor came from the next room, spoke with the nurse and examined him. Dove listened carefully. There were things this clinic could do and things it no longer had the equipment or supplies to do safely. The better clinic across the canal was still accepting patients. Their own radio operator was already trying to confirm the route.

"Then we go there," Dove said.

The doctor looked toward the courtyard. Gunfire sounded beyond the wall, followed by people running.

"The crossing is being held."

"By your people?"

He did not answer quickly enough.

Edrik looked at her, and she knew he was already considering every ugly way he could force them across. She loved him for being willing. She did not want another husband bleeding beside the first.

The operator returned with the receiving clinic’s confirmation. They could take Thorne. Their courtyard was clear, their staff ready, but they could not send a vehicle through the fighting.

Dove looked past him, toward the sky above the wall.

She remembered the practice yard. Ash standing in dragon form while workers secured the weighted load. The room they had left around his wings. The careful landing, with people waiting instead of rushing beneath him.

She had watched because it was useful to know.

Now she hated how useful it was.

"The flight straps," she said. "Are they here?"

The operator glanced toward the equipment room. "A set. We kept one after the drill."

Edrik understood first. His face went still, but he did not argue. He looked down at Thorne, then back at her.

"I’ll check them."

Dove nodded. That nearly broke her, his willingness to help her do something neither of them wanted.

While he fetched the straps, a worker found the spare clothing and wash bag they had left at the clinic. Dove put it beside the ready bag. They were still people with belongings, with plans, with clean shirts waiting for another morning. She refused to let this room turn them into a body on a bed and everybody else standing around it.

She kissed Thorne’s forehead. He opened his eyes when she said his name.

"I’m going to get you there."

Then she stepped into the courtyard, where Ash stood beneath the red-streaked awning with blood on his knuckles.

He turned the moment he saw her.

"Take him," Dove said. Her voice shook, and she made herself finish. "Please, Ash. Take my husband across the canal and keep him alive."