First aid equipment lined the shelves.
“Bash,” I snapped, needing him to move, to help. He was just standing there, looking at his twin, his eyes endlessly grief stricken and hopeless. “No,” I shoved him, hard, which got his attention for a second. It was all I needed. “She’s not dead, yet. Help me save her.”
Something flickered in his eyes, a sign of recognition. He grabbed the stirrup from my hands and attacked the first cabinet.
I found the medicine in the third one. Bottles lined the shelves, all labeled, all neatly arranged. I stared at them, waiting for one that was labeled “Silver antidote” to jump out at me, but when it didn’t, when all I saw was medical mumbo-jumbo, I slammed my fists into the counter and wept.
“What? It’s not there?” Bash practically pushed me out of the way to look.
“I don’t know,” I said on a sob. “I have no idea what any of these medications are.”
He turned to stare at me. “You said the nurse had an antidote.”
I wiped my cheeks with the back of my hand and frowned. “She has to, but I don’t know which one it is and if we give her something random…” I trailed off and looked at Daniella.
“We’ll kill her,” Bash finished what I didn’t want to say. He closed his eyes and let his head drop as if it were too heavy to be held up. For a moment, we just stood there, gutted, and hopeless.
A sound so small a human may not have heard escaped Daniella’s pale blue lips and snapped up both out of our misery. Bash raced to his sister’s side but I stayed and looked again at the bottles. It was here, one of the bottles could save her.
And any of the others could damn her.
She was dying anyway, I argued, trying to use reason in an unreasonable situation. My head swam with counter arguments until I could barely see straight. I was smart, smart enough, maybe I could process of elimination my way through this problem. Gritting my teeth, I reached for the first bottle and read the label.
Feverfew.
No, I put the bottle down on the countertop. My mom suffered from the occasional headache and had a big bottle of feverfew in the medicine cabinet. I grabbed another.
Aconite.
That one rang a bell. I searched my memory for meaning and came up empty. Frustration gripped me hard. Somewhere in my brain, I knew the answer but it kept slipping away the harder I tried to grab it. With a growl, I put it on the counter, too.
The counter filled with discarded bottles, dwindling down the choices.
Argyria sanitatem.
My palms went damp. I’d always loved the origins of words and had made a study of many over the years. I’d looked up the Latin for words, the French, and the German.
Argyria. Argent. Silver.
Sanitatem. Santé. Health.
“This is it,” I said quietly and turned with the bottle in my hands. “This is it.” I gave Bash a shaky smile and held it out.
“Are you sure?”
The hope in his voice was heartbreaking. I wanted to shout “no” and wrench it away, but Daniella was out of time. I watched her chest struggle to rise. Bash’s fingers grasped the bottle and took it from my hand.
“How much should I give her?” His voice quivered as unscrewed the top.
I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
He lifted the bottle to Daniella’s lips, his hands shaking wildly, then froze when I hissed, “Stop!”
Bash turned his head and I saw terror in his eyes.
“What if it needs to be intravenous?” I swallowed hard, then nodded sharply and turned back to the first cabinet I’d opened and grabbed a hypodermic needle.
I’d never administered one before, but I’d seen the process often enough. Old Ones, I’d watched enough Grey’s Anatomy to be a surgeon by now.
Bash held out the bottle and I slipped the needle inside, withdrawing a full five milliliters of the liquid. Holding it up, I squirted a tiny bit, to get rid of air bubbles my brain told me, then walked like a terrified first year to the exam bed.
Daniella looked near death. I eyed her, wondering where to inject the antidote so it could work the quickest. I grabbed the fabric of her shirt and tugged, ripping it a bit so I could see her wound, and gasped.
Violent, angry lines of silver fanned out from the bullet hole, spreading in a straight line towards her heart.
Bash moaned and lowered his forehead to his twin’s and I stopped analyzing everything from a million different angles.
I lifted the needle and plunged it into Daniella’s chest.
Chapter 21
No one spoke. No one breathed. We just waited until Daniella’s chest rose once more, then we both let out shaky breaths.
“What do we do now?” Bash straightened and reached a hand out to me without even looking, just as he had with Daniella.
I just looked at it for a moment, hanging there, waiting for me to fill it, then slipped my hand, palm to palm into his. The connection made every tight muscle in my body sag in relief.
After a moment, he turned and looked down at me, his eyes endless pools of grief. “How long should it take?”
I shook my head and whispered, “I don’t know,” then squeezed his hand and lifted it to my lips.
Time seemed to stand still in the silence. I counted the rise and fall of Daniella’s chest, watching to see if the rhythm changed, grew stronger, or weakened. When minutes passed, according to the clock on the wall, and she didn’t die, hope blossomed.
“She’s strong,” I whispered, feeling as though we were in a church. Death was too close.
Bash nodded slowly, never taking his gaze off his sister. “She’s stubborn as hell.” He gave a shaky laugh. “I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone more mulish than my big sister.”
“Big sister?” I asked, confusion twisting my face.
He chuckled. “By three minutes and seven seconds. And she’s never let me live it down.” His fingers clenched.
I turned to him, needing to do something more than just stand there, useless, and wrapped my arms around his waist. “Look at me,” I urged.
He tore his gaze from Daniella and looked deep into my eyes.
“You need to be the stubborn one, now.” I lifted a hand to brush an escaped tear from his cheek. “You need to be the strong one, for her.” I waited a minute for his mouth to thin and his eyes to sharpen. “Can you do that?”
He closed his eyes for a second, then opened them and nodded. “Thank you.”
I shook my head and opened my mouth to say “don’t mention it,” but he stopped me.
“Don’t do that,” he said, shaking me gently. “We’ve gone through Hell today, all of us, and you’re still hanging on. We hid in a shed,” Bash pointed to his sister then himself. “But you fought your way across campus to save a man that pisses you off.” He tilted his head and lowered his lips to a fraction of an inch from mine. “You’re amazing.”
His lips brushed mine so softly it felt like a whisper of a dream. I accepted his warmth with a sigh and sank into him, giving what he so obviously needed and taking what my soul craved.
Comfort and understanding.
He moved to press a kiss against my forehead then tucked me into his arms and just held on. Together, we turned, watched, and waited.
“Look,” I whispered the word as I tugged at Bash’s shirt and pointed to his sister’s chest. The silver threads of poison were drawing back, away from her heart, and, as we watched and grinned at one another, she took a deep, steadying breath.
I let go of Bash as he moved to her, pulling up the only chair that hadn’t been smashed to sit by her side. It was a sweet sight, one that had a lump forming in my throat. I turned away as tears filled my eyes, not for them, but for me, and the loved ones I’d almost lost today. Or, rather, they’d almost lost me.