Chapter 50 I promise to love you
“Maybe in the kitchen,” Izabella got up and rushed to the kitchen, which was to the left of this room.
She started rummaging through drawers and kitchen cabinets, throwing everything out on the floor but she found nothing. Grunting angrily, she looked around. Everything was emptied. The kitchen was a mess. She was sure that, if a first aid kit was here, she would have found it.
Then, it hit her. Maybe it was in the bathroom. Delirious with worry, she ran through a narrow hallway but instead of the bathroom, she found the bedroom. She immediately got out of there, then noticed another door, down the hallway. She rushed over and pushed the door open forcefully with her foot.
It was a small bathroom, with a square shower stall, one toilet and two small cabinets. She opened them, finding some medications, razors, toothbrush and toothpaste. Then, pushed all the way back in the lower cabinet, she found a little black, zip bag. She got it out and checked the contents.
“Bingo!”
She ran back to the room where everyone was. Raphael was barely conscious, his head in Renwick’s lap. He was coughing up blood already. The rolled up sleeve was barely keeping his wound from bleeding out. He looked bad.
Brandon was looking out the window, while Hendrik watched the doors. Everything seemed peaceful and, yet, Izabella knew something had gone wrong, terribly wrong. She wondered where the others were, but right now, she had more urgent matters to attend
to.
“Lemme see,” Izabella knelt down by Raphael’s side.
Renwick cautiously removed the rolled up sleeve and revealed the wound. Izabella felt an urge to gasp but she suppressed it. It looked deep. She was hoping it’d just be a nasty flesh wound but there was no such luck. She needed to clean it immediately, before an infection could set in. She got the hydrogen peroxide and a small washcloth from the zip bag.
“This is gonna hurt,” she said out loud but she wasn’t sure if Raphael would hear
her.
She poured the solution onto the wound and Raphael squirmed in pain, turning to the side. He moaned loudly, wanting to press the wound with his bare hands, so Renwick had to hold his arms.
“Sorry, sorry, sorry…” she kept repeating, watching the foam merge with the blood. “I can’t treat this. It’s too deep,” she told Renwick. “He needs a hospital or at least a place with basic medical tools.”
“There are no hospitals for miles around,” Hendrik voiced. “We could take him to our nurse, she might be able to help him.”
“I could stich it up, but I think it’s too deep, and I’d only be stitching the surface skin. He might get sepsis and die unless his wound is properly treated,” she told them, sure that Raphael was barely able to hear her.
He kept opening and closing his eyes, his bloody hand in hers. She could almost feel his life oozing out of his body and she knew she’d do anything to keep him alive.
“There’s no time to take him anywhere,” Renwick shook his head nervously.
“Even if there was, I doubt they’d let us go anywhere,” Brandon suddenly interrupted, his gaze focused on something happening outside.
“Who?” Izabella asked.
“Whoever killed Dante is here,” Brandon moved away from the window and pulled the curtains. “They’re just toying with us. Waiting for us to get cozy and then they’ll probably attack. What happened to the others?” he asked the guys.
“We’re the only ones left,” Hendrik shook his head solemnly.
“What do you mean?” Izabella was shocked. “Everyone is dead? What happened?”
“We got attacked,” Hendrik explained. “I think someone betrayed us, someone on the inside. I just kept seeing people fall down, attacked out of nowhere, then they got Raphael, and we somehow managed to get to the house.”
Raphael coughed violently, interrupting him. Renwick turned him to the side but the blood on the floor was visible to everyone. Raphael was dying. If they were going to do anything, they needed to do it now. There was not a second to waste.
“We can’t go anywhere,” Izabella was frantic, “so, we can’t get any help. Is there anything we could to do help him?”
“Actually…” Brandon started, at his wit’s end.
“What is it?” Izabella shouted. “Tell me!”
“The guys can’t do anything,” Brandon shook his head, “but, you could.”
“What can I do?” Izabella shot her question at him.
“You’re half witch, which means your blood is special. We could give him your blood to drink, it will help him regenerate faster,” Brandon explained.
“He’s too weak to bite her,” Renwick watched his friend.
“What do I need to do?” Izabella asked, without the slightest doubt in her mind. “We could just pour it down his throat, would that work?”
“It should,” Brandon nodded. “But, Izabella…”
He grabbed her by the elbow, to pull her close to him. What he was about to say to her wasn’t easy.
“He’ll need a lot,” his voice was almost down to a whisper, “I’d help, but my blood wouldn’t regenerate him fast enough, only yours would, and there is no time to waste, he might die any second.”
“How do I do it?” she asked, her voice confident and sure.
She wasn’t afraid of losing blood. She was more afraid of losing Raphael.
“You’ll have to cut your wrist, that’s the only way your blood will flow quickly enough.”
Instead of a reply, she rushed over to the kitchen and grabbed the biggest kitchen knife she could find. She ran back to the room and sat down by Raphael’s side. His eyes were half closed. His breathing was down to a barely audible wheezing. Time was running out. Her heart was beating like crazy but she felt no fear - only love.
She got a lighter out of her pocket and sterilized the knife with the flame. No one was speaking, just closely following her every action. They were all hoping that no one would attack them right now. Izabella took a deep breath. She pressed the blade against her pale skin. She could see the outlines of dark blue and purple veins. She prepared herself for pain, lots of it.
Closing her eyes, she slit her veins horizontally and spurts of bright, red blood sprayed everywhere. She immediately turned her arm towards Raphael’s mouth, and the blood kept pouring into it, in time with her pulse. Straight away, she could feel her heart rate rocketing and droplets of sweat formed on her forehead. She felt too weak to hold her hand up after only a few seconds and it dropped down. Brandon quickly jumped to help, holding her arm up, so Raphael could drink the blood immediately, so that not a single drop of this precious liquid was lost. Izabella’s head was in his lap. She was becoming paler and paler but as she was getting worse, Raphael was becoming visibly better.
“Mom?” Izabella asked, looking somewhere into the distance.
“Shit, she’s losing consciousness!” Brandon shouted, pulling her arm back. “We need
to stop the bleeding!”
Brandon knew that a simple pressure dressing wouldn’t be enough to stop the bleeding. He needed a tourniquet. He thought of a belt first but that’d be a poor choice, seeing that it’d be very difficult to apply the right amount of pressure on the skin. He looked around for something else. He found a scarf lying next to a coat on a hanger in the hallway. He broke the umbrella and used the elongated part and a pair of scissors as a windlass. It took some effort on his part but he managed to do it well.