Chapter 143: Caleb
Everything that had happened in the last few hours was pushed from my head as I made my way across the living room to the kitchen.
“What happened?” I demanded using my newfound dad voice.
Carly and Logan were both sitting at the countertop. Michael was standing next to Carly whispering something to her as he held a cloth just above her eye that was soaked in blood. And Logan was holding his arm in what looked like an unnatural position, and the blood on his face looked dry, telling me that he was already healing.
“I- ff-fell into t-the coffee table,” Carly sobbed.
“They were training.” Maizie explained, her voice shaking slightly, which surprised me. “But there isn’t a lot of space in here, and they lost where they were in space and smashed into the coffee table. Logan was taken off guard and fell. I think he dislocated his shoulder. But Carly caught her face, on the edge and there’s glass all imbedded in her arm, and for whatever reason, she isn’t healing.”
I immediately reached out for Sawyer, but I was no longer a part of the pack. I couldn’t just mindlink them when I wanted to... At least not yet.
“Alana, go get Sawyer.” I said calmly as I looked at the young girl’s bleeding arm. “Michael, go get all the other kids into a different space. I know there isn’t a lot, and this literally is where many of them sleep, but literally, get them out of here.” Michael nodded and handed me the cloth to hold pressure to Carly’s head.
“Maizie, my girl, pull it together.” I whispered as Sammy held onto my legs, clearly scared. “Did the table get cleaned up?”
“Yea, Taylor was working on it.” Maizie answered, taking a steadying breath.
“Okay, good,” I said calmly as the door slammed telling me Alana was on her way.
“Do you have any idea why she isn’t healing?”
“Not officially, no.” Maizie answered, worry clearly in her voice as she was handed a pair of tweezers from a 14 or so year old that I couldn’t remember the name of in the moment.
“What are you doing?” I asked in surprise.
“The glass.” She answered trying to steady herself. “Her healing might just be delayed... I don’t want the glass to get trapped in her skin.”
I took the tweezers from her, trading her the cloth.
“I’ll do it. You just hold pressure.” I told her.
She nodded and started talking to the younger kids. Both were about 13, and it was clear that they were both in pain and scared. But Maizie did her best to distract them. She had been in charge of these kids for longer than anyone had expected. She didn’t seem to mind most of the time, but she was a kid herself. As tough as she pretended to be, she was human, and more than that she was still a child.
The door flew open as Michael was corralling the last of the kids to another space. I was surprised at his efficiency, and I wondered what he had told them to accomplish that.
“What happened?” Sawyer questioned as he approached, his eyes scanning the situation to the best of his ability. “Are you hurt?” He asked Maizie directly.
“No, no, not my blood.” She answered, her voice shaking a little before she quickly gave the rundown of what happened, but I tuned it out. The cloth in Maizie’s hand was soaked completely through, and Carly was looking paler by the second.
“Alana, go get my bag from my room.” Sawyer directed before evaluating. “Logan, you appear to be healing fairly quickly, let’s put your arm back into place before it heals wrong,”
Sawyer gave me a look as he positioned Logan to put his arm into place. One I knew a little too well. Carly was losing a lot of blood. He was only doing Logan first because he could do it quickly. Carly would take longer, and he wasn’t sure there was anything else he could do.
With all the kids now elsewhere, Michael came over to help.
“This is going to hurt,” Sawyer warned Logan, but that was the only warning he got. His scream ripped through the apartment with a vengeance. Michael tried to comfort the boy as Maizie looked away. It was clear that this situation was more than a little triggering for her.
I kept my focus, pulling out every little piece of glass I could find, but it was hard. The blood was making it hard. I worried about wiping it off and accidentally pushing it into her skin more. Her sobs were weaker now, but I knew it wasn’t because she was in less pain.
“Do you normally heal quickly, Carly?” Sawyer asked her.
“Yes, well, I used to.” She cried. “But not since they -”
“Oh god,” Maizie gasped, a look of horror crossing her face.
“What?” Both Sawyer and I asked.
She grabbed us both and pulled us a little further away as to not scare Carly more.
“They were experimenting on us in the program. That’s why they picked Carly for this mission. They messed her up, and she was no longer useful to them... She probably won’t heal from her Lycan. They damaged her.”
“Do you know what they did to her?” Sawyer asked quietly, peaking over his shoulder to look at the poor kid.
“No. I just know they were mixing different supernatural's’ blood.” Maizie responded in a hushed whisper.
Sawyer nodded and put his doctor face on as he turned back to Carly. Michael was comforting her, and he looked uneasy letting us anywhere near her, but he moved away so Sawyer could do his job. Sawyer quickly patched the girl’s head up first. A few stitches to stop the bleeding. Then it was the hard part. I had gotten a lot of the glass out, but there was still a lot in her, and the bleeding didn’t appear to be slowing down.
Sawyer rummaged through his bag and pulled out a little vial. He handed me the tweezers and told me to keep working. I didn’t know where Alana had disappeared to, nor did I know how long we had been at it. I’d remove glass, and Sawyer would drop whatever was in the vial into the hole.
“Can we help?” Grace’s calm gentle voice asked.
I had been so focused; I hadn’t even noticed her, or Rhys come in.
“No.’ Sawyer answered through gritted teeth. “No, we’re almost done.”
“You’re so brave, Carly,” Grace commended.
Carly sniffled and gave Grace a small smile. This was the calmest Carly had been all night. Grace came over and gently touched the girl’s face.
“A nice-looking battle scar,” Grace smiled at her. “Wear them proudly.”
But to both Sawyer, and my surprise suddenly all of the cuts on Carly’s arm started to heal.
“What the fuck?” Sawyer muttered, backing away.
“What?” Grace asked, removing her hand to look at us.
Sawyer looked at me, then Grace, then back to Carly’s arm which had started to heal, before demanding, “How the hell did you do that?!”