A/N: Hello again lovelies! I'm sorry if the little prison-escapade didn't go as everyone expected… what can I say, as an author, I am ruthless to my characters at times! I hope everyone enjoys this next installment! Drop a review please!
-MS
Blood and Bone
"Of course I will," the pink haired man grunted as he hauled the shorter, bloodstained man out of the car, "But this one's not going on his tab, the tight fisted miser… give me a hand here, miss?"
Soi Fon nodded shortly and stepped down off the curb, situating herself under Ggio's other arm. His eyelid fluttered and he seemed to come to himself for a moment; he tried to stand, getting his feet under him for only half a second before his knees buckled and he almost dragged her down with him. The tall doctor shook his head and began to drag the dark haired man with a small sigh; Soi Fon walked with him, lending as much support as she could by just holding his torso. His useless arm drooped over his own shoulders more to ensure that it didn't move too much rather than helping him remain upright. Her face was becoming slowly painted red as her cheek brushed against him with every staggering step.
"S-soi…?" he muttered, his molten-gold gaze slowly wandering to the corner of his eyes as his head was bowed with the weight of pain.
"What?"
"Sorry… 'bout this," his speech was slightly slurred, "I really…. Wan'ed to help ya…"
Soi Fon glanced at him again, taking in his ashy-pale featured with a feeling of annoyed alarm. He wasn't looking fantastic. All traces of his usual cocky humor were gone, and he looked like the simple act of speaking was an effort.
"Shut up," she snapped at him, "just shut up."
"Yeah…" he whispered in a murmuring sigh, closing his eyes again. His weight seemed to increase, and the doctor looked over.
"He's out," the glasses-wearing man commented as they passed through the sliding doors of the apartment building and into the lobby, "Let's hope he stays that way."
The lobby to the apartments spoke of just how much people paid to live there; tiled with white marble and well lit by a chandelier, there was a set of sweeping stairs carpeted in red, and set in the wall was a large elevator with the customary buttons. Against the opposite side was a large, polished mahogany desk at which a young woman sat shuffling papers with a look of concentration. Her dark brown hair fell over her business-casual dressed shoulders in ripple-like waves. Her dark eyes flicked up for a second to glance at the odd trio before returning to her papers… she took a moment to realize what she had seen before she bolted upright with a squeak, he chair spinning out behind her.
"Doctor!" she cried, her eyes settling on the wide streak of red that was now smeared across the pristine white tiles from Ggio's passage. Soi Fon helped to get Ggio into the elevator as the pink haired man address the woman.
"Don't tell anyone about this Marianne," he said with a smile as he pressed a bloody finger to his lips, "it's for work. If anyone comes asking around, I'm not here, okay?"
"But doctor-!" the elevator doors shut what might have been a protest on her end, and the air was then filled with gentle music that couldn't overcome the exhausted static in Soi Fon's head.
The doors dinged open at the eighth floor, and the young doctor stepped forward while Soi Fon continued to space out; she stumbled while trying to catch up to him and almost was dragged along herself as he walked down the hallway to the fifth door down on the left. The doctor fumbled for his keys for a minute before ramming a key into the lock and pushing the door open.
Inside was extremely clean, the furniture and décor themed white, black, and every shade in between, creating a very sterile looking environment that reminded Soi Fon of a chessboard.
"Come on, come on," the pink haired man urged, dragging her forward once more via Ggio, "We can't have Ggiovanni bleeding all over my tile again…"
"Again?" Soi Fon asked incredulously, but the man ignored her.
"Hold this," he said hurriedly, shoving Ggio at her so that she almost fell backward; she watched as he rummaged in a cupboard and came back up with what looked like a tool box and a tablecloth. He swung the cloth over the table in a practiced movement so that it settled more or less straight and then turned to his sink, turning the water on hot.
"Here," he muttered, taking Ggio from her and picking him up with some effort, "Damn it you fatass, you're only like five feet tall, lose some weight!"
The doctor spread her injured companion out on the table, and then stuck a pair of pliers under the hot water in the sink.
"Well," he said, "I have good news and bad news. Which do you want first?"
"I don't care," Soi Fon told him tiredly, "I really don't."
"Good news first then!" the young man smiled, "We don't need to use anesthetic because he's practically comatose; this saves us some time."
"And?"
"Well the bad news is that there's not an exit wound, and I don't have an X-ray machine, so we get to go fishing in Ggio's shoulder until we find a bullet. Also, he's staining my best tablecloth… these should be sterile enough, right?"
He pulled the pliers out of the water; Soi Fon looked at them and cringed in disgust. They were none too well cared for, and the handle was crusted with dried blood.
"Help me get his shirt off, hm?" the doctor smiled at her, "Hand me the scissors, I'll cut and you just pull it off."
She gave him the black handled blades that had been propped against the phone on his counter and watched as he carefully cut away blood soaked cloth from Ggio's skin. When he moved away to wash the scissors, she retrieved the parts of shirt as best she could; she could see the actual wound now, a dark hole surrounded by serrated, torn bits of flesh. It wasn't pouring blood like it had before, but she wasn't sure if it was because it was getting better or because Ggio was bleeding out.
"The bullet probably hit a pretty major vein," the pink haired man commented, coming back to the table and picking up the pliers he had set down before, "Maybe even nicked an artery… But as long as he's got the same strong will as before he won't just flop over and die; no need to look so worried Ms… uh…"
"Soi Fon," she replied drily, "And I'm not worried, I'm disgusted."
"Oh, well, Szayel Apporo Granz at your service miss," he smiled again, "And at least you're not wailing on the floor like some of my patients accompaniments do."
"As if I would shed tears for this fool," she shook her head, "I have no doubt that he'll come back just as annoying as before."
Soi Fon paused, thinking. The name 'Granz' sounded very familiar…
"Are you related to Yylfordt by chance?" she asked. Szayel tensed, but did not look at her.
"Ah, yes, my idiot of an older brother," he said stiffly, "It seems you met my father's undisciplined, uneducated, hell spawn which he sired with that whore…" he trailed off, his words becoming nothing more than furious and unintelligible muttering for a moment before he turned to her again, "Well, disregarding that, I think it's time to start the procedure now. Bansai!"
He inserted the ends of the pliers into the wound carefully, twisting a bit. His face lit up as he seemed to find something.
"Ah, here it is, but I can't-"
Soi Fon jumped as Ggio's hand jerked convulsively by her, gripping the edge of the table white knuckled. Her eyes moved swiftly to his face, and she found him to be an ashy gray color, eyes wide and teeth clenched.
"Shit, this thing is really stuck-" Szayel continued, eyebrows furrowed over his glasses with concentration as he tugged on whatever he had a hold of in Ggio's shoulder.
The slight black haired man in question screamed then, losing his grip on the table as he tried to pull away from what was causing him so much agony.
"Hey! Soi… uh… lady!" Szayel cried, obviously having forgotten her name already, "Hold him still!"
Soi Fon looked at him like he was crazy, but it was no time to be prissy about things, so she complied, stepping forward and grabbing the writhing man by the wrists and stretching her body across his to try and pin him. He was stronger than she anticipated, however, because when Szayel touched the edge of the wound with the pliers for a second try, Ggio pulled away from her, almost elbowing her in the face in the process.
"This isn't working," Szayel panted after a bit, the bloody pliers hanging from his limp fingers, glaring over at Ggio who was then semi curled up on the red stained, wrinkled table cloth, chest heaving.
"No shit," Soi Fon ground out, "Does he even know what he's doing?"
"Probably not," Szayel shrugged, "It's most likely a mental preservation response… I think he's in shock from losing so much blood."
"Why not just give him some of the anesthetic then?" she snapped, "This could have been over already if you would!"
"Ah, well," Szayel laughed a bit awkwardly, "That's the problem, I don't have any left… my boss brought over this red headed nurse with a huge rack, and one of my coworkers to take care of, and she wouldn't let me piece him back together without using up what anesthetic I did have… she said it was cruel."
Looking at Ggio, Soi Fon could agree with the aforementioned red haired woman.
"Here," Szayel thrust the pliers at her and dropped them in her hands before walking back to the table; he wiped his face, leaving a smear of red on his pale cheek. He grabbed Ggio and stretched him out, saying "Since you can't hold his still you'll just have to get the bullet."
"No!" Ggio cried, straining to get away from the self proclaimed doctor, "No! Just leave it in!"
"Come on, hurry up," Szayel sighed. Soi Fon bowed her head, realizing she had no other choice, and came forward with the metal in her hands.
"Hold him still," she muttered.
"Of course,"
She suppressed a shudder as the pliers entered the dark hole in Ggio's body with the unpleasant feeling of running her hands over a slab of raw beef, and he tensed again, gasping in pain. She ignored him with some difficulty and continued on; the metal grated against something that was not of a fellow substance and she thought that while she was not a medical professional, it must have been a shard of bone broken off from the whole. She suddenly felt contact with another object, metal this time, and opened the pliers a bit to take hold of it. She had expected to be able to extract it, but it remained firmly trapped in Ggio's body.
She played a gruesome tug of war with the bullet, purposely drowning out Ggio's cries with mental noise, thinking of anything but what she was doing.
Her hands suddenly pulled free, Ggio's pain so great that he seemed to have had the wind knocked out of him, preventing him from making a sound. Soi Fon stood there as Szayel hurriedly pressed a hand against the hole to stop the flow of blood and began bandaging it as tightly as he could.
"Broken collar bone," he was murmuring, "possible necessity of a blood transfusion, approximately thirty-four percent blood loss; Chance of encountering MOF twenty percent, no accessible AOE in the area, survival rate as high as eighty, maybe as low as seventy-three…"
Soi Fon meanwhile examined the twisted metal she had pulled from the other man's body. It seemed to be a hollow point bullet, but she knew that those were supposed to burst upon impact with a body and leave shrapnel in the skin. It was a military grade bullet, but she supposed having it ricochet was the only thing that had stopped it from traveling straight through Ggio. That would have been better, she thought, a clean hole rather than the messy, ragged thing that was there… but a shot straight through would have destroyed his shoulder, blowing the bone to smithereens.
Szayel was still mumbling to himself, "… In the event of hemorrhagic shock there is possibility for circulation to cease… recovery time for bones about four to six weeks at the very earliest, flesh reparation will take much longer, possibly another month with a hundred percent chance of scarring… I need to find the S-bind sling…"
Four to six weeks, he had said.
Soi Fon plopped down in a chair by the wall, staring at Ggio, who couldn't see her from his position. She wasn't even sure if he was conscious, as he'd been slipping in and out while Szayel had been bandaging him up.
Four to six weeks.
"You," she said flatly to the man on the table, "are a fucking idiot."
