“That’s not what your credit card says,” Wren mumbled, repositioning her liner.
Two Fists and Brother, fellow members of the Acadiana Chapter of Bikers Against Child Abuse, laughed again. Wren took this as a sign that she’d won the pissing contest against the biker who was twice her age and almost three times her size.
Still, it wasn’t much of a win. Everyone knew Bear was a softy. That is, until it came to his membership in this particular group. Like all of the members of BACA, Bear could turn on the scary when a little kid needed him.
A lot of Wren’s clients were bikers, but her favorites were the ones who were members of BACA. The riders would station themselves at night around the homes of abused children or escort them to and from court to testify against their attackers. They were the closest things to superheroes Wren could imagine.
She respected them so much she’d tat the BACA symbol for free — touch-ups included. Wren started that little tradition after her apprenticeship ended six months ago, and she’d never regretted it. Instead of costing her money, it had gained her a solid base of loyal customers.
“Speaking of credit cards, what are you getting Ariel for your anniversary?” Two Fists asked.
Bear just beamed. “I’m taking her to Toledo Bend,” he boasted. Wren smiled, too. She’d worked on Mrs. Gayle Darcy — Ariel — more than once, and she loved the woman’s spunk just as much as she loved her ink choices. Under her clothes lived a mermaid’s world. Two mermaid sisters ran down the sides of her body. The one on the left had cascading blue hair adorned with scallop shells and sea anemones. The other wore tresses of gold and seemed to kneel against Ariel’s right thigh, her tail fin fanning over the woman’s ample hip. The colors and textures of each were nothing less than hypnotic. Working on Ariel was a tattooist’s dream.
Wren swapped out her black liner for the white shader. She rolled her right shoulder before diving in again. “How many years?”
“Twenty-five,” Bear gloated proudly, puffing his chest.
“Keep still!” Wren scolded.
The biker deflated. “Oops. Sorry.”
Twenty-five years. Wren couldn’t imagine it. That was as long as she’d been alive. Miller, her last boyfriend, hadn’t even made it three months before she’d kicked his ass to the curb. They’d gotten along just fine while she was apprenticing. Back then, she’d spend mornings at the studio watching Rocky and working on practice skins before waiting tables every night. Her free time had been pretty limited. But as soon as Rocky hired her and she quit serving, things had changed.
She wondered how long it had taken Miller to figure out that she made a lot more money in ink. Had he known before they hooked up? Or after she’d gone full-time?
He’d started coming over to her place more often — like every night. Miller would order pizza and then duck out onto her back stairs for a smoke when the delivery guy came. It seemed like she was always the one paying. And he was constantly making some comment about how the money he made hanging drywall wasn’t worth his time. When he’d suggested moving in with her a month after she went pro, Wren’d had enough.
She pulled her machine back and rolled her shoulder again. The clock by the door said it was only 6:15 p.m. She’d come in at noon and would stay until they closed at ten o’clock. She worked Thursdays through Sundays, and it was way too early to start feeling stiff, especially since she just switched to the heavier shader. But she couldn’t ignore the dull ache that now lengthened down her back. And that twinge in her side had returned. It was weird.
“What’s wrong, Wren? That gun’s not too big for you, is it?” Brother teased. Wren shot him a glare, but she didn’t have to say a word.
“You know better than that,” Rocky warned from the table beside hers. Her boss spoke without looking up from the wings he was giving Angel Delacroix. Angel was a local middle-weight boxer just starting out. The tattoo was a masterpiece they’d been working on every Thursday night for three weeks, and it wasn’t even half done. When the tattoo was finally finished, it would look like the pair of wings could flare open and lift Angel into the air. He hadn’t been in a fight since Rocky started on them, and Wren was sure the new ink would help the young boxer get noticed.
Rocky Perrodin was the best tattoo artist in Lafayette, and Wren had been lucky to apprentice with him. She was even luckier that he showed her obvious respect in front of their clients.
“I’m just teasing,” Brother defended. “That gun’s half the size she is.”
“Maybe,” Rocky muttered. “But she can hold a machine longer than most men I know, and her art could be in the frickin’ Louvre. Wren’s only the second artist I’ve hired right out of apprenticeship, and I did that so I wouldn’t have to compete against her.”
Wren bent down and pretended to check the machine’s coils so she could hide the blush that painted her face. When she stood up, the ache in her back seemed to stretch down into her thigh. It felt sort of like cramps, but it stayed just on her right side, and her period wasn’t due for another two weeks. Gritting her teeth against the discomfort, she got back to work.
Ten minutes later, the BACA logo was done. But as she set down her tools and peeled off her latex gloves, Wren saw that her hands shook. It felt like a giant vice clamped her in half. A sheen of sweat broke out on her lip.
And then pain — like a white-hot blade — pierced her in the gut.
Bear looked at her and frowned. “Darlin’, you’re as white as a ghost.”
His bushy eyebrows were the last things she saw before Wren Blanchard passed out.
CHAPTER THREE
LEE WAS BEGINNING his second twenty-four-hour shift of the week when the attending doc in the ER called him down.
“I don’t think it’s appendicitis. No fever. No vomiting or diarrhea,” Dr. Leger said, pointing to the tiny heap on the bed in front of her. Upon a closer look, the heap turned into a girl curled in the fetal position. A girl with blue and black hair. “I’m thinking cyst rupture. She fainted at work and is presenting with acute abdominal pain with back and shoulder tenderness.”
Lee stepped closer and took the patient’s right hand. It was clammy to the touch, but his eye darted to the tattoo on the inside of her wrist, a flock of black birds taking wing. Beneath her blue bangs, her eyes screwed shut, her forehead etched with pain.
“I’m Dr. Hawthorne. Can you tell me your name?”
The girl’s eyes peeked open, and Lee made out green irises, but before she could answer, Christiana Leger broke in.
“Wren Blanchard. Twenty-five. Non-smoker. No prescriptions. No history of kidney stones. Her boss said she was fine one minute and on the floor the next.”
Lee kept the girl’s hand in his as he glanced back at Dr. Leger. He tried to swallow the irritation his colleague inspired. Most of his colleagues. The ones who had never grasped that you could learn so much just by listening to your patients.
“Fuck me, this hurts.” Ms. Blanchard squeezed his hand as she hissed out the words.
One look told him he didn’t need to ask her to rate her pain. She was guarding, and her breath was labored. A nine, easy.
“On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate your pain?” Dr. Leger asked.
Lee had to stop himself from rolling his eyes.
“Stupid question,” the girl muttered, her eyes still closed. Then he watched a thought ripple across her face. “Seven.”
She’s tough.
“How long were you hurting before you fainted?” he asked, and her hesitation confirmed his guess. Lee knew before she answered that she’d likely hidden her pain as long as she could.
“About half an hour… maybe more.”
“Has this ever happened before?” he asked.
She gave a tight shake of her head. Then she opened her eyes, looked down at their joined hands, and released him. She squeezed her eyes shut again, as if that could block her pain.
“Can you make it stop?” Even though her voice shook with agony, she wasn’t be
gging.
Lee felt certain that she was vetting him, asking if he were up to the task.
And he wanted to say yes. He wanted to make the pain stop.
“Eventually. We need to find the cause first. Any chance at all that you’re pregnant?”
“Hell, no.”
Lee smiled as he plucked a pair of gloves from the supply table. “I’ll need to do a pelvic exam.”
She opened one eye.
“Morphine first.”
In spite of himself, Lee choked on a laugh. Dr. Leger folded her arms across her chest, unamused. “I’ll be fast. I promise.”
“Mmm… what a catch,” she rasped.
Lee bit the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing a second time. If she could crack jokes in this kind of pain, what was she like on a good day? Lee cleared his throat before speaking again.
“Ms. Blanchard, I’ll need you to roll onto your back and raise your knees. I’ll keep you covered.”
“It’s Wren. First-name basis now,” she mumbled before moaning and rolling over. But with the movement, her eyes shot open, and she began to pant. “Oh shit… oh Jesus — What the fuck…”
Lee slipped his right hand under the sheet and used his left above to palpate her abdomen. Beyond her cervix, he could feel swelling, but no adnexal mass. He pressed deeper.
“Ten… Oh God, make it stop—” she gasped, her voice hollowing out.
Lee looked up to see his patient had gone completely white.
“Her pressure’s dropping,” Dr. Leger said.
Shit.
“She needs surgery. Now.”
“Don’t fuck up my ink…” she whispered. Her eyes rolled back, and she was out.
AS LEE SCRUBBED his fingers and hands — counting each stroke — he gave thanks that Dr. Jem Yeng, Chief of Obstetrics, was the attending on call and not Dr. Barrow. Lee had only scrubbed in on a few cystectomies, but he’d watched Barrow do dozens of hysterectomies, making calls about women’s organs he never would have made.
With his hands in front of him, Lee backed into the operating theater behind Dr. Yeng and waited for the scrub tech to fit him out with gown and gloves. He saw Mercer standing at the head of the surgical table where his patient was already intubated, giving him another measure of relief. Mercer was a friend, but he was also a careful and skilled anesthesiologist. Wren Blanchard’s emergency had come on a good day at UMC.
“Dr. Hawthorne, she’s your patient. Why don’t you take the lead?” Dr. Yeng offered.
Adrenaline surged in his blood. Lee had assisted in scores of laparoscopic procedures, but something about this particular patient made his heart race.
“Thank you, Dr. Yeng,” he managed. But when he approached the table and saw the flesh peeking through the square of surgical drape, Lee stilled. In an operating room, it was easy to forget that the body on the table belonged to an actual person. Swathed in blue drapes, heads nearly covered with masks and hair caps, patients barely looked human. Apart from race and body type, one patient resembled every other.
Except Wren Blanchard.
The abdomen in front of him was a work of art. A cherry-blossom tree in full bloom spanned her body from pelvis to ribs. Pink petals floated away in a breeze, and a flock of Red-winged Blackbirds was just taking flight. The dark branches and roots of the tree struck a stark contrast to her fair skin, as did the blackbirds. But the pink blossoms, each one blushing in its own way, could not have looked more natural — as if such images made their debut on skin before growing up from the ground.
“Wow.”
“You should see the rest of her.” Lee looked up to see the smiling eyes of the scrub nurse. “It’s quite something.”
“She asked me not to mess up her ink,” Lee said, bringing his eyes back to the masterpiece in front of him. “I thought she was delirious. Clearly not.”
“Well, she’s bleeding, so you’d best get started, Dr. Hawthorne,” Dr. Yeng chastened gently.
“Right.” He held out his hand for the scalpel.
In the end, he made two small incisions. One in the trunk of the cherry blossom just to the right of her navel. The other, lower, just above her pudenda, he was able to hide in the beautiful root work of the tree.
After Lee had corrected the ovarian torsion and removed the hemorrhaging corpus luteum, he stitched up the incisions as carefully as he could so that Wren’s scars would be tiny. For the first time in his career, he found himself hoping that his patient would be happy with his sewing skills.
CHAPTER FOUR
WREN WAITED IN the carpool line. Her stomach started to hurt. Mamaw Gigi was late, and Mamaw Gigi was never late.
She looked over her shoulder back at the entrance to Myrtle Place Elementary and wondered if she should go tell her teacher, Mrs. Gibson. Would Mrs. Gibson still be in the classroom? Could she walk back there all by herself?
“Hey, sugar.”
Wren jumped, and Darryl laughed at her from the driver’s seat of Mamaw’s station wagon.
“Where’s Mamaw?” Wren asked, peering into the empty car through the open window.
Darryl winked at her. “Your mamaw took a spill and hurt her elbow.”
Wren’s heart started to thump hard against her chest. Mamaw was hurt?
“Now, don’t go all scaredy-cat on me, sugar. She and your Papaw are getting her patched up at the hospital, and I told them I could pick you up from school.”
“Mamaw’s at the hospital?” Wren’s lip began to tremble, and Darryl pushed open the passenger door.
“She’ll be fine, sugar. Elbows are easy to fix. Climb on up here, and we’ll go get some ice cream.”
Wren eyed the front seat. “Mamaw doesn’t let me sit in the front. She says the back is safer for little girls.”
Darryl nodded. “Well, she’s right about that, but I thought you were a big girl. Hop up here. What’s your favorite ice cream flavor?”
Wren didn’t move. “Where’s Laurie?”
A frown started to fold onto his forehead, but he shook it off with a smile. “Your mama is sleeping off some medicine she took. Now, you need to get in this car if you want some ice cream… unless you’re planning to walk home tonight.”
Wren’s eyes got big. Walk home? She’d get lost or kidnapped. She scrambled into the front seat and put on her seatbelt.
“Now, that’s a good girl. A big girl… What did you say your favorite flavor was?”
Ten minutes later, Wren sat in the front seat with rocky road in a sugar cone. Mamaw usually made her get it in a cup because cones dripped, but Darryl had said it was a good thing Mamaw wasn’t around today.
Wren licked the side of her cone and thought that she’d always want Mamaw around, but she was happy to get a cone.
Darryl sat next to her, sipping a milkshake.
“Mmm-mmm,” he said, drinking his shake and tilting his seat back. “This sure is good. It relaxes me.”
Wren nodded and slurped a marshmallow out of her ice cream. “Marshmallows relax me,” she said. She leaned back against her seat and sighed.
Darryl held his milkshake with one hand and put the other in his lap. A minute later, he began rubbing his fingers up and down the zipper of his jeans. Wren stopped licking her ice cream.
“Yep, this sure is relaxing,” he said, moving his hand back and forth. “You ever try this?”
Wren shook her head, her face getting hot. “I’m ready to go home now.”
“We’re in no rush, sugar. Uh-oh. Look at that,” Darryl said, pointing to her lap. Ice cream had dripped down her cone and dotted her school pants. “Let me wipe that up for you.”
WREN WOKE UP in a semi-private hospital room next to a snoring woman. Her throat burned, and her eyes felt greasy, but she was alive.
She raised her right hand to her face to wipe her eyes, and the sight of an IV lock taped to her wrist surprised her.
“Good thing needles don’t freak me out.” Her voice came out scratchy and raw, and she cleared her throat,
wishing for some water.
She knew better than to try to sit up on her own. Although her limbs felt heavy and drugged, she was still aware of pain in her middle. Wren glanced around and found the controls along the railing, and she inclined the head of the bed until her chest was just higher than her belly.
Even under blankets and a hospital gown, her stomach looked… puffy.
She lifted the neck of the gown and took a tentative peek. The Lady Gouldian Finch that soared across her chest made her smile. Even if things lower down were a mess, he was still beautiful with his sharp red face and his proud purple chest and gold belly. He aimed for a bougainvillea perch and gazed sagely past her right arm. Across from him, over her heart, her timid wren hid in his nest as though the events of the night had spooked him.
He wasn’t alone. Wren lifted the gown a little higher.
The top of her cherry blossom tree was still visible, but the rest of it disappeared under bandages. She’d have to wait to assess the damage.
Wren glanced at her snoring neighbor. The woman was about Mamaw Gigi’s age, seventy, or so. She slept on her back with her mouth open. A tube that looked disturbingly thick snaked down from the side of her bed and ended in a pouch half-full of rust-colored fluid.
Wren made a face and looked toward the door, not wanting to think of the tube or its unfortunate owner. She was aware that she was both half-starved and nauseated, but the thought of eating anything in the dingy hospital room nearly made her gag.
I need to get out of here… What the hell time is it, anyway?
There were no windows in the room, but she felt sure that only a few hours had passed. She looked around in search of her purse and clothes. They were nowhere to be found. Did Rocky have them? Wren remembered her boss hovering over her when they strapped her to a gurney in the hospital’s drive. Rocky must have brought her in his car.
The ride she didn’t remember, but she did recall a nurse helping her out of her clothes and into a mint-green gown in the ER. Wren looked down. The one she wore now was blue. Any number of things could have happened to her between the time the doctor with the blue eyes nearly killed her and the moment she’d awoken here.
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