“I was going to!” There was an agonized look on Clear’s face. “But I never thought…we were just speaking so naturally and easily. The conversation was flowing from one topic to the next and I know I should have said something but I never expected her to give the command to cook while her hand was still in the way!”
“Well, it’s done now. Don’t be too hard on yourself, Brother—I don’t think it was your fault,” Strong added, seeing the state his twin was in. “Which hand was injured? Ah—the right one,” he answered his own question, leaning down to look at the smoking hole in the female’s delicate hand. “This is bad,” he said, frowning and shaking his head.
“What—too bad to fix?” Clear demanded. He glared up at Strong. “You’re the doctor, Brother—so fucking fix her!”
Strong looked up in surprise. Clear never cursed. He had never seen his twin in such anguish before. Obviously the lush little Elite who was lying on the table had already captured his heart.
“All right,” he said, using a calming tone. “I can fix it—it’s just going to hurt like all the Seven Hells rolled into one. Thank the Goddess she’s out,” he added.
Which of course was the cue for the little Elite to open her eyes and look up at him.
“Clear?” she murmured, frowning. “What did you do to your hair? And your eyes…they’re blue now. Where’s the green?”
“I’m not Clear—I’m his brother, Strong,” Strong told her. “You hurt your hand and he brought you in to me to get it tended to.”
“I’m here, Melanie.” Clear took up a position on the other side of the bed and cupped her cheek anxiously. “I won’t leave you, I swear it.”
“Oh, Clear…” She reached for him with her uninjured left hand and he took it in both of his.
“It’s all right,” he told her softly. “Strong is one of the best doctors aboard the entire Mother Ship. He’s going to heal you up, Melanie—I swear it.”
“He will?” Her gaze switched to Strong and he found himself falling abruptly into her clear, amber eyes. Who knew that a human female could have eyes like that? They were so exotic in her lovely, pale face. He could see why Clear was attracted to her—she was fucking gorgeous.
“Yes,” he said finding his voice at last. “Yes, I’m going to get you all healed up, Melanie.” He liked the taste of her name on his lips. “But I’m afraid I’ll need to give you something to knock you out,” he went on, trying not to get lost in her eyes again.
To his surprise, she shook her head vehemently.
“No! I don’t…don’t do well with any kind of anesthesia. Had…had it during surgery when I was younger and broke my leg. I was sick for…for a week afterwards.”
“But this is going to be an extremely painful procedure,” Strong protested. “I’ll have to inject your hand with nanites so they can rebuild all the flesh and nerves and any tendons that got burned away by the wave.” He looked at her seriously. “I don’t want to scare you but if I was having it done, I’d want to be knocked out myself.”
She shook her head stubbornly.
“Don’t want it.”
“Can’t you use some kind of local anesthetic?” Clear asked him. “Something to numb the area while the nanites work?”
Strong raised his eyebrows at his brother.
“Local anesthetic? And here I thought you never listened when I talked about my work, Brother.”
“Just do something for her,” Clear said tightly. “Help her get through this, Strong. Please.”
“I will. Of course I will, Brother.”
Touched by his twin’s anxiety, Strong reached across the table to squeeze Clear’s shoulder briefly and sent a surge of reassurance through their bond. Then he looked at Melanie again.
“Clear is right—I can inject something into your hand to numb it to a certain extent. But I’m afraid you’ll still feel the nanites working.”
“Do it,” she said tightly. She looked at Clear. “You’ll stay with me?”
“Every minute, sweetheart.” Clear seemed unaware that he had called her the term of endearment and Melanie, for her part, didn’t protest. She only nodded and gripped his hands tighter.
“All right, then—let’s get started. Nurse,” Strong said, turning to the nurse who had been standing to one side, watching wide-eyed. “I’ll need 4 ccs of lidobexicain and a small syringe of the flesh-building nanites. Oh, and bring me something to disinfect the wound.”
Although honestly, it looked like the rays from the wave had pretty much cauterized the gaping hole in the little female’s hand. Still, Strong liked to be thorough.
“Yes, Doctor!” the nurse exclaimed and ran out of the room in a hurry.
“It’s all right,” Strong told his patient, hoping he was telling the truth. “Everything is going to be just fine—you’ll see.”
“It’s all right, sweetheart,” Clear said, echoing his words. “We’re going to take care of you, I swear it.”
5
Melanie’s first thought on waking up from the gray-out was that Clear had somehow changed his hair and eye color and gotten even bigger. Her second thought was that her hand hurt like hell.
It hadn’t before—maybe because she’d been in shock. But now it throbbed and roared at her, demanding that she do something because it hurt…it hurt!
Then, when she understood the man she was looking at wasn’t Clear, but his brother, Strong, she understood the incredible resemblance. The twins had basically the same features, though their coloring was very different. Not that she had time to compare them much—not when her hand was in so much pain.
Now she gripped Clear’s hands with her uninjured one and looked into his eyes, trying not to watch as his brother worked diligently on her right hand. First he poured some kind of pale blue liquid which foamed and hissed over it, and then there was a series of light pinpricks around the site of the injury as he injected her quickly and smoothly with a tiny needle.
“Okay,” he rumbled—somehow his voice was even deeper than Clear’s. “I’ve cleaned the wound and numbed it as much as possible, but you’re still probably going to feel the nanites as they work.”
Melanie couldn’t help looking then, and she saw that he was holding a small syringe which appeared to be filled with pinkish foam.
“Those are the nanites?” she asked breathlessly.
Strong nodded.
“They’ll capture information from your DNA and rebuild your hand exactly as it was.”
“But…I don’t see anything but foam,” Melanie protested weakly.
“That’s the medium they’re stored in,” he explained. “The nanites themselves are microscopic. They look like tiny metal spiders if you look at them under an electron microscope.”
“Tiny metal spiders?” Melanie didn’t like the sound of that.
“They’ll use the foam they’re stored in as a flesh building medium and ‘spin’ a web of flesh to fill in the hole in your hand,” Strong said, nodding. “Are you ready to begin?”