Fight, Flight, or Freeze: The Healer's Story
Chapter 116: Blood On His Hands

Chapter 116: Blood On His Hands

I ignored his words like I did every night and raised my hand to touch his.

"Don’t fucking touch me!" he screeched, his limbs flying around widely, one of them hitting me in the face, causing me to fall to the ground from the impact.

He paused long enough to see what he had done, only for a twisted smile to appear on his face once he realized he had hit me. "It is nothing less than what you deserve. If I could, I would get out of this bed and beat you like I do the guys in the ring. I don’t think you would last nearly as long as they did before I killed you."

Ah, yes, and now we were getting into the verbal threats. Unfortunately for them, one of their... coworkers actually followed through with that threat. He got in a few good hits before Rip ripped the door of his cage off its hinges and then the head off the guy.

He offered it to me, but I had to decline. I had no room in my cage to display it, and I didn’t want to smell it once it started to rot.

It was bad enough I could smell me.

Now, all the fighters had their legs strapped down before I healed them. That way, they couldn’t get out of bed to beat me, but the hands weren’t important. Why not let them get in a few hits to make themselves feel better?

And if a VIP got a bit too rough with a woman? Well, they could just stay in their cages while I healed them; it wasn’t like they could move anyway.

Gotta love my new life.

Slowly, I picked myself up off the ground and returned to the bed. However, I had learned my lesson.

Walking to the foot of the bed, I grabbed his ankle.

"No broken bones," I said absent-mindedly as if I were back in the ER treating a patient. "Contusions to the kidney but no internal bleeding. Multiple contusions to the face, ribs, and torso." In other words, two days without fighting and he would be completely fine on his own.

But he was the best fighter they had, so there was no way they were willing to wait until nature took its course. Nope, not when they had an ace up their sleeve.

I bit my tongue as I healed the man who wanted to kill me in the worst ways possible. Unlike when I healed Rip, this one was painful. A combination of the patient not wanting to be healed and fighting me and the fact that I hadn’t recovered from last night...

Or the night before...

Or the night before that...

Maybe my body would just give out, and I wouldn’t need to worry about killing myself.

But there was Rip, and after what we just shared, I wasn’t going to leave him first.

Which meant that I now had to do everything possible to live for him.

Including healing people who hated me.

"Done," I said after a few seconds as I stepped away from Yin Jie. It was amazing what a few weeks in this place did to a person.

"You know there is a special place in Hell for people like you. The sick fucks that enjoy torturing people," slurred the man as his body, happy and pain-free, was lulled into sleep.

"I am sure there is," I muttered. I was going to have to grow a thicker skin if I was going to deal with these insults all of the time.

"Fucking bitch," he said in his sleep as I turned around and walked toward the cage door.

The Reaver just grunted as Rip looked me up and down. I wanted to tell him I was fine, but he knew me better than that.

I gave him a half smile as I stepped out of the cage. The Reaver walked in and unlocked the straps at the bottom of the bed, keeping Yin Jie from getting to me.

I stood there, swaying in pain, barely able to open my eyes as the fighter was treated like the king he was.

I’m sorry, did I sound bitter?

"Let’s go," grunted the Reaver once he returned from making sure that the man would be fine for tomorrow. He gripped my arm and dragged me to a second cage a few steps away.

"He killed his opponent in minutes," smiled the Reaver as two others left the cage. They must have just brought him back. "Everyone seemed to like that."

It was dark enough that a human wouldn’t see me rolling my eyes, but this was a Reaver; night vision was probably built into his DNA or something. But I really didn’t care what the watchers thought about these fights. As far as I was concerned, it would have been better for the fighters to just kill each other in the ring and keep me out of it.

I paused just as I was pushed through the cage. Maybe I wasn’t the only one without the ability to kill myself.

I let out a low snort, half laughter, half scorn. These men threatened me, beat me, and lashed out at me for being forced to heal them, and yet they refused to kill themselves or have someone else do it for them. What did that say about them?

I approached the bed and looked down at the fighter. Huh, must have been military. "It’s okay, Sweetness," smiled the man in the bed as he raised a hand to my face. I flinched away, expecting a hit, but it never came.

"Oh, Princess, I would never hurt you," murmured the man as if he was talking to a scared animal. I guess, in a way, he was. "Are you a doctor?"

I nodded, not bothering to answer him. Clearly, he was a new guy. They were always nice to me for the first few days until they started to understand just what it was like living here. That was when the threats began.

Reaching out to grab his wrist, I took his pulse and let my healing powers flow through his body.

I was right about the military part. He had healed ribs, healed bones. His lung had been punctured at some point in time, and he had more concussions than a hockey player. All healed.

"Broken medial phalanges on the right and left hand, grade one concussion. Minor contusions to face, arms, torso, shin, and thighs." I didn’t want to be impressed, but this guy managed to do good in the ring. Or he was paired up with someone who hadn’t bothered to really fight back.

"I wish I didn’t have to kill him," muttered the man as he looked down at his bloody hands.