Earthbound : A gripping crime thriller full of twists and supernatural suspense by Fynn Perry (popular romance novels TXT) 📗

who tried to convince her it had been an unfortunate accident. Grasping the handle of the letter opener, he rocked it from side to side, just enough to free it from the table surface. The tip came out from the desk, but the handle snapped clean from the blade, leaving it stuck in his hand.

“Oh, my God! They have to take it out at the hospital… You’ll need stitches...I already called the paramedics for Robert… they can take you.” She rattled off these disjointed statements between panicky gasps for breath as she applied a dressing around the embedded blade.

“For Robert? What do you mean, you called the paramedics for Robert?”

“He just collapsed, right here in the office, just a few yards from your door… The paramedics will check him over… He must have had some kind of episode… You sure you don’t want to wait for them?”

“No, it’ll be quicker if I go myself,” he assured her. As he walked out of his office, he noticed there was a group of people standing over Devereux. He looked at his attacker’s face in disbelief. The lawyer was unconscious. As much as he’d mistrusted Devereux when they’d worked together, he’d never known the lawyer become this irrational and enraged.

“You’ve got this, right, Abigail? There’s nothing I can do here then. I need to get this fixed up. I’ll be at the hospital.”

He rushed out before she could stammer out a response.

Forty minutes passed before a female nurse called out David Miller’s name for the second time. He was sitting in one of the beat-up hard plastic chairs in the waiting area of his nearest ER. So preoccupied was he with trying to understand Devereux’s behavior that he had barely registered the whimpering boy on his mother’s lap next to him or any of the other people that filled the neighboring seats, pressing icepacks or blood-stained bandages to injuries, clutching limbs and, in one case, holding a garbage bag to catch vomit. He had been called up once already, only to be told to wait when more pressing cases arrived––fast-tracked through on gurneys, with flurries of medical staff shouting instructions and coping with distress from loved ones. He got to his feet, now fully aware of, and happy to escape, the sounds of coughing, labored breathing, murmurs of complaint, and tedious daytime television.

“Mr. Miller, would you follow me, please?” the nurse said politely and walked him down a corridor. “All the rooms in the ER are full. We will have to find an examination room in the main hospital. Are you OK to walk, Mr. Miller? It’s just an injury to your hand, right?” she asked.

“Yes, just my hand,” David replied.

They turned into another corridor, and then a farther passage. Eventually, she asked him to sit outside a room. “A doctor will be here in a little while.”

She left him there, and he waited another ten minutes. The nurse came back alone. “The doctors are all busy. But I’m a qualified trauma nurse, so I can handle this. You OK with that, Mr. Miller?” she asked, pulling on a pair of pale-blue latex gloves. She clearly was in no mood to be challenged over her competence and was not waiting for an answer.

“I guess so,” he said cautiously.

She led him into the room opposite and closed the door behind them.

“So, let’s have a look at this,” she said, unwrapping the bandage.

“It’s the blade of a letter opener,” David explained.

“Right. Someone not very fond of you at work, Mr. Miller?”

“It was kind of an accident.”

“Aha, and where do you work, Mr. Miller?” She rotated his hand to get a good look at the wound.

“Law office.”

She said nothing and slid her chair, which was on castors, to a tray where she took a hypodermic needle and filled it with a substance from a small glass bottle. “I’m going to inject a local anesthetic into your hand at the base of the blade. We won’t be able to see if there is any tendon damage until we pull the knife out,” she explained in a tone that was both professional and pleasant.

She placed the syringe down on the tray and let it lie there. “I hate lawyers. No offense,” she said, her tone and expression emotionless.

David was surprised but decided not to respond. He wanted the anesthetic. The constant pain was just about bearable, but pulling the knife out would be excruciating.

“Is it private or clinic work that you do?” the nurse inquired.

“Clinic,” he said, confident that this answer would resonate better––a man of the people rather than a lawyer helping the rich get richer and lining his own pockets in the process.

“My son was represented by a lawyer from a clinic. He was holding a package for a friend of his. He didn’t even know what it was. When he was asked to deliver it to an address, he got stopped for speeding. The cops searched his car and found it. There was a gun inside that had been used in a shooting.”

David said nothing. He looked longingly at the syringe on the tray.

The nurse placed cotton pads around the base of the blade to soak up the blood that would come gushing forth when it was removed.

“That son-of-a-bitch lawyer only spoke with him for twenty minutes,” she said, placing her hand over David’s hand just behind the embedded blade and over his wrist. “He wasn’t interested in the truth—he just told him to plead guilty.”

She pressed down on his hand and with her other hand, brought a pair of surgical pliers into view. David wondered whether he would ever get the anesthetic. He really wanted it.

“That’s all he got. Twenty minutes alone with his lawyer and five minutes in the courtroom,” she said as she clasped the end of the blade with the pliers.

“Anesthetic!” David pleaded, but it was too late, she was already pulling out the blade. The pain was excruciating.

“He got the maximum sentence of five years. Fucking lawyers!” she hissed as