Salvation (The Keepers of Hell Book 2) Read Online Free Page A

gurney as quickly as possible, and while that was going on, Elizabeth ran ahead of them. She had pulled her radio from her belt and was giving orders over it while she ran to the pre-op area to scrub up.
         This was that feeling. The high. The euphoria she used to get in the ER. She was working against time and she was going to save a brand new life. She had every confidence in her own skill and this was what life was all about.
         She entered the OR and the mother was already there. Anesthesia was already there too, sedating her and tying her arms down. “Ok everyone, let’s get going,” she announced. She stepped up on her step stool so that she was tall enough to do her work. She ran a fingernail across the mother’s abdomen. “Can you feel this?” she asked.
         The mother said no, and she said no to the prick of the needle that Elizabeth administered as well.
          Elizabeth took her scalpel in hand and made a precise cut along the pubic line. For just a moment, she had the flash of a memory. Cutting into a chest. A heart that wasn’t beating. It was only a flash, but it felt like a memory of something she just could not grasp. She shook it off and made her second cut, this time into the uterus. Very gently, the skin and muscle was spread and Elizabeth got her first look at the unborn child.
          Carefully, she grasped the amniotic sack that surrounded the baby and sliced it open. Fluid gushed out, only to be suctioned back out by a nurse. Elizabeth reached in and took the baby by the butt. She had to wiggle a bit, but she managed to pull him free of his mother’s pelvic cavity. “And here is the problem,” she announced. “He’s got a necktie,” she said, pulling the umbilical cord free from the baby’s neck.
         She held him upside down for a moment, and then handed him to the waiting NIC-U nurse, who went to work on cleaning him up.
         “How is he?” the mother asked.
         Before Elizabeth could answer, a shrill wail lit up the room and a chorus of relieved sighs followed. “I think he is going to be just fine,” the NIC-U nurse told her.
         Elizabeth went to work on putting the mother back together. While she stitched and listened to the lovely sounds of the new baby wailing like a banshee, she tried to remember what it was that she couldn’t remember. She hadn’t cut into anyone’s chest lately that she could remember. And a dead heart? That just about described her. If only she could figure out the whys of it, she could maybe figure out why she was so damned depressed all the time.

CHAPTER FOUR

    GREED
         Ash watched the elevator doors open to another office type lobby.  It looked exactly the same as Sloth had. Before he and Mali could open the double doors leading into the sanction, they opened on their own.
         A tall, willowy woman came out. Her hair was like fire, red and blonde, and it waved around her long face as if each strand was alive. “I didn’t realize it was you,” she said to Ash. As the others did, she started to bow.
         “Please, don’t bow,” Ash told her.
         “Yeah, he is kinda weird about that,” Mali piped in. “Doesn’t like it one bit. Might get your head bit off if you do it.”
         Ash tossed an elbow at the little man and was rewarded with a grunt. “What he means to say is,” Ash said, “that I do not want anyone bowing to me. I have a job to do here, just like you. I’m Ash.” He put his hand out to shake hers.
         She looked Ash up and down thoroughly, then at his hand quizzically for a moment, and then took it into her own. “Nice to meet you, Ash,” she said with a come-hither grin. “I’m Shelly.”
         Ash inclined his head once. “Are we going in?” he asked.
         “Of course,” she said. She held her head high and with a flick of her hand, the doors opened.
         Ash walked through them without hesitation. Once the doors