18.

Damon let the plunger sink to the bottom because when he'd picked up Mimi's hand from inside the blanket, he'd smelled an infection, and it was pretty damn bad. He wanted Mimi to be as painless as possible.

He took the blankets aside and stripped Mimi of her shirt and trousers, which were bloody and rotten. Mimi's stomach was open in three places. She had had some surgery at the medical facility, judging by the location, one had been on her liver, one on her pelvic area, Damon wasn't sure if they had done the uterus again, and then one had been on her spleen or pancreas or intestines.

Every wound oozed putrefaction, and they bled lazily. The wounds were bleeding, and when Damon touched one lightly, the rot would ooze out with force. Oh, fuck it. He grabbed his phone and snapped pictures of them all, sending them to Samuel.

A minute later, Samuel called, his voice stern and a little maybe desperate as he asked, " Don't tell me those are Mimi's wounds. How the fuck did no one notice?"

Damon replied, " Well yeah, we were in more obvious terrible shape, and Miss is always such a sacrificial lamb. But this critter is hot. I just put her to sleep on black velvet. We're still in North Carolina, and I'll drive up there. The drive will take 12 hours, so I'll try to clean and dress these' wounds a bit. Hopefully, I can keep the lady asleep."

Samuel grunted and said, "Send me a message when you get closer; I'll be in Chicago myself."

Damon grumbled and hung up. Now, he had to concentrate on taking care of his wife.

First, he put on some gloves, a strong disinfectant, a vacuum extractor, and some bandages. This took a while, but he had to try to stop this from spreading any further. The infection smelled terrible, and Damon preferred to put the collectors on his teeth as he started working.

Bag after bag was filled with mostly velvet, but there was more in there. He thought of a suitable car where he could drop some in on the way, maybe keep Mimi asleep for part of the time.

 Damon began to clean the wounds as best he could and dress them. He poured some disinfectant into the wound, then turned on the suction and tried to suck out anything that came loose. He pressed around the wound, feeling the air rushing under Mimi's skin. Not good.

This was almost like some sort of flesh-eating bacteria, but Mimi was supernatural, and it wouldn't be quite as crippling as it would be for a human. All of these would require a very extensive full abdominal cavity opening and check. Damon was not at all sure of the function of any organ.

Oh, that someone would have checked through Mimi as soon as they arrived. But as the three of them had been in bad shape, so Colin and Bran and Charles had put the three of them in shape, and when Dresden and Constantine had sucked the metals out of Mimi, and she had slept with Colin's medicine, well, Colin had thought she was fine.

Wound by wound, he rinsed, sucked, cleaned. He didn't open the wounds anymore and didn't pour his own blood into them when this lady should be opened up like a fish and her whole body cavity examined.

Mimi's breathing was weak and shallow. Her heart was beating unevenly, fast. She was hot as hell. Damon suspected that the fever was almost 50 °C, and as she was so miserably thin, this was wearing her down even more. Damon persevered until the irrigation solution was always clear, and he couldn't find any pus deposits even if he pressed.

It took over three hours to get those wounds cleaned. Damon went into the kitchen to eat. He had given another dose of velvet to Mimi just before he had gone to eat. Adam was having breakfast.

Damon said, "You don't want to go for a drive to Chicago, do you? Mimi has a fucking severe infection, and it's because she plucked the stitches out when we escaped, and nobody went through her. I've been cleaning her wounds for three hours; they're bandaged, and she's ready to go, asleep on black velvet. I have a few IV bags already dripped into her, but no fever medicine, and her fever is hovering around 50 C. The drive will take 12 hours, and I thought if you were going to Chicago, we could go the same way." 

Adam grunted and said, "Fine, I can drive there with you, but I can't stay, as I have to keep going. I'll be back at some point, yes, or has the lady got herself in such a state, and I think Samuel is already in Chicago?"

Damon nodded and showed Adam the pictures of the wounds.

Adam went pale and said, " Really awful shape, but I trust you two, yes. This experience has been a satanic lesson for all of us, and now we have so many things to remember. One is to check everyone involved thoroughly, even if one lady says she's fine. She saved us."

Damon looked at his friend for a moment and said, "Isn't that a bit of an ego blow? A little flea like that saves three fucking supernaturally powerful men just like that."

 Adam snarled and said, "The lady's rage is impressive when you witness it yourself."

 Damon nodded and ate as much as he could. He knew there was a long and demanding surgery in Chicago and now he took the opportunity to eat, it wouldn't be delayed too long and he would benefit from it, he was going to be in a better shape to take care of Mimi then in Chicago.

Adam went to get the car while Damon went to fix Mimi up. He had taken some antibiotic concentrate from the first aid kit in his car. It was a one-tooth substance. He made a dilution of it and poured some more on the wounds, taped them up so the antibiotic solution wouldn't run off so much, and re-bandaged the wounds.

It took his time as he was organized and careful. Eventually, Damon finished dressing the wounds and took a sheet to wrap Mimi in. He had had time to drop the bags that weren't pure velvet on Mimi, but they didn't have any fever medicine in them. He carried his miserably light wife out to the car, putting nothing on her as he tried to carry her quickly to the car.

Adam was already in the driver's seat. Mimi was still burning hot, and Damon was doing his best to cool her down. He put Mimi in the back seat and turned on the air conditioning in the car to keep it as cool as possible. Adam put the air conditioning on the back seat where Mimi slept, strapped in with seat belts.

Damon gave Mimi an extra dose of black velvet before leaving so that she would sleep the whole way. Samuel reported he was already in Chicago, ready to go. Damon sent a message when they were half an hour away.

He and Adam had taken turns driving, stopping now and then, and one of them was always in the car with Mimi. Damon had given her three more doses of velvet when she tried to wake up. He had ready-made syringes loaded in his pocket.

At last, they drove into the driveway of the Chicago house. The journey had been long and hard. Worry weighed on Damon as he stroked his feverish wife. Mimi moved and shivered wildly as the fever tried to rise all the time.

They had cooled her down a little in the car, but as soon as the air conditioning stopped blowing, the fever started to rise. But they had arrived. Here was all the equipment and tools they needed to fix her up.

Samuel watched from the window as the car pulled up. He didn't take the stretcher in vain, as he knew Damon wanted to carry Mimi. Damon arrived after a 13-hour drive and carried Mimi, who was waking up and trembling, on the way to the medbay downstairs.

Damon spoke to her gently, soothingly as he carried his shivering, miserably thin wife and tucked her into the hospital bed, knowing Mimi's fear of the business.

Samuel sighed as he took her temperature. 47.9 Celsius. Samuel was already calculating Mimi's caloric intake and wondering if he had enough fever medicine. Fortunately, Damon had made an intravenous preparation for that, too. 

Damon asked, "Do you want another dose of velvet for her? I've got black velvet. It's strong as hell, keeps her asleep for hours with a few milliliters."

Samuel handed over the jar and said, " Give me a sample first, and then you can put Mimi back to sleep."

Damon put a good dose of jet-black velvet in the jar. He took a syringe from his breast pocket, put the needle back into Mimi's vein, and pressed the plunger.

He murmured, "Sleepy time, baby, again,"

The shaking stopped as Mimi drifted back to sleep. Samuel got more drugs and gave Mimi another maintenance dose of anesthetics and muscle relaxants. Damon set up the operating theatre, and Samuel was already looking for the fever meds. He gave her a dose of that, too, and put in a maintenance dose of that, too.

Damon had the OR ready quickly, and the men had a quick meal and a drink. Then they changed into scrubs, gowns, gloves, and so on. They didn't wear masks.

Damon carried Mimi into the OR, and the men started by opening her up with a y incision. As crude as it felt, and then they started cleaning and removing. 

They dissected Mimi for 18 hours. All the organs were gone, including the lungs and heart. All were badly infected, but Mimi miraculously grew new organs on her own. They were small, but they were growing, and Damon poured a lot of blood over Mimi's organs, giving them vitality and making them grow. 

But Mimi couldn't heal her skin even with Damon's blood, so she got a line of stitches in her stomach. The infection was so deep in the skin and subcutaneous tissue that it just wouldn't heal. Y-incision has healed partly, but Mimi had a long, straight row of neat stitches from her sternum into her pelvis.