The flicker of pain that registered on Kendall’s face at seeing the dragoon in pain caused him to laugh. He didn’t like it when she was so serious. It made him feel sad, like he’d done something to personally fuck her over. So he tried to sit up in the cot—the shrapnel expanded just a little with his movement—and a deep moan of excruciating pain rang out of him like some kind of horrible song.
"Son of a bitch…if I do die…I’ll make sure ta haunt…tha’ fucker…."
Kendall’s grip was on his wrist now. She was yelled at by the attendants not to touch him because she could excite him and screw with the metal pieces inside of him, but she didn’t care to listen. Nine didn’t either as he kept trying to sit up and wiggle around, even though blood was coming out of his wounds and the shrapnel was twisting and expanding inside of him.
He could live with it, if it hadn’t plunged him so deeply. But it hurt like fucking hell, and all he wanted was for it to be taken out.
"Ya should go now. They’re gonna operate o’ some shit."
Pulling the girl into an embrace, he practically crushed her into him. He wanted to make it so she couldn’t breathe just like he couldn’t, and so she would remember that this was someone she’d loved and cared for. He kissed the top of her head and let go. Laying back on his cot, Nine waved her away and told the attendants to take her. He wasn’t going to survive the operation, he knew it, but she didn’t have to see him go.
He wanted to go out with a bang, but all he got was a dirty cot filled with soot and blood and shrapnel piercing his lungs that he told them to rip out of him quickly.
