Blood Ties: The Bloody Tulip – Part 17

In “Dancing with Darkness,” thunder and fluorescent lights cast stark shadows over Detective Bogotá’s haunted confession, revealing the Tulip’s artistic brutality through his partner’s tragic end. Meanwhile, beneath Cleveland Clinic’s sterile veneer, Dr. Ayuna Hartman’s mask began to slip, something ancient and ravenous stirring behind her carefully controlled smile. A twilight encounter in the parking lot turned ominous as blood-red beads pulsed on her wrist, each one holding untold secrets, while her whispered warning about Gabriel hung in the air like a blade waiting to fall.

As darkness descended, the trap was laid with surgical precision – crimson sheets and gleaming instruments awaiting their gruesome performance. In the end, Dima walked willingly into the jaws of the monster she helped create. Outside, Olivia crept closer to a truth more horrifying than she could fathom, the sweet scent of tulips promising death in the night air… the story continues now.

The Surgeon’s Secret Past

Consciousness returned to Dima like sunlight filtering through a cracked shutter, faint and fragmented. The silk sheets beneath her felt wrong – too tight, too restrictive. As her vision cleared, familiar surgical instruments glinted on the bedside table, but their arrangement was different. More precise. More threatening.

“Welcome back.” Ayuna’s voice was steady, devoid of the timidness it had shown recently. She stood at the foot of the bed, backlit by antique brass lamps, her shadow stretching across the crimson sheets like spilled ink. The Queen of the Night tulips in their crystal vase seemed to pulse in the dim light, witnessing this twisted reunion.

“My flower.” Dima tested her restraints, a smile playing at the corners of her mouth. “Finally embracing what you are?”

“This isn’t about who I am.” Ayuna’s fingers traced the edge of a scalpel. “This is about who I’m willing to become to protect Gabriel.” Her voice dropped to a whisper, each word precise as an incision. “You forced my hand, Dima. You should have left him alone. You should have left us both alone.”

“Maybe so. But then again, I’ve never been good at giving up.” Dima’s laugh was soft, almost intimate. “The bracelet.” Her eyes fixed on the dark beads encircling Ayuna’s wrist. “Tell me about it. I’ve seen you wearing it before a long time ago.”

Something shifted in Ayuna’s expression – pride warring with shame. Her fingers caressed the beads almost lovingly. “Each one is unique. Special.” The words came slowly, like a confession. “Pine resin mixed with… a remembrance. Blood from each of them, preserved forever. And soon, you will join them.”

“See, my flower?” Dima’s smile widened, triumphant. “You are a monster. Just like me. We’re the same.”

Her eyes glittered with malicious delight. “I’ve been watching you for months, you know. That night at Murphy’s Bar… I saw everything.” She savored each word like a surgeon prolonging an incision. “The way you chose him – so careful, so precise. Similar unique blood type to Gabriel. The perfect donor, I’m assuming you knew exactly who he was before entering that bar. You’ve always been one to do your research.”

Ayuna’s hand tightened around the scalpel, but her face remained impassive.

“Frank, I think his name was,” Dima continued, her voice thick with admiration. “You slipped something in his drink – something to trigger an ischemic stroke, didn’t you? The perfect way to ensure minimal organ damage. Making him the perfect candidate for organ donation. All so Gabriel could have his new heart.” A soft laugh escaped her lips. “This is not the first time that you are killing for Gabriel, is it, Ayuna?”

A Heart’s Deadly Price

Outside the window, Olivia’s world tilted on its axis. Frank. The name hit her like a physical blow, hurling her back to that terrible night in the waiting room. The crying woman’s voice echoed in her memory with devastating clarity: “He just went to the bar to get a drink… He hardly ever even does that… He was perfectly healthy, HOW DOES THIS HAPPEN?… FRAAANK!”

Olivia covered her mouth and gasped, stunned, her shock almost overriding her curiosity. Through the window, the scene continued to unfold like a nightmare she couldn’t escape.

“And what was your plan, little flower?” Dima’s voice softened dangerously. “To live a normal life with this man you stole a heart for?” Her restraints creaked as she leaned forward, eyes gleaming in the dim light. “Playing house with your stolen happiness?”

Something flickered across Ayuna’s face – vulnerability, perhaps longing. “What’s so wrong with that?” Her surgical precision cracked, revealing raw emotion beneath. “What’s wrong with wanting something peaceful and normal? Having someone who loves me, and checks up on me?” Her voice softened, lost in the vision. “Maybe start a family in a normal boring little house, with a backyard and even a little lake nearby.”

The scalpel trembled in her hand as her voice rose, years of suppressed anger finally breaking through. Her knuckles whitened around the instrument’s handle. “Why couldn’t you just stay away and let me have that, Dima? Why did you have to ruin it all? WHY COULDN’T YOU JUST STAY AWAY AND LET ME HAVE THAT?”

“Because that is not something for us, Ayuna.” Dima’s voice softened, taking on an almost maternal tone. “We are different. Peaceful and normal is not in our destiny.” She paused, studying Ayuna’s face carefully, then laying her head back, her eyes growing distant. “Do you remember where you and your dad found me?”

The silence stretched between them, the question hung in the air like thick smoke. Ayuna’s shoulders tensed, the memory clearly unwelcome.

“Yes,” Ayuna whispered finally, her anger deflating. “We found you being held by those bad men.”

Dr. Lecter’s Legacy

“That’s right.” A single tear traced down Dima’s cheek, catching the lamplight. “I was in that closet for two days. They hurt me and hardly fed me. I thought I was going to die.” Her voice carried the weight of years of trauma. “And then, I heard your dad kill the first one, and chased the second one into the room and knocked him unconscious.”

Dima’s eyes took on a faraway look, lost in the memory. “I watched him cut open that man—precise incisions following the renal fascia—and remove his kidney. He placed it in a bag with ice from their fridge, teaching even in that moment of violence.” She paused, her breathing shallow. “I was happy he was hurting them. I thought maybe he was going to get me next and do the same thing.”

A smile spread across her face, beautiful and terrible. “But then… then I saw you enter the room and stand beside him as he showed you how to remove the heart.” Her voice took on an almost reverent quality. “I don’t know how, but I knew then that I would be okay.”

“Dr. Lecter knew we wouldn’t be normal, Ayuna. That is why he taught us so much,” Dima continued, her voice taking on an almost dreamlike quality. “Remember how he would quiz us on anatomy while we worked? The way he made us memorize every vessel, every nerve…” Her eyes glazed over with nostalgia. “He saw what we could become.”

“He saw what he wanted us to become,” Ayuna corrected sharply, but her hand unconsciously moved to touch her bracelet of blood-resin beads. The antique brass lamps cast dancing shadows across her face as she paced the length of the bed, each step measured and precise like a surgeon approaching their mark. The floorboards creaked beneath her feet, a subtle counterpoint to the soft whisper of her surgical scrubs.

The thunder’s growl seemed to echo Dima’s words, its vibrations traveling through the floorboards like a pulse through veins. The Queen of the Night tulips trembled, their dark petals drinking in what little light remained—beautiful and lethal, like the women they witnessed.

“No, my flower.” Dima shifted against her restraints, the silk sheets rustling beneath her like whispered secrets. Her smile was knowing, predatory – the expression of a creature that had spotted weakness in its prey. The metal frame of the bed groaned softly as she leaned forward, the lamplight revealing old scars on her bare skin, like silver threads. “He merely watered what was already growing in our garden. The seeds were there long before him.”

A car passed outside, its headlights sweeping across the ceiling in slow motion, briefly illuminating the perfectly arranged surgical instruments on the bedside table. Each scalpel and clamp cast elongated shadows that seemed to reach toward the women like grasping fingers. The moment of light revealed something else too – a slight tremor in Ayuna’s usually steady hands, a crack in her carefully maintained facade.

Dima tested her restraints again, more curious than concerned. The soft clink of metal against metal punctuated the heavy silence as her eyes followed Ayuna’s movement across the room. Sweat beaded on her forehead despite the room’s chill, catching the dim light like tiny diamonds. “Look at yourself – even now, you’re collecting trophies, just like he used to, in his own twisted way.” Her voice dropped to a whisper that seemed to echo in the sterile air. “Your bracelet is proof that you can’t escape what you are.”

The Blood-Resin Beads

The blood-resin beads clicked softly against each other as Ayuna’s wrist trembled, each bead catching the lamplight differently – some glossy like fresh blood, others matte like old wounds. She moved to the window, her reflection fragmenting across the glass, multiplying like fractured versions of herself. The surgical scrubs she still wore rustled with each movement, a sound both familiar and somehow threatening in this context.

“Tell me something, my flower,” Dima’s voice cut through the silence, sharp as a newly-honed scalpel. Her head tilted to one side, studying Ayuna with the focused intensity of a surgeon examining an unusual specimen. “When you’re in the operating room, saving lives with those talented hands of yours…” She paused, licking her lips as if tasting the words. “Do you ever think about the other lives you’ve taken with them?”

The question hung in the air like contaminated gauze. Outside, branches scraped against the window in an arrhythmic pattern, like ventricular fibrillation on a cardiac monitor. Ayuna’s fingers found the edge of a nearby surgical tray, its metal surface reflecting her face in distorted fragments. The perfectly aligned instruments rattled slightly under her touch, their sterilized surfaces gleaming with promised violence.

“Every time,” Ayuna whispered, her voice carrying the weight of countless secret operations. The admission seemed to change something in the room’s atmosphere, making it heavier, more oppressive. The antique brass lamps flickered momentarily, casting wild shadows that danced across the crimson sheets like abstract arterial spray.

Dima’s smile widened, her teeth gleaming in the dim light. “And Gabriel?” She shifted again, the restraints creating a symphony of small creaks and clinks. “When you’re pressed against him at night, do you feel Frank’s heart beating between you? Does it excite you, knowing that your… procurement made it possible?”

A muscle twitched in Ayuna’s jaw, the only sign that the words had struck home. The Queen of the Night tulips seemed to lean toward her, their dark petals drinking in her silent struggle like eager spectators at a surgery. The carefully constructed edifice of her control, a sterile field of detached professionalism, began to crumble as raw emotion threatened to breach its pristine walls.

“You see,” Dima continued, her voice taking on an almost sing-song quality, “that’s what makes us special. We understand that death and love, surgery and murder – they’re all just different forms of the same art.” She tested her restraints again, but this time the motion was almost lazy, like a cat flexing its claws. “Father saw that in us. In you. The way you could compartmentalize, separate yourself from the mess while still appreciating the beauty of it all.”

The mention of their father sent a visible shiver through Ayuna. She turned from the window, her shadow stretching long and distorted across the floor, merging with the darkness that pooled in the room’s corners. The beads on her wrist caught the light again, each one a perfectly preserved moment of past violence, a gallery of personal trophies that she both cherished and despised.

“You remember the first one, don’t you?” Dima continued, her head tilting to catch the light, highlighting the familiar surgical precision of her movements – even bound, she carried herself with a doctor’s calculated grace. “How father guided your hands through each step? The way he taught us to preserve the moment?”

Ayuna’s steps faltered almost imperceptibly as she crossed the frame of the window. Her reflection fragmented in the glass, multiplying like cells under a microscope. Outside, the security light cast harsh shadows across the overgrown garden.

“I remember everything,” Ayuna whispered, her breath fogging the glass. The words carried the weight of surgical steel, heavy with unspoken procedures and preserved specimens. Her hand moved to her pocket, where the outline of a scalpel pressed against the fabric like a reminder of who she truly was. “Every cut. Every lesson. Every… collection.”

The room’s temperature seemed to drop with each word, though the thermal monitor on the wall held steady at 68 degrees – perfect conditions for preservation. The antiseptic smell grew stronger, mixing with the metallic tang that always seemed to linger around them, like blood caught in surgical drains.
“Of course you do.” Dima’s voice took on the soothing tone of an attending physician calming a nervous patient. “We’re surgeons, after all. Memory is everything.” Her restraints clinked again as she leaned forward, the sound sharp as instruments on a steel tray. “Tell me, does Gabriel appreciate your… attention to detail? Does he understand the precision it takes to preserve something perfectly?”

Thunder rolled closer now, its deep resonance vibrating through the floorboards like a massive heart murmur. The tulips trembled in their vase, dark petals scattering across the bedside table where they came to rest among the perfectly arranged surgical instruments. One petal landed on a scalpel’s blade, balancing there like a drop of old blood.

“Leave him out of this.” Ayuna’s voice hardened to surgical steel, her reflection in the window transforming into something darker, more primitive. The mask of Dr. Hartman, respected surgeon, slipped further, revealing glimpses of the creature that had learned its trade in Dr. Lecter’s special operating theater.

“Your father didn’t create what we are,” Dima pressed, her voice softening to an intimate whisper. “He just gave us the tools to perfect it. The precision. The patience.” Her eyes flickered to the surgical instruments, then back to Ayuna. “The appreciation for proper documentation.”

Predator and Prey

Thunder growled again, closer now, and a gust of wind stirred the tulips in their vase. Their petals trembled like butterfly wings, casting delicate shadows that danced across Dima’s face. The air in the room felt charged, as if the atmosphere itself was being compressed between the weight of their shared past and the pressure of imminent violence.

Olivia stumbled backward, her heel finding a fallen branch. The snap seemed to echo through the night like a gunshot, bringing her crashing back to the present horror. Everything was falling into place – the convenient timing of the donor heart, Ayuna’s exceptional calm during the surgery, the grieving widow’s confusion about her healthy husband’s sudden stroke.

Ayuna’s head whipped toward the sound. “Wait here,” she purred to Dima, lifting a scalpel from the perfectly arranged tray. “We’re not finished.”

Olivia’s trembling fingers found her phone, Gabriel’s number already dialed. “Gabe, just listen,” she whispered, backing away from the house, fallen leaves crunching beneath her feet. “Ayuna is hiding something, but I think I got it all wrong. Gabe, she—”

The scalpel caught the security light’s glow as Ayuna emerged from the shadows, the blade’s polished surface reflecting moonlight like liquid mercury. Olivia’s phone slipped from her fingers, tumbling in slow motion. It hit the concrete pathway with a sharp crack, the screen splintering into a spiderweb of fractures. The display flickered once, twice, Gabriel’s name still visible through the broken glass, then went dark – but not before Olivia caught his panicked voice: “Olivia? OLIVIA!”

Thunder rolled overhead as Ayuna stepped fully into the light. The surgical steel in her hand gleamed with familiar purpose, but it was her eyes that froze Olivia in place – there was something ancient in them, something hungry. Recognition flickered across Ayuna’s face as their gazes locked, predator and prey caught in a moment of terrible understanding.

…

» Part 17.5 When protocols fail, darkness bleeds through: In this heart-stopping installment of “Emergency Protocol,” some emergencies can’t be contained.

A desperate call echoes through sterile corridors, carrying ancient codes and deadly secrets. As surgical precision meets primal instinct, three sisters’ carefully maintained masks begin to crack. In the race against time, every heartbeat counts, every incision matters, and some protocols were made to be broken. When the night shift descends, even the most skilled hands can’t stop what’s already in motion. 1/05 – In the delicate dance between healing and harm, sometimes the most dangerous protocol is the one written in blood.

Subscribe now. In the operating theater of life and death, family ties can become fatal complications.