"That's what you're here for!" Charlie yelled. "Make it happen! Or did you not notice that this is an actual Coulise?!" Abe was feverishly working on a pale and unconscious Ava who, if she hadn't been a Coulise, would certainly have been dead by now.

Abe colored at his father's jab. The man was intolerable. "Will you shut it?" he snapped back. "This is a surgery that should be performed at a hospital, not in the back room of some crazy old man's lair!"

Charlie looked surprised--and perhaps proud--to hear his son speak to him that way for once. He'd never seen Abe at work.

But his stunned silence didn't last long. "What did I send you to medical school for, anyhow," he said, returning to his characteristic growl, "if you can't save the last damned Coulise?!"

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