Total pages in book: 60
Estimated words: 55860 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 279(@200wpm)___ 223(@250wpm)___ 186(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 55860 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 279(@200wpm)___ 223(@250wpm)___ 186(@300wpm)
“Not when I’m sitting down. Look, you don’t have to clean me up. It was a simple dispute in close quarters, and it’s a hazard of the job. I got cut up worse than this over some girl in high school behind the gym. When I went to my dad, he said quit doing stupid shit and go get a band-aid if you think you need one.”
“Really?”
“Really,” he says with a chuckle.
“Yeah, not funny. That’s abusive.”
“Baby, you don’t know the half of it. I got stitched up that time, down at the body shop.”
“Is that a euphemism?”
“No, it’s the chop shop and salvage yard my dad owned. We took apart stolen cars, sold the radios and transmissions and shit for cash. It was profitable, but I got out of the business once I took over.”
“Because of the stolen goods?”
“No, it’s not an integrity thing. It was seedy, kind of like Bettino’s but without the lovable bartender to redeem it. The guys that worked the body shop were low level assholes that drugged on the job and fenced other shit out the back room.” He shrugs like it was trashy and not worth the trouble.
I swing into the parking lot and turn off the car. We go in the back by the office and everybody clears out on cue. I scrub my hands in the bathroom and get out the supplies. I expect him to remove the items on the desk, efficiently ready the space I need to work. Instead, I find him sagging in a chair, his lips pale, eyes fevered and a little glassy.
I kneel down by him. “Hey,” I say softly, “you still with me? Jack?”
“Yeah, ‘course I am,” he slurs.
I peel back his jacket and see the blood soaked through the entire left side, a dark stain down the left thigh of his slacks. A bolt of fear pins me in place for a second before my training kicks in. If he’s losing this much blood, I don’t have time to send him to ER anyway. I snatch an ice pack out of the mini fridge and slap it against his side, tell him to hold it. He tries to but his arm seems limp when he attempts to press the ice pack on the wound. I lean out the door and signal to Foz.
He drops his bar mop and hustles to the office door faster than an old guy that size should be able to move.
“I need your help.”
“Boss in there?”
“Yeah. He got cut. I’m gonna need another pair of hands,” I admit, try to keep my voice even and sure.
Foz looks over my shoulder and sees Jack slumped down and nods. I let him pass and shut the door again. He washes up and joins me.
“How bad?”
“I need scissors,” I tell him. He hands me what I ask for as I peel the shirt away from the clotting wound, a jagged gash that’s probably three inches long. My eyes flash to Foz when I see it. His mouth tightens but he doesn’t say anything, which lets me know he hasn’t seen worse than this on the regular. He’s not doing the jovial chatter I had hoped for, but he’s efficient and understands what we need to do.
He helps me get Jack onto the desk because I need to be able to reach the cut better than I could with him in the chair. He can stand for a few seconds with assistance, and we stretch him out on the surface that Foz has cleared and covered with a sterile plastic sheet.
While I put on fresh gloves and set out my supplies, Foz gets a bottle out of the freezer, offers it to me. I shake my head even though I’d love to take one drink to silence my nerves. He props up his boss’s head and gives him a couple of drinks. It brings some color back to his face and he coughs, swears at the pain from coughing with a three-inch slice down his side.
I swallow hard and assess the location. It’s low enough it would have missed his spleen but it’s definitely more than a quarter inch deep, which means stitches and antibiotic cream if our luck holds. If he takes an infection or it somehow nicked a kidney, we’re screwed.
I clean the cut, wash away the dried blood and sponge off the surrounding skin. There’s so much blood. I have to focus on the steps I need to follow to clean and suture this to prevent infection. All I can think is, Jack’s bleeding. Jack’s bleeding. My baby’s father is bleeding. It echoes through me with every pounding heartbeat.
My hands have a tremor in them, and I remember the ethics unit on how we shouldn’t be assigned to care for people we love. Our clinical objectivity is compromised, that was the main point of the chapter. I can see that now, because any rational thought is shot to hell knowing the man I’ll be stitching up is the same man who braces his weight on his forearms and licks into my mouth to swallow my cries when he makes me come. I pause and look at his face, the clenched jaw and brows drawn low, the hiss of breath between his teeth when he tries not to swear or moan from the pain of this stab wound.