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Marc grinned just a little, but he waved me off and took to removing his jeans. “Do I have to wear the green gown?” he asked.
I glanced back at Dr. Green but he shrugged. “I guess not,” I said.
Marc was wearing boxers and tossed his jeans off. It took him a moment to angle his body so he wasn’t doing more damage to his open wound. He sat back a little, propping himself up on his elbows as if to get out of the way. The wound continued to drip on the table.
“Catch up some of that blood off the table, Sang,” Dr. Green said. “You’re making a mess.”
“Marc’s the one bleeding,” I said, trying to be funny. If they weren’t going to take this seriously, I wasn’t about to be the dork in the room who wasn’t laughing. No wonder Mr. Blackbourne often got after Dr. Green about being silly sometimes.
“Don’t blame me,” Marc said. “Blame the nail.”
I held a bunch of gauze against Marc’s leg, trying to stop the flow.
“We need to clean the wound first,” Dr. Green said. “Just catch the blood from getting all over the place for now.”
“He’s bleeding a lot.”
“It’s good that he does. It’ll clean out any bits of jean material that might have gotten jammed in with the nail.”
I felt the edge of a curse behind my lips, wanting to snap at him like Gabriel or North. Instead, I glanced around the room, looking for more gauze or paper towels to work with as the stuff I had was dirty now. Marc’s warm blood stained my gloves and made them slippery. I used clean gauze to wipe it away, although droplets of blood flicked onto my clothes.
Dr. Green pointed to a couple of sterile towels that I’d glanced over in my panic. “Use those.”
“Hold this,” I told Marc, taking his hand and getting him to hold the gauze against his leg over the wound so it would stop any more blood from spreading.
“Yes, ma’am,” Marc said, pushing the gauze against his leg.
I did my best to wipe the table cleaner and around his leg so he was reasonably dry.
Dr. Green drifted to the table, hovering over my shoulder. He picked up a strange looking syringe that was big and held a lot of clear liquid. “Try these,” he said.
I took it from his hand, seeing a thick plastic nip at the end. “What do I do?”
“It’s point and shoot. Stick it in the hole and push down on the plunger. You’ll flush out any debris.”
I was tempted to shoot him in the chest with it. Instead, I turned back to Marc, holding the syringe in my hand.
“She is trained with that thing, right?” Marc asked.
“Of course she is. I just trained her. Didn’t you hear me?” Dr. Green nudged me forward. “Go ahead.”
I returned to Marc. Marc pulled his hand away from the wound.
“Probably want to clean it first, Sang. You don’t want to stab him again. You want to flush the hole, not make a new one.”
“Yeah, Sang, clean it,” Marc said.
I glanced back at Dr. Green, and he pointed at a bottle of liquid sitting on the counter. The bottle was marked with a long name I was too distressed to read, but I imagined it was peroxide or rubbing alcohol or something similar.
I went back for the bottle, putting down the syringe. I uncapped the bottle, found a fresh piece of gauze to soak the liquid in to. I held it to Marc’s leg, but the blood soaked through before it probably ever touched the wound.
“Don’t worry about the gauze for now,” Dr. Green said. He hovered over my shoulder. I felt his chest warming my back. This time his voice was calmer, several notches down from the joking voice he had been using. “Pour it over the opening.”
I sucked in a breath, cupping Marc under the knee with a new towel, and tipping the bottle over until the clear liquid dripped over the wound.
“Now that you can see what you’re doing,” Dr. Green said, “try the syringe.”
I aimed the syringe at the hole. It was hard to control my shaking fingers, but the nip caught the edge and I was able to ease it in just a little.
“Push the plunger,” Dr. Green said.
I did it slowly. When the opening in Marc’s leg started to overflow with a mix of blood and liquid, I stopped.
“Keep going,” Dr. Green said, his voice incredibly soft now. He had his reassuring voice back, the one I’d heard before. Promising that I’d be okay. All I had to do was listen. “Keep cleaning it out until what comes out is more clear than it is blood.”
I did as he told me to, rinsing out the wound. While it was never completely clear, eventually it was just a wash with little bits of red instead of mostly blood.
“That’s it,” Dr. Green soothed. “Now here’s some packing material.” He pointed to small pieces of what looked like clean gauze but shaped smaller. “You want to push this into the wound.”
I picked it up off the counter.
“Aim the packing material at the hole.”
I touched the edge of Marc’s thigh to hold him steady. I placed the edge of the material to hover over the wound.
Dr. Green shifted my hands over a little, guiding me to try to stuff it in at the same angle the nail had gone in. “Good. Now press it into the wound nice and tight. That should help stop the bleeding.”
I hesitated, sensing both Dr. Green watching and Marc’s wide eyes on me, expectant. My heart was thundering. We just took a nail out. He wanted me to put something back in?
“Stop thinking,” Dr. Green said, his voice a little stronger now. “Push it in.”
I pushed gently. Marc winced. I kept my fingers over the packing to try to keep it against his leg as I worried it would fall out.
“Good,” Dr. Green said. He held out a hand, covering mine. He took up a stack of gauze and then eased my fingers from Marc’s leg and covered the wound. “I need tape.” He nodded to a roll of medical tape on the tray. I picked it up and he guided me through tearing off strips. He took the strips from me and dressed the packed wound. My fingers rattled and I shoved them behind my back.
Finally, Marc’s wound was closed up and dressed.
“Beautiful,” Dr. Green said. He pressed a hand to my shoulder, luring me back from my desire to run, now that Marc wasn’t permanently injured from my inexperience. “You’ll make a good doctor yet.”
“Maybe,” Marc said. His fingers hovered over the wound, as if protecting it. “Have to work on that yanking part. Was she supposed to use her fingers for that?”
“Probably not. But you’ve got to give her credit. You tell her to jump ...”
“I wouldn’t expect any different from an Academy girl,” Marc said.
My eyes widened at this second mention of the Academy and his assumption. A thousand thoughts ran together in my mind, and at the same time, I tried to confirm what I’d just heard with Dr. Green but he wasn’t looking at me.
Marc knew about the Academy. He rattled it off too easily. It seemed odd that Marc assumed I was Academy without knowing who I was. It was like he expected everyone here was involved with the Academy in some way.
The hospital would probably have to be understanding if Dr. Green left at random for Academy reasons, did that mean Dr. Phillip Roberts—Dr. Green’s superior—was Academy, too?
Could the Academy take over a hospital wing? Or did they own the entire hospital? Was that how things like letting me into this room and letting me take over taking out a nail was possible? Other doctors probably wouldn’t dream of it.
I released another sigh. I didn’t know how to voice my suspicions. “May I wash my hands now, please?” I asked, which was the only thing I could come up with to say.
SUSCEPTIBLE
“What was that?” I asked Dr. Green inside the elevator. We were headed to the basement level. I’d washed my hands, but my clothes were still stained with blood. “Why ...”
“Was it too much?” Dr. Green asked, in a gentle tone. His eyes focused on the reflective doors instead of looking at me. “Owen is always telling me I go too far.”
&
nbsp; “I could have hurt him,” I murmured. I brushed my thumb and forefinger against each other, rubbing, as I could still feel the rough metal and the warm blood together in a phantom memory. I’d pushed through it, mostly trying to prove to Dr. Green that I could do it and he couldn’t tease me. Now that it was over, I realized how that might have been a mistake. I wasn’t a doctor. I wasn’t even pretending to be one. I couldn’t imagine the damage I could have caused—or possibly hadcaused. What if I ripped Marc’s skin more than I needed? What if he got an infection?
“You weren’t going to hurt him, Sang. I wouldn’t let you.”
“I’m not a doctor.”
The doors to the elevator opened. The sign on the wall across the corridor said the floor was for employees only. I hesitated only a moment, but when Dr. Green dashed out of the elevator and down the hallway, I followed behind him, not wanting to be alone. He paused just long enough that I could catch up beside him.
