“Then you read why I’m here.” His voice was quieter than the banter, the drawl still there but the easy manner out of it. “What I did.”
“The chart says you stepped in front of a knife meant for your club president.”
Just the plain fact, nothing attached to it. “I’d do it again.”
There wasn’t anything clinical to say to that, so I didn’t say anything. I moved to the blood pressure cuff and fit it around his arm and waited while the monitor ran.
His numbers came back better than they should have. I moved to pulse: two fingers at the inside of his wrist, just below the branded cuff tattoo at his right wrist. The second I made contact his pulse jumped. Hard and immediate, right there under my fingers.
My expression stayed flat. His did too.
Neither of us addressed it. He was good at that. It had a different quality than the easy approach, more considered. He knew when to wait. He was waiting right now.
“How’s the pain?” I asked.
“Fine.”
“Scale.”
“Three.”
Probably a five. “I’ll note that.”
“You note everything.”
“It’s documentation.” I set the chart down and moved to the suture line. Careful at the tape edges. Clean dressing. Tissue response good. He had muscle built from years of asking a body to do what it was told, and I kept my hands where they were supposed to be and my attention where it was supposed to be.
“You didn’t answer the question,” he said.
“Which one?”
“You haven’t answered me about the rally.” The drawl was back, easy and low. “You’ve been on your feet all shift. The Hill Country would do you good.”
“I’m sure it would.”
“Is that a yes?”
“That’s a ‘your dressing is clean and your numbers are holding.’” I stepped back and noted it. “Dr. Patel will be by in the morning. If he signs you out, you have someone from your club come get you, you don’t ride your own bike, and you follow the discharge instructions to the letter.” I clipped my pen to the chart. His eyes cut left.
Toward the bathroom door. Fast and assessing, back to me.
“The bathroom window is smaller than this one.”
He blinked. “I wasn’t—”
“I know exactly what you were doing.”
He was in the bed with his hands folded, IV line slack, that easy smile back where it lived. He spread his hands like he’d been there the whole time.
“You do this to all your patients?” he said.
“Only the ones who try the window.”
Something real crossed his face—not the charm switch, something under it, quick and unannounced. A laugh surprised out of him, changed the whole register of his expression, made him seem like someone who’d actually been caught off guard instead of someone who’d arranged it. He laughed the way people laughed when they hadn’t chosen to.
“You really don’t flinch,” he said, the laugh still warm in it. “Do you.”
The laugh had landed differently. Made him warmer and less calculated and more like what I suspected the man was when he wasn’t working at anything. That version of him was going to be a problem. I noted it and kept it exactly where it was.
