“That wasn’t a no,” I said.
“It wasn’t a yes either.” She stripped the cuff.
Her fingers found the inside of my wrist. Two of them, light pressure, counting. My pulse jumped before I could stop it—one hard spike. My other hand closed on the bedrail. She counted out the rest with her expression exactly where she’d put it. I watched her hold it there. She let me watch.
“Zero,” she said, eyes still on the page. “Your blood pressure’s at a hundred and forty over ninety.”
“That’s resting.”
“That is not what resting looks like.” She made a note. “I’m talking to Dr. Patel about your pain management before I leave tonight.”
“You don’t need to do that.”
“I know that.” Her eyes stayed down. “I’m doing it anyway.”
I watched her reach past me to check the IV drip rate, and the antiseptic-and-soap smell that was part her and part this whole building came with her. My jaw tightened before I got ahead of it.
“Site looks clean,” she said, and pulled back. “Sutures.”
She stepped around to check the suture line, leaning over to get the right angle, and the top pulled forward and I had a clear view of exactly what the fabric had been barely containing. I kept my eyes above the collar. She ran through the line thorough and unhurried, not showing whatever she found, and Patel had done what the wound needed on a job that had options for going worse, and she wrote her notes and straightened up.
“Healing well,” she said, and covered the incision. “Dr. Patel’s going to be pleased.”
“Patel can add it to his win column. I’ll be in Bandera.”
She looked at me for a beat. Then she went to the foot of the bed.
She was already using the charm attempts against me—I could tell by the way she’d timed the blood pressure cuff. The opening wasn’t there yet.
“You’re being discharged tomorrow,” she said.
“I know when I’m leaving. I’m leaving now.”
“You’re not being discharged until tomorrow,” she said, same patient register. “You’ll need a driver when you are.”
“I’ve got one.”
“Wound care twice a day for the next week.” She tucked the paperwork under her arm. “And you’re not riding for ten days.”
“Seven.”
“Ten.”
“I’ll be mostly sitting. It’s a rally, not a—”
“Are you explaining how motorcycles work to me right now?”
“I’m explaining my specific situation.”
“Your specific situation is a knife laceration that needed surgical repair and sutures holding together your external oblique.” She looked up. “If you torque that muscle, you’ll know it immediately and Dr. Patel will know it thirty minutes later when I call him. Ten days.”
“Eight.”
“Do you know what I’ve never once seen improve a surgical repair?” She waited. “A man deciding eight was close enough to ten.”
I was going to tell her I’d been in worse shape than this when the door opened and the orderly leaned in, the evening-shift kid I’d talked to this morning about getting my personal effects before checkout. He had a plastic bag in his hands. He set it just inside the door.
My jeans and boots were in it.
