“You haven’t heard the story?” the doctor asked, helping Cooper lie back on the table.
“No,” I said. “What’s the story?”
The doctor peeled off the gauze to reveal a line of black sutures running diagonally down Cooper’s torso—holding together a long gash. A gash that was neatly reassembled until your eyes landed at the popped part. There, it was bright red and bleeding.
“Cooper?!” I demanded.
Cooper looked down. “It looks worse than it is.”
The doc took one look and said, “We’re going to need to re-suture.”
“How did you get this gash?” I asked Cooper.
“It’s not a big deal,” Cooper said.
I redirected my question to the doctor. “How did he get this gash?”
“I could tell you,” the doctor said, “but it probably violates about ten doctor-patient privileges.”
“It’s going to be one or the other of you,” I said, trying to sound authoritative. “So who’s it going to be?”
“You should tell her,” the doctor said to Cooper. “She’ll be impressed.”
“You can take this one, Doc,” Cooper said, closing his eyes like he was less fine than he claimed. “I won’t sue.”
The doctor found some vials of local anesthetic and then got washed up.
“And make me sound good,” Cooper added from the table, keeping his eyes closed. “I’m always trying to impress this girl.”
“You got it,” the doctor said, planting himself on the rolling stool and getting to work.
I stood behind the doctor, peeking over his shoulder while he worked.
“Apparently,” the doctor began, “Mr. Watts here has a lady friend who got into some trouble back on Bishop’s Cay.”
My eyes widened.
“She called him for help as she was hiding in a—a lighthouse, was it?”
“A lighthouse,” we both confirmed.
“Anyway,” the doc went on, wanting to stay on track, “when Mr. Watts showed up, there was an angry drunk man loitering outside, guarding the door.”
Pork Pie.
“Mr. Watts tried to encourage the loiterer to leave the area,” the doctor went on. “But he really didn’t like that idea, and things escalated.”
I pointed at Cooper’s stomach. “Escalated—tothis?”
“Please explain to the lady,” Cooper said then, eyes still closed, “that Mr. Watts is totally manly and could easily have taken this guy, no problem. Except that one of them—and not Mr. Watts—had a weapon.”
The doctor nodded. He was having fun. “Mr. Watts could easily have bested this gentleman, given how very pickled he appeared to be, but then the man put his hands up in surrender and pretended he was going to leave peacefully before suddenly smashing his beer bottle against the side of the lighthouse and then slashing at Mr. Watts with the broken edge, cutting open Mr. Watts’s T-shirt—”
“HisfavoriteT-shirt,” Cooper added.
“—and creating a superficial laceration of approximately ten inches down his torso.”
“That drunk dude got lucky,” Cooper said poutily, like the ending of the story insulted his pride.
