"No."
"Petrov is rerouting."
"Where?"
"Konstantinos safe house. Charlestown."
"All right."
? ? ?
Inside the safe house, the door locks behind us.
It is a small unit on the third floor of a converted warehouse building. The kitchen is to the left. The bedroom is to the right. The windows are blacked. Petrov is on the phone with someone in the front room. Declan is in the hallway speaking to Cormac on a secured line.
Lex closes the bedroom door behind us.
He says, "Sit down."
"You sit down. You have been shot."
"It is a graze."
"You are bleeding."
"It is still a graze."
"Lex Konstantinos. Sit your ass down and let me look at it."
He sits down on the edge of the bed.
I find a medical kit under the bathroom sink. The Konstantinos family stocks every safe house with the same kit. This one has gauze, butterfly closures, antiseptic wash, suture thread, and lidocaine. I take it back to the bedroom.
Lex has taken his coat off.
His left sleeve is dark with blood that has soaked through the shirt at the upper arm. He’s holding the arm out from his body. I can tell he is in pain.
I cut the sleeve off with the medical scissors.
The wound is, in fact, a graze. The round went through the meat of his upper bicep and out the back. There is no exit fragment. The bleeding is moderate. The damage is real but not life-threatening.
I know this because I am the daughter of a Galway-born mother who taught me to read a wound the same year she taught me to read a recipe. I file my gratitude for my mother in the corner of my brain, and I focus on Lex's arm.
"This is going to hurt."
"Do it."
I clean it. I irrigate it. I close the entry and exit with butterfly closures because suturing is more than I can do here, and the wound doesn’t require it. I dress it and tape it. The whole process takes nineteen minutes. He doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t speak. He watches my face the whole time.
My hands shake exactly once.
It is when I am pulling the second butterfly closure tight that the closure draws the skin together over the entry wound. Lex makes a small sound at the back of his throat. The sound is the smallest possible piece of evidence that the man on the bed hasbeen shot today and is, despite the ‘graze’ he’s been claiming, in pain.
I take a breath. I keep working.
When I am done, I tape the bandage, and I sit back on my heels, and I look at his arm to make sure I have not missed anything.
Then I look up.
