His gaze drops briefly to my bare thigh, where my skirt has ridden up as I drive. Then back to my face.
"You’re distracted, counselor."
My pulse stutters. "You’re hallucinating from blood loss."
"That’s possible.” His voice lowers. "Still thinking about your legs."
Heat climbs my throat so fast it feels chemical.
I adjust my grip on the steering wheel. My hands are steady. The rest of me is not.
"If you die in my passenger seat," I say, "I am leaving your body in New Jersey."
His mouth moves. Half a smile.
"You'd miss me."
I do not answer.
I do not know what I was going to ask. Something professional. Something that would have explained itself as operational. I open my mouth, close it again, and look back at the road.
This is unusual. I ask everything, in the right order, at the right time, in the right voice. The asking is a tool, and I know exactly what I will do with every answer.
I did not know what I was going to do with this one.
I press the gas.
He is lighter on his feet than he should be when I help him out of the car. Cop training. The military layer underneath. The specific stubbornness of a man who has decided he is going to walk under his own power, if he has to grow new legs to do it.
The door is biometric. I press my thumb to the pad. The lock releases. I push the door open with my hip. I get an arm under his shoulder and walk him into a kitchen I have not stood in since last autumn.
He looks around once. Enough. He does not comment. He is going to wait for me to give him a piece of information and then use that piece to learn three more things, which he is not going to comment on either.
I lower him onto the kitchen island.
"Stay."
He stays.
I cross to the cabinet under the sink and pull out the medical kit. Not the household kit. The other one.
I bring it to the island and open it.
I scrub the worst of the blood from my hands with antiseptic wipes from the kit before pulling on nitrile gloves.
I have to unwrap the jacket to see the wound.
I work the knot loose at his hip.
The wool is heavy with him now. I peel it back in one slow motion. The shirt underneath is dark and stuck to his skin. I cut it away with the trauma scissors.
The wound is through and through. Clean. Below the ribs. Close enough to the spleen that I won't be comfortable until I've confirmed the exit wound. But the angle is wrong for the spleen. The bleeding is wrong for any major vessel.
He is going to live.
Why am I relieved?
He saved my life tonight.
