“Probably not,” she agreed pleasantly, moving inside without waiting for a formal invitation.“But as a nurse, I’ve learned to just come see for myself.”She set her bag on the kitchen table.“Can I see it?”
I held out my right hand.The bandage Griffin had applied hours ago had come half off, the adhesive edges curled and dark with dried blood, the gauze pad soaked through and stiff at the center.
Nadine peeled it back carefully, her touch light enough that I barely felt it until she reached the edge of the wound itself.Then I hissed through my teeth.
“Sorry.”She didn’t look up, but her hands slowed.“The bleeding’s slowed,” She tilted my hand toward the light, her tongue tip appearing between her lips as she studied the wound.“Pain, I’m going to need the irrigation syringe and the tweezers.And the magnifying glass if you’ve got it in there.”
“You do realize, I’m the doctor.Right?”Pain gave the small woman a wry smile, but I easily recognized the affection he had for her.
Nadine looked up and raised an eyebrow.“I do.I also know how cleaning scrapes and superficial lacerations makes you gag.”She turned her head to look at me.“The man put a chest tube in a young man when he got stabbed in the yard.Give him severed limbs.Broken bones grinding together as he sets them.Penetrating trauma with evisceration.Anything.Give him small, annoying wounds like splinters or infected paper cuts, and he breaks out in a sweat.”
“Laugh all you want, sweetheart.Them things hurt like a mother bitch.”
“And don’t get me started with delivering babies.”Nadine gave me a wicked grin.
Pain’s eyes got wide.“Don’t you dare, Nadine.”
The other woman got a mischievous grin on her face as she picked up the items Pain set on the island in a neat row.Then she pulled out her phone and brought up a picture.She handed the phone to me and I saw an image of a much younger-looking Pain, presenting a newborn to its mother.The woman had a huge smile on her face.Everyone in the picture looked to be laughing hysterically, including the dad.Pain, however, had… spaghetti coming out of his nose?
“Oh, my God,” I put my hand over my mouth, smothering a laugh.“What happened here?”
Pain rolled his eyes at Nadine.“All right.Very funny.”He moved to my side and looked at my palm.All the while the couple kept up the running dialogue.
“Pain threw up four times with his first delivery.Seven at his second.”She nodded at the phone in my hand.“That picture is hospital lore.They barred him from the delivery room after this incident.”Nadine applied some ointment to the cut while Pain stuck a gauze pad over the cut and wound more gauze around my hand to hold the bandage in place before moving to gently clean the abrasions on my face.
“I still delivered the kid.Handed her to her mother too.”Pain stuck his chin up stubbornly.The expression on his face was all kinds of cute, but I also knew this was all to put me at ease.Their easy banter felt real, and for the first time since walking out of that office, a knot in my chest began to loosen.
“Thank you,” I said, looking from Pain to Nadine.“I appreciate you taking care of my hand and face.But I also appreciate you trying to make me comfortable here.”
Nadine gripped my uninjured hand in hers.“If you need anything, you call me.Anything at all.”She took out a pen and wrote her number on a note pad then ripped the page off and handed it to me.“Day or night.Me or any of the old ladies will happily come to you if you need us.”
I thanked her.Nadine left some stuff for me to re-bandage the wound if I needed to, then she and Pain left.Once they’d gone, I put Nadine’s name into my phone, then went to the bathroom.
The mirror above the bathroom sink reflected a stranger back at me.My hair matted with soot and blood, face streaked with dirt, and eyes hollow with exhaustion all confirmed I looked like I’d been run over, backed up on, and run over again.
I stripped, dropping each piece of clothing to the floor.My shirt was stiff with dried blood, my jeans torn at one knee.Underneath, my skin was mottled with bruises -- a dark purple smudge across my ribs where I’d hit the ground, a line of finger-shaped marks on my upper arm where someone had grabbed me in the fight at my apartment.
I snagged a plastic sack Nadine had left with the supplies, along with water resistant tape.After I covered my bandaged hand, I turned on the shower and stood under the spray without waiting for it to heat.The cold seized my chest and forced the air out of me in a single hard exhale.I made myself to stay there, teeth chattering, until the water ran hot.Then I stood under it, eyes closed, face turned up to the spray, and let the heat soak into muscles that felt like they’d been tied in knots.
I washed myself as best I could, especially the scrapes on my face.The soap stung slightly, but the pain helped clear my head a little.At least, the water ran clear down the drain instead of the brownish red from dried blood.
I kept scrubbing until my skin felt raw, then shut off the water and stepped out, wrapping myself in a plush, soft towel that smelled fresh and clean.
The bathroom had no window, just a vent near the ceiling that hummed with the sound of the building’s heating and cooling system.I dried off and dressed in the clothes I’d been given, then went into the bedroom, shut and locked the door.I sat on the edge of the bed with my back against the wall.The gun I still retained lay on the mattress beside me, within easy reach.My hair dripped onto my shoulders, soaking the collar of the T-shirt.
I sat with my knees drawn to my chest and watched the door, waiting for my body to stop running on terror.My heart raced with every creak of the building.Closing my eyes felt like a surrender I couldn’t afford, but exhaustion had other ideas.The edges of the room began to soften.My eyelids grew heavy, then heavier, until keeping them open was a fight I was losing.With a final, shuddering sigh, I let them fall.
Chapter Six
Veda
I gasped awake with a start.The nightmare left me in a cold sweat.I saw Carl’s face hit the desk, the man in my kitchen with the knife, the moment I pulled the trigger and the man’s head snapped back, and the wall behind him looking like a piece of modern art that I would carry around inside my skull forever.
I sat up.My ribs ached where I’d hit the pavement in the alley.The cut on my palm pulsed under the fresh gauze, a hot insistent throb that matched the beat at my temples.I’d slept maybe twenty minutes on the ride back from my apartment, and that was questionable.My body wanted rest.My head simply refused to cooperate.
I swung my legs off the mattress and stood.The room felt too small all at once, the four walls pressing in around me.I needed some air and to breathe in the night.I pulled on jeans that someone, probably Hannah or Pippa, had left folded on the dresser, and a hoodie that swallowed my hands at the wrists.I tucked the .38 into the waistband at the small of my back and pulled the hoodie down over it.Then I went to the door and rested my forehead against the wood for a long count of ten before I turned the deadbolt and slipped out into the hall.
The overhead lights had been dimmed and the empty hallway lit by safety lights at floor level.I padded to the lift and rode it down to the ground floor.The path outside ran between two warehouses and disappeared under the camo netting that I now understood covered every walkway in this place.The netting turned the security floods into a green-tinged muck, broken up by patches of darker shadow where the light could not punch through.I moved along the path, taking in the sights and scents around me.The compound smelled like diesel and gun oil and the faint vegetal funk of the river a few blocks off.
