“I’m sorry.” Should I pat her shoulder or keep talking? “It’s a rotten world.” Great. How profound. Exactly the right thing to say. I rubbed the wounds.
“Stop it.” She took my hand and lowered it.
The contact with her soft, warm skin sent a jolt through me. Her touch was delicate but strong enough to distract me from the pain. The wish to hold her and make her feel safe came out of nowhere. If my life weren’t such a struggle, if I weren’t a criminal, I might buy her flowers and ask her to take a walk in the park with me so I could hear her laughing.
She fiddled with her cross, and I had to gaze away, my stomach churning.
She made a sound like a strangled sob. “You’re disgusted with me.”
“Hell, no.” She’d misunderstood the reason for my disgust. On impulse, I held her lovely hand and noticed the pulse in her wrist, slow and steady. “It’s not you.”
“But I sensed it. You were disgusted.” Tears welled in her eyes.
“It wasn’t you.”
She narrowed her gaze. “You’re honest. Then what?”
Bugger. “You don’t like crowds. I don’t like crosses.”
“This?” She opened her hand, and the cross shone as if on fire.
“Yes.” I released her hand.
“I can’t judge anyone.” She uncoiled the chain around her wrist and put the cross in her pocket.
Anger was rising, and I didn’t want her to feel it. “I should get back inside,” I said in a more brusque tone than I intended.
For a moment, my gaze lingered on her neck where a vein ticked.
I hurried to get far from her and waited in a corner of the hall.
She could sense people’s feelings. I didn’t know whether I should pity or envy her. She wouldn’t envy my recent obsession with pulses and veins.
“Mr. Hart?” A nurse pulled me out of my dark thoughts.
Before following her to the doctor’s room, I glanced behind me, but the bench wasn’t visible. It was the first time I’d felt truly responsible for someone. Another odd thing. Darius could take care of himself despite his insatiable appetite, but Miss Harlowe was struggling, and she was here because of me.
A doctor in a white coat smeared with dubious substances let me into a white room with bars on the windows.
I hoped the bars were meant to keep people out.
“Come here.” The doctor waved me closer.
I entered cautiously, eyeing the shiny tools on the table and the glass bottles filled with coloured liquids. A pungent smell tickled my nose and made me blink.
“Sit.” He scribbled in a notebook and pointed at the table covered with a white sheet; it was so starched that it rustled when I perched on the table.
“Move your head to the left.” The doctor prodded the wounds, making me groan in pain. He muttered, getting closer. “Do you sleep with rats?”
“Sometimes.”
“These seem like rat bites, very infected rat bites.”
“It wasn’t a rat but a tool in the garden shed.” I rubbed my forehead. Every time I focused on what had happened that evening, a headache pounded. “I don’t recall the details.” A vision of sharp teeth flashed across my mind, but it was gone so quickly I couldn’t grasp it. “I would have noticed a rat crawling up on me and biting me hard.”
The doctor scrunched up his face, writing in the notebook. “I’m merely telling you what I see. The margins of the wounds are jagged and torn, like an animal bite. A tool would have left a clean cut with less risk of infection. Wounds caused by a sharp tool are deeper than they’re wide.”
Another odd thing. I’d slept next to rats for years, and no rat had ever bitten me. All of a sudden, I got rat bites.
