"Come inside." I grabbed his helmet and wedged myself between his torso and his free arm because he looked two seconds from dropping on my mat too.
"You're hurt pretty badly," I muttered, shutting the door with my foot.
"No."
But when I swiveled my head and tried to look at his face, I saw the way his eyes glazed, noticed the fine shake in his hand.
"Let's get you settled down."
He complied, one careful step at a time across my living room. Each movement was rehearsed, like he was afraid to break himself. He made it to the couch, and pointed at the throw blanket. I hastily spread it over the pillows with one hand while trying to keep him upright with my other. Once the blanket was in place, he carefully slid down and stretched his body across whatever it was that I'd made for him.
Then he exhaled loudly.
"Is this a bullet wound?" I asked, scanning the blood and the damage it was doing to my living room. Yet somehow, I didn't care about the furniture. I just cared about him.
"Knife," he replied.
I stared at his jacket, then at his hands, then at whatever portion of his face I could see. He took another deep, shuddering breath and started peeling off his gloves. I took them from him and set them on the coffee table. When I looked at my hands, his blood had been smears across my skin.
My stomach rolled.
"Take off my jacket," he said, snapping me out of my panic.
"What?"
I wasn't sure how he pulled it off in this condition, but he fixed me with a severe look. "It's not coming off by itself."
I swallowed, settled on the edge of the couch, and set to work.
The zipper stuck halfway. I tugged harder, and he made a sound. I eased the zipper back up and tried again. This time, it went smoothly. Underneath the jacket, it looked worse. The soaked T-shirt clung to his torso.
Oh God, he'd lost a lot of blood. It was trickling on the blanket now.
"T-shirt too," he said.
This was the weirdest self-serve striptease of my life. "Okay," I whispered. With trembling hands, I lifted the T-shirt, apologizing when I had to peel it off the wound.
He barely flinched.
I could see it now—a clean gash on his side, just under the ribs, at least an inch across, deep and gaping. There was a smaller cut, old and ragged, a little lower down. I tried not to stare at the rest of his torso, but it was impossible.
He was too close. There was nowhere else to look.
His skin was pale, slick with sweat and blood smears, but under it I could see the way muscles corded around his bones. There was a tattoo over his left pec—angel wings, rendered in fine black lines. It looked more like a pencil drawing rather than ink. Below it, the ragged burn scar ran across his abdomen to the waistband of his pants. I wondered how big it was and where it ended and how he'd gotten it.
I shifted my eyes back to the wound. "I think you're gonna need stitches," I said just to distract myself. "A bandage alone won't do it."
He nodded. "Suture kit or a regular needle if you have it."
I shook my head.
"Stapler?"
"You're kidding?"
He held out his hand, palm up, as if I had it ready for him. "I'm not."
I backed away, opened the office cabinet, and pulled the heavy-duty Swingline from the shelf.
