Page 72 of Quiver

“I thought you were a doctor.”

“I’m the kind that makes you feel good while you’re here, not the one who clears you to go, but don’t worry, I know a guy.” Bex gently folded down the blanket and peeled back half of a bandage about the size of a paper napkin. Kylie leaned over her shoulder for a second, then closed her eyes and stepped back.

“How bad is it?” Fletcher asked.

“It’s not.” Bex eased the bandage back in place. “There’s significant bruising around the edges, and the dressing has a lot of blood on it, but we can swap that out. The main thing is nothing looks infected, so I’ll send my recommendation back up the chain along with my promise to keep monitoring you while I’m in town.”

“You don’t have to,” Fletcher said quickly. “I’m sure you have your hands full with other patients.”

Bex stood back and shook her head, golden waves of hair feathering like she was in some kind of soap opera medical scene. “Nope. I’m not even on call this morning, but curiosity got the better of me.”

“You scrubbed up and drove into Burlington to look at my Band-Aid?”

Bex clasped her on the shoulder. “It’s what friends do. Let me go find one of the doctors on shift, and we’ll be back in a bit. Can I get you anything while I’m out and about, Ms. Manchester?”

“Please, call me Kylie, and coffee would be magic right now.”

“On it.” Bex headed out.

Fletcher turned to Kylie. “Is it what friends do?”

“What?”

“Do friends go to work on their day off to peek at people’s stitched-up arrow holes?”

Kylie sat back in the chair. “I can’t say I have any wide frame of reference for friendship, but I kind of wish I hadn’t seen the wound.”

“That bad?”

“If it were on a random person, I probably wouldn’t have flinched, but I saw it happen, all the blood yesterday, and well, it’s you.”

“Me,” Fletcher said pensively. “It was kind of intense, huh?”

“You have a gift for understatement.”

“What about you?”

Kylie shook her head. “Normally, I’m considered rather hyperbolic.”

“Yeah, drama queen, but I meant how are you doing?”

“It’s been a long day and night, but I think we’ll both survive.”

“Survive, that’s something we’re good at.” She paused, realizing they could leave things there, and maybe yesterday she would’ve been happy to, but this morning she pushed forward. “You told Bex to call you Kylie, not Kye.”

She shrugged. “I don’t know that I gave it much thought.”

“What if you did?”

Kylie rolled out her neck as if trying to loosen some tension, either from the topic or a restless night sleeping in a chair. “I guess I could say people around town, the ones Bex is likely to run into, know me as Kylie, but it would also be true to admit it’s weird to have someone else call me Kye with you sitting here.”

“It’s weird for me, too,” Fletcher said, and then they both sat in the silence for a while, maybe letting the concept sink in or perhaps waiting to see if lightning might strike them for such simple, bare honesty. It felt a little bit like an affront to the natural order.

“Do you remember much of yesterday?” Kylie finally whispered.

“I think I remember most of it,” she said warily, wondering what, specifically, Kylie thought she might’ve forgotten. “Everything before the accident seems pretty clear. The moment I went off the horse is burned into my memory, as is the excruciating ride to the hospital.”

“What about after?”