Page 40 of Reckless

“Don’t remember.”

“Drink water?”

“Not since... yesterday, maybe.”

His jaw tightened. He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t have to. The disapproval was written in the set of his shoulders, the careful way he placed the penlight back on the tray. He reached for a pair of scissors and began to cut away the blood-matted hair around the wound, his movements precise and economical. The blades whispered against my skin, and the tension in my scalp eased as the weight of the clotted hair was lifted.

“This is going to sting,” he said. And then the antiseptic hit the raw wound, and I hissed through my teeth, gripping the edge of the table.

“Sorry.” His voice was softer now. “Almost done.”

He cleaned the wound with slow, careful strokes, his gloved fingers parting the torn skin to check the depth. The gash was about two inches long, sitting just behind my right ear, and it was still seeping blood—a slow, steady ooze that he blotted away with gauze.

“Well,” he said, “the good news is it’s a scalp wound. They bleed a lot, but they’re usually shallow. This one’s no exception.” He pressed a fresh piece of gauze to the wound and held it there. “The bad news is that the stairs damaged more than your head. You’ve got bruising along your entire right side. I’d like to check your ribs, if you’ll let me.”

I nodded. The movement made my stomach lurch, and I closed my eyes, focusing on breathing. In and out. In and out. The paper under me crackled as I shifted my weight.

I had bruises I hadn’t even seen yet, going all down my right side. Alastair gave me some painkillers and wrote out instructions, very rightly assuming I wouldn’t remember most of what he said. Part of that was the whole general state of me. But part of it was I was so focused on what he must think of me. Which was stupid; I wasn’t anything to him. But I didn’t want him to think I was…well, the person sitting shirtless on the exam table with a bandage on his head, vomit on his breath, a stew of liquor in his bloodstream, and the whole past, present, and future of bad decisions spread out before him.

The worst part was when Alastair went into his house and got me one of his zip-up jumpers since my jacket was almost as bloody as my balled-up T-shirt. And for some reason I kept shivering, even though the weather wasn’t that cold. Alastair said it was probably the blood loss, and I couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic. The jumper was light blue and too small on me, stretching tight across my shoulders, pulling the sleeves too short. But it did help. With the cold.

Alastair’s fingers probed the edges of the bruises, gentle but firm, checking for breaks.

“Does this hurt?”

“No.”

“Here?”

“A little.”

“Here?”

I winced. “Yeah.”

His hands stilled. He was quiet for a long moment, his fingers resting lightly against my skin so could feel the heat of them, the steadiness of his touch. It was the gentlest anyone had been with me in days, maybe weeks, and the realisation made my throat tighten.

“Nothing’s broken,” he said eventually. He withdrew his hands and reached for a roll of bandages. “But you’re going to be sore for a while. I’d recommend rest, ice for the swelling, and avoiding stairs for the foreseeable future.”

“Noted.”

He began to wrap the bandage around my head, his movements practiced and sure. The white gauze circled my brow, over my ears, around the crown of my skull, until I must have looked like a soldier come home from a war. His knuckles brushed against my temple as he worked, and each time they did, I felt a small, electric shock travel down my spine.

“There,” he said, securing the bandage with a strip of tape. “That should hold.”

He stepped back, surveying his work. His expression was unreadable. Professional. The mask of a doctor who had seen too many broken bodies to be moved by one more.

I sat on the examination table, bandaged and shivering despite the warmth of the room. I wanted to say something. I wanted to explain. But the words felt stuck somewhere behind my breastbone, heavy and useless.

He turned away and busied himself with cleaning up the supplies, disposing of the used gauze and the blood-stained cotton balls. The sink ran for a moment, the sound of water filling the silence between us.

“Robbie,” he said, without turning around.

“Yeah?”

“You need to stop.” His hands were braced against the edge of the sink, his back still to me. “What you’re doing—” He stopped. His shoulders rose and fell with a deep breath. “What you’re doing, how you’re going about it, it’s dangerous.”

The words hung in the air between us, heavy and raw. I stared at the curve of his back visible beneath the dressing gown, at the way his fingers gripped the porcelain like he was holding himself together by force of will.