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He put the gloves on and then reached for a small vial of liquid. “Can you hold this up?”
My arm was on fire, but I nodded anyway, taking it as he switched hands. Then he reached for scalpel, bent over Ethan’s wound and ground out, “Till you’re old, gray, and senile I’ll tell the story about how I left a patient to die to come to save your damn life. And just in case I’m senile too, I’m making this scar a little bigger, so you’ll at least have something to trigger a memory. I’m going to be so damn petty, you’re going to wish I’d just let you die.”
“I’m sure he’ll love that,” I whispered, tired, watching, one hand in the air.
“I don’t care if he loves it or not,” Wyatt muttered to himself. “He’s just going to have to deal.”
“Yes, Doctor.”
He glanced up at me, shaking his head before looking back down, rubbing the blood on his two gloved fingers.
“What is it?”
“For some reason his blood has thickened. It’s the only thing keeping him from bleeding more. Was he taking anything?”
“Does your brother seem like the person to take anything?” I asked him and then thought for a second.
“He must have had something with a lot of protein then…” he whispered to himself, leaning over to see more. “Ivy, see if you can hand me the thing that looks like tweezers,” he said, reaching to the side of him.
“You mean the forceps? Sure.” I reached over to him.
He smirked, reaching inside and pulling out a fractured bullet. He stared at it for a moment. “Who did this to him…to the both of you?”
“My cousins…cousin. It’s only Elroy now.”
“Is he dead?” he asked, never looking away from the work in front of him.
“Wounded but not dead.”
“Good,” he said, pulling out the second fraction of the bullet and dropping it beside him.
“Good?”
He nodded, picking up a suture needle. “There are only so many things a cadaver can teach you. I’m curious to know how many ribs you can take out before the body concaves. Or how long someone can stay awake during an open heart surgery with no painkillers…you know, the painful questions.”
“Ethan might have some painful questions to ask too.”
“Well, Ethan is shit out of luck,” he said loudly, tying his suture. “Because his younger, smarter, better looking brother, who is sharing his precious blood with his stubborn ass, has already called dibs. And as such he must, without bitching, take a step back. After all, what would he do if he didn’t have a doctor in the family?”
“You both are ridiculous.” I smiled, wincing at the ache in my shoulder.
“Just a little longer,” he whispered.
“I’m fine.”
“You are not.” He frowned, cutting the second suture and looking up at me just a little bit drowsy. “When he wakes up, don’t tell him that. He’ll feel worse.”
“You want me to tell him—”
“You suffered. You suffered for him. You’d suffer again, but you prefer not to,” he answered sharply, grabbing a vial of something and injecting it into his IV before moving back to close the wound back again. “If you say fine, he’ll know he failed you so seriously, you can’t even share the mental pain with him. Protect your wife…he failed…just like our father.”
“He didn’t fail me.”
“And that i
s your job. To defend him to your dying breath against any and every one.” He smiled sadly, slowly working down the side of the wound, his eyes a little droopy. “But call out the bullshit between you both privately.”
“And what is your job, Dr. Know-It-All?”
