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‘I sneaked all this stuff past Dee and called the clinic from my mobile so she wouldn’t hear me on the house phone. Which meant trekking all the way to the far corner of the vegetable garden, because that’s the only sodding place I can get a signal.’ Ellie dabbed at the angry swelling with the antiseptic wipes, keeping a tight grip on Art’s wrist in case he flinched. Although, as usual, he was the picture of stoicism.
Frankly a little less stoicism and a lot more common sense would have gone a long way in the last couple of days. Who the heck was so flipping stoic they let their hand rot off? She tore open another of the wipes she’d filched from Dee’s first aid supplies.
‘Why did you have to sneak them past her?’ he asked, as if he honestly didn’t know.
She dabbed at the stitches again, making sure they were clean, before ripping open the packet of sterile gauze with her teeth.
‘If she’d seen me carting this lot in here, she would have been fussing over you for the next decade.’
Holding the gauze in place, she began wrapping his hand with the bandage.
Once she was satisfied it was suitably covered, she tore the ends and tied it.
She placed his hand back on the desk. ‘So you totally owe me one.’
He nodded. And his lips twitched. The almost smile had her heart knocking against her ribs.
She’d genuinely panicked he was going to have to get his hand amputated when she’d seen what he’d managed to do to the wound. Thank God, the clinic nurse had been a lot less worried once Ellie had finally got her on the line.
The instructions had been simple. Check his temperature. Clean and re-dress the hand. Dose him up with painkillers. Get him to his GP’s for a course of antibiotics. Tell him to stop being an idiot.
His temperature had been in the normal range. He’d refused the heavy duty painkillers but agreed to take Nurofen and paracetamol, she’d changed the bandage, and made an appointment for him at the GP in Gratesbury for this afternoon, so the first four directives had already been covered. All that remained now was to impress upon him what an idiot he was being. And re-check the wound every day, reapplying new dressings if necessary, the stitches could come out in a week’s time and as long as he didn’t get it infected again all should be well.
‘What did the clinic say?’ he asked.
‘The nurse basically said if you don’t have a temperature, it’s probably just a localised infection. But you need to keep an eye on it and get a course of antibiotics.’ She began packing the contraband supplies back into the box. ‘Which means you can go to the GP’s this afternoon and I’m keeping an eye on it from now on, because you’re obviously incapable of doing that.’ She scooped up the empty wipe packets and dumped them into the bin under his desk.
The crisis had been averted. Art wasn’t going to lose his hand just yet. And Dee hadn’t discovered what a twerp he was.
‘So why don’t you tell me now exactly why you haven’t been eating your food?’ Ellie asked, still irritated by his cavalier attitude. ‘And don’t give me any bullshit, because I can still rat you out to Dee.’
He watched her, his eyes narrowing, but he didn’t look away when he said: ‘I’m left-handed.’
‘So what?’
‘So I can’t eat with my right hand, it goes all over the place.’
‘Let me get this straight, you’ve been starving yourself because you’re worried about making a mess? Are you kidding me?’
He looked at his injured hand, cradled in his lap, the tips of his ears turning an interesting shade of red.
‘Why didn’t you ask for help, Art?’ she asked, not quite ready to give him a break. He might be a man, but that did not mean he got to be a total moron. ‘I could have cut up your food for you, or Dee, or even Toto.’
He tapped the fingers of his good hand on the desk. ‘No one’s cutting up my food.’
‘It’s better than starving to death.’
He shrugged, the stubborn expression suggesting she hadn’t won that argument. ‘It’s not that bad, I managed to find some finger food from the pantry after Dee had gone to bed to keep me going.’
So he’d been raiding the pantry in the middle of the night, simply to avoid having to ask Dee to give him food he could eat with his fingers?
‘Very clever,’ she said. ‘Except Dee now thinks you’re about to die of malnutrition.’
‘She doesn’t have to worry. I’ve been looking after myself for years.’
‘Of course she has to worry, she loves you.’
