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The EMTs had tried to convince me to get stitches for my head wound, and I told them they should help somebody who actually needed it. I wasn’t nauseous… well, okay. I was. But not from a concussion. I’ve had a head injury before, and what I was feeling was all the result of not enough food, not enough water, and far too much impotent rage. I was fucking filthy and sore, and my head throbbed from a combination of post-adrenaline, dehydration, and taking a damn bottle to the skull.
Doc took one look at me when I knocked on his door and hauled me inside, then dragged me to the bathroom, where he made me sit on the toilet seat so he could poke at my head, Taavi underfoot and whining the whole time.
“Whoa,” was the comment that came from Doc’s eleven-year-old nephew, Jackson, as he stood in the doorway, watching as Doc ran his fingers under the water in the bathtub.
“I’m not taking a bath, Doc,” I told him.
“You’re washing that head, Hart.”
“It’s fine.”
“It isn’t.”
Taavi whined loudly.
“I didn’t ask you,” I snapped at the dog.
“You didn’t ask me, either,” Doc pointed out. “But you’re going to let me clean you up anyway.”
“Doc, I just want to go home.” Now that I wasn’t actively trying to do everything at once, my body was protesting, muscles and joints aching like fuck.
“I’m sure,” came the mild response.
I glared at him. “Doc.”
“Hart.”
“Jackson, please go clean up your coloring,” came Ward’s higher tenor.
“I’m watching.”
“I can see that,” was the reply. “Coloring. Please.”
Jackson let out a whine that wasn’t all that different from Taavi’s, but he left the bathroom door. Ward replaced him. “Need anything?” he asked, and I wasn’t sure if he was talking to me or to Doc.
“Towels and some clean clothes,” the big orc answered.
Ward left, and I scowled at Doc. “I—”
“Shut up, Hart.” There was a low edge to it that was almost a growl.
I shut up.
Fortunately, Doc herded Taavi out of the bathroom when Ward came back with a dark blue towel and a set of Doc’s clothes. “Shower. Then I’m cleaning you up,” he told me.
I showered, hissing as the hot water stung about seven different places on my body, several of which I hadn’t realized were scraped to hell, including a long cut of some sort on my lower back that felt kind of like a deep cat scratch.
I pulled on Doc’s too-big-for-me sweatpants and tied the waist, then pulled his long-sleeve t-shirt over my head. I’m almost as tall as he is, but he’s a lot broader than I am, so I was swimming in that, too.
I opened the door and found Taavi sitting outside it, staring.
“For fuck’s sake, doggo.”
“Back in.” Ignoring Taavi, Doc herded me back to the toilet seat.
He had a washcloth, which came away from my head spotted with blood as he cleaned at the injury. I winced, but tried to hold still and not complain. Taavi lay on my feet, his head pushed up against my shin. Doc put two little butterfly bandages against the side of my temple, then dabbed the injury with hydrogen peroxide.
“You’re not going to let an actual doctor look at this, are you?”
