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I glance at Sam. He looks very pale. I wonder how much blood he’s already lost.
“Look, I don’t care about Mina or the money or you losing your mind,” I say. “Take the photos. Keep your secret. Tell the ambulance people whatever you want when they come. But he’s really hurt.”
“Okay. Let me think. You must know someone,” the dean says in a low, pleading voice. “The kind of doctor who won’t report a shooting.”
“You want me to call a mob doctor?”
The eagerness on his face is exaggerated, manic. “Please. Please. I’ll give you anything. You can both graduate with a 4.0. You can blow off all your classes. If you make this go away, as far as I’m concerned, you can do whatever you want.”
“And no more demerits,” says Sam weakly.
“Are you sure?” I ask Sam. “This doctor’s not going to have all the stuff that a real hospital—”
“Cassel, think about it,” Sam says. “If an ambulance comes, we’re all in trouble. We all lose.”
I hesitate.
“My parents,” he says. “I can’t—they can’t find out.” I look at him for a long moment and then remember that Sam was the one who brought a gun into the dean’s office and threatened him with it. Normal parents probably frown on that kind of thing. I bet judges don’t like it either. This isn’t a zero-sum game for the dean, Sam, and me. There’s plenty of trouble to go around.
With a sigh I flick the safety on, shove the gun into my pocket, and make the call.
* * *
The doctor with the crooked teeth arrives a half hour later. His answering service never asked for a name from me and never gave one for him, either. In my head I am still calling him Dr. Doctor.
He’s wearing a similar outfit to the one I saw him in the last time—sweatshirt and jeans. I notice he’s got on sneakers with no socks and there’s a scab of some kind on his ankle. His cheeks look more sunken than I remember, and he’s smoking a cigarette. I wonder how old he is. He looks like he’s maybe in his thirties with a full head of unruly curls and the scruff of a man who can’t be bothered to shave every day. The only thing that indicates he’s a doctor at all is the black bag he’s carrying.
I’ve elevated Sam’s leg and padded it with my T-shirt. I am sitting on the floor, applying pressure. Dean Wharton wrapped Sam in my coat to stop him from shivering. We’ve done our awful best, and I am feeling like the worst friend in the world for not insisting we take him immediately to the hospital, whatever the consequences.
“You got a bathroom?” the doctor says, glancing around.
“Through those doors and down the hall,” says Dean Wharton, frowning at the doctor’s cigarette disapprovingly, still apparently trying to stay in control of the situation. “This is a no smoking building.”
The doctor gives him an incredulous look. “I’ve got to scrub in. Clear off the desk while I’m gone. We’re going to have to get the patient up there. And get some more lights. I need to see what I’m doing.”
“Do you trust that man?” Dean Wharton asks me as he lifts stacks of papers and shoves them into his filing cabinet haphazardly.
“No,” I say.
Sam makes a choked sound.
“I didn’t mean it that way,” I say. “You’re going to be fine. I’m just pissed off. Mostly at myself—no, scratch that, mostly at Wharton.”
The dean drags a floor lamp to his now clear desk and flips it on. He manages to position a couple of other lights on the bookshelves, tilting their flexible necks to point bulbs at the table, like faces all turned toward a performance.
“Help me get him up,” I say.
“Don’t lift me,” Sam says, slurring the words slightly. “I can hop.”
This seems like a terrible idea, but I am not arguing with a wounded man. Putting his arm around my neck, I haul him up. He makes a low sound in the back of his throat, like he’s biting back a scream. His gloved fingers dig into my bare arm. His face contorts with pain and concentration, his eyes closing tightly.
“Don’t put any weight on it,” I remind him.
“Screw you,” he says through gritted teeth, which I take to mean that he’s doing okay.
We move across the room, his body half-slumped on mine. My T-shirt slides off his leg, and blood seeps sluggishly from the hole as he climbs up onto the desk.
“Lie down,” I say, reaching for the shirt. I have no idea how clean anything is, but I try to mop up the worst of the blood and reapply pressure.
