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“You should always see who it is before you just open the door,” he advised, turning away to slide the locks into place. “I’m sorry. I know it’s late.”
“What are you doing here?” She was already backing away from him, stepping into the dining room to put some space between his body and hers until she could figure out exactly what was going on.
“I need help,” he admitted sheepishly, pulling his other hand away from his side and showing her a bloodied, crimson palm. It was hard to see under his black shirt, but a patch of damp fabric clung to his side and the wound he’d been concealing there. “I didn’t know where else to go.”
Eloise’s stomach turned over in one slow moving, graceful loop and she felt her own blood drain from her face. She reached blindly for the chair beside her, knuckles whitening as she gripped it for balance.
“What happened?” she asked, trying to focus on his face as her tingling lips formed words that she didn’t remember her brain making. “You should go to the hospital.”
“I can’t,” he said quickly. “I can’t go to a hospital, and you can’t call for help, okay? Promise me?”
“Ethan…”
He grabbed her arms, warm wetness sliding over her skin as she recoiled. “You have to promise me, Eloise.”
“Is that … Is that your blood?”
“Most of it,” he said, lifting the hem of his shirt to show her the seeping wound in his side. “Lucky enough, the bullet just grazed me, and it’s not buried in there somewhere.”
“What the fuck?” Her voice was unnaturally high pitched and she winced at the tone and the swear, swallowing hard to try and get it under control. She was teetering on the edge of hysteria and neither of them needed her fainting at his feet. “You have to go to a hospital.”
“Eloise, look at me,” he insisted. “If I go to the hospital, then I’m going to jail. If you call an ambulance, I’m going to jail.”
That sobered her a little and she looked at him, swallowing thickly. They’d have to deal with that—he couldn’t just show up and say that to her and expect her not to have questions—but getting him appropriate medical care took priority. “Isn’t there someone else? I mean, couldn’t Myles or Dylan do something? Don’t any of you know how to treat injuries?”
“Dylan already poured part of a bottle of vodka on it, and I didn’t appreciate it,” he said, and looking at him a little closer she had to admit that he did seem a lot paler than usual, his skin sweaty and green with pain.
“What do you expect me to do?” she asked, voice rising again and hands shaking. “Sew it back together?”
“Do you have a needle?’
“No! I mean, yes, I do have a needle but no I will not be sewing up gunshot wounds in my dining room. I don’t know anything about first aid.” Her head was swimming and she thought she might throw up if she had to look at the wound again.
“Butterfly bandages? I can’t reach it, or I swear to you I would do it myself,” he said, looking down at her with pleading eyes.
“Just what the hell are you into anyway?” If he wasn’t going to go to the doctor, he could answer her questions. “You just show up here and bleed all over my floor …” Her words faded away when he wobbled a little on his feet, his eyes momentarily losing focus as she reached for him and struggled to keep his body upright. “Damn it,” she grunted, her back protesting under his weight. “How much blood have you lost?”
“More than I would have if I hadn’t gotten shot,” he said unhelpfully. “And Dylan gave me the rest of the vodka before they dropped me off.”
“No honor and no help among thieves I see,” she said irritably, guiding him the rest of the way into the dining room and pushing him down into the nearest chair. She hadn’t expected better behavior from Dylan—dropping his friend off to fend for himself or die was pretty much what she would have bet on from him—but it surprised her that Myles hadn’t done something. She supposed you had sunk to the level of the lowest of your companions. “Sit here and don’t move while I look for a first aid kit. I don’t even know if I have butterfly bandages.”
But she did, of course, because she was always prepared for everything. A frantic rummage through her bathroom cabinets produced a sizable first aid kit with antiseptic, gauze, butterfly bandages in several sizes, and some over the counter painkillers. The last weren’t advisable considering how much it seemed he’d been drinking, even she knew that, but maybe he could take them in the morning to take the edge off.
She hurried back into the dining room, arms stuffed full of towels and medical supplies, to find him sitting in the same chair, his head tipped back and his eyes closed. She stepped forward cautiously, her heart a shallow beat in her ears as she listened intently for the sound of his breathing, her eyes focused in silent terror on his chest as she watched for the rise and fall that would indicate he was alive.
“Ethan?” She wasn’t sure the sound of his name would even carry far enough for him to hear her. It was thin, thready, and full of quiet fear.
“Hmm?”
“Damn it,” she said, stomping the rest of the way into the room and dropping everything onto the table beside him. “I thought you were dead.”
“Not quite,” he said. “Honestly I think it mostly just hurts like hell.”
“It probably wouldn’t have bled so much if Dylan hadn’t decided to use alcohol as a pain killer. I know nothing about medical procedures but even I know alcohol is a blood thinner.”
Ethan just shrugged. “Maybe you aren’t the only one that’s shitty at first aid.”
“Well, thank you so much,” she said, voice dripping with sarcasm as she lifted the hem of his shirt—tugging it up until he lifted his arms with a grimace and let her slide it off over his head—and started poking around the wound. Anger made it easier to separate herself from the situation and her nausea faded away. He had a jagged edged red line across the side of his torso, but the bleeding had nearly stopped, and it wasn’t as serious as she’d originally thought.
