25
EASTON
Eventually we return to the car. We carry in the stuff from the trunk and then Elijah climbs onto the running board to unload everything from the rooftop carrier too.
Just as he reaches over to unlock it, however, he hisses in pain, jolting upright.
Blood is spreading like an ink stain over the lower right side of his T-shirt.
“Goddammit,” he says, more focused on the piece of metal sticking up on the luggage rack than his wound.
I reach toward him. “Get down.”
He bats my hand away. “I’ll be fine.”
“If you were fine, you wouldn’t be bleeding like that. Get down from there and let me look.”
“It’s fine,” he argues. “It’s just a cut.”
I reach for the shirt again. “Hmm, I don’t recall you getting a medical degree. Refresh my memory.”
“You can’t even practice, remember?”
I snatch one of the guest towels out of a gift bag and press it to the wound. “I was only saying that so I wouldn’t have to saveyour grandmother,” I reply, tugging at his shirt hem. “Get down,now.”
Reluctantly, he gives in, but when I reach for the button of his shorts, he steps backward.
“I’ve got it.” His voice is gruff, meaner than necessary.
“Go up to the couch,” I demand. “I brought a medical kit. I’ll meet you there.”
I grab it from the trunk and follow him upstairs, where I find him lying on the couch. He’s unbuttoned the shorts and pushed them and his boxers just low enough that I can see the cut.
Also low enough that I can see the ridges of his abdominal muscles. The trail of hair beneath his belly button. The sharp rise of his hip bone.
But I’ll ignore that for now.
I kneel beside him and pull the towel away to examine the wound. For a single, sharp moment, I think of my brother bleeding out on my dad’s couch. Saying, “We could ruin your life with a single phone call.”
“Are you okay?” Elijah asks.
I shake the memory away. “I’m just on the fence about whether or not you need this sutured.”
“I can promise you I’m not going to the hospital over this. So take that into account.”
“You’ll go to the hospital if I tell you to go to the hospital,” I reply. “When was your last tetanus shot?”
He rolls his eyes. “Everyone in my line of work is caught up on tetanus shots.”
He’s cranky, and acting as if I’m being some absurdly overprotective mother figure instead of an entirely reasonable person who knows more than average about wounds. “If you’re really going to be a little bitch about going to the hospital, I can sterilize it and attempt to glue it together.”
“Do that,” he says.
I tear open an alcohol wipe and clean him off, then draw a thin line of glue while holding the incision together. I continue holding it, waiting for the glue to set, trying very hard not to think about the way his boxers are currently positioned.
It would be so easy to slide them lower.
My God, what an excellent doctor I’d make: this is the first patient I’ve dealt with in years, and all I can think about is molesting him.
