“Why?” I ask.
“Nursing school,” she says. “I just know too much about bacteria not to want to bandage half the people who walk in here.”
“Yeah?” I echo. “Then go bandage them. You don’t have to bandage me.”
“Well…” She thinks. “Most of them never agree to any of my requests like you did. I suppose I’m thankful for your good deed.”
I want to laugh at her. But alright. She’s too cute for me to curse at, and what harm can come from letting a stranger patch me up?
I offer my hands. She turns them over, thumbs tracing the constellation of scars. Her touch lingers on the newest split across my knuckle.
“This one’s deep,” she murmurs.
“Brick wall,” I say. “I won.”
She lifts a brow. “Against a wall?”
“Wall had it coming.”
A corner of her mouth tugs. She reaches under the bar and pulls up a battered plastic kit. Inside: gauze, tape, little brown bottles with handwritten labels. “I can clean and close it, but I think it will scar anyway.”
“Everything does,” I say before I can catch it. “But I don’t mind it, Miss Nurse.”
Her eyes flick to mine. “Don’t call me that. I failed.”
“You seem good enough to me. All that Good Samaritan spirit.”
She rinses the cut with saline. It bites. She dries, presses, tapes a pair of butterfly closures, then wraps the gauze snug around my hand.
“Believe me, I used to be better.” She pats the wrap.
“Better than this?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t believe you,” I murmur. “What were you, Mother Teresa?”
“Something like that,” she says. “You done for the night?”
“Yeah.”
“Then you can help me close.”
Again, I really don’t know why the fuck I stay—but I do.
We stack glasses, flip stools, mop around a puddle that’s older than either of us.
“You plan to work this bar long?” I ask.
“If you mean, do I have any plans to disappear soon, then no. I’m thinking of staying here for a while.”
“Why this bar?”
“It’s the first job I got,” she says with a small smile. “Simple as that. The manager’s a creep but he promised to pay me on time, so I like it.”
“If he doesn’t, I’ll break his fingers,” I say.
She laughs, startled, then sobers when she sees I’m not entirely joking. “Oh, so we’re friends now?”
