I reach for my phone.
One of his eyes flickers open. The only one that can, I think.
“Don’t,” he croaks out.
“What the hell happened to you?”
I already know what happened. He tried to prey on the wrong person and he got his shit handed to him.
“I had a disagreement with some gentlemen,” he says. “I need some time to recover. I don’t believe they know about you, so this should be a relatively safe place.”
I should kick him out. I should go to the cops. I should…
I go to the kitchen, get a bowl of warm water, a towel, and some soap, and come back and sit on the side of the bed next to him.
“You bled all over my floor,” I say. “You’re probably bleeding all over my bed, too, you know that?”
“I’ll replace whatever…”
“Stop talking,” I say. “You need your strength to recover from whatever happened. Were you shot? Do you need a doctor? How come you didn’t just go to your house and call one of your evil doctors?”
“If they don’t kill me, your questions will,” he says.
“Do you need a doctor?”
“I’ve called one,” he says. “I got patched up at the time, but…”
“Did you call a cleaner, too? And a bed store?”
That one eye focuses on me with annoyance. “Is this your idea of being helpful, Laura?”
He’s managing to lecture me even in this state. I don’t particularly care for his tone.
“I am being helpful. I’m letting you use my bed as a full body sanitary pad,” I say.
“You’re angry at me,” he says. “You think I abandoned you after Vegas.”
“There was a different woman teaching class today,” I say. “She wasn’t you.”
“A sin for which she will never atone,” he says dryly.
Knock. Knock.
The doctor is here. He’s a tall, lean man with a serious expression. He’s younger than I expect him to be. Mid-twenties, maybe. Barely old enough to be qualified. Probably a med student moonlighting in the underworld to pay off his student loans. The idea sounds far-fetched, but I’m pretty sure that has to be what is happening.
“Dr. Black,” he says as he walks right past me into my house, following the trail of blood to the bedroom, where he opens a black bag and starts poking around Sam.
“A few inches to the left or right,” he mutters.
“And?” Sam asks the question. “They would have killed me?”
“And they would have missed you entirely,” Dr. Black says.
I snort. I like this guy. He’s funny. Even Sam grunts with appreciation.
“It’s a shallow wound and it’s missed anything super important,” the doctor says. “But it’s going to hurt for a while, and you need to stay clear of other murderous activities for a few weeks at least.”
I turn my eyes away as he stitches the wounds that must have just had gauze or something pushed into them before. He must have patched himself up, then come to my house, moved something in the kitchen that made him bleed, then just collapsed on my bed.
