Sofia Rosa steps out the front door to fetch her groceries. Sharpness throbs at Nomi’s eyebrow; she tastes salty blood on her lip. Somewhere in the back of her mind, it registers as interesting that when she makes herself bleed, that’s good—necessary, even—but when someone else does it, it’s a totally different story. Her vision is still spinning, filmed with pink. Voices out in the first-floor hallway are garbled, like she’s under the ocean.
No—it’s not distance making the words hard to understand. Whoever’s out there is speaking Spanish.
Her vision is graying fast. Someone says, “Dónde está ella?” and Sofia Rosa says, “Here, she is here.” Then the apartment door opens, and Simon Noone strides through, shoving his beanie into his jacket pocket.
“Christ, what a mess,” he mutters, and also what seem like curse words in Spanish as he takes over with the dish towel and braces her head gently. “It’s okay, I’ve got you.”
“Oh, perfect,” Nomi says, right before she slides into the dark.
Chapter Nine
September 1987, Sunday
Simon realized five years ago, after resurfacing in Richard Flores’s village house, that some functions came back automatically, some things he had to relearn, and some things he had to pick up from scratch. With a few of the latter skills, he showed enough aptitude that Flores suspected he’d had some experience with them before; they even became instinctual.
Simon has another skill category, of course, which is “things that seem to have unfolded from inside him, fully formed.” He’s discovering more of these skills since arriving in America—he discovered a new one today, in fact. A few of them have been disquieting.
But he focuses now on one of his “studied yet instinctual” skills, which is providing medical attention. Amid all the confusion and strangeness here in America, it’s good to have a personal competency about which he’s entirely confident.
He catches Nomi as she passes out, tips her side-on over a cushion, which prevents her from falling off the couch and keeps her breathing clear. Simultaneously, he keeps pressure on her head wound with the dish towel.
“Too much blood!” Sofia Rosa declares, fluttering behind him.
“Head wounds always bleed a lot.” Swapping hands on the dish towel, he shakes out of his jacket, sits down on a footstool. He’sconsidering moving the dish towel to examine Nomi’s head when she gasps awake, her bleary eyes flaring open.
“It’s me,” he says. “Hold still.”
With a groan, she pushes herself upright.
He sighs. “Or not. But maybe don’t move around too much.”
Her face is messy with blood, and she looks disoriented. “This’s Sofia Rosa’s place.”
“Sí,” Sofia Rosa replies on automatic, still hovering as she removes her coat.
“Yes,” Simon confirms, watching Nomi’s gaze regain focus. Her pupils don’t seem too blown. “How are you feeling?”
“Like shit,” she rasps. Her head droops. “Guess this is where you get to say I told you so.”
“Is it?” He’s still maintaining pressure with the dish towel. “Seems a little brutal, under the circumstances. Okay, let’s have a look at this.”
He peels back the reddened cloth. Nomi hisses. Sofia Rosa makes tsking sounds over his shoulder. The wound is a simple one-and-a-half-inch laceration above the right eyebrow extending down to the orbital rim. Not a long cut, but it’s gaping. Edema is developing—it’ll swell more the longer they leave it. Bleeding has slowed with pressure, still seeping at the lowest edge. The right eyelid is purple.
“Bad?” Nomi’s left cheek is fiery where she’s clearly been hit.
Simon discovers something else that’s new—something cold and black and enraged, growling up inside him at the sight of Nomi’s injury. He flashes on the man who followed her: He should’ve broken his kneecaps. He’d had opportunity. If he’d had his knives from work, he could’ve made three quick cuts, groin-stomach-neck, and then—
He controls his thoughts, grimaces. “Not bad. Not great. Let me wash my hands.”
He asks Sofia Rosa to steady Nomi on the couch as he washes and rinses at the kitchen sink. He makes sure to clean under his nails. Forces himself to fall into a pattern he knows, a skill he’s familiar with. Concentrating on the task ahead helps him feel calm, methodical, likehe’s back in the clinic, or even back at his table at Gennaro’s: boots solid on the rubber mats, cimeter knife heavy in his hand, a sense of relaxation settling over him as he makes neat, precise cuts ... He returns to the footstool.
“I need to touch your face, okay?” When Nomi gives the tiniest nod, he palpates the supraorbital and infraorbital rims. The flesh is tender, but there’s no step off or indication of fracture. “Tell me if there’s pain.”
“It’s fine.” She looks like she’s controlling the urge to wince.
“Double vision? Headache?” No, it seems. “Watch my finger.”
He holds up his index finger and traces it left to right, observes her ocular movement. Seems okay. Her eyelid also seems to have normal movement. He presses the dish towel against the blood still leaking from the wound.
