“I think an infected prick is probably where this started but even if we go with your take, you still need someone to make sure you’re not bleeding out internally or something.” After a brief pause, I add, “That seems on par with your current run of luck.”
Her mouth opens to make some smart retort, then she hitches her right knee a little higher and her face screws up with pain.
“You have terrible taste in men,” I joke to distract her. “Anyone ever told you that?”
“Joseph doesn’t count as a man,” she says through gritted teeth as I fumble at the clinic door, trying to hold her and swipe my card and push it open all at the same time.
“Here,” she says, swiping her entry pass. “Thanks for the lift. You don’t need to stay.”
“Man, I hope that’s just the pain talking because if that’s your assessment of our situation, you need your head examined.”
I set her in a chair and briefly explain what happened to the medical receptionist, who scurries through to interrupt the doctor. While we wait, I sit in the chair next to Esme, stroking the hair back from her face, dotted with sweat from the pain.
“What if Joseph comes after you, now?” she asks miserably, and my heart has an uptick at her concern.
“I’m no expert on rampant misogyny—”
She snorts, interrupting with, “Are you sure about that?”
“—but even I know that a man who’ll punch a teeny tiny woman probably won’t attack a full grown man.”
“Call yourself grown.”
I lean over so I can pull her head against my chest. The random insults are a better sign she’s not too badly hurt than any other signal she’s currently broadcasting.
The doctor comes out and crosses straight to Esme. “Have you coughed up any blood?”
A shake of her head.
“Can you move your hand aside? I just want to have a quick feel.”
The doctor crouches down, doubling her hands one on top of the other before softly pressing against Esme’s abdomen. She tries three spots without reaction. On the fourth, Esme lets out an elongated moan, her legs trying to retract.
“I have a patient with me just now, but once I’m finished, I’ll have you come straight through. Can you walk?”
“Sure.”
“No, you can’t.” I brush aside Esme’s protestations and turn to the doctor. “I can carry her through to the exam room.”
“Okay.”
Her worried eyes move from her patient to me and back again. There’s the tiniest flicker of recognition and the concern I had six weeks earlier, about Esme telling tales on me, the one I dismissed, comes back for an unwelcome second visit.
I spend a tense seven minutes waiting to be called through, then get summarily dismissed from the consulting room, leaving me outside waiting for the doctor to complete her examination, waiting for the verdict.
A verdict I only get second hand because privacy blah blah blah.
“I’m fine,” Esme says, waving away my concerns as though it’s not obvious to everyone on the planet that she’s still in agony. “Just some bruising.”
“Is that true?” I ask the doctor directly, but she refuses to be drawn.
“Don’t you need another appointment at least?” I ask as Esme slowly makes her way out the door, hissing through her teeth when she has to descend the two steps from the building to ground level.
“I want to stay with you overnight, keep an eye on you.”
Esme starts to say something, give her usual excuse about school rules like her adherence to them is a saintly quality, then shakes her head. “Okay.”
She pulls out her phone, displaying an electronic script signed in such indecipherable handwriting it could only be made by a doctor. “She wrote this out for the pain. Can you help me to the pharmacy to get it filled?”
