One of the men waited downstairs for the doctor, where Liam insists I sit on the sofa, before the elevator chimes and the doors slide open.
He’s older than I would’ve expected, with gray hair and a slight pot belly under his sweater vest. He looks like he could be somebody’s grandfather, like he should be out on a fishing boat or on a golf course, enjoying retirement.
Instead, he goes straight to the kitchen and waves Liam in along with him. On the way in, his gaze glides over me. He arches a white, bushy eyebrow.
“My wife,” Liam explains. “I want you to check her out. Take care of her first.”
“I’m not the one who was shot!” I remind him as I get up, wincing at the pain in my knees before limping after them. Why do I care? It just seems so strange that he would care more about me than his own blood loss. I can’t figure it out.
“One thing at a time.” The doctor sets a black bag down on the kitchen table. “Sit.” He swings a chair around, setting it up with its back against the table before pointing to Liam.
Liam does as he’s told, straddling the chair, leaning against it with his elbows on the table. “You sit, too,” Liam tells me, jerking his chin at the other chairs assembled. “Put your feet up.”
“You should,” the doctor agrees. “Until I have a chance to assess you.”
“I hit my head, but I really am fine otherwise.” While I talk, he scrubs his hands at the sink, sleeves rolled up, then goes to his bag and opens it to pull out tools. All of a sudden, I feel sort of queasy. Is he seriously going to do surgery right here and now?
He notices me watching and murmurs, “Maybe he could use a drink.” It hits me the comment was meant for me. It gives me something to do, at least.
I get up and go to the little bar set up in the living room. “What do you want?” I call out.
“Whiskey,” Liam replies. “And bring the bottle with you.”
By the time I return, the doctor has cut Liam’s shirt open in the back and is cleaning the wound. I have to deliberately keepmyself from looking as I set the glass and bottle down, then take a seat again. I’m a little queasy at the sight of different metal instruments lined up on a folded dishtowel.
“Don’t worry about it,” the doctor says with a gentle chuckle, glancing at me as he works. “This is nothing compared to some of the wounds I’ve treated.”
“Do you have a lot of patients?”
“I did at one time,” he replies in a way that tells me there’s more to the story, “but I was talking about him, specifically.”
When I look at Liam, he shrugs before gulping down half of what I poured. “What can I say? I have more lives than a cat.”
When the doctor picks up a probe that I have to look away from, I ask, “You just walked around with bullet holes in you all the time?”
Dr. Baker snorts. “Something like that,” Liam says through gritted teeth. He has to be in pain, but he’s pretending otherwise. I doubt it’s for my sake.
“Not always bullets,” the doctor points out. “Knife fights were your specialty for a while there. I did a lot of stitching. You looked like Frankenstein’s monster more than once.”
I’m starting to put a picture together, and it’s not pretty. This is a man who walks around in a penthouse, wearing a Patek Philippe watch and custom-tailored suits, drinking the finest liquors, and let’s not get started on the amount of money he must have spent to put together his ambush. That’s not where he came from. How did he make the leap from knife fights to this?
“Got it.” There’s satisfaction on the old man’s face as he raises the recovered bullet, which he drops onto a folded dish towel sitting next to Liam’s elbow. “You got lucky. Again.”
“That’s my trademark.” He can try to play it off all he wants, but I can see through him. His color is a little gray, and he’s sweating.
But alive. The lucky bastard is still alive.
I might not have gotten so lucky.
I don’t want to be grateful to him. I don’t want to owe him anything. He has made it his mission ever since my abduction to taunt me, to rub his victory in my face.
But I’m pretty sure he saved my life today. How do I make any of it make sense? I don’t know how to feel as the doctor starts stitching him up, and he grunts his way through it, pouring another glass of whiskey. Really, it would be quicker if he just drank straight from the bottle.
Who is this man? “And now take care of her,” he orders the doctor once he’s stitched and a bandage has been applied. “Make sure she’s cleaned up.”
Before I can get the wrong idea or anything, he adds, “She’s still valuable to me.” If Dr. Baker thinks there’s anything strange about that, he keeps his thoughts to himself as he gently cleans the wounds on my knees.
While I sit here and try to figure out the man I’m married to, and how he became who he is.
