“I’m just saying!”
She gave me a dirty glare but crooked her arm around my neck as I slid her across the seat. The chauffeur opened the door and helped hoist her into my arms.
“Where are we?”
“We’re at the address Mr. Angelo told me to put into my GPS,” he said.
The mystery address was a huge brick home that was four stories tall and goodness only knew how many square feet. We were parked in front of four garages, and one of the doors was coming up.
“Come on in,” said a man, hunched over with age. He’d clearly been expecting us. He didn’t wait to make sure we were following before turning around to lead the way. We passed a seventy-eight Sting-Ray Corvette to the right and a Ducati motorcycle to the left. Then we went up some steps and into the world’s largest mud room.
“This is incredible,” Aubrey mumbled.
We stopped at a table with a bench in what had to be the breakfast nook. The kitchen beyond was commercial grade with granite counters and all kinds of cabinets. The doctor sat down a small plastic tub full of liquid. “Put your foot in there and then tell me more about what happened.”
Aubrey kept her eyes on the doctor and told him the story as I unwrapped her foot and gently placed it in warm water that immediately went pink.
“Huh,” the doctor said after she was finished. “You really got a three off Zeke?”
She grinned, and a part of me relaxed in relief.
“I sure did, and it’s going to be worth the stitches.”
The doctor chuckled. “We’ll see about that. You let that foot soak for just a few minutes in that antiseptic solution, and we’ll see how brave you really are. I’ve got my kit, but I’m going to need more light and a better pair of glasses. I’m used to dealing with bigger feet than yours!” He walked out of the room to gather his supplies.
“Sweet of him, but that’s a size nine and a half down there,” Aubrey quipped. She seemed to be studying the kitchen to keep from thinking about her foot.
“You know what they say about women with big feet,” I said, raising my eyebrows.
Her eyes turned to me, and she scowled. “No. What is that?”
“It was a joke! I was just trying to lighten the mood.”
“I can talk about my big feet, but you have to pretend that they are dainty, thank you very much.”
“They are dainty. I like the blue nail polish.”
She made the mistake of looking down and immediately looked back up with a nauseated grimace on her face.
I struggled to think of something to get her mind off the injury, but I couldn’t think of anything. Blessedly, the doctor returned about that time and began his ministrations.
“Think you could lie down on the table?”
“Uh, I guess?”
“Help her up, son. This would be easier in the emergency room, but you would’ve had to have waited a lot longer for it. And I am quite the seamstress, if I do say so myself.”
I hoisted Aubrey up on the table, and she lay down, trying to be demure with her short little skirt with one leg in the air. I draped my suit coat over her skirt, even though the doctor and I were too intent on her foot to be anything less than gentlemen.
With a light on his head and stronger glasses, he checked for shards of glass and bits of asphalt before declaring, “Clean cut, not even jagged. If you’re gonna cut yourself, that’s the way you wanna do it.”
“Yay me?” Aubrey said from the table, her hands clenched at her sides.
“A little numbing agent,” he said as he inserted a hypodermic. Then he got out his needle and thread.
I had to look away this time. I was holding up Aubrey’s leg with my left arm so I reached to hold her hand with my right. She squeezed tightly.
Our eyes met. I moved ever so slightly to block her view of her own foot. I didn’t like how pale her face was or how she’d pressed her lips into a thin line of concentration.
