His knuckles were swelling fast across the third and fourth metacarpals. The skin was split in two places, and tiny flecks of wood chips and paint were embedded in the raw tissue. Blood had dried in uneven streaks down his fingers.
“It looks like you’ve got debris in there. I’ll need to clean it out. I’m going to numb it first,” she said.
“Why did this have to happen? Ivy was so beautiful.” He sniffed.
May pulled open a sterile tray and drew up lidocaine into a syringe. The smell of whiskey hit her again, strong and rich. “How much have you had to drink?”
“The whole bottle,” he slurred. “And it’s still not enough. It still hurts. She was funny and beautiful and kind. I think she was the one.”
“I’m sorry.” May positioned his hand and injected small amounts of anesthetic around the base of his fingers, creating a field block along the knuckles. He flinched once, then sagged as the medication started working.
“Give that a minute.” She irrigated the wounds with sterile saline, flushing out blood and grit into a basin. Tiny stones washed free. With fine forceps, she removed what remained, careful not to push anything deeper.
“Don’t you get it?” he said hoarsely. “Without me, she’d be alive. I should’ve saved her.”
“Jack,” May said evenly, “you were fishing all night with the senator miles away from here. Along with Peter, Lance, and Dirk Fredrickson. You had no way of knowing Ivy was in danger.”
“You don’t understand.” He sniffed hard. “We would’ve had such a good future. She was a nurse. She would’ve made a great political wife.”
May tried to keep him talking so he wouldn’t look at the injuries. The swelling along the metacarpal ridge made her uneasy. She would confirm with an X-ray. “You’re going into politics?” she asked, keeping her tone neutral while she assessed the depth of the larger split. It was deep but clean now.
“Of course I am. I’m with Kyle learning what to do and what not to do.” He swayed a bit. “That guy is serious about you. You don’t want anything to do with him, do you?”
“No,” she said honestly. “I really don’t.”
Jack blinked as if fighting to focus.
“You’re all leaving tomorrow, right?” she asked.
“Yeah. We’ve got that rafting thing tonight because we talked about it so much. Then we’re gone.” His mouth twisted. “I wish we could just get the hell out of here.”
“Ivy’s funeral will be in about a week,” May said gently as she applied antibiotic ointment to the cleaned wounds. “Her parents are still setting it up. It’s in Washington State. You could go. Or send flowers.”
His pupils were wide under the bright exam lights. Too wide.
She leaned closer. “Jack, have you taken anything besides alcohol?”
He hesitated. “Yeah. The senator’s got some decent sedatives. He can’t sleep sometimes. I took a few.”
Her stomach rolled over. “How many?”
“I don’t know.” His words were starting to blur together. “Not enough. I just can’t get her face out of my head.”
Alcohol plus an unknown sedative. Not good. “We’re going to get an X-ray to rule out a boxer’s fracture, and I need to check your vitals.”
He started crying harder, his shoulders heaving.
She rested a hand on his shoulder. “It wasn’t your fault. You were fishing that night. There was no way you could’ve known.” She wrapped the blood pressure cuff around his arm and watched the monitor as it inflated. His pulse was elevated. His oxygen saturation was holding for now. “Do you know the name of what you took?”
He shook his head slowly. “Little white pills. That’s all I know.” Mucus ran from his nose, and he wiped at it with the back of his good hand.
“Taking pills isn’t going to help. It’s terrible that Ivy died, but it wasn’t your fault. You were fishing, Jack. You have to let that go.”
His head jerked up. “I wasn’t fishing.”
May froze. “What do you mean you weren’t fishing?”
His expression turned petulant. “I didn’t go. Who told you I went?”
