He raised a brow. “You just ripped my scrubs off. I think you can call me Louie, don’t you?”
Izzy placed a Sharpie she’d found under the couch at the center of the knot, then tied the fabric again. She began to twist the Sharpie, which wound the cotton around, tightening the new tourniquet. The blood flow trickled, stopped. “There,” she said. “That’s more like it.” She grabbed a roll of tape, awkwardly tugging it with her teeth so that she could secure the tourniquet in place. Then she looked at her wrist. It was just after twelve-thirty. Now, the countdown began: she had stopped Dr. Ward from bleeding out, but without arterial flow, there would eventually be ischemic damage to the tissue. If that binding stayed in place longer than two hours, there could be muscle or nerve injury. Six hours, and he would have to have his leg amputated.
Maybe by then they’d be rescued.
Dr. Ward patted her hand as she finished taping the tourniquet. “We make a good team,” he said. “Thank you.” He lifted his leg onto a chair so that it would be elevated above his heart.
She looked at Bex, still lying on the floor, deathly pale but stable.
Now that Izzy didn’t have a medical emergency to occupy her hands, they started shaking. She grabbed her right with her left.
“I haven’t seen you here before, have I?” Dr. Ward murmured.
Izzy shook her head. She started to answer, but then hesitated as the shooter passed by, talking to himself under his breath.
When he was on the other side of the room, the doctor spoke again. “You got a husband out there worrying about you?”
He was speaking quietly, creating a bubble of conversation just big enough for the two of them. “No,” she said. “Just a boyfriend.”
“Just a boyfriend?” he teased.
“Maybe a fiancé…”
“Maybe like you can’t remember?” Dr. Ward chuckled. “Or maybe like you haven’t decided yet?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Girl, I got nothing but time.” Dr. Ward grinned.
“It’s not that easy. We come from really different places,” Izzy explained.
“Palestine and Israel?”
“What? No…”
“Mars and Venus?” Dr. Ward asked. “Union and Confederacy?”
“Parker grew up eating caviar. I grew up eating when we had enough money for food.” Immediately, Izzy flushed beet red. She didn’t talk about her upbringing. She tried, on a daily basis, to forget it.
She and Parker had been together for three years. They hardly ever fought, and when they did, it always came down to the difference in their backgrounds.
There was the time they had only been dating a few weeks when she had come across him scrolling through social media on his phone. He’d murmured,Valencia looks nice.
Let me guess. She’s someone you went to school with.Jealousy had bristled through Izzy. Women with names like that had trust funds and ski instructors.
Parker had held out his phone to show her that it was the name of the new Instagram filter.
Someone’s jealous,he had teased.
I told you I’m not perfect.
Nope,Parker had said.But you’re perfect for me.
Another time, they had just moved in together and he’d put his glass on the coffee table they had just bought at a yard sale.How could you not use a coaster?she’d snapped.
It’s a twenty-dollar table,he had said, incredulous.
Izzy could not imagine spending that much on an item and not treating it like it was precious.Exactly,she’d said.
