Page 45 of Devil

A taut satisfaction thrums in my chest at that, and now I really can’t move because I’m getting hard.I’d like him to stay.Fuck me.

I kiss the side of her head as I move my leg so it hangs down the side of the bed, out of the way, and Dr. Curtis smiles at us.

Oh, Dr. Curtis. You’d be so disappointed if you knew.

Birdie explains that she fell off a ladder and didn’t have the time or money to waste on a hospital trip. She also explains—a little peevishly, I think—that she wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t insisted.

I just smile at the doctor and nurse, who are listening to Birdie nonjudgmentally but clearly thinking she’s silly as hell for not coming in. The nurse at least is silently planning to hand Birdie pamphlets about patient assistance and financial aid for medical bills, like Birdie doesn’t know all this already and for a six-county radius no less.

But I appreciate the validation. Some things can’t be helped, and going to the ER for ripping up your fucking leg is one of them.

“The first step will be getting this tape off so we can get a good look,” Dr. Curtis says as the nurse puts a fresh chux pad on the bed like a tablecloth and lays some gauze squares on it, followed by a handful of white blister packs. Each one has an ampoule of orange-ish liquid inside. “This might feel cold, but it won’t hurt until we get close to the wound, okay?”

Birdie nods. She’s shivering a little again, and I wrap both arms around her, tucking my chin on her shoulder. “The worst thing, remember?” I whisper in her ear.

“The worst thing,” she repeats, also in a whisper, like she’s reminding herself.

Dr. Curtis breaks the inner vial inside the ampoule, opens the blister pack, and then uses the now-saturated cotton tip to start wetting the corner of the duct tape. It’s some kind of adhesive remover, because soon, she and the nurse pull up a full corner of the tape and work their way in toward the injury.

It’s painstaking work, and I can tell when they start getting closer to the wound because Birdie gets tenser and tenser in my arms. But she doesn’t make a sound, my brave girl, my stoic little Catholic.

Dr. Curtis is professional but less circumspect with her noises, and I’ve already gathered from the pitch of the noises she’s been making in her throat that things are not good under the tape. Finally, she and the nurse lift the entire strip of tape away; the nurse dabs gently at Birdie’s calf with wipe after wipe while Dr. Curtis snaps off her gloves and goes to get a fresh pair.

“So,” the doctor says, pulling on the fresh gloves as the nurse bundles the used wipes, ampoules, and duct tape into the chux tablecloth and throws all of it away. “We’ll definitely need stitches. I think I can get away with just a few dissolvable ones in the muscle, but then we’ll need stitches going from here to here.” She’s pointing at spots on Birdie’s leg with a blue-gloved finger. “However, what concerns me the most is this.” Now she’s pointing at the edges of Birdie’s injury, at the dark red lines reaching outward from the torn flesh. “That’s an infection.”

A muscle beneath my jaw starts twitching. “It’s infected?”

“Pretty thoroughly. I think we’re only at the beginning, however, and I don’t think I’ll need to keep you here for observation.So long asI can do a batch of IV antibiotics, send you home with more, and then make sure you’re following up with your primary care provider?”

I cut in before Birdie can say she doesn’t have one. “We’ll definitely follow up. And are you sure we don’t need to keep her in overnight? Or over the week?”

Or maybe install round-the-clock medical care in my house?

Dr. Curtis gives us a comforting expression. “I do think you’re safe to go home, as long I can give you IV antibiotics here and some oral ones to take at home. It’s very important that you finish the full prescription and that you come back the minute your pain gets worse, or you notice discoloration in that leg, or you start showing signs of a fever.”

“I—” Birdie takes a breath. “Okay. Yes. Whatever I need to do.”

“I’ll make sure she does all of it,” I say. It comes out a little ominous, but I don’t care. I just got this little genius back in my arms. I’m not losing her to afucking ladder.

There’s some typing on a laptop, a casual mention of something being ordered for pain, and then the new IV bag is hung while the antibiotics and pain meds start dripping into Birdie’s system. She stiffens a little when they numb her leg with local anesthesia and again as Dr. Curtis starts suturing, but I hear her murmurthe worst thing today, and within a few moments, she relaxes back against me.

By the time the suturing is finished, the IV bag is half gone, and Birdie is stoned in my arms. The nurse smiles at us and turns off the lights, promising to be back in an hour to remove the IV and discharge us.

“You weren’t worried,” Birdie says, the torpor making her words slow and dazed.

“You’re lying again,” I say. “I was extremely worried. I’m still extremely worried.” If we hadn’t come in…if that infection had festered under that duct tape with me oblivious…

My grip on her tightens. The fear makes me want to roar, threaten the sky, fight God himself. He’s not allowed to take another person I love away from me, and fuck him for trying.

“No,” she says, overly careful with her words in the way intoxicated people often are. “You weren’t worried about me telling the nurses the truth about you.”

“Oh. That. No, I wasn’t worried.”

“But why not?”

“What’s going to happen if the police get involved? The worst they can charge me with is solicitation. Maybe domestic criminal deprivation of property since I haven’t driven you back to get your car yet, but that would depend on how you framed the past two days, I guess. Anyway, they’re both misdemeanors.”

“You’re so…” A long, drugged sigh. “Casual about crime.”