Page 4 of Kaine

Chapter Two

HIM

“I don’t care. Findher a private room or I’m going to take her somewhere else.” I turn from the nurses’ station before they can argue with me again. Pulling my hood tighter around me, I step behind the curtain to where the woman lies, hooked up to a saline IV and oxygen monitor. The ER department is a freaking shambles here and it’s taken over two hours for her to get all her tests done. I’m just glad that she is still unconscious, making it easier on her, the doctors...and me.

The ride here wasn’t as easy. She kept waking up and asking questions, the same ones, over and over. The more she asked them, the more I was afraid that her head injury was the worst of her wounds. That is until I saw the blood stain she left on my sweater from when I held her.

Fuck! I am an idiot, I curse myself. I hadn’t even thought to check her for injuries and maybe I could’ve lessened the severity if I’d stopped the blood loss from her back as well as her collarbone. I cringe at the memory of pulling her dress up to examine her wound. The knife had cut deep and long.

“Hhmmummmuhmmm,” she mumbles in her sleep, and I get up to make sure she is okay. Her face is so bruised, a black eye spreading across almost her entire forehead and down her right cheek. The blood is still caked in her hair from her fall, Bordeaux red against her thick, chestnut brown curly locks.

She looks so peaceful in her sleep, and I am glad. I don’t know if I’ll ever forget the look on her face when I came jogging into that dark alley and saw the knife against her throat, her attacker threatening her life. Her large brown eyes wide with fear and shiny with tears. Her soft cry for help before she fainted. And then, in my arms, she fell against my chest, murmuring gently, “thank you for saving me,” and then slept.

She looked beautiful, like a perfect porcelain doll lit by the growing moonlight. Broken doll, though.

Beautiful? Shut up, man,I say to myself. Those aren’t the thoughts I am meant to be having.

An intern pokes his head around the curtain interrupting my thoughts. “Mr...? Um.”

“Just call me K,” I answer, not talking my eyes off the woman.

“Um, okay, Mr...um, K.”

“What?” I snap.

“Well, we have the results of her tests.” He stops, as if not sure how to continue.

I brace myself, “Well? What do they say?”

“Um, Mr. K... are you, er, are you family?”

“No.” I turn and stare at him, daring him to challenge me.

He squirms and look away, fidgeting with the clipboard in his hands. “Then I’m sorry but I can’t...”

I cut him off, “I saved her when two thugs had a knife against her neck, had stabbed her in the back and slit her collarbone, so without me she’d be dead. So, you can consider me her goddamned guardian angel and cut the bureaucratic red tape bull shit and just fucking tell me if she’s okay.”

He opens his mouth, then closes it. Geez, he looks like he’s going to cry.

I inwardly roll my eyes and try again, softening my voice as much as I can. “Sorry, it was a tough night. Look I just want to know that she’s okay.”

He sighs and looks a little sorry for me. Pity. Great. Well, whatever gets me what I need.

“She... um, she should be fine. She doesn’t have any bleeding in her brain, and the knife wounds are just flesh wounds. Once she wakes up, we’ll probably keep her here for a couple of days for observation and then she can go home.”

There’s a rush a relief through me. “Thank you, doctor.”

“You can... um, I mean, if you want to keep an eye on her, you can stay overnight. I can get a nurse to set up a cot for you.”

I look at him, peering through the opening of my hoodie, not answering. He squirms again, shuffling his feet and clearing his throat.

“Do we know her name yet?”

He shakes his head. “No, the police haven’t found her identity yet. The thieves were gone when they got there and they’d taken her bag with them, so no ID has been found.”

“So, you don’t know if she has insurance?”

“Um, no, but that...”

“Print out the bill for me. I’ll pay it.”

“Well, the accounting department has to work that out. I can send it to you...”

“No, I’ll come back for it. Just remember, I’ll take care of it. She’s not to be burdened by it.”

“Yes sir.”

He smiles at me with a weird look in his eye and leaves.

“And get her a fucking private room, now!” I yell after him.

I hate having to repeat myself.