Greg Rucka - Walking dead

"She's just standing there, she shouldn't need to be told to help," Alena said. "This one on your side I don't like. You are tearing it when you move."

"We should probably do something about that."

She knelt down on her haunches, putting the wound at eye level, careful not to touch it. "Only blood?"

"Far as I know."

"So maybe the peritoneum was not perforated." She hissed softly. "I don't want to risk infection, or further infection. We need to sterilize, and we'll need to stitch it."

"Can you do that yourself?" Bridgett had a couple of towels over one arm, was carrying a porcelain bowl with a matching porcelain pitcher resting in it.

"I don't know nothin' about birthin' no babies," I said.

Both women glared at me.

"Nothing," I said. "Never mind."

Bridgett handed Alena a small bottle of antibacterial hand wash. "This help?"

"We need things," Alena said, taking the bottle. She squirted a generous amount onto her hands, began rubbing them vigorously together. "Ringer's solution and a catheter. Betadine or some other sterile wash. Saline, a lot of it. Needle-nose pliers. Thin needle, thin thread, silk is ideal. Antibiotics if we can get them, a Z-Pak would be best."

"I should be able to get all that in Galway. Everything but the Ringer's, at least."

"Then what are you waiting for?"

"Fucking," said Bridgett. "Bitch." It was dark in the room when Bridgett returned, to find Alena sitting beside me, still holding the towel she was using as a bandage to apply pressure to the wound. I'd either slept or passed out since Bridgett had left, depending on whether one wanted to be charitable.

Bridgett flipped on the lights, then moved to the foot of the bed to dump out the contents of the plastic shopping bag she was carrying. Alena stopped her.

"Show me."

The look Bridgett gave her would've dropped a charging rhino. With a deliberation verging on surliness, she began removing items from the bag, one at a time. Alena told her where she wanted each set down. When she produced two bags of Ringer's solution and a catheter, Alena actually made a noise of approval.

"Did I get everything, ma'am?" Bridgett asked.

"We're going to need more light," Alena replied. "And a candle or lighter."

It took Bridgett a couple of minutes to gather the items and then return, during which time Alena left the bandage at my side to use the antiseptic wash on my arm and hook up the first bag of Ringer's. Bridgett returned as the catheter was going in, and she winced visibly at the sight. She asked Alena where she wanted the lamp she was carrying, placed it as directed.

In my daze, I realized something.

"When was the last time you did this?"

"Long time ago. Afghanistan." She actually smiled at me. "The vet in Poti was a good reminder."

"You are motherfucking kidding me," Bridgett said. "Let's take him to the goddamn hospital!"

"It's the same procedure," said Alena. "We can do this. Come here."

Together, they rolled me onto my right side, propping me up with more pillows. When Alena pulled the towel away from the wound, it pulled the clot that had formed with it, causing fresh pain and bringing fresh blood. She dumped all of one of the bottles of saline on the wound, irrigating it, soaking the bed and the pillows in the process with a mixture of blood and salt water. Then she dumped the antiseptic wash into the basin, scrubbing her hands and forearms. I smelled fire, saw Bridgett prepping the needle. When it was ready, she offered the pliers to Alena.

"No," Alena said, washing the length of thread she'd prepared in the basin. "We might cross-contaminate. You will stitch."

"The fuck you say," Bridgett said.

"I will hold the wound closed, you will do the stitching."

"Not me, sister."

"Ebi tvoyu boga dush mat'! Yes, you! Come here!"

"I can't sew him shut! I can't do it!"

I managed to raise my head, focused as best I could on Bridgett. I wasn't sure I was following. "You've got a hoop through your nostril. You have a half pound's worth of earrings in each of your ears."

"That's different! I didn't have to give myself the piercings!"

"You used to fucking shoot heroin, Bridgett," I said. "Don't tell me you're afraid of needles."

"Why do you think I'm scared of them, motherfucker?"

Alena swore in Russian again, this time to herself. I thought for certain the next thing she'd say in English would be a threat, and I was still present enough to know that if it was, things would go all the way downhill.

"Please, Bridgett," Alena said. "I need your help."

Bridgett stared at her. "Don't try to play me. Never fucking do that, okay?"

"Okay."

It took another second, then Bridgett moved out of my line of sight, to join Alena behind me. There was more explanation from Alena, what she wanted Bridgett to do, and then I felt the needle pushing through my skin, and it surprised me because it hurt a hell of a lot more than I'd expected. They worked slowly and carefully, and that didn't help, either. It hurt enough that I hadn't realized they were finished until they were moving the pillows, rolling me onto my back.

"Done?" I asked.

"Done," Alena told me.

"Good," I said, and fell asleep then and there, in my blood-and saline-soaked bed.

Twenty-eight The day after they closed the wound in my side, Bridgett drove me back to Dublin, this time to drop me off at the airport, rather than to pick me up. I was clean-shaven, wearing my new suit and a clean shirt, with a new pair of glasses that Bridgett had gotten made for me at a one-hour place while I'd been sleeping most of the previous day away. The stitches in my side itched, the skin tight, and again I was suffering cotton-mouth, but now it was due to the antibiotics I was taking, and not from the fact that I was in compensated shock. While I'd been unconscious, Alena and Bridgett had also sewn up the cut in my forearm. My palm they'd left to a bandage and more superglue.

"You have any reason to believe this place you're going to in Nevada will get you what you want?"

"None at all," I said. "But I think the information is accurate."

"Why's that?"

"Because the guy who gave it to me believed I would kill him if it wasn't."

"Did you?" She didn't take her eyes off the road.

"No," I said.

Bridgett slowed to pay the toll over the River Liffey. Dublin spread out to the east, hidden in the rain. As she accelerated again, she said, "Guy sells people into slavery."

"Yes, he does."

"Explain this to me."

"Explain what?"

"That fucker didn't deserve to live. But you let him go."

"You think I should have punched his ticket?"

"If anyone was going to do it…"

"I thought about it," I admitted. "This other guy, too, Arzu Kaya. Pure piece of human excrement, that one. I thought about killing them both."

"But you didn't."

I shook my head.

"Why didn't you?"

"It's not about them," I said. "It's about me." I'd booked my flight as Matthew Twigg, flying Continental to Seattle via Newark. Maybe it was because I'd been doing so damn much travel, maybe it was because I'd be flying into the U.S. again, but I took extra precautions this time to reinforce my cover. I abandoned the duffel that had seen me through the last four weeks of globe-trotting, exchanging it for a nice leather two-piece set, one rolling bag, the other a messenger. The rolling bag I loaded with clothes and appropriate toiletries. The messenger carried my laptop and its attendant cables, as well as copies of The Financial Times and The Economist. I still had Bakhar's little black book and Vladek Karataev's BlackBerry, as well. The little black book I kept in the messenger bag. The BlackBerry I put in a case on my hip, even going so far as to buy a Bluetooth headset for it.