Лорел Гамильтон - Rafael

“Most of it isn’t.”

Doc Lillian sighed. “The curtained areas are full, but we need to see her wound.”

They had three curtained-off areas in the locker room area, like a makeshift version of an emergency room. Someone was screaming and someone else was cursing in Spanish loudly enough to be heard over the screaming. The third curtained area had blood flowing out from under the curtains like the blood of . . . I looked away from the blood. I’d seen enough for one night. The rest of the room looked like a nice locker room at most MMA gyms, except for the big mirror in the one wall, which was usually something you saw more often in a gym that catered to mostly women.

“I need to see your wound, Anita,” Doc Lillian said.

“Okay,” I said.

“That means I need you to undress enough for me to see it.”

I nodded. “Sure.”

“I need you to take your pants down enough for me to see, Anita.”

I nodded.

“Can you do it now?” she asked.

I reached for my belt and started undoing it. I vaguely knew that I’d normally not want to be standing in plain sight for dropping trou, but it just didn’t seem like a big deal now.

Doc Lillian knelt beside me. A man I didn’t know appeared with a tray of medical supplies. Once it would have bothered me for a strange man to be in the circle with my pants halfway down my legs, but he was wearing scrubs and it was all very medical professional; besides, Pierette was my lover so the days when I was embarrassed by just men were long past, and if anyone got that big a thrill out of just seeing a little underwear and naked thigh, they could go fuck themselves.

My leg didn’t even hurt anymore until Lillian squeezed antiseptic cleaner all over it. The sharp sting of it cut through the fog in my head, and when she wiped the wound with a piece of gauze, the edges of the wound caught on the gauze. The sensation made my stomach roll.

“It’s not bad,” Lillian said, “but it will need stitches.”

I had to swallow past the nausea before I could say, “Can you numb me first?”

“Does your body react to drugs like you’re still human?” she asked.

I had to think about it. “If it’s an ordinary wound, it heals too fast for regular medical care, but this doesn’t seem to be healing that fast, so maybe?”

“It was a silver blade,” Claudia said.

“Had they tried with a regular blade first?” Lillian asked.

“No,” Claudia said, “I believe Tony meant to kill her.”

“He was trying for my inner thigh, but I turned so he couldn’t get my femoral,” I said.

“You turned so the cut would be to your outer thigh,” Lillian said.

“Yeah.”

“I believe we can numb the area before I stitch you up.”

“Great,” I said, and I meant it, because I really hated getting stitches without painkillers.

“We can wait for one of the private rooms to open up,” she said.

I shook my head. I’d decided to grit my teeth and just do it, so . . . “I’m short, I can stretch out on a bench by the lockers.”

She smiled at me as if she was proud of how brave I was being. Dr. Lillian had worked on me before and she knew what a terrible patient I usually was, but there wasn’t time for that today. I needed to get to Rafael. I don’t know if it was seeing the blood on the floor or what, but I suddenly felt an urgency to be with him. Then I realized he was worried about me, wondering where I was. I was feeling his urgency, not mine. I could control some of the connection between us, but he was powerful enough to be able to push against that control. Either way, he wasn’t wrong.

“How many more fights until the main one?” I asked as Doc Lillian ordered how she wanted me to hold the leg while I half leaned, half lay on the narrow bench.

Pierette sat down on the bench and said, “I’ll be your pillow, my queen.”

“If I’m laying my head in your lap, can you at least call me Anita, instead of my queen ?”

“For tonight, you mean?”

“Sure,” I said, and I laid my head on Pierette’s thigh. I’d never laid my head in her lap before, so there was a moment like kissing for the first time when you don’t know where the noses go, and then my cheek found that sweet point where my head rested just right on the curve of her thigh.

She offered me her hand to hold while Doc Lillian got the syringe ready. I didn’t try to be tough, just took the offered hand. I tried to find something to stare at while the doc injected the local. Did I mention that I really don’t like needles? The curtains on one of the ER “rooms” were moving as if there was a quiet fight going on inside it. I stared at the curtains and tried to piece together what was happening behind them. It gave me something to think about while the needle went in and Lillian started asking me if I could still feel when she touched my skin.

A man in scrubs came stumbling out of the curtains. I started to say “Look out” to the nurse holding the tray, but he moved smoothly out of the way without so much as moving any of the instruments. It also meant that the other nurse fell backward into Pierette and me, or would have except that she put up an arm and that was all the man needed to regain his balance.

“Did he hurt you?” Lillian asked.

The nurse raised his arm up. It was bleeding.

“Knife or claws?” she asked.

The man made a disdainful face. “He’s not powerful enough for claws.”

“Is he allowed to cut up the medical staff?” I asked.

“No,” she said.

The man who’d gotten cut said, “Yes.”

I looked at Lillian.

“My rule is that if you harm my staff, then we don’t work on you.”

The bleeding man said, “The rule here is if you can’t protect yourself, then you deserve to be hurt.”

She touched my leg. “Can you still feel this?”

“Pressure only,” I replied, then asked, “How do you guys get anything done if everything is a fight?”

“I’m going to start stitching you up.”

“Just tell me when you start, I don’t want to startle and make you drop a stitch,” I said. I tried to concentrate on the curtain that the nurse had just come out of, and then I looked at his arm. “Why aren’t you healing?”

“Silver,” the nurse said, and he didn’t seem offended by it. I’d have been pissed.

“Why did he cut you?” I asked.

“I’m starting now, Anita,” Lillian said.

“Do it, doc,” I said.

I felt the pressure of the needle and then that unsettling sensation of it starting to pull through the skin. It wasn’t sharp, so it didn’t technically hurt, which I was grateful for, but just feeling the needle go through my skin made my stomach roll a little. I held tighter to Pierette’s hand and it helped.

“Why did he cut you?” I asked again.

“Diego,” Claudia said from where she was standing over us. Apparently, she didn’t plan on any more stumbling nurses getting past her to Pierette.

I said, “Diego, why did he cut you?”

“He’s an asshole.”

“Besides that,” I said, and smiled before Lillian started tightening the stitches in my thigh. My stomach rolled again.

“Big baby can’t take a few stitches, says I hurt him on purpose.”

Claudia said, “Painkiller doesn’t work on us.”

“I’ve had stitches with no drugs, it hurts a lot.” I tried to focus on how much better this was than that. It really was better.

“Did you hurt him on purpose?” Pierette asked.

“Not yet,” Diego said.

Lillian was tugging on the stitches, which made me too aware of the hard thread going through my skin. My stomach clenched and tried to do a flip-flop at the same time. I squeezed Pierette’s hand tighter.