“I can’t tell you how lucky I feel.” Looking at his knee, I added, “Sit here.” I lowered the toilet lid.
“Do you want me to take my pants off?”
“Either that or we cut them.” He sat down.
“They’re ruined anyway.” With a scalpel, I sliced through the fine wool fabric of his left trouser leg while he sat very still, his leg fully extended. The cut on his knee was deep, and I shaved around it and washed it thoroughly, placing towels on the floor to blot bloody water dripping everywhere. As I led Wesley back into the bedroom, he limped over to the bottle of Scotch and refilled his glass.
“And by the way,” I told him, “I appreciate the thought, but I don’t drink before surgery.”
“I guess I should be grateful,” he answered.
“Yes, you should be.” He seated himself on the bed, and I took the chair, moving it close. I tore open foil packets of Betadine and began to swipe his wounds.
“Jesus,” he said under his breath.
“What is that, battery acid?”
“It’s a topical antibacterial iodine.”
“You keep that in your medical bag?”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t realize first aid was an option for most of your patients.”
“Sadly, it isn’t. But I never know when I might need it.” I reached for the forceps.
“Or when someone else at a scene might–like you.” I withdrew a sliver of glass and placed it on the towel.
“I know this may come as a great shock to you. Special Agent Wesley, but I started out my career with living patients.”
“And when did they start dying on you?”
“Immediately.” He tensed as I extracted a very small sliver.
“Hold still,” I said.
“So what’s Marino’s problem? He’s been a total ass lately.”
I placed two more slivers of glass on the towel and stanched the bleeding with gauze.
“You’d better take another swallow of your drink.”
“Why?”
“I’ve gotten all of the glass.”
“So you’re finished and we’re celebrating.” He sounded the most relieved I had ever heard him.
“Not quite.” I leaned close to his hand, satisfied that I had not missed anything. Then I opened a suture packet.
“Without Novocain?” he protested.
“As few stitches as you need to close these cuts, numbing you would hurt as much as the needle,” I calmly explained, gripping the needle with the forceps.
“I’d still prefer Novocain.”
“Well, I don’t have any. It might be better if you don’t look. Would you like me to turn on the TV?” Wesley stoically stared away from me as he answered between clenched teeth! “Just get it over with.” He did not utter a protest while I worked, but as I touched his hand and leg I could feel him tremble. He took a deep breath and began to relax when I dressed his wounds with Neosporin and gauze.
“You’re a good patient.” I patted his shoulder as I got up.
“Not according to my wife.”
I could not remember the last time he had referred to Connie by name. On the rare occasion he mentioned her at all, it was a fleeting allusion to a force he seemed conscious of, like gravity.
“Let’s sit outside and finish our drinks,” he said. The balcony beyond my room door was a public one that stretched the entire length of the second floor. At this hour the few guests who might have been awake were too far away to hear our conversation. Wesley arranged two plastic chairs close together. We had no table between us, so he set our drinks and bottle of Scotch on the floor.
“Do you want more ice?” he asked.
“This is fine.” He had turned off lamps inside the room, and beyond us the barely discernible shapes of trees began to move in concert the longer I stared at them. Headlights were small and sporadic along the distant highway.
“On a scale of one to ten, how awful would you rank this day?” he spoke quietly in the dark.
I hesitated, for I had known many awful days in my career.
“I suppose I’d give it a seven.”
“Assuming ten’s the worst.”
“I have yet to have a ten.”