‘What she said . . .’ His voice trailed off again. He sounded distraught. ‘It doesn’t matter. Not to me.’
Sara didn’t believe him. The fact of Angie’s death hadn’t yet sunk in. ‘It mattered to her. It’s probably the last thing she wrote before she died.’
He lifted the glass of Scotch. He threw back the drink, and then he almost coughed it all back up.
Sara pulled a paper towel off the roll and handed it to him.
His eyes were watering. He wiped the mess off the counter. He was sweating. He looked shaken. And he should be. Angie was dead. She had begged him for help. He hadn’t been able to save her, not this time when it really mattered. Thirty years of his life was gone. He was probably in shock. Alcohol was the last thing he needed.
Sara took the glass away from him and put it in the sink. ‘Wait for me in your bathroom.’ She didn’t give him time to respond. She found her glasses on the couch and walked down the hall to her office. She pulled down her medical bag from the closet shelf. She turned around.
She did not want to leave the room.
She stood by her desk, holding the bag, willing herself to calm down.
There was no way to fix this. She couldn’t stitch together their relationship like she could stitch together his leg. Talking around the problem was only delaying the inevitable. And yet she didn’t have it in her to confront him. She was frozen in place, terrified of what might come if they really talked about what had happened, what was coming next. Sara couldn’t guess the future. There was just a blank expanse of unknown. All she could do was stand in the darkened office listening to the blood rushing through her ears. She counted to fifty, then one hundred, and then she made herself move.
The hallway seemed longer than it ever had before. More like an arduous journey than a stroll. Will’s bathroom was in the spare bedroom. Sara had designated a separate area for Will for the benefit of their relationship. When she finally rounded the corner, he was waiting for her in the doorway.
She said, ‘Take off your pants.’
Will stared at her.
‘It’s easier than trying to roll up your jeans.’ She emptied her medical bag into the sink. She laid out the tools she would need. ‘Take off your pants. Take off your socks. Stand in the tub. I need to clean the wound.’
Will obeyed the orders, giving a slight wince when he peeled the jeans away from his leg. He had bled through the bandage, which was little more than an oversized Band-Aid. He stood in the tub.
‘Take off the bandage.’ Sara looked for a pair of gloves, then thought better of it. If Angie had given Will a disease, Sara already had it. She put on her glasses. ‘Turn sideways.’
Will turned. The leg was worse than she’d expected. This was more than a few splinters. He had a deep two-and-a-half-inch laceration down the side of his calf. Debris had crusted into the blood. It was too late for sutures. She would be sewing in an infection.
She asked, ‘Did you wash it?’
‘I tried in the shower, but it hurt.’
‘This is going to hurt more.’ Sara unwrapped the bottle of Betadine. She closed the toilet lid so she could sit down. She didn’t give him any warning before she blasted a steady stream of cold antiseptic directly into the wound.
Will grabbed the curtain rod, almost ripping it from the wall. He hissed air between his teeth.
‘Okay?’ she asked.
‘Yep.’
Sara jetted out a chunk of debris. He’d done a poor job of cleaning the site. Caked blood dropped onto the white porcelain tub. Will lifted up onto his toes. He had braced his hands on the curtain rod and shower head. His teeth were clenched. So much for the Hippocratic Oath. Sara had gone from being a caring doctor to a passive-aggressive bitch. She put down the bottle. Will’s leg was shaking. ‘Do you want me to numb you?’
He shook his head. His shirt had ridden up. He was holding his breath. She could see every single clenched muscle in his abdomen.
Sara felt the full weight of her transgression. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t want to hurt you. I mean, obviously, I did, but I—’
‘It’s okay.’
‘No, it’s not okay, Will. It’s not okay.’
Her words echoed in the bathroom. She sounded angry. She was angry. Both of them knew that Sara wasn’t talking about his leg.
He said, ‘I know why Angie took your lipstick.’
Sara waited.
‘She was trying to bully you. I should’ve stopped her.’
‘How?’ Sara genuinely wanted to know. ‘It’s like the note she left for you on the wall at the club. She knew that Charlie or somebody would luminol the area. That I would see it. That it would be a public thing. She does what she wants to do.’
‘The wall.’ Will nodded, as if that explained everything. ‘Yeah.’
‘Yeah,’ Sara agreed, which brought them right back to where they had started.
She wet some gauze under the tub faucet and used it to wipe off the Betadine. Will eventually lowered his heel. She scooped warm water onto his leg and foot, rubbing away the iodine stain. She’d made a mess of everything. Even the hand towel she used to pat him dry showed streaks of yellow-brown from the antiseptic.
Sara told him, ‘The hard part’s over. I can still numb you. Some of the splinters are deep.’
‘I’m fine.’
Sara took a flashlight out of the drawer. She found the tweezers from her bag. There were several tiny black splinters just below the surface of his skin. She counted three that were deeper, more like shards of wood. They would’ve been jabbing him every time he took a step.
She folded the hand towel and knelt on the tile floor so she could get at the splinters.
Will flinched before she touched him.
‘Try to relax the muscle.’
‘I’m trying.’
She made the offer again. ‘I have some lidocaine right here. It’s a tiny needle.’
‘I’m fine.’ His death grip on the curtain rod said otherwise.
This time, Sara tried to be gentle. As a pediatric intern, she’d spent hours sewing sutures onto peaches in order to train a softer touch into her hands. Still, there was no way to get around some types of hurt. Will remained stoic, even as she worked a piece of wood the size of a toothpick out of the open gash.
‘I’m sorry,’ she repeated, because she hated the thought of hurting him. At least she hated it now. ‘This one is really deep.’
‘It’s okay.’ He allowed a breath, but only so he could speak. ‘Just hurry.’
Sara tried to hurry, but it didn’t help that Will’s calf was a concrete block. She remembered the first time she’d seen him in running shorts. She’d felt a rush of heat at the sight of his lean, muscular legs. He ran five miles a day, five days a week. Most of the time he took a detour to the local high school, where he sprinted up and down the stadium steps. There were sculptures in Florence with less definition.
‘Sara?’
She looked up at him.
‘I could’ve gotten stronger locks for the doors. A Flip Guard. An alarm. I’m sorry I didn’t do that. It was disrespectful to you.’
Sara carefully worked out the last splinter. Now that he was talking about it, Sara didn’t want to have the conversation. She sat back on her heels. She put down the tweezers. She hooked her glasses on her collar. Will was standing in front of her in his boxers. His arms were still raised over his head. The alcohol inside of her suggested that there was an easy way to get them through the night.
Will said, ‘Everyone’s been telling me what it’s like to lose somebody.’
Sara reached into the sink for the bandage roll and some fresh gauze.
‘Faith told me about her dad dying. Amanda told me about her mother. Did you know she hanged herself?’
Sara shook her head as she tied the bandage around Will’s leg.
‘I’m just going to tell myself that Angie’s where she always goes when she leaves me. Wherever that is.’
Sara stood up. She washed her hands.