“Mom!” the girl protested. “We need that. As a disinfectant, not a drink.”
“I know, Darla, but he’s got to be hurting. This will take the edge off.” She held the mug to my lips.
“I already gave him four Advil. Do we have to waste all our medical supplies on this kid?”
I took a sip of the bourbon and spluttered it back out. It tasted horrid.
“I’ll hold your nose,” the woman said. “Drink it all at once.”
It burned my throat on the way down, and when she let go of my nose, the fumes burnt my nostrils, too. I had to side with Darla-bourbon made a better disinfectant than beverage-although I wasn’t thrilled to learn that she considered using medical supplies on me a waste.
I started coughing again. The woman held out a rag, and I used it to wipe my mouth and arm. “Thanks. I appreciate-”
“Don’t you mention it,” the woman said. “I’m Gloria Edmunds, by the way.”
“Alex.”
Darla had been doing something by the fire. Now she returned and began stripping the blanket off me. I grabbed it before she could pull it away from my groin, to preserve my modesty.
“Let go. There’s nothing there I haven’t seen. Who do you think undressed you, anyway? And honestly, I’ve seen better equipment on goats.”
“Darla!” Mrs. Edmunds said. “Keep a civil tongue with our guest.”
“Some guest. He’s using our medicine, drinking our water, and will be eating our food soon, no doubt. Why’d he have to find our barn?”
“Because the good Lord led him there, that’s why, young lady. And you’ll treat him exactly as you’d want to be treated if you fell over in someone’s barn, halfway bled out.”
“Yes, Mother,” Darla said. “But I’m not dumb enough to go wandering around in this crap,” she added, muttering.
I let go of the blanket. Darla pulled it off me and set it aside. My equipment definitely wasn’t looking very impressive. I guess bleeding all over northeastern Iowa hadn’t done much for my manhood. The cut at my side had mostly crusted over. A little blood seeped slowly from one edge.
“Roll up on your left side, so I can get at that wound. What happened, anyway?” Darla said.
“Hand-ax,” I replied.
“Christ, that was clumsy.”
I decided not to try to explain it right then. I was too tired. It took all my strength to watch Darla and her mom. They set out a bowl of water, a pile of mostly ash-free rags, a pocketknife, a sewing needle, and some heavy black thread on the end table by my head.
“This is going to hurt,” Darla said. “Try not to move.”
“Uh, do you know what you’re doing?”
She shrugged. “I got a prize in the 4-H junior veterinary program.”
“Isn’t that for animals?”
“Yeah, so? We’re all animals.”
“You’ll be fine, hon,” Mrs. Edmunds said. “Darla has better hands than mine for fine work. Uncle Arthur came to visit me early.”
“What?” I asked, confused.
Darla leaned close and hissed in my ear, “Arthritis, dumbass. Now lie still.”
It was fine while she washed the outside of the wound with water. It hurt, but I could cope. When she started washing it with bourbon, I clenched my teeth and felt tears leak from my eyes. When she pried the flap of flesh open with her pocketknife, I screamed and passed out.
Chapter 18
When I awoke, I was desperate for both water and a place to pee. Odd that my body both craved water and needed to void it at the same time.
I lifted my head to look around. A mistake, because it triggered a jackhammer headache that was worse, if possible, than the one I’d had before I passed out. I closed my eyes and rested my head, waiting for the pain to subside.
After the headache had died down some, I reopened my eyes. There was still a small fire going-either I hadn’t been unconscious long or someone had been feeding it. I pushed the blanket off my torso and looked down. I was still naked. The clean area around my wound formed a big oval of pink skin on my otherwise gray, ash-stained body. An Ace bandage was wrapped tightly a few times around my chest, holding a folded white cloth against my side.
Gingerly I slid my fingers under the cloth. I wanted to get a look at the wound. I pulled it up as gently as I could, but it was stuck. It hurt like crazy to pull the cloth free. The Ace bandage stretched just enough for me to take a look underneath.
There was a huge cut on my side, about the same size and shape as a horseshoe. Darla had closed it with a row of neat stitches, at least thirty of them-I didn’t have the strength to count.
I badly needed to pee. I had no idea where I was, where the bathroom was, or whether the toilet worked. I thought about peeing out the front door, but I didn’t know where that was either.
I swung my bare feet off the couch and sat up. A bad idea. I must have still been short on blood, because what little I had rushed out of my head. The world started spinning around me, and I toppled forward onto the wood floor. Pain spiked in my side and head, and I let out a short, involuntary yell.
Darla swept into the room a few seconds later. I was curled up on the floor in front of the couch, trying to summon enough strength to get up. She wore a T-shirt that came almost to her knees.
“What the hell-are you trying to wake up everyone in the house?” she said.
“No. Just looking for the bathroom. If you could point it out?”
“Christ. Let me find something we can use for a bedpan.”
Okay. I didn’t like that idea one bit. It was getting a bit embarrassing, exposing myself to this girl every time I saw her, especially since she found my “equipment” so unimpressive and didn’t mind telling me so. I certainly didn’t want to pee in front of her. Nonetheless, she had already left. I heard the clank of metal pans coming from an adjoining room. If I hadn’t already woken her mother, that racket was sure to.
She returned holding a bread pan.
“Really,” I said, “if you could show me where the bathroom-”
“Can you even stand up?”
I pushed my head and shoulders up off the floor, preparing to try.
“Never mind! I don’t want you ripping all the stitches out of your side. I worked damn hard on those.” She grabbed me by my left arm and hoisted me onto the couch.
I lay back, grateful to rest my pounding head. “Thanks for sewing me up. The stitches look good.”
“Why were you poking at them, anyway? I put the bandage on you for a reason, dumbass.”
“I just wanted to see them.” The insults she was dishing out were annoying, but I was grateful, anyway. She had probably saved my life with those stitches.
“Hmm. Well, they turned out okay. I’ve never actually done that before, but I’ve watched doctors stitch me up twice. Wish I had curved needles like they used on me-would have made it a lot easier.”
“You should be a doctor.”
“Maybe. Don’t tell Mom we used her second-best bread pan for this, okay?” She put the bread pan on the couch next to me and stared expectantly. “So you need to pee or what?”
“Yeah. Could you, like, turn your back or something?”
She rolled her eyes. “Whatever, sure.” She stepped to the hearth and added a log to the fire.
I pulled the pan to my groin, lined up my soldier and… nothing. It’s hard to pee when a girl’s in the room-even if her back was turned. And on top of that, I was worried about whether I could get it in the pan without splashing. I knew “performance anxiety” wasn’t exactly the right term, but something like that was going on. Or not going at all, rather.
Darla had finished feeding the fire. “Are you ever going to do it?”
“Yeah, I need to, but I can’t. Not with you standing there.”
She let out an exaggerated sigh and strolled toward the kitchen. “Yell when you’re done.”
It took a minute, but I finally got it done. Sweet relief. I didn’t splash, either. Well, not enough that anyone would notice. “Finished!” I called out.