“I’m not a nurse,” she says.
“But you’re a woman,” he says, and in his experience all women seem to know what to do. “Please, help me with my wound and I’ll let you go.”
“How do I know you’re not lying?”
“I don’t lie,” he says, lying and feeling bad about it.
“So what exactly do you want me to do?”
“Clean the wound and bandage it. I want you to make me feel better.”
“And for that you’ll let me go.”
“Of course.”
“You promise?”
“On my mother’s life.”
“Then you’ll need to untie me.”
“I have a gun,” he says, waving it back and forth slightly even though surely she’s seen it by now. “If you try to escape I’ll shoot you. Please, don’t make me do that, it really is the last thing I want to do,” he says, and this time the entire statement is true.
“Where’s the first-aid kit?”
“There are some things in the bathroom,” he says, “but I don’t know what everything is and most of it is old anyway.”
“Then untie me and bring everything you have back in here.”
“No. I’ll get everything first and then untie you.”
He heads back into the bathroom. He stares at the mirror. The rash is still there with the same intensity, but he’s no longer flushed-if anything he looks very pale. Like a ghost. He scoops everything into a plastic bag and carries it back into the room. He returns to the bathroom and fills a bucket with warm water and finds some cotton balls and a couple of clean cloths.
“It will be easier if you take your shorts off,” the girl says.
“Ah. . I don’t know. I think it’ll be okay,” he answers, remembering the time he vomited on the prostitute.
“They’re going to keep getting in the way.”
“It’s just that. . that. .” he doesn’t know how to finish. He’s never taken his pants off around a woman before, except for last night when Cooper’s mother helped him, but she was more like a mother and less like a woman and that’s a big difference. “The shorts stay on.”
“Okay. It’s your decision. You need to untie me.”
“I know.”
“And I’d like another drink.”
“When we’re done.”
“You promise you’re going to let me go?”
“You sound like you don’t believe me.”
“I do believe you,” she says. “After all, you saved me from whoever took me, and for that I’m thankful.”
Adrian smiles. He likes her.
“What’s your name?” she asks.
“Adrian,” he tells her. He had never planned on telling her his name, and can’t believe how quickly he’s told her now.
“I really like your name, Adrian.”
“You do?”
“Of course,” she says, smiling at him, and wow, what a smile! He can feel his heart beating. “It reminds me of classic romance novels.”
“It does?”
“Sure it does,” she says. “Adrian. .”
“Yes?”
“Oh, nothing. I was just saying your name. I like it.”
He’s pleased that she likes it. It makes him feel. . warm inside.
“My name is Emma,” she tells him. “Emma Green. I’m glad you’re going to take me home, Adrian, because my family will be worried about me. My mum especially. I can imagine she will be crying a lot, and so will my dad, and I have a brother too. My mum has cancer,” she tells him, “and is dying.”
“Does she really have cancer?” he asks.
“Of course she does. I wouldn’t make up something like that.”
“Do you read books about serial killers?” he asks, then adds “or books about psychology?”
“What? No, no, never. Why?”
“No reason,” he tells her, and he’s suspicious that she’s trying to relate to him. She’s using his name a lot, and the story about the mum with cancer is supposed to make him feel sympathetic. . that’s what he read in the books about serial killers, but if she doesn’t read those books, then she wouldn’t know to say these things. She’s not trying to trick him-she’s a nice person. Hanging around with people who aren’t nice is making him look for things that aren’t nice in nice people.
“Do you have any antiseptic, Adrian?” she asks.
“Huh?”
“Antiseptic.”
“Oh, yes, sure.”
“Can I have some?”
He moves around the bed and unties the ropes. She sits up, carefully so the sheet doesn’t drape from her body. She rubs at her wrists while he unties her feet. Her wrists are red and the skin is broken and it must be hard being tied up for nearly a week the way she was, and he’s annoyed at Cooper for doing that to her. Cooper could have just locked her in a room. When her feet are free she slowly leans forward and rubs at her ankles.
“Can I have the antiseptic?” she asks.
He passes it to her. She takes off the lid and starts to rub cream into her ankles and wrists. He watches her work, going from limb to limb, and he wants to offer to help but he doesn’t. He likes the idea of rubbing cream into her and helping her, but he doesn’t think she’ll like the idea as much.
“It really hurts,” she tells him.
“I’m sorry. Next time it’ll. .” he stops talking, realizing his mistake. He looks down, unable to look her in the eye, waiting for her to pick up on it, waiting for her to say Next time what? You said you were letting me go. He doesn’t know how to finish his sentence, and thankfully he doesn’t have to because she lets him off the hook.
“Let’s take a look then, shall we?” she says, missing his comment, and he is pleased. “What happened?”
“Somebody shot me.”
“Oh, you poor man,” she says, and her voice is soothing and already his leg doesn’t seem to hurt as much. The image that comes next is immediate-he sees himself sitting with this woman on the porch watching a sunrise and not with Cooper. His chest is warm and he feels a little light-headed and he isn’t sure what’s going on. Her wrists are shiny from the cream. He can’t stop looking at them.
“It doesn’t hurt that much,” he says, but it really does. He doesn’t want her to know how much pain he’s in. “You know, I’ve had worse,” he adds and immediately wishes he hadn’t.
She tucks the sheet beneath her armpits and clamps her arms down on the outside of it. “Is that everything in the plastic bag?”
“Yes.”
“We should start by washing the wound,” she says. “Is that okay? Do you want me to do that for you?”
“Okay.”
“You have nice legs, by the way,” she says.
“Oh. Oh, really?”
“Surely, Adrian, you’ve heard that before?”
“Umm. . no. Never.”
“Never? I find that hard to believe,” she says, and her smile makes him smile. “Now, do you have any cotton balls?”
“In the bag.”
“Then let’s get started.”
He hands her the bag and she goes through it, placing the items on the bed next to her. Along with the antiseptic, there are other ointments, bandages, gauze pads, tape, a safety pin, pills, creams, a pair of scissors. He keeps his eyes on the scissors. He wants to take them away from her, but at the same time he doesn’t want to say anything mean to her. He needs to take them away without sounding like he doesn’t trust her. He’s really starting to think it would be a waste if he gave her to Cooper.
“Is that pad stuck on the wound?” she asks, leaning forward to get a better look. Her hair is draped down her back, the sheet open like a curtain through which he can see her spine, it looks like a row of knuckles down her back, her skin is smooth and pale. The skin on her neck is tight and there are beads of sweat sitting on the surface. He has the urge to run his finger over them and send them dripping down her body.
“Yes,” he hears himself saying.
“We’re going to need to remove it.”
“The leg?” he asks, the image of him pacing uneven laps in his room comes back to him, and he can feel the blood drain from his face. He wants to be sick.
“No, the pad,” she says. “That would be awful if we had to remove the leg,” she says, and she says it in a way to not make him feel stupid about his mistake. He doesn’t know why he thought she meant the leg-it makes no sense. He feels silly. In the past others would have laughed at him for getting something so simple so wrong.