Please!”
Dew stared for a few seconds, the table leg suspended in the air.
“Puh… please, Daddy,” Dawsey stammered. “No more.”
Dew lowered the table leg to his side, then dropped it on the floor. He still couldn’t move his right arm. The bloody, giant-size man lay crying on the floor, big body shaking with sobs.
“I’ll get someone in here to clean you up,” Dew said. “Then go back to your room. I’ll come talk to you there. We’ve got work to do.
Dew walked out of the room.
BITCHES GET STITCHES
Clarence leaned his head into the communications trailer. Margaret smiled at him. She couldn’t help it. She had thought him handsome the first moment she saw him. Now, after three months on this assignment and more than a few nights in his bed, she found him gorgeous. She was falling for him. No, she had already fallen for him. She didn’t know if it would be a temporary romance, if when this insanity ended they simply would go their separate ways. Maybe their attraction was just an outlet, a way to deal with the death that surrounded them on a daily basis.
Maybe he was with her because she was the only woman on the project. That thought had crossed her mind more than a few times. She was older, twenty pounds overweight, and while she still got plenty of attention from men, it wasn’t as much as she used to get. Was she already in love with him? She pushed the thoughts away—if she let it go that far and he didn’t love her in return…
“Doc,” Clarence said, “Dew says you need to go to the office.”
“I’m a little busy,” she said. “Tell him if he wants to see me, he can come to the trailer. Then I’ll get rid of him, and you can give me a nice shoulder rub.”
Clarence shook his head. “Uh, no can do, Doc. You need to get to the office, and bring a first-aid kit. Seems Dew and Perry had it out.”
“Oh, no. Do we need an ambulance?”
“You’re going to have to see this for yourself,” he said. “Don’t worry, I’ll go with you.”
Margaret looked through the comm room’s cabinets. There was a first-aid kit in here somewhere…. She found it, grabbed the white plastic box by its built-in handle and ran out of the trailer toward Room 207.
In a way, Clarence had made her question her life choices, even as she rode a rocket-train of career success and quite literally stood in the path of a potential global catastrophe. She was the man, for lack of a better term, something she always longed to be, but thanks to her feelings for him it was starting to ring empty. When this was over, if they separated, what did she have to look forward to? Her sparse apartment in Cincinnati? A place she really used only for sleep, because she worked all the time?
“You don’t need to be afraid,” he said as they reached the room. “I’ll be right here with you.” He opened the door for her.
“Afraid? Why would I be afraid of Dew Phil—”
Her voice broke off when she saw Perry Dawsey curled up in a fetal position, bleeding like a stuck pig.
“Like I told you,” Clarence said, “I’ll be right here.”
She couldn’t believe it. Dew Phillips had beat up Perry Dawsey? Beat up wasn’t really the term for it. Thrashed him to within an inch of his life.
Yeah, that was more accurate.
“Clarence, leave us alone.”
His head whipped around, looking from Perry to her.
“Are you crazy? He’s down, he’s not dead.”
“I know.”
“He could snap at any second, Margo,” Clarence said. “I’m staying right here.”
She took his hand and led him out of the room, then pulled his head down so she could whisper in his ear.
“Honey, I know you want to protect me, but he’s not going to hurt me.”
“He’s a killer, Margaret,” Clarence whispered back.
“You’re going to have to trust my judgment,” she said. “I’ve taken care of him for five weeks, and I’m telling you he’s not going to hurt me.”
“Fine, then I’ll stay to watch and see how wrong I am.”
“He just got the crap kicked out of him,” Margaret said. “I’m not a guy, but I think that makes you guys feel a little ashamed? Am I right?”
Clarence stared at her, then nodded.
“So maybe having a woman in there, instead of another man, won’t be as bad, because he won’t think I’ll be wondering if I can beat him up, too?”
“Well, that’s not exactly how I’d think of it,” he said. “But yeah, I’d be embarrassed if there was another guy watching me get stitched up. A non-doctor guy, of course. Doctors aren’t embarrassing in a situation like this.”
“Guy logic?”
“Guy logic,” he said. “Listen, can’t we at least get Amos to take care of him?”
She smiled at him. “If you can talk Amos Braun into being in a room alone with Perry Dawsey, I’ll give you twenty bucks.”
“I’m not taking that bet.”
“Clarence, I’m a professional. I love the fact that you want to protect me, but this conversation is over, okay? Stand out here if you’re worried.
If he tries anything, I’ll scream for help.”
“That only works if you can make a noise before he breaks your neck.”
She sighed, then slapped him once on the chest and walked into Room 207. She shut the door behind her.
“Perry? It’s Margaret.”
He opened his right eye. His left was swollen shut.
“Hey,” he said.
“I’m going to fix you up, okay?”
“Just leave me be.”
“No can do. I’m a doctor. You’re bleeding. That’s the math.”
Perry looked at her with his one good eye, then slowly sat up. He scooted until he rested his back against the wall.
“Fine,” he said. “Just till you stop the bleeding.”
She knelt and opened the first-aid kit. She pressed gauze bandages against the cut on top of his head. “Hold that there, please.”
Perry did.
She put another one on the forehead cut. Blood instantly soaked it.
“Okay, Perry. Tell me what hurts.”
“My ego. I just got my ass kicked by the poster boy for the AARP.”
“Maybe you’re lucky,” Margaret said.
“Well, buy me a fucking Lotto ticket. How do you figure I’m lucky?”
“Dew’s told me a couple of stories over the past three months. He’s killed a lot of people, Perry. I know you’re big and strong and athletic. You know how to fight —Dew Phillips knows how to kill or be killed.”
“Ha,” Perry said. “He didn’t do either. Does that mean I won?”
Margaret laughed. “See? You’re cracking jokes. You can’t be hurt that bad.”
“Guess again.”
She tossed the bloody gauze aside, then poured some peroxide on the cut.
“Does that hurt?” she asked.
“Compared to getting hit with a table leg? Might as well be a sensual massage.”
“Good, then just think of this part as your happy ending.”
She proceeded to stitch up his cuts. Six stitches on the forehead, five on the top of the head, and three more on his lip.
“How bad is the eye?” Perry said. “Is it ruined?”
She pulled open his upper and lower eyelids and flicked a penlight at the pupil. The eye was already filled with blood, but the pupil contracted with each flash.
“You’re going to have a hell of a shiner, but I think you’ll be okay.”
She made him take off his shirt. Her eyes lingered on the gnarled, fist-size scar on his right collarbone, then inadvertently flicked to the similar one on his left forearm. She’d treated him for weeks and knew of his other horrible scars: on his left thigh, the center of his back and his right gluteus, along with a smaller one on his left shin.