“Parlez vous français?” she asked, looking down to him. He looked up and saw, apropos of nothing, that she was rather pretty.
“Parlez vous anglais?” he asked.
“Yes, some. You are English?”
“Yeah,” he lied, but he had no intention of trying to fake an accent.
“Monsieur. I tried to tell Monsieur Fitzroy. Zee doctor is out of town, but I called him; he’s on his way here now. He will arrive in a few hours. I am sorry, I did not know how badly you were hurt. I cannot help you. I will call an ambulance. You need a hospital.”
“No. You are in Fitzroy’s Network. You at least have medicine and blood and bandages.”
“Not here, I am sorry. Dr. LePen has access to a clinic nearby, but I do not. I only work here with zee animals. You need a hospital. You need emergency aid. Mon Dieu, you are cold. I will find you a blanket.” She turned from him and left the room, returned with a thick wool blanket that smelled like cat piss. She draped it over his shoulders.
“What is your name?” Court asked, his voice at its weakest point yet.
“Justine.”
“Look, Justine. You’re a vet. That’s close enough. I just need some blood and—”
“I am a veterinary’s assistant.”
“Well, that’s close to close enough. We can make this work. Please help me.”
“I give baths! I hold zee dogs down for zee doctor! I can’t help you. Zee doctor is on his way, but you cannot wait for him. You are completely white. You need blood. Fluids.”
“I don’t have time to wait. Look, I know battlefield medicine. I can talk you through what I need. We’ll have to get some blood, just a couple units of O positive, some antibiotics, and your hands. When the weakness and pain get to be too much, I won’t be able to do what needs to be done.”
“Battlefield medicine? This is no battlefield. This is Paris!”
Court grunted. “Tell that to the guy who did this.” He opened the blanket and took his hand from his knife wound. His blood pressure was low enough now to where the blood no longer pumped from his waist, but it oozed and glistened in the harsh light of the treatment room.
Justine gasped. “That looks bad.”
“Could be worse. It’s through the muscle, bloody, but I’ll be okay if I can get some O positive. If you can help me, I’ll be on my way. Fitzroy will pay you and your doctor for the trouble.”
“Monsieur. Are you not listening? I work with zee dogs!”
He shut his eyes, seemed to drift off a bit, but he said, “Just picture me with fur.”
“How can you joke? You are bleeding to death.”
“Only because we’re arguing. Where is this clinic? We can go there, get what I need. I can’t go to a hospital. Have to do it this way.”
She breathed out a long sigh, nodded, and tied her brown hair in a ponytail behind her head.
“Let me put a bandage on that so you do not lose more blood.”
The barking of the dogs began to subside.
The small surgical center in the vet’s office was filthy. It had not been well cleaned after the close of business on Friday.
“I am sorry, monsieur. If I knew you were coming—”
“It’s fine.” Court made to pull himself onto the metal stand in the middle of the room, but Justine stopped him, grabbed a spray bottle, and perfunctorily wet and wiped down the brushed aluminum surface while her patient leaned against a shelf of bandages. She ran out through the door and came back with a cushion from the sofa in the waiting room.
“You must let your legs hang off zee side. It is not made for persons.”
“Okay.”
He used his last bit of strength to rip open his shirt. Buttons flew and bounced over the tiled room. Justine pulled off his rain-soaked shoes and used shears to cut his pants off, left him in his shorts.
“I… I am not so experienced with humans,” she said.
“You’re doing great.”
She fought her timidity and looked Gentry over from head to toe.
“What happened to you?”
“I got shot in the leg. A couple of days back.”
“With a gun?” She looked down at the open three-day-old wound in his thigh, then back up to the bloody hip. She quickly pulled rubber gloves on over her small hands. “Mon Dieu.”
“And then my legs and feet got cut with broken glass.”
“I see that.”
“Then I snapped a rib rolling down a mountain in Switzerland.”
“A mountain?”
“Yes. Then I fucked up my wrist busting out of some handcuffs.”
Justine was silent. Her jaw had dropped open slightly.
“And your stomach?”
“Knife wound.”
“Where?”
“Here in Paris. About an hour ago, I guess. And then I fell into the Seine.”
She shook her head. “Monsieur, I do not know what you do for a living, and I do not want to know. But whatever it is, I think you should find some other type of job.”
Court laughed a little, setting fire to the stab wound. “My skill set is not conducive to honest work.”
“I’m sorry. I do not understand these words.”
“Never mind. Justine, we can stanch the knife wound with this bandage, more or less, but if I don’t get some blood in me, I’ll pass out.”
“The clinic is close by, but it is closed.”
“We’re going to open it,” Court said. “Let’s go. I need to be on the move in under an hour.”
Justine had been wrapping a compression bandage tight around Court’s waist to hold the thick square of gauze she’d placed over the knife wound. “Move? You don’t need to move at all! For days. Do you not understand how badly injured you are?”
“You don’t understand. I have someplace I have to be! I just have to get patched up so I can leave!”
She clenched her teeth, and her eyes widened. “Monsieur, I am no doctor, but I can promise you there is no place you need to be right now other than in medical care. You could die within zee hour.”
“I’ll be okay. I have to be.”
Justine knelt down, unlocked a low cabinet, and began pulling equipment from it. “That is impossible! If we give you a transfusion, zee blood will just leak out of your stomach if you move. You need stitches. When you get the stitches they will just break if you try to move.”
Court thought it over. He looked down to his wrist-watch to find it was three a.m. “I… I need to get to Bayeux, up in Normandy.”
“Tonight? Are you crazy?”
“It’s life or death, Justine.”
“Yes, your death, monsieur.”
Court pulled Maurice’s envelope of cash from his pocket. It was soaked, but it was a miracle it had survived the river, as had his car keys. He handed the soggy envelope to Justine. “How much is it?” he asked as she looked through it.
Her eyes returned to his. “It’s a lot.”
“It’s all yours. Just help me get to Bayeux before eight a.m.”
“If you can’t even drive a car, what do you expect to do when you get there?”
“I can drive the car, but I need you to stitch me up and bandage me while I drive. We can do the transfusion on the way.”
She stood slowly. Said each word alone. “Sutures? In, zee, car?”
Court nodded.
“While you drive zee car?”
“Yes.”
She muttered something in French that Court did not understand. He picked up the word for dogs and figured she was saying it was due to moments like these that she preferred her patients to be the four-legged variety.