Page 22 of The Stranger
“Are you okay?” I shoot up in bed, eyes bugging.
“What?” She spins around to look at me. “I’m fine. What do you mean?”
“You’re bleeding.” I point to the blood on the fabric covering her shin.
She pales, looking down in horror but not confusion. When she bends down, she pulls her pant leg up slightly, revealing a deep gash along her shin bone.
“I’m so sorry,” she says, shaking her head.
“Sorry?” I’m out of bed then, bending down next to her. “What are you sorry for?”
“For bleeding on your clothes. I didn’t mean to?—”
I put a finger under her chin, lifting her face so she’ll look at me. My eyes lock with hers—dark brown with hints of gold—and I hear, rather than see, her take a breath.
“I don’t care about the pants,” I tell her, keeping my voice low, my lips hardly moving. Everything suddenly feels hazy. “I care about you. Are you okay?”
She swallows, blinking, and looks back down at her leg. “I, um, I fell earlier. On the pavement. When Craig and I were fighting. I hit a rock.” She stands, starting to head for the bathroom, but I beat her to it.
“I’ve got it.” I return a few moments later with a fresh roll of toilet paper and begin tearing off pieces, handing them to her. “It’s not exactly medical-grade bandaging, but it’ll help.”
“Thanks.” She presses the tissue to her wound. “I thought it had stopped bleeding, but the warm water from the shower must’ve made it start again.”
I want to ask if she needs to go to the hospital, but really, what good would it do? I couldn’t get her there unless I called an ambulance, which I can’t do until the phones are back up. And even if, by some miracle, the phones were to start working again, truth be told, I’m not sure they’d make it here in this storm anyway.
“It might need stitches,” I tell her gently, bending down and lifting the tissue for a second so I can get a better look. It’s relatively deep and about as long as my pinkie finger. “You said you fell?”
“Yes.” She looks away as I lift her leg to get a better look.
“You were fighting?”
She nods and clears her throat. “It wasn’t a big deal.”
“Is that what happened to your hands?” I gesture to the wounds across her palms.
She studies them, looking unbothered. “Yeah, I scraped them. They’re fine.”
I put the tissue back over the wound on her shin. “You should keep pressure on it. I’ll be right back.” I cross the room again and grab a towel from the bathroom, returning to tie it around her leg gently. “This will help hold the tissue in place so you don’t have to worry about it through the night. Hopefully tomorrow we can get you some real bandages. I wish you’d said something earlier. Maybe we could’ve found something at the rest area when we were there. The cut needs to be cleaned out with peroxide at the very least. The scrapes on your hands too.”
“Yeah, I know. I didn’t think about it then. It wasn’t bleeding at that point, and I was a bit preoccupied with being kidnapped.”
I scowl. “Try rescued.”
“Rescue usually requires a willingness to go.” The words would sting if I didn’t sense the playfulness of her tone.
“No one shoved you in the car, last I checked. Just a bit of healthy persuasion.” I nudge her shoulder with my finger. If I hadn’t stopped tonight, I wouldn’t know this woman, and that feels impossible. And in just a few days, hours maybe, she’ll be long gone. Just a distant memory. It doesn’t seem fair.
“That’s not how I remember it.”
“Seems like the cold got to your head.”
To my surprise, she smirks, and her eyes linger on mine for several seconds. There’s something so mysterious about her, so confident and distant, it just makes me want to know more. To ask more. She looks away abruptly, turning her face to look at her leg again, ending whatever the hell just happened between us.
“Anyway, I thought I was fine.” She pulls the towel tighter around her leg than I’d had it. “Thank you, though.”
“Sure.” I move to stand but stop at eye level with her, staring into her wild and somehow fearful yet bold eyes again. The woman is a walking contradiction. “Can I ask you something?”
Lips parted, she nods. “Mm-hmm.”