Total pages in book: 66
Estimated words: 61042 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 305(@200wpm)___ 244(@250wpm)___ 203(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 61042 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 305(@200wpm)___ 244(@250wpm)___ 203(@300wpm)
He set a bottle of water and a wrapped sandwich on the counter. “Pain will be by with his woman, Nadine, to look at your hand in a few minutes. Try to get some rest.” He paused a moment. “You have my phone number. Hannah said she gave you hers, Pippa’s and mine.” When I nodded, Griffin gave me a smile before stepping back outside and pulling the door closed behind him with a quiet click. I waited a moment before crossing to the door and turning the lock. The bolt seated itself with a dull click. I pressed my forehead against the cool wood of the door and closed my eyes. I was safe. For now.
It wasn’t long after, a knock came. I looked through the peep hole to see a woman about my age or slightly older standing outside. Behind her was a large man I’d seen briefly when I’d first gotten to the compound. I unlocked the deadbolt and opened the door.
The woman who knocked was compact and athletic, with honey-colored hair in a loose braid. Her gray eyes assessed me with a calm, clinical interest I recognized from ER nurses. The man behind her was older, maybe mid-forties, with shaggy salt-and-pepper hair and a settled stillness that was unnerving. He watched me without expression while the woman offered a bottle of water.
“Veda?” The woman smiled warmly, and it reached her eyes, which I hadn’t expected. “I’m Nadine. This is Pain. Griffin asked us to come take a look at your hand.”
I stepped back from the door. “It’s really not that bad.”
“Probably not,” she agreed pleasantly, moving inside without waiting for a formal invitation. “But as a nurse, I’ve learned to just come see for myself.” She set her bag on the kitchen table. “Can I see it?”
I held out my right hand. The bandage Griffin had applied hours ago had come half off, the adhesive edges curled and dark with dried blood, the gauze pad soaked through and stiff at the center.
Nadine peeled it back carefully, her touch light enough that I barely felt it until she reached the edge of the wound itself. Then I hissed through my teeth.
“Sorry.” She didn’t look up, but her hands slowed. “The bleeding’s slowed,” She tilted my hand toward the light, her tongue tip appearing between her lips as she studied the wound. “Pain, I’m going to need the irrigation syringe and the tweezers. And the magnifying glass if you’ve got it in there.”
“You do realize, I’m the doctor. Right?” Pain gave the small woman a wry smile, but I easily recognized the affection he had for her.
Nadine looked up and raised an eyebrow. “I do. I also know how cleaning scrapes and superficial lacerations makes you gag.” She turned her head to look at me. “The man put a chest tube in a young man when he got stabbed in the yard. Give him severed limbs. Broken bones grinding together as he sets them. Penetrating trauma with evisceration. Anything. Give him small, annoying wounds like splinters or infected paper cuts, and he breaks out in a sweat.”
“Laugh all you want, sweetheart. Them things hurt like a mother bitch.”
“And don’t get me started with delivering babies.” Nadine gave me a wicked grin.
Pain’s eyes got wide. “Don’t you dare, Nadine.”
The other woman got a mischievous grin on her face as she picked up the items Pain set on the island in a neat row. Then she pulled out her phone and brought up a picture. She handed the phone to me and I saw an image of a much younger-looking Pain, presenting a newborn to its mother. The woman had a huge smile on her face. Everyone in the picture looked to be laughing hysterically, including the dad. Pain, however, had… spaghetti coming out of his nose?
“Oh, my God,” I put my hand over my mouth, smothering a laugh. “What happened here?”
Pain rolled his eyes at Nadine. “All right. Very funny.” He moved to my side and looked at my palm. All the while the couple kept up the running dialogue.
“Pain threw up four times with his first delivery. Seven at his second.” She nodded at the phone in my hand. “That picture is hospital lore. They barred him from the delivery room after this incident.” Nadine applied some ointment to the cut while Pain stuck a gauze pad over the cut and wound more gauze around my hand to hold the bandage in place before moving to gently clean the abrasions on my face.
“I still delivered the kid. Handed her to her mother too.” Pain stuck his chin up stubbornly. The expression on his face was all kinds of cute, but I also knew this was all to put me at ease. Their easy banter felt real, and for the first time since walking out of that office, a knot in my chest began to loosen.