Between Here and the Horizon(59)

“Jesus, Sully, what the hell are you doing?”

“Initially, I was trying to shower,” he said through gritted teeth. “Now I’m just trying not to pass out.”

“What happened? Damn it, why is there blood all over the floor?” A huge patch of carpet was soaked bright red next to the stairwell, and smaller patches were dotted between there and the point where Sully was now leaning up against the wall.

“I opened up some stitches,” he said, wincing. “It’s not as bad as it looks.”

“Where? And why did you even need stitches in the first place?” I put down the tubs of food I was carrying, wriggled out of my jacket, then hurried to check him over. At first I didn’t see the long, jagged slice down his right side, because he was cradling his arms around his body, however the source of the bleeding became all too apparent as I got closer.

“The ship,” Sully said. “The rocks out in the bay gutted her. Tore up the underside of the hull. All twisted metal and sharp edges. I saw one of the guys sink below the water, so I dived in to get him. The waves were so big out there. Linneman did his best to keep the Zodiac steady but a big one hit. Nearly took him out. It smashed the Zodiac into the Sea King. I was in between the two at the time. I got pinned. Crushed my ribs. The warped steel from the hull got me pretty good.”

“I can see that. God, Sully. Let me take a look.” He was shielding his side, body bowed over a little, making it hard for me to survey how bad the damage was.

“It’s okay. Lang, seriously. Just sit down and let me catch my breath for a second, damn it.”

“Sully, I’m not joking. Move!”

He straightened, sighing in frustration, his arms dropping loose to his sides. The cut was deep and raw, eight inches long, and it looked angry. I lifted Sully’s arm out of the way entirely, trying to get a better look, to see if it was infected, which is when I saw the beginnings of the scar. Red, mottled, violent-looking: it started at his hip and run upwards over his side, and then onto his back. I turned him, mouth hanging open, eyes growing wider by the second.

“Turn around,” I told him.

“Why?”

“Just do it.”

“My back’s just fine. There’s nothing there you need to concern yourself with,” he said in a hard tone.

“Sully. I mean it. Turn around.” Lord knows I sounded ready to do him some damage myself. It could have been the determination in my voice, or it could have been the fact that he’d lost a lot of blood and he didn’t have the energy to argue, but Sully actually did as I told him, slowly turning to face the wall he’d been leaning against, bracing both hands against the plasterwork so I could see the magnitude of the scar that spread up and onto his back, sweeping up almost to his shoulder. Twisted, puckered skin. Brilliant red and dark pink. It was healed, quite an old injury, but it looked like it had caused him a great deal of pain at one point.

“Pretty, ain’t it?” Sully asked. He didn’t sound bitter, or angry. He sounded resigned. Empty.

“Damn, Sully. I don’t even know what to say.”

“Good. Then how about you don’t say anything, and we move on.”

“How?”

He shrugged. “An accident.”

“What kind of an accident?”

Sully leaned forward even further, until his forehead was pressed up against the wall. His eyes closed. He seemed so tired. “One that involved fire, obviously.”

“How old were you?”

A long silence. And then, softly: “Old enough to know better.”

He clearly didn’t want to talk about it anymore, but I couldn’t let it go. Not without a proper explanation. Fielding’s words were still ringing in my ears, and I couldn’t help but panic. Was this a prime example of Sully trying to throw his life away, or was it something else entirely? “Was it your fault?” I asked. “Could you have prevented this, if you’d wanted to?”

Sully looked back at me sharply. He didn’t reply straight away. “I might have been able to. But the cost of preventing this injury would have been far greater than a few inches of burned skin.”

“It’s more than a few inches, Sully. It’s your whole side. Nearly all of your back. It would have been—”

“Painful? Yeah, it smarted a little. Right now, I’m far more preoccupied by the pain in my ribcage and the open wound I’m holding together with my bare hands than something that took place years ago, though. Can you go into the kitchen and find me some alcohol?”

“Drinking probably isn’t the best option at the moment.”

“Not to drink. To sterilize this cut again.”

“Ahh, right. Sorry.” I rushed into the kitchen and started flinging open cupboard doors, trying to remember where he’d produced the whiskey from last night. It took forever to find the shelf where Sully stashed his booze. Grabbing a small, unopened bottle of vodka, I also snatched up a cloth from under the sink, brand new, straight out of the packaging, and took that with me too.

“Here. Will this do?” I showed him what I’d found.

“Yeah, that’s perfect.” Taking both items from me, he cracked the cap off the vodka bottle and poured a liberal amount of the alcohol all over the clean cloth. “If I squeal, don’t think any less of me,” he quipped.