Darkness(31)

Her chin came up. She met his eyes steadily. “Unless you have another injury I don’t know about.”

“Bruises and scrapes. At least, as far as I can tell.”

“You’re lucky,” she said, remembering the violence of the plane’s explosion.

“Yeah.” There was a dryness to that that told her he didn’t think so.

Convince him that he still does need you. Tend his wound, tend the furnace. Then, when the storm passes, when morning comes, run like hell.



SHE PUSHED back the sleeping bag to find that fresh blood darkened the white cotton of his makeshift bandage. Gina frowned. Clearly the wound was still bleeding. At a guess, the only reason it had bled so sluggishly up until this point was because his circulation had slowed down as he’d gotten colder and colder. Now that he was warming up, the bleeding was worsening.

The sleeves of the turtleneck were knotted around his waist to keep it in place. Untying them, she pulled it off him, picked up the flashlight, and trained it on the wound, which was several inches above where the waistband of her sweatpants bisected his muscled abdomen.

The taut skin just below his waist was marred by a bruise about the size of the rim of a teacup. In the center of the bruise was some swelling, and in the center of the swelling was a puckered hole. A dark crust around the edge of the hole told her that it had begun to clot before something—probably everything he’d done since he’d fallen out of the boat onto the beach, at a guess—had broken open the developing scab. Fortunately, the bright red blood that welled up as she watched seeped rather than poured from the hole.

She didn’t know much about bullet wounds. But she did know that a small entry wound, assuming this was the entry wound, was usually accompanied by a larger exit wound. As in, he should have a bigger, gorier hole in his back.

Since the turtleneck had already done its unsterile worst, she picked it up and used it to wipe away the blood that was starting to trickle down his side. Then she tackled the blood welling from the wound itself so she could get a better look.

“Ouch,” he said as she dabbed at it.

“Can you roll on your side a little? I need to see your back.”

His brows twitched together. “Why?”

“Because if you have a hole like this in your front, you probably have a bigger one in your back.”

He shook his head. “Bullet’s still in there.”

He didn’t sound nearly as worried by that as she thought he should.

“Are you sure?” Gina looked at him with dismay. He nodded. If the bullet was still in him—her chest tightened—it undoubtedly needed to come out.

The idea that she was going to have to dig a bullet out of him—with what, the tweezers in the first aid kit?—filled her with dread. A pregnant moment in which she imagined herself shoving the tweezers into that oozing hole and probing around inside his body in a sweaty, panicky, and probably futile attempt to hit metal while his blood gushed around her fingers made her feel a little woozy. It couldn’t be done. Or at least, she couldn’t do it. Not even to show him how much he still needed her.

The mere thought made her queasy.

“I’m not even going to try to dig a bullet out of you,” she told him, sinking back on her heels.

Something glimmered in his eyes. Amusement? She couldn’t be sure.

“I thought you said you’re a doctor.”

“PhD,” she gritted.

He actually smiled at that, a quick there-and-gone smile, but a smile nonetheless. He was, she noticed sourly, way handsome when he smiled.

He said, “Then I guess you’ll just have to slap a bandage on it and leave it.”

She frowned at him. That was exactly what she meant to do, but . . . he sounded surprisingly okay with it.

“Don’t look so worried. Amateur surgery by flashlight is way more likely to kill me than leaving the bullet in there. Besides, if it had hit anything vital I’d be dead already.”

“Good point.” Seeing as how he wasn’t dead, seemed in no real danger of dying now that they had shelter and he was warming up, and they both agreed that her digging around inside him for the bullet was a bad idea, stopping the bleeding and then covering the wound seemed like the way to go. She positioned the flashlight on top of the backpack so that it would provide the maximum amount of light where she needed it. “One of our group—Keith Hertzinger from the University of Chicago—is a physician. He can look at it tomorrow.”

“A physician, huh? I thought you were here to watch birds.”

“Study birds. He also has a PhD with a specialty in environmental analytic chemistry. As isolated as Attu is, the organizers thought it would be good to include a physician in the group.” Removing an alcohol wipe from the first aid kit, she tore it open and warned, “This is probably going to sting.”

“Who are the organizers?”

“Of the trip? There are several. The National Audubon Society. The Nature Conservancy. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Why?” As she spoke she cleaned the wound and surrounding area, being careful not to dislodge the crust that had formed around the hole. The already taut muscles of his abdomen contracted still more as she swabbed them with alcohol. The wound was a little higher than his navel, which was an innie, and not much more than an inch from the edge of his body. She couldn’t help but notice the narrow trail of black hair that traced down from his navel to disappear beneath the stretched-out waistband of her sweatpants. Or how firm his abdomen felt beneath her fingers. Or how faithfully the cotton-spandex hugged his package.