The Lonely Mile(45)
The rubbing alcohol slipped from his shaking hand and fell into the sink—luckily, it was in a plastic bottle. He really would have been in trouble if that bottle had shattered, spilling the valuable disinfectant down the drain.
Martin slapped himself in the face, hard, and it seemed to help a little. His eyes focused and the buzzing noise receded slightly, like an army falling back to regroup. How long he could keep that army at bay, he did not know. Probably not long. He placed the towel over the wound on his arm and unrolled the bandage, anchoring one end on top of the sink as the rest trailed away onto the dirty floor. Then he reached into the basin and lifted the bottle of alcohol, uncapping it with his teeth as he pressed his injured arm to his belly to keep the dish towel firmly over the wound.
When he finally managed to screw the top off the bottle, Martin placed it next to the end of the bandage on the sink. Breathing deeply, he lifted the towel, now soaked crimson red, off the knife wound. Blood gushed, and there was no way to reliably gauge the severity of the injury, but if the mounting pain was any indication, she had gotten him good.
He sucked in his breath again and, gritting his teeth against what he knew was coming, poured the alcohol straight from the bottle over the open knife wound. The liquid hissed and bubbled, and Martin sucked air in through his teeth, trying not to scream. He failed. The pain ballooned and mushroomed, detonating in his arm like a nuclear explosion. Bright white spotlights danced in his vision, and, for the second time in seconds, he had to grab the sink for support. His arm throbbed, and he felt like he was being stabbed again, over and over.
When he could stand it no longer, Martin wrapped the towel—the last clean hand towel in the bathroom—as tightly as he could manage around the wound, doing his best to pull the two halves of sliced flesh together. It wasn’t an easy trick to manage using just one hand. When he had gotten the towel packed as tightly as he could over the wound, Martin pressed it once again against his side and picked up the end of the bandage off the sink. He rolled the bandage around and around the towel, beginning at his wrist and running all the way to the elbow, then returning to his starting point, pulling it tight.
He was panting and sweating, the pain rolling off his arm in waves that crested with each beat of his heart. Martin sank to the floor and examined his handiwork with a critical eye while he tried to get his breathing under control and avoid passing out. Under the circumstances, he felt he had done a pretty impressive job of emergency first aid. The towel was packed relatively tightly against the knife wound and further blood loss would now be minimal, although it continued to soak into the thick white cotton.
The urge to lie down and sleep was strong; Martin was exhausted. He had no doubt whatsoever that he could simply ease down onto his side right here on the bathroom floor and sleep until morning, but as tempting as that thought was, there was still more to be done. He struggled to his feet and waited patiently for the accompanying wave of dizziness to pass, then reached once more into the medicine cabinet, this time pulling out a bottle of ibuprofen. His arm seemed to have returned to its normal length, at least for the time being.
After dry-swallowing five of those suckers, Martin stumbled back into the kitchen, half expecting the sneaky little Benedict Arnold to be waiting for him, awake and alert, and to come at him again. She might be his destiny, his little angel, but she had a lot to learn about loyalty and about not biting the hand that feeds you.
He rounded the corner and was relieved to see her still motionless on the floor where he had left her. She was moaning softly and her eyes were open, although they remained unfocused, and she stared straight ahead. The blood continued to flow slowly from her head where he had hit her with the butt end of the knife, and it was clear that, although he had clocked her pretty hard, she was in no real danger.
Maybe she had a concussion. Good. Served her right. She could consider that the first lesson in the retraining process that was going to have to take place, beginning right here and now and continuing wherever in this big world she finally ended up.
He kneeled next to her and slapped her across the face, hard, just as he had done to himself a few moments ago. She blinked rapidly and peered up at him blankly, confused at first. Then her brain engaged and terror blossomed in those beautiful eyes as her memory clicked in. She began moaning, “Oh, oh, oh…”
Martin nodded. “Yeah, ‘oh, oh, oh’ is right, little girl. You ever come at me with a knife again, you better kill me with the first swipe because this was your one and only mulligan. Next time I’ll put it places you don’t want to think about. Are you with me on this?”
Carli moaned again but nodded gingerly at the same time, and Martin knew he had nothing to worry about. Not for a while, at least. His angel wasn’t about to cause him any trouble for the foreseeable future. Maybe this little skirmish would end up being a good thing in the long run. Maybe some time in the next week, he and Carli would look back on this moment and laugh. Probably not, but you never knew. She might be a fast learner.
At the moment, though, it didn’t seem very funny. The pain continued to ratchet up in Martin’s arm, and he didn’t feel much like laughing. When the hell would that ibuprofen start to work? He reached under Carli’s armpit and pulled, and even in his weakened state, he was able to lift her to her feet using just his good arm. She really wasn’t very big. He walked her to the basement and down the stairs, supporting her with his good arm, and brought her back to her bed, shoving her down on it roughly and snapping the empty cuff back into place on the metal frame. She lay down in the fetal position and closed her eyes.