Page 42 of Wayward
He glares back at me. “No, that wasn’t part of the plan, but neither was falling through the dock. I was to hold you here until sunset and then take you up the back way to the main house. Thayer will be waiting for you. Only the caretaker guards use this building. They’re a couple of old locals who have worked for the Zambranos forever. So no, I didn’t expect us to be doing any triage in here, but that’s what we’ve got. I can’t risk taking you up to the main house during the day. The elder Mr. Z’s guards will definitely notice. And that’s not something you want. So stay tight. I’m gonna go get some stuff. I’ll be back. I don’t know. See what you can find around here to clean up a bit if it bothers you that much. But don’t move. Don’t leave this building. If you do, I can’t protect you.” Holloway’s out the door.
Zane peers out the door after Holloway.
“And stay away from the doors and windows,” Holloway yells back.
Zane turns back to us. “He’s halfway up the path out of sight. We should move.”
“No, we’re not going anywhere,” Easton says.
Calvin goes to the sink and turns on the faucet. The water runs light brown.
“Ew, that’s not good,” I say.
“Let it run for a while.” Dante helps Sam sit. “I worked a couple of weeks in a restaurant here in Thailand. Older buildings can have bad pipes, but if you let it run, it’ll clear right up.”
I shake off the fog of shock. My adrenaline’s crashing. We’ve got to get Sam cleaned up as well as we can. “Take your shirt off,” I tell him. Sam pulls off his shirt with a grunt. There’s not a mark on his chest and only a few light scratches on his shoulders. His arms, however? The outside of his forearms on both sides are scratched with light abrasions. His left elbow has a deep gash. “Pants too.”
Sam stands next to a chair. He drops his pants, holding on to the side of the chair for support, and I try not to gasp at his injuries, but they look worse than when I first saw them. There are a few scratches on his left, nothing big. But on his right leg, there are two long gouges, two inches apart, from his knee down to his ankle bone. There are some on his thighs too. But they’re not as deep.
“Bloody hell, Sam. You’re gonna need a tetanus booster shot for sure,” Zane says.
Easton’s eyes flick to mine, and he swallows. “We’ve seen worse. And there’s medicine here. I’m sure Holloway can maybe go get us a tetanus shot. And as long as he has a kit for stitches, I’ll have you cleaned up in no time.” Easton nods up at Sam.
“Let me help you get your shoes off,” I say.
Zane finds the cleanest of the chairs and places it next to Sam. “Sit on the edge of this.”
He does, and I take a lopsided chair and sit next to him. I hold out my hand, and he takes it.
“This isn’t how I thought things would go down either, Sugar.”
“Yeah, but it’s not that bad.” I kiss the top of his hand. I’m trying to convince myself more than Sam.
“It’s clear,” Calvin says from the other side of the room. “And the hot plate even works.”
“There’s got to be a pot or something around here. Let’s boil some water.” Dante crouches next to Calvin’s legs and rummages around in the cabinet until he comes up with a pot.
Twenty minutes later, the water’s just starting to boil when Holloway comes crashing through the crooked door with the supplies we need.
“Took you fucking long enough,” Dante says.
I cock my head at Dante because, while I love him, he doesn’t need to antagonize the one person who has shown us some kindness.
“Thank you, Holloway,” I say, taking the kit from him. I spread it on a corner of the table that we’ve cleaned while waiting for the water to boil.
Holloway pulls something from his back pocket. “I brought this too.” He hands a bar of soap to Easton.
Hands washed, Easton begins the long process of cleaning out the larger scratches and stitching them up. After twenty, I lose count of how many stitches Easton makes. It takes a good couple hours to get Sam bandaged up, even though we run out of bandages for some of his smaller scratches. It’s well past dinnertime when I get the last bandage on Sam’s leg. His stomach starts rumbling.
“Excuse me,” he says.
Holloway has been standing in the corner watching. “I can’t bring you guys anything to eat right now. But it’ll be dark in another hour.”
“I’ve gone longer without food. It’s not a problem. Thanks for the supplies, Holloway,” Sam says.
I wrap my arm around Sam as we watch Holloway leave. “How do you feel now?”
“Not bad. It stings, but it’s not horrible.”
