Page 12 of Saving Summer
Father: Jamie Snow.
“Uh, Adam?” Jay said, frowning at the baby’s poor APGAR score. “We’ve got a problem.”
CHAPTERFIVE
Jesus.Fuck. Everything hurt. His eyes still closed; Jamie had no desire to open them. He’d already seen what the Chicopee Inn had to offer. Forest green carpet, threadbare in high-traffic areas. Bleached oak furniture gone grey with age. Striped wallpaper, peeling in one corner. And an obnoxious burgundy flower print covering both beds, the one chair, and the blackout curtains.
Hideous—but clean enough—and perfect for staying off the radar.
Once they’d made it out of the hospital, a feat unto itself, his father had wheeled Jamie to his rental car. Then following instructions, Samuel had driven them two hours west of Boston, avoiding the Pike’s toll cameras by sticking to the secondary roads.
Gun in his hand, Jamie had drifted in and out of consciousness until they’d arrived in Springfield. Confident they were safe enough for the moment, he’d asked Samuel to pay for a week of lodging in cash, the money coming out of his go bag.
The small duffle filled to bursting with wads of rolled hundreds, guns, boxes of bullets, knives, and more than one fake ID, he’d expected a barrage of questions. They hadn’t come. Neither had the standard reproaches or chronic disapproval he was accustomed to receiving.
Instead, his father had done his best to make him as comfortable as possible, propping his leg with pillows and administering a shot of morphine using one of the auto-injectors he’d stolen from the hospital.
Since then, it’d been lights off.
No thoughts. No nightmares. No worries. For eight hours? Ten? Twelve? He had no idea. “How long have I been out?” he asked, his voice sounding rougher than the hum of the heating unit.
“About six hours.”
He groaned. “Well, that’s fucking disappointing.” Why did time slow to a crawl when the best thing for those suffering was for it to speed up? In his case, slow and steady most definitely did not win the race. He needed to be back on his feet and, at a minimum, moving faster than a dead turtle.
Thanks to his father, he’d managed to slip away undetected, but he still had plenty of people looking for him, and no interest in being found. Not by anybody. Not now. Maybe not ever.
The springs on the mattress next to his squeaked, and a second later, his father’s palm rested against his forehead. “You’re a little warm.”
“You would be too if your bed was next to the heater, and you were covered up to your eyeballs in vintage chintz.”
Samuel huffed and then fluffed, plumping the pillow behind Jamie’s head before folding down the coverlet while leaving the sheet in place. “I’d like to change your dressings.”
He cracked one eye open. “Since when do you ask for permission?”
“I wasn’t asking,” he replied. “Just letting you know what’s coming next.” He busied himself getting supplies out of the trauma kit he’d taken, returning with an armload of stuff held in the crook of his elbow. “Which end do you want me to start with first?”
Since his knee hurt more than his abdomen, he chose the lesser of the two evils. “Upper.” He slid the bedsheet down to his waist and waited while Samuel dumped his cargo onto the bedside table next to Jamie’s loaded Glock.
“How bad is the pain?” Samuel snapped on a pair of latex gloves, and removing the bandage covering his handiwork, he dropped it into a black plastic waste basket.
“On a scale of one to ten, about seven hundred and fifty.” He winced at the poking and prodding going on. “How long did you make the incision?” he asked, filling the awkward silence with a medical question because it was the only type of conversation the two of them had ever been able to have without things ending in an argument.
“Eight inches.”
He did the mental math for ten stitches per inch, his father’s standard when it came to suturing. “So eighty stitches to close, give or take a few?”
“Ninety-four.”
Huh.More stitches usually meant a smoother scar, not that he gave a damn about what his scar looked like. He just hadn’t expected the extra care and attention from the man who’d been carving him up—figuratively speaking—for years.
“This looks good.” Finished with his exam, Samuel wiped off the residual antibiotic ointment before disinfecting with an alcohol swab.
“No signs of infection?” Jamie lifted his head to check out the situation for himself, getting annoyed when his father nudged his fingers away from his skin. He often found himself doing the same thing with his patients, so a little ridiculous to be insulted by the brush-off.
“No. No signs of infection, but keep poking at it with dirty hands, and you’ll give yourself a nasty staph.”
If he could have laughed pain-free at the indignation in his father’s tone, he would have. Not too often the mighty king of all things surgical was challenged by an underling, much less someone he’d sliced into less than twenty-four hours ago.
