Page 111 of Loverboy
I cry harder. Silently.
“There's tape and bandages. Don't panic, okay?” Duff strides toward me, and I step back to get out of the way. I take a deep breath and try to calm down. I’m no use to Gunnar as a weepy mess.
But hespoke. He’s okay!
I cry some more, just because.
A grey-haired nurse has already come running. She bustles into Gunnar’s room and lays a firm hand on his arm. “Mr. Scott, you’re recovering from a major surgery. Try to hold still, okay? We’re paging your doctor.”
“So thirsty,” he says with a groan.
“Would you like a sip of water? I've got a straw.”
“Please,” he whispers.
“Careful,” she says, angling his head up a few degrees. “If you cough, it will hurt.”
He takes a small sip. Then he takes a bigger one, and has trouble swallowing. I hear him cough, and then immediately groan.
“Oh honey,” the nurse says. “What did we just talk about? Here's an ice chip.” She slips it between his lips when he stops coughing. “And how is your pain?”
“Fine,” he grunts around the ice.
“Then I’ll go find that doctor, and he’ll take a look at your eyes.” She hustles out again.
I dig a napkin out of the donut bag and blot my tears away. Duff catches my eye and winks.
“My throat feels terrible,” Gunnar rasps. “Like there's ground glass in it.”
“Maybe there is,” his colleague says.
“What happened?”
“Well, I don’t know how much you remember, but you got shot right before I hauled you out of that basement. You woulda bled out right there in the alley if Pieter didn’t give you a tourniquet.”
“A tourniquet…” He pauses. “…Upper leg?”
“Yeah,” Duff says, his voice husky. “You had a major surgery, and it’s gonna add a few seconds to your hundred-meter dash, let me tell you.”
He swallows hard. “It’s still there, though? The leg?”
“Still there,” he says cheerfully. “Although it was touch and go for a while. And Max almost got thrown out of the hospital at one point.”
“Why?”
“For yellin’ at doctors.”
“It was that ugly, huh?”
“Yup!” Duff says. “Your GSW only shredded soft tissue, which was lucky. But it nicked a major artery. So you could have easily bled to death. You remember asking me a few weeks ago to take you for a spin on the racetrack?”
“Uh huh.”
“Well, I took you for a real spin through Manhattan. Too bad you don’t remember it. I hit eighty miles an hour on Third Avenue.”
“Jesus. Did the pedestrians on Third Avenue survive it?”
“Sure! Like steerin’ around cones on the raceway! And it worked, didn’t it? You’re still here.”
