Page 16 of Just Do It
‘Creative.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Come on, let’s get some ice on it. It’ll help the swelling and the pain.’
‘I don’t think it’s swollen, it’s just sore.’
‘Take another look.’
I did so and processed the fact my finger was now twice its normal size.
‘Oh, double balls. You know this is all your fault.’
He waited for me to step through the door first, cradling my finger, before falling into step beside me. ‘And how do you figure that?’
‘Because I wasn’t expecting to see… that… in my drawer.’
‘You’d have preferred me to leave it on the desk?’
‘No!’
He gave a shrug. ‘One could argue that actually this is all your fault.’
‘And how do you work that one out?’
‘Had you not been in such a hurry to leave my place on Saturday morning, you wouldn’t have left it behind.’
Annoyingly he was probably right.
‘No argument to that, huh?’
‘I’m thinking about it.’
He gave a low chuckle that brought back a lot of not unpleasant, but certainly not appropriate, memories. I stopped at the ladies’ loos.
‘You going to be OK?’
‘Yep.’
‘Because I can’t come in there.’
‘That was rather the point.’
He ignored it. ‘So if it’s split, you’ll be OK?’
‘What’s split?’
‘The finger, the fingernail, there’s a range of possibilities. I can’t see for the blood at the moment.’
‘Stop being dramatic. I deal with dead bodies as part of my job.’
‘Yes. Ones that have been dead over three thousand years. I’m guessing they don’t tend to bleed all that much.’
‘I will be fine. Go back to doing whatever it is that you do when you’re not annoying me.’
‘If you insist.’
I shoved the door open with my shoulder and headed to the sinks. Running the tap with one hand, I placed the other one underneath the gentle flow. ‘Oh… Oh that’s not good. That’s…’ I dived into a stall as my breakfast came back for an encore. Once my stomach was empty, I flushed and rinsed my hands, without looking at them. There was a knock at the door.
