Page 40 of Captive

He sits down against the concrete barrier and puts his leg out straight. His jaw is locked.

I cut the denim away. The cut runs along the outside of his thigh, deep enough that I can see yellow fat under the blood, dirty with dust and denim and whatever lived on that trailer. I put folded gauze on it and bear down with both hands.

I’m a large-animal vet. I know pressure and packing and shock. I am not a human trauma surgeon, and I tell myself that three times in a row, because my hands want to do something much bigger than they’re trained for.

His face goes gray around the mouth.

“Hands off the ground,” I tell him. “Press with me.”

He puts both hands over mine. His grip is strong, but it wavers when he looks toward the equipment yard.

“Look at me.”

He looks at me.

“You’re not walking on this,” I say. “You’re not driving. You don’t get to decide catching him matters more than keeping your blood inside your body.”

“He went east.”

“The county heard you. Press.”

The first gauze soaks through at the center. I don’t lift it. I add more and keep pushing. Becca kneels beside me with the tourniquet open on her knee.

“Not yet,” I say. “It’s slowing.”

His blood has gotten under the edge of my glove and dried across the blue mark on the back of my hand. I stare at it. It should be a scene note. It isn’t. It’s his blood on my skin, and a week ago I didn’t know his name, and for most of that week I hated him, and right now I would do anything to make it stop.

“You knew where the edge was,” I say. My voice doesn’t come out right.

“I knew where you were.”

It goes straight through me before I can stop it. Fear, anger, and wanting make terrible colleagues. Apparently they share an office.

“That wasn’t a request for romance.”

“I know.” His mouth changes by half a degree. “You ask terrible questions while applying pressure.”

“You create terrible answers with farm equipment.”

EMS comes six minutes later. The medic checks the dressing without lifting what’s controlling the bleeding and gets him on a stretcher. He tries to stand on his good leg.

I put my hand on his shoulder. “You can demonstrate independence after somebody closes the hole.”

He lets them lift him.

That shouldn’t feel intimate. It does. For a week, this man has shown me he can take almost anything except needing someone. Now he gives me exactly that, without making me fight for it.

“You coming?” he asks from the stretcher.

“After the cattle are examined.”

He nods. “Good.”

He doesn’t ask me to choose him over the animals somebody used to hurt him. I watch the ambulance go and don’t let myself feel anything until it turns onto the road.

* * *

Becca comes across the yard with the gelding’s lead still looped over her wrist. She stops next to me and looks at the blood on my gloves, and the blood on the concrete, and the torn denim in the dirt.