Page 7 of Patch

Consciousness meant his brain was getting oxygen. Shallow breathing meant the lung might be compromised. I needed more than I had.

“Pulse. Wrist or neck, I don’t care. Count it for me.”

A pause. Engine noise. Brazil’s voice came back strained.

“Hundred and ten. Weak. Thready.”

Too fast. Too weak. Freak was compensating. His body was throwing everything at keeping pressure up. It wouldn’t hold.

“Keep pressure on that wound. Don’t lift the rag. If the bleeding stops, tell me immediately.”

“Copy.”

The road curved east. I leaned the bike into it and felt the tires bite. Brazil was counting breaths again. Twenty-eight. Twenty-nine. Thirty. Steady at thirty. Too fast, but steady. That was something.

The county marker flashed past. Nine. I was close.

“I’ll be there first. Pull around back. Don’t come in the front.”

“Copy.”

The clinic came into view around the next bend. A low-slung building set back from the county road. Gravel lot. No lights in the parking area. The building itself was dark except for one window on the east side. A single rectangle of yellow light against the black exterior. Somebody was working late.

I pulled into the lot at an angle no client ever used. Cut across the gravel diagonally, killed the engine at the edge of the light spill. The bike settled beneath me. The engine ticked, still warm from the run. I was off the seat before the sound died.

My boots hit gravel and I was moving. Three strides to the front door. My hand found the frame and braced against it. Not knocking yet. Not ready yet.

I looked at the lit window. Yellow light against dark glass. Behind it, somebody moving. A shadow crossed, then gone.

I stood at the door with my hand on the frame. I’d switched the call from my helmet back to my phone and had it pressed to my ear. I could hear Brazil’s breathing coming through the speaker. Freak’s voice came from further away, fading now, saying something about the paint on his bike being custom and how he was going to be pissed if he died before somebody appreciated it.

I had about thirty seconds before Brazil pulled in. Thirty seconds to make the case. To explain. To convince a stranger that the bleeding man in the truck was worth the risk. Worth the questions. Worth whatever came after.

Chapter Two

Maren

The overheads in reception were already off. I’d hit the switch twenty minutes ago, same as every night. The front desk phone sat on the counter playing something low and instrumental that I’d stopped hearing half an hour back. The lobby chairs were pushed in. The magazines were stacked. The credit card terminal had been wiped down and the drawer emptied into the safe. Every surface clean. Every light off except the surgical suite.

I hauled the mop bucket through the door with one hand on the handle and the other braced against the frame. The wheels caught on the threshold. I lifted and rolled, and it cleared. The bucket sloshed. Bleach and hot water at a ratio I could smell without measuring. Three parts to one. Maybe two and a half. My nose knew better than my measuring cup.

Stitch was asleep on the procedure table. Full extension. Orange belly up, three legs splayed, the missing left hind an absence so familiar I’d stopped noticing the shape of it. His one good ear was folded back against the vinyl. He didn’t open his eyes when I came in. He knew the sound of the wheels. He’d been sleeping there for six years in direct violation of every health code Gerry had ever been cited for and never fixed.

The latch on the supply cabinet needed a thumb on the bottom edge. I found it without looking. The cabinet swung open. I grabbed the bottle of disinfectant spray, set it on the counter, and closed the door with my hip. The spray bottle went into my left scrub pocket. Right pocket held a roll of gauze and a pair of shears.

The sink handle stuck. I jiggled it left, then right, then left again. The water came on cold. I filled Stitch’s ceramic dish to the rim and set it on the floor beside the table leg. He still didn’t move. The water would be there when he woke up. It always was.

The clinic was mine in this hour.

Gerry had left at four-thirty, after sorting out where his keys were. He’d said something about a dinner with his sister in town.

Tessa had clocked out at six sharp, her scrubs swapped for jeans and a sweatshirt. The building settled around me after hours. The fluorescent hum. The faint tick of the hot water heater through the wall. The smell of bleach and fur and the underlying note of something chemical that never quite aired out.

I moved through it without thinking. My hands knew where everything lived. The suture drawer was three inches left of the anesthetic cabinet. The saline bags hung on the far wall hook behind the scale. The crash cart sat where it had sat for six years, its contents arranged by size rather than use because that was how I’d found it and how I’d kept it. I could reach any of it in the dark. I had, twice, during power outages.

The supply levels ran in my head instead of on the clipboard. Two cases of 4-0 suture. Three boxes of exam gloves, large. One case of saline, half-empty. The drug drawer was locked. The key lived on the ring with the keys for the back door and the crash cart.

The lead technician credential hung on the wall behind the front desk.