Chapter 17 Tristan #2
His head fell against my shoulder, breath hot and ragged, skin burning under my hands. Feverish and cold all at once, that awful clammy heat screaming something was wrong.
“Stay with me. Hey…stay…” I eased him down, knees sliding on the slick floor, water soaking through my pyjamas as I pressed a towel to his side.
Blood was everywhere. Too much, too fast. The colour of it hit me first, then the sound. A wet hiss against the drain. His eyes fluttered, lips pale. I needed to call an ambulance. But if I let go, he’d bleed out right there.
So I shouted, “Henry!”
The sound drowned in the shower’s roar. I reached up, fumbling for the knob, twisting it off. The water cut to silence except for the gasping drag of Razor’s breathing.
I yelled again. “Henry!”
Doors opened. Feet hit the landing hard. Then Henry’s voice. Sharp, alert.
“Tris?” He appeared in the doorway a second later, dishevelled, no shirt, eyes wide, trousers open at the fly and clutching a cricket bat. “What the hell—?”
I lifted the towel. “Can you help him?”
Henry blinked. “Who the fuck is this?”
“Can we talk after?”
Henry stepped forward, crouched, and pulled the towel away. His face changed instantly. Doctor mode. “That’s a stab wound.”
“Yeah. I think so.”
“Tris, did you do this? Is he burglar? Are we saving a fucking burglar?”
“No! Can we talk about it after you save him? Put those years of med school to use, yeah?”
He shot me a look. “I’m not even half qualified—”
“Henry, please!”
That did it. He threw the cricket bat away and pressed his hand to the wound, checking pressure, then looked Razor over in quick, clinical sweeps. Pulse, pupils, breathing.
“He’s in shock.” He glanced around. “We need him flat. Lift him…careful, careful…”
Between us, we hauled him out of the shower, a guttural groan breaking from him as Henry guided us into the bedroom. We laid him across the bed, my pristine white sheets instantly blooming crimson beneath his side.
Henry leant over the wound. “Right lower flank,” he said. “Missed anything vital, I think. Lucky bastard.”
“What do you need?”
“First-aid kit. Big one. And vodka. Or antiseptic. Anything clean.”
I bolted. Down the stairs, feet slipping on the wood, heart in my throat. I grabbed the kit from under the sink, snatched the half-empty bottle of vodka from the counter, and tore back up where Zara was in the doorway, wrapped in her silk dressing gown, phone in hand.
“No!” I slapped it away before she could dial. “No ambulance. Not yet.”
She stared back at Henry, wide eyed, waiting for his instruction. Henry looked up, caught her gaze, and gave a small, grim shrug. That was enough. She sighed, bit her thumbnail, watching while I shoved the bottle and kit into Henry’s hands. He ripped open the gauze, pressing down hard on the wound.
“He’s lost a lot, but he’s breathing. We can manage this.”
Then he poured the vodka.
Razor jerked, a hiss tearing from between his clenched teeth. His eyes flicked open, wild and glassy, and he shot out a hand, catching mine in a grip that could’ve broken bone. I held it anyway. Held him.
“Yeah, mate, I know,” Henry said, voice calm, professional. “You’re fine. Stay still.”
He wasn’t fine. His skin was pale grey under the light, lips blue-tinged.
His breath came shallow, fast. He wasn’t really there.
Half conscious, pulled between fight and fade.
But Henry kept working. Clean pressure, butterfly strips, then a tight gauze wrapped around his ribs until the blood slowed from a steady leak to a sluggish pulse.
“He needs rest.” Henry fell back on his heels. “Fluids. Antibiotics. And a hospital.”
“If we take him in, he’ll be logged.” I shook my head. “A stab wound like this, they’ll call CID.”
Henry narrowed his eyes. “Which is what we should want, no?”
I looked down at Razor, his hand clamped in mine, body trembling beneath the bandages, heat radiating off him in waves.
“No,” I said quietly.
“Who is he, Tris?”
I met Henry’s gaze. “For now, he’s mine. Leave it at that. Please.”
Henry exhaled, shaking his head. “Jesus Christ.” He stood, gathering up bloodied gauze. “Get him warm. He’s freezing.”
Then he was gone, leaving the air heavy with the smell of iron and vodka.
I eased Razor higher onto the bed, dragging the covers up around him and me. He was limp against me, breath shallow, heartbeat unsteady but there. I held him close, trying to share what little warmth I had left. After a moment, his lips moved.
“Might’ve ruined your sheets, Tricky.” The words were soft, slurred, but unmistakably him. Rough, crooked humour even while half gone.
A laugh escaped me, shaky and small, somewhere between relief and disbelief. I pressed my lips to his temple before I could stop myself.
“I doubt it’ll be the last time.”
He didn’t answer. And I was grateful for it. Because those stupid, unguarded words were my bloodletting, my weakness spilling out to meet his.
My hope.
Then his fingers slipped from mine, his breathing steadying, and he fell asleep.
* * * *
Razor was out cold until the next day.
I did what I could around him. Changed the sheets, tried not to stare at the wreck of him on my bed.
I got him out of his soaked underwear and dug out a pair of Ollie’s old boxers I hadn’t yet torn or thrown out.
Tight on him, but decent enough that Henry didn’t have to blush when he tended to him.
Not that he would. He was training for A he’d seen more naked men than a rugby locker room.
The modesty was more for Razor’s sake. Or mine, if I was honest. Because looking at him half-dead and half-divine, I didn’t trust what I felt.
Henry came in again in the morning. He’d been out and got some supplies. He checked his pulse, lips pressed thin.
“He’s stable. Fever’s holding, which isn’t ideal but not critical.
Keep him warm. Fluids if he wakes.” He then dumped what he’d bought down the little Waitrose on my bedside table.
Water. Salt. A bottle of lemonade. “Alternate between the water and salt water. Keep the lid off the lemonade for it to go flat, then use that. If his temperature spikes or he starts shivering uncontrollably, come get me.” He rummaged through his bag, handed me a small pack of tablets.
“Antibiotics. They’ll help if anything’s brewing.
Painkillers, too. Codeine, so don’t double dose him. He’s lost enough blood already.”
“Right.” I glanced up at him as I sat on the edge of the bed. “Thank you, Hen.”
Henry wiped his hands on a towel. “He’s lucky.” Then he gave me that look, landing between disappointment and worry, the one he’d used to give me when I snuck out after lights-out to kiss boys behind the chapel. “Not so sure about you here, though.”
I nodded. He was right. But he didn’t lecture me.
Or press for answers. And that’s the thing about Henry.
He just gets on with it. If he became half as good a doctor as he was a friend, the NHS would be grateful.
That’s what he proved right then. Even when everyone else had betrayed me, he wouldn’t.
And when he left, I could hear Zara browbeating him for answers and Henry giving her nothing.
Of course, he had nothing, but the point was, he still protected me even when I’d brought chaos to our doorstep.
Razor barely stirred, mumbling nonsense every now and then.
Once or twice, he came to enough for me to lift his head and get a few sips of salt water down him.
Then he’d sink back under, body trembling before it finally gave up and he fell back to sleep again.
I gathered his clothes into a pile by the wall, not sure what to do with them.
Every instinct told me to leave them. My father’s voice muttered about evidence.
But another voice, quieter and far more dangerous, told me to wash them. Or burn them.
Instead, I emptied the pockets.
Two burner phones, both cheap and scratched.
One tattered smartphone, screen cracked, a photo showing a dark-haired girl not much older than Amelia, holding a baby.
I hoped to God that wasn’t Razor’s baby.
A wad of rolled cash, an old lighter, a single house key.
A flick knife. Small, clean, well-used. A handful of baggies: some empty, some not. No wallet. No ID.
No trace of who he was when he wasn’t this.
The burners rang constantly. Unknown numbers. I let them ring out.
I spent the rest of the day tending to him. When he woke, I made him drink. When he slept, I sat beside him. Henry checked another two times.
At nightfall, I stripped down to my boxers and slid under the covers beside him. His skin was hot against mine, his pulse thready under my fingertips. I told myself I was just checking he was breathing, counting heartbeats the way a medic would.
But I wasn’t.
I was lying to myself the same as I always did.
Because what I wanted wasn’t to save him.
It was to keep him.
* * * *
Forty-eight or so hours later, Razor jolted awake.
The room was dark, lit only by the faint orange spill of the streetlamp through the curtains. He gasped, coughed, shot his hand out, searching the space as if he didn’t know where he was.
“Hey—hey.” I sat up, rubbing my eyes and put a hand on his shoulder. He flinched so hard I thought he was going to swing. “Easy.” I raised my hands. “It’s me.”
I wasn’t sure if that meant anything to him.
He hardly knew who ‘me’ was. But something in my voice must’ve caught because his breathing steadied, shoulders dropping.
He blinked hard, trying to focus, then sagged back against the headboard with a hiss, one hand going to his ribs.
He glanced at it, as if not remembering how it got there.
He wasn’t fully back yet. All those strong painkillers Henry had got him must have been messing with his head.
He then nodded down at the gauze around his middle. “You do this?”
“Uh… no. That was my housemate.”