30. Five Women and a First Aid Kit
Chapter thirty
Five Women and a First Aid Kit
áINE
The apartment door barely closes behind us before Joy sees the blood.
"You're hurt!" She points at Kieran's arm, voice pitching. Then she runs across the living room and throws herself at him.
He drops to a squat that fast and takes her full on against his chest. "It's just a little blood, sunshine. Nothing to worry about."
Yeah, that's not going to have the calming effect he thinks it will.
"You're bleeding?" Sadie demands from the hall.
"It's just a graze." Kieran sets Joy aside gently and stands. "I'll wash up in the bathroom."
Neeve tosses the book she's reading on the sofa and jumps up, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose. "Mom?" Her voice waivers.
"Sadie, get the first aid kit from under the bathroom sink." I grab Kieran's hand and pull toward the couch. "You, sit down. Neeve, I need the peroxide from the medicine cabinet."
"Joy, go ask your gran to make Kieran a cup of tea."
The girls scatter and I tug Kieran down. "Come on, big guy, time to take your medicine."
"What medicine?" he asks, sounding bemused. But he sits.
"The 'you're part of a family now and there's no washing the blood away in the bathroom and pretending like nothing happened' medicine." I sit down on the coffee table facing him.
For some reason, I haven't let go of his hand. "Taking care of yourself sets a good example for the girls. Do you want them thinking they just have to suck it up if they get hurt?"
He goes stiff, repugnancy at the suggestion radiating off of him. "No way in hell."
"The best way to teach them it's okay to rely on family when you're hurting is to let us take care of you."
"But it doesn't hurt."
"Compared to what? A broken leg? Kieran, you were shot," I whisper yell that last bit so the girls and mom don't hear. "Don't try to tell me it doesn't hurt."
"We don't deny our feelings in this family." Sadie arrives with the first-aid kit, her tone a pretty good imitation of mine.
It makes Kieran smile.
Which helps Sadie's shoulders to come down from around her ears. Neeve too. My middle daughter silently offers me the peroxide and cotton balls.
I take them and set them beside me on the coffee table. Sadie opens the first-aid kit and places it next to the peroxide.
I tug on the hem of his t-shirt. "Come on, let's get this off."
"You don't need to take it off to clean the graze," Kieran balks.
"Don't be a baby. You're not going to run around in a shirt splattered with blood, are you?"
When I see from his expression, that is exactly what he planned to do, I shake my head and tug the shirt up his torso.
The graze runs along the outer edge of his upper arm. Raw and ugly, it's still bleeding sluggishly.
Joy comes back into the living room. "Gran will bring the tea after it steeps," she announces as she settles onto the arm of the couch.
Sadie and Neeve hover to Kieran's left, all of the girls watching me intently, the worry palpable.
"Neeve, I need a clean hand towel. Will you get me one, please?" I ask my middle daughter then smile at Sadie. "We're going to need a trash can for the used cotton balls."
I don't need to ask my oldest. She scurries across the room and grabs the small, decorative trash can mom keeps beside her recliner for snipped yarn ends. Neeve's back in seconds with the hand towel.
"Here you hold it under his arm, like this." I demonstrate for Neeve to hold the towel with both hands pressed against Kieran's arm a few inches below his wound.
He goes still, a strange expression on his ruggedly handsome face.
This is what I used to do when the girls were small and got hurt. If I wasn't careful, all three would end up wailing, two of them in sympathy, while I tried to patch up one of them. Giving them jobs to do and keeping them close kept them focused on helping, not sliding into sympathy hysterics.
It works just like it did when they were younger. The tension in room settles by degrees every time I give them another job to do.
Seeing my hands beside Neeve's on the towel, I grimace in consternation. "I have to wash my hands. Girls, you keep Kieran right where he is." I wag my finger at him. "Do not get up."
By the time I get back from washing my hands and then liberally dosing them with sanitizer for good measure, mom's in her easy chair and there are two mugs of tea on the end table closest to Kieran.
Joy is sitting beside him, her little hand anchored in his, taking the job of keeping him seated very seriously.
Neeve is still holding the hand towel against his injured arm, stopping the blood from spreading further. "Good job," I tell her.
I return to my seat on the coffee table, my knees bumping Kieran's. When I try to shift so our knees aren't touching, he moves his leg and keeps us connected.
Giving him a quizzical look, I pick up the bottle of peroxide and pour some directly onto his arm.
He blinks back at me as if to say, "What?"
The peroxide runs down his arms, making rivulets in the blood and bubbles on his wound, doing what it's supposed to.
Grabbing one of the cotton balls, I start wiping away the blood from his skin, but not his wound.
For that, I ask Sadie to open a package of gauze.
I use the sterile gauze and more peroxide to gently clean the wound itself.
It takes six cotton balls and two large gauze pads to clean the blood away so I can check the wound. My fingers settle on either side of it, pressing gently, causing more blood to well but also giving me a clear visual of the grazed flesh. Nothing embedded.
"Is he going to be okay, mommy?" Joy asks.
She hasn't called me mommy since she started preschool. Except when she's really tired. Or really scared of something.
My youngest abhors spiders.
And I know exactly what a screamed, "Mommy!" in the middle of the night means.
It's not a nightmare, but a spider in the bathroom when she got up to pee.
"He's going to be fine," I promise, believing it fully for myself for the first time.
Kieran got shot.
Protecting me.
I have way too many feelings about that, some of them way too deep for how long we've known each other. Even if we are married.
Neeve chews on her bottom lip. "Does it hurt?"
"No," Kieran says.
My daughter's face screws into a frown. "I don't believe you."
"You're right. It hurts a little, petal," he admits. "I've had worse shaving."
I'm grateful for his honesty. Trust starts with the small things.
Joy stares up at Kieran doubtfully. "You shave your arm?"
The corner of his mouth tilts upward. "No, but I have cut myself shaving my face."
"Oh."
Before Joy can add more, Sadie demands, "What happened to your arm though? Was it to do with…before?"
This kid. She's taking the weight of the world on her shoulders and it's not hers to carry. Not even a little.
Kieran shakes his head decisively. "No."
"We were mugged." I finish cleaning Kieran's graze and apply a clean square of gauze to it.
Sadie's eyes grow round. "Mugged? But…" She looks at Kieran with doubt-filled worry. "I thought…"
"They tried to mug us," he stresses.
"I bet you kicked their butts," Neeve says with satisfied hero worship as she crumples the now bloody towel into a ball and holds it tightly in both hands.
"He so did." I refuse to be embarrassed if my voice has a little hero worship in it too. "There were five of them and Kieran disabled all of them."
The man was amazing.
"But one of them hurt you?" Sadie asks, her own tone still laced with uncertainty.
"We can't always avoid getting hurt," mom says briskly from her chair, speaking for the first time since I started cleaning Kieran's wound. "But that doesn't mean we give up fighting."
There's a message in there for all of us.
Kieran nods. "That about sums it up, Maureen."
"Your new dad isn't Superman," mom cautions the girls. "But he's a strong man that will never stop fighting for you or himself."
I don't know why mom is so firmly on Team Kieran, but I'm glad she is. The fact she always refers to him as their new dad and not their stepdad? That's as telling as how quick she is to stand up for him.
Maybe it's because he reminds her of dad, like she said. Or that she listens when Ellie talks him up.
I know I do.
Whatever her reasoning, between mom and the girls, Kieran's approval rating in this family is at 100. After the gifted phones, I have to give him a 99. He was hovering closer to 80 before the mugging, but I have to admit to an undeniable susceptibility to his willingness to take a bullet for me.
Even if it only ended up grazing him.
Kieran stood between me and the gun pointed at me without a second's hesitation.
Something expands in my heart and I do my best to ignore it. It's too soon.
You keep telling yourself that.
"You want to put that in the laundry?" I ask Neeve, nodding toward the dirty towel.
Her shoulders hunch, a sure sign she does not want to leave the room.
"Here. Put it with Kieran's shirt." I plan to throw the shirt away because of the rip in the sleeve. The towel can be washed though. "I'll take care of it after I'm done."
Pushing her glasses up again, Neeve sidles closer to Kieran. "Will it scar?"
"Probably not," he says, not sounding very concerned about the possibility.
Considering how many scars he has on his beautiful body, that's not a surprise.
I tape the gauze down. My thumb drags slow along the inside of his arm as I smooth the last edge.
Unintentionally. Probably. Maybe.
Okay, not so much unintentional as inevitable.
He inhales a deep breath.
My heart beats a faster rhythm. I don't look up. If I do, he'll see what I'm feeling all over my face. I smooth the tape along each side, deliberate now, taking longer than I need to.
I feel his gaze heavy on me the whole time.
"Hmm." Mom picks up her knitting. "Looks good from here, áine."
I quickly drop my hand away from Kieran's arm. "Right. It's all good."
Kieran looks at the dressing and there's a look on his face I don't like.
"Don't," I say.
He looks at me.
"I can see what you're thinking. You are not taking that off before I replace it with a clean dressing tomorrow."
"I always listen when Mom sounds like that," Joy offers helpfully.
Sadie is quiet for just a beat. Then, with studied casualness says, "Yeah, you better listen, dad. If you know what's good for you."
The word lands in the room like a boulder in the middle of a pond, sending ripples of reaction outward.
Sadie goes pink from her collarbone to her hairline. She looks down at the first aid kit and starts putting things away with careful movements.
Kieran is still, his expression flummoxed. Then he clears his throat. "Good to know." His voice is level but there's a pleased undertone he doesn't bother to hide.
Sadie doesn't look up, but her mouth curves.
The girls aren't about to settle down for their normal bedtime tonight, so I start a movie they've all seen before.
Tilted sideways on the couch with her mouth open, Joy is out before the princess climbs down from her tower. Neeve lasts until the palace guards start chasing them. You know she's tired because that's her favorite part of the movie.
Sadie looks at her sleeping sisters and asks, "Can I turn it off?"
My answer is to grab the remote and press the power button. "Ready for bed?" I ask her.
Yawning, she nods but doesn't get up. After several long seconds, she asks, "You sure they were just muggers? Not the dads of the boys who hurt me?"
"Positive. I already dealt with those arsewipes." Suddenly, Kieran's talking with an Irish brogue I've never heard him use before. "Sure as certain, the fools who tried to mug us aren't mobbed up. They're gang bangers."
"How do you know?" Sadie asks, but she's smiling now.
"They were wearing gang colors," I offer.
"I know our men, zemra e vogel," Kieran says, his brogue even thicker. "It's my job."
"No one can know all of them."
"Oh, aye, I can. Believe me, Mick knows every member of the Shaughnessy mob, right down to the runners."
The so do I goes unsaid.
But I'm pretty sure both me and Sadie hear it just fine anyway.
She lets out a breath, the remaining tensions she's been holding draining away. "Okay." She yawns again and stands up. "I'm going to bed." Sadie looks at Kieran. "You'll be here in the morning?"
"Yes," he says firmly.
"Well, that's me ready for sleep," mom says and stands. "I'm glad they didn't get you, boyo."
She and Sadie walk down the hall together.
Kieran shrugs into a button up and then insists on carrying Neeve and Joy to bed with his good arm.
Of course.
I know what's coming before he reaches for his jacket, but I still ask, "Where are you going?"
"I have men to interrogate."
"You want to interrogate our would-be muggers?" Am I missing something?
"They were trying to get to you," he says, fury that's been banked since we walked into the apartment and the girls' concern making his voice deadly. "Someone sent them."
"I…Kenneth?" I ask faintly.
He nods. "Yes. Whether they know it was Kenneth is something I have to find out."
"Because you need evidence against him to prevent the other mobsters from turning on you when you kill him." I can't believe I'm talking about killing a man like this.
But one of those men shot Kieran. He could have died. My daughters have already been hurt. Kenneth Shaughnessy has to be stopped.
I step in front of him. Not to stop him. Just not ready for him to leave this very second.
Placing my hand on his chest, I order, "Keep that dressing on, big guy."
"Will I get a prize if I do?"
Oh, lord. I want to give him a prize. I want to give him all of me.
He doesn't wait for me to answer because we both know that whatever I give him won't be as much as either of us wants, but he pulls me in for a kiss that acknowledges that, and more.
When he steps back, I sway, my mind too sluggish to figure out what comes next.
Kieran brushes my cheek gently. "Go to bed. I'll be there when you wake up."