8. Kirk #2
She turns when she hears the door and her face does something, that expressive, unguarded face, it moves through pleased and startled before she registers what she's actually looking at.
"Kirk." The spatula drops. "Kirk, what did you, oh my God, sit down, sit down right now."
"It's fine."
"There is blood on your coat." She's already moving, already around the kitchen counter, already putting herself between me and the door I just came through, looking up at me with those wide hazel eyes that are doing something I haven't seen in them yet.
Not panic. Not the kind of panic she had in the car, not the falling-apart kind.
Something focused. "There is blood in the snow, I saw it from the window. Sit. Down."
"I just need to bind it."
"Yes, and I'm going to help you bind it, and you're going to sit in that chair while I do it.
Kirk." Her hand comes up and five small fingers splays against my sternum, and pushes.
I don't move because I'm six-foot-four and weigh two hundred and forty pounds and she is neither of those things, but I sit down in the chair by the fire because she is looking at me like that. "Where's your first aid kit?"
"Cabinet," I say. "Above the basin. Top shelf, left side."
She's already gone. I hear her opening the cabinet, the shift of supplies, and I sit with my hand clamped over my forearm and look at Barnaby who is looking at me with his yellow eyes in a way that I find profoundly unhelpful.
"Shut up," I tell him.
He drops his chin to his paws.
She comes back with the kit, the proper one, the military surplus one I've maintained for years, and she opens it on the kitchen table and looks at its contents with the brief, assessing look of someone who is frightened but has decided that being frightened is not currently useful.
Then she pulls a chair up directly in front of me, so close her knees are between mine, and holds out both hands.
"Let me see."
I look at her for a moment.
"Kirk." She doesn't look away. Her jaw is set and her hands are steady and she's still wearing my flannel shirt and her hair is all over the place. "Let me see your arm."
I put my arm in her hands.
She peels the sleeve back carefully, and I watch her face when she sees the cut. Something crosses it, something that is not squeamishness but is adjacent to it, a flinch that she overrides before it can take hold. She takes a slow breath and reaches for the antiseptic.
"This is going to sting," she says.
"I know."
"I'm going to clean it first, and then I think you need steri-strips on it, I don't think it needs stitches but I'm not a doctor, I'm an event planner, so if you disagree with my assessment please say so."
"Steri-strips are fine."
"Okay." She pours antiseptic onto the gauze pad and meets my eyes, and I can see her steeling herself, for my reaction more than anything else, preparing to apologize for hurting me.
I don't give her any reaction to manage.
I sit still while she cleans the cut, thorough and careful, and the only thing that happens is that my jaw tightens once and then releases.
"You don't make a sound," she says quietly. Not asking.
"No."
"My brother used to cry at papercuts." She's working, not looking at me now, peeling the backing off the first steri-strip, placing it with neat precision across the mouth of the cut.
Her fingers are careful. Remarkably careful.
"He's very dramatic. I used to be the one who patched him up. " Another strip. "I got good at it."
"You're good at it," I say.
Her hands pause. Just for a moment. Then they keep moving.
She puts five strips across the cut, spaced with an exactness that would be harder to achieve without practice, then covers the whole thing with a non-stick pad and starts wrapping gauze around my forearm.
The strip goes over and under with quiet efficiency, and she ties it off with two half-hitches that are cleaner than most people manage with two working hands on their own wounds.
"Where'd you learn to tie that?" I ask.
"Scouts." A short pause. "I was very committed to my sash."
I look at the bandage. "Good work."
"Don't sound so surprised." She's still holding my arm.
She looks down at the bandage too, checking her work, and then she looks up at me, and we are very close, her knees still between mine and her hands wrapped around my forearm and her face a foot below mine, and for a long moment we do nothing useful.
"How bad is it going to hurt?" she asks. "Honestly."
"Already is."
"Oh." She doesn't let go of my arm. "Do you have ibuprofen in here?"
"Left side of the kit."
She reaches for it without moving away, has to lean slightly across me to get there, and I can feel her hair against my jaw for the three seconds it takes, and then she's back with the bottle, shaking two into her palm and pressing them toward me.
I take them from her hand. My fingers touch her palm. I close my hand around the pills and she pulls her hand back and tucks it into her lap and looks at the fire instead of at me.
"You should stay inside today," she says.
"Wood won't split itself."
"You split enough wood to heat this cabin for a week. I watched you." Her chin tips up slightly. "From the window."
So she was watching. I file that away and say nothing.
"One day off isn't going to kill you," she says.
The storm drives against the north wall, the same note it's been hitting since yesterday, a long low moan through the pines. Barnaby sighs at my feet.
I look at my arm. I look at her handiwork, that neat, clean dressing, the careful knots.
"Fine," I say.
She blinks. She was clearly prepared for an argument. "Fine?"
"One day."
"Oh." She pulls her chair back slightly, giving me room, and her hands find the hem of my shirt and she smooths it over her knee, and I can see the effort it costs her not to smile.
Not the bright, busy kind of smile she uses when she's managing her own nerves.
Something quieter. Something she's trying to keep to herself. "Well. Good. I made eggs."
"I saw."
"I also found your coffee tin. I hope that's all right."
"It's all right."
She stands up, taking the first aid kit with her, and crosses to the kitchen to put it back, and I sit in the chair by the fire with my bandaged arm resting on my knee and the pills in my fist and Barnaby's chin finding my boot, and the cabin is warm, the fire full and breathing, and it smells like eggs and woodsmoke and pine soap.
One day.
I can manage one day.