5. The Stitch
The Stitch
Monika
The blood is always the first thing I notice.
Not the wound itself—not the shape of it, the depth, the things that are cut and the things that are still intact.
The blood comes first, because blood tells you everything you need to know before you even look.
The color tells you if it's venous or arterial.
The flow tells you how much time you have.
The smell tells you if there's something else wrong, something underneath, something that won't show itself until you're already inside.
I learned that in the barn. I learned it again in the diner, on a night I've been trying very hard not to think about.
Tonight, the blood is dark red and seeping slow.
Venous. Not life-threatening, not yet, but the kind of wound that will turn into something worse if nobody does anything about it.
The kind of wound that needs cleaning and closing and someone who isn't afraid to push a needle through flesh that's still trying to hold itself together.
The man holding the towel against his arm is young.
Younger than me, maybe—nineteen, twenty, the kind of age where you still think you're invincible even when you're bleeding through a dish rag in a diner at one in the morning.
His face is pale, but he's not crying. He's not even shaking.
He's just sitting in the booth with his jaw tight and his eyes fixed on the door, like he's waiting for someone.
Like he's waiting for permission to fall apart.
"The hospital is twenty minutes," I say, kneeling beside the booth with the first aid kit in my hands. "Maybe less if you run the lights. But you're not going to make it twenty minutes with that towel. You need stitches."
"Can't do a hospital." His voice is young too. Scratchy. Like he's been shouting. "No hospitals."
I've heard those words before. From another man, on another night, with different blood and a different wound. The echo of it makes something cold settle in my chest.
"Let me see," I say.
He hesitates. His eyes dart to the door again, and I realize he's not waiting for permission. He's waiting for someone specific. Someone he's afraid of disappointing.
"I don't have time for you to make up your mind," I say. "You're bleeding on the upholstery. Del will kill me if you ruin another booth. Show me your arm or get out."
That does it. He pulls the towel away, and I see the wound for the first time.
It's a knife wound. Clean entry, no jagged edges, which means the blade was sharp and the person holding it knew what they were doing.
The cut runs along the outside of his forearm, from the wrist to halfway to the elbow—not deep enough to hit the bone, not shallow enough to ignore.
The muscle beneath is visible, glistening pink and wet, and I feel my stomach do something that isn't quite a flip.
Not because I'm squeamish. I'm not. I've seen worse. I've put my hands inside worse.
Because I recognize this wound. I've seen it before, on animals that got into fights they shouldn't have started. This is a defensive wound. He put his arm up to block a blow, and the blade caught him on the way down.
Someone was trying to hurt him. Someone almost succeeded.
"I can stitch this," I say. "It won't be pretty.
I don't have lidocaine. I don't have sterile thread.
I have fishing line and a sewing needle and a bottle of vodka that's been sitting under the register for six months.
It's going to hurt. It's going to leave a scar. But you won't bleed out on my floor."
He swallows. "Do it."
"Who are you?"
"What?"
"You're waiting for someone. You won't go to a hospital. You're carrying a knife wound like it's happened before." I hold his gaze. "Who are you?"
"My name's Dmitri." He hesitates. "I work for someone. That's all I can tell you."
"Does that someone have a name?"
"If I told you, I'd have to kill you."
I laugh. It comes out before I can stop it—a short, sharp sound that surprises both of us. "You can barely hold a towel. You're not killing anyone tonight."
His mouth twitches. Almost a smile. "You're not wrong."
"Come to the counter. I need better light."
I set up in the same place I set up three weeks ago.
The counter. The same stool. The same cheap fluorescent light that makes everything look yellow and diseased.
The vodka is still under the register—I replaced the bottle after last time, because Del noticed it was low and gave me a look I didn't want to explain.
The fishing line is from the back closet, where we keep the supplies no one remembers buying.
The sewing needle is from my own coat pocket—I keep one there, for buttons, for hems, for the small repairs that come with clothes that weren't expensive to begin with.
I sterilize everything with vodka and Del's lighter, and I don't think about the last time I did this.
I don't think about grey eyes and silver temples and a smile that looked like a crack in a stone wall.
"Put your arm on the counter," I say. "Palm up. I need to see the edges."
Dmitri does what I say. His arm is trembling—not from fear, I think, but from adrenaline. The body's way of burning through everything it has left. He's running on empty, and he doesn't even know it.
"This is going to hurt," I say. "I need you to stay still. If you move, I'll have to start over, and I only have so much vodka."
"I can stay still."
"Good."
I pour vodka over the wound. He gasps—a sharp intake of breath, his back arching off the stool—but he doesn't move his arm. His other hand grips the edge of the counter, knuckles white, and I watch his face go through something that looks like a prayer.
I thread the needle with the fishing line. My hands are steady. They're always steady. That's the gift, my mother said. That's the curse.
The first stitch is the hardest. The needle has to go through skin that's still trying to pull itself apart, and the fishing line is thicker than anything a surgeon would use, and I don't have any way to numb him except the alcohol that's already burning its way through his nerves.
I push the needle through the edge of the wound, and he makes a sound—not a scream, not a cry, just a low, guttural exhale—and I pull the line through and tie the knot.
"Eight more," I say. "Maybe nine."
"Great."
"You're doing fine."
"I'm not doing anything. You're doing everything."
"That's the idea."
I work quickly. Not fast—fast is how you make mistakes—but efficiently, the way you learn to work when you have a limited window and a patient who's running out of blood.
Each stitch pulls the edges of the wound a little closer together, a little more aligned, until the gash that was gaping begins to look like a line.
Like something that might, eventually, heal.
I'm on the sixth stitch when the door chimes.
I don't look up. I can't look up. My hands are inside someone's arm, and looking up means stopping, and stopping means leaving the needle in place while I figure out who just walked in.
So I keep working. Sixth stitch, knot. Seventh stitch, knot.
The fishing line pulls through the skin with a sound that makes Dmitri's jaw clench, but he doesn't move.
"Good evening," says a voice I recognize.
Low. Rough. Familiar.
The suit.
I don't know his name yet—not the real one—but I know his voice, and I know the way it settles under my skin, and I know that my heart is beating faster than it should be for someone who's supposed to be focused on a wound.
"Evening," I say, not looking up. "I'm a little busy."
"I can see that."
He doesn't sit. I hear him move—the soft sound of expensive shoes on linoleum—and then he's standing beside me, close enough that I can smell cedar and smoke and something clean.
He's looking at Dmitri's arm, at my hands, at the needle and the fishing line and the vodka bottle with its label half-peeled off.
"Dmitri," he says. "Report."
"Ambush," Dmitri says. His voice is strained, but steady. "Three men. Outside the warehouse on Grant. I didn't see their faces. They knew where I'd be."
"Knew or guessed?"
"Knew. They were waiting."
Suit is quiet for a moment. I finish the seventh stitch and start the eighth, and I can feel his eyes on my hands—watching the way I move, the way I tie the knots, the way I don't hesitate even when the fishing line pulls through flesh that's already starting to bruise.
"You came here," He says. It's not a question.
"Nearest place. And I knew—" Dmitri stops. Swallows. "I knew you'd come here."
"You knew she was here."
"Yes, sir."
Suit doesn't respond to that. But I feel the weight of his attention shift—from my hands to my face, from my face to the way I'm holding my breath.
He knows what Dmitri meant. He knows that this diner has become something to his men.
A place where the bleeding go, because the girl with steady hands will help them without asking questions.
I don't know how I feel about that. I don't have time to figure it out.
Eighth stitch. Knot. Ninth stitch, and the wound is closed—not beautiful, not the way a surgeon would close it, but closed. The edges are together. The bleeding has stopped. Dmitri will have a scar that looks like a railroad track, but he'll keep his arm, and that's what matters.
I cut the fishing line with my teeth—something I learned from my mother, something that always made my father wince—and reach for a clean towel. I press it against the stitches, wiping away the excess blood, and I don't look at Suits.
I don't look at him, but I feel him. The way you feel a storm before it breaks.
"Keep pressure on that for ten minutes," I tell Dmitri. "Don't get it wet for at least twenty-four hours. If it starts to swell or turn red around the edges, you need antibiotics, and I can't help you with that."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Don't call me ma'am. I'm younger than you."