Up Close and Dangerous (Page 22)

“I have to shift you around, so you’re lying with your head downhill, at least until after I rinse the cut—unless you want mouthwash all over your face and running under you.”

“No thanks. I can do this myself, though; just tell me what you want me to do.”

“Slide toward me, first; I don’t want you to get off the blanket into the snow. Okay, good. Now rotate on your butt—wait a minute, let me get this piece of vinyl under your head. That’s it.” His gyrations had caused part of the mound of clothes to fall off and she took a minute to replace them.

To keep the mouthwash out of his eyes, he tilted his head back as far as it would go. “Okay. Here goes,” said Bailey, using her left hand as a barrier against any stray splashes, and began carefully pouring the mouthwash over the cut. He twitched, once, then held himself very still.

She watched for any trash or dirt that may have gotten into the wound, but all she saw was blood being washed away. The instructions had said not to dislodge any obvious clots, so she tried not to let the mouthwash splash directly into the cut. When all the mouthwash was gone, she put the cap back on the empty bottle and set it aside, then opened one of the alcohol prep pads and began cleaning around the cut.

She didn’t let herself think about the seriousness of the gash, or how easy it would be for him to pick up an infection in these less than sterile circumstances. Instead she concentrated on what she had to do, step by step. She wiped her hands, the needle, and the pliers with another alcohol pad. Then she put on the disposable plastic gloves and wiped everything again. She wiped his forehead with an iodine pad. When she had done everything she could possibly do to kill every germ, she prepared a suture, took a deep breath, and began.

“The instructions say to start in the middle,” she murmured as she punctured his skin with the curved needle and forced it on around to the other side of the cut. “I guess that’s so you don’t end up with a big lump of skin at one end, if I don’t sew you up evenly.”

He didn’t answer. His eyes were closed and he was taking very measured breaths. Even with the ice pack and ibuprofen, Bailey knew this had to hurt, but evidently it wasn’t the agony she’d feared she would be inflicting on him. He wasn’t tensing every time she jabbed him, at any rate. She went slowly, afraid of making a mistake. Every stitch had to be tied off and clipped, so one stitch was independent of all the others, and the instructions had said to make certain the knot was lying on the skin, not directly on the cut. She made herself think of it as hemming a pair of pants, which didn’t help a lot because sewing was so not her favorite thing to do—and she wasn’t very good at hemming pants, either.

The gash was a good six inches long. She had no idea how many stitches per inch she was supposed to put in, so she simply worked from the middle and put in as many as looked right to her. When she was finished, her hands were shaking, and she was sure she’d taken at least an hour to get the stitching done. She carefully blotted the line of black stitches, wiping away the dots of blood where the needle had punctured his skin, then hesitated. Should she apply antibiotic salve before putting a bandage over the wound? She didn’t think doctors did that now, but then they normally did their stitching in a sterile environment, with all the drugs and paraphernalia they needed. She and Justice were stuck on the side of a mountain, in the snow, with very little food. She thought his immune system might need all the help it could get.

She carefully applied the salve, which also contained a mild analgesic; that had to be a good thing. Then she covered the wound with sterile pads and wrapped gauze around his head; when she was finished with that, she used the Ace bandage to wrap around his head and cover the gauze. The finished product was rather neat, if she did say so herself, and the Ace bandage would help keep dirt away from the wound.

“There,” she finally said, collapsing on her butt beside him. “That’s done. Next on the agenda: shelter.”

9

DAMN, SHE WAS SEXY.

Cam had never thought so before, but he definitely did now—and not because of the way she looked, either, because right now she looked like hell. Her hair was a mess, her face sported both blood and dirt, as well as bruised areas under both eyes that would probably be black tomorrow. Her current state of dress made her look like a cross between a mountain man and a bag lady. And despite the fact that she’d just spent an hour punching holes in his head—or maybe because of it—he wanted to kiss her.

He inwardly snorted at the last thought. Kiss her, my ass. He wanted to do a hell of a lot more than that, so he guessed it was a good thing his current physical condition wasn’t the greatest, or he’d have already risked having his head handed to him on a platter by making a heavy, serious-as-a-heart-attack pass at her.

He’d always wondered what made a male praying mantis court death by mating with the deadly female, whether they didn’t have functional brains so the poor saps had no idea they were literally fucking themselves to death or if something had short-circuited in their evolution. After all, a process that ended in death for the male couldn’t be good for the species. At the same time, he’d sort of admired the little bastards; it took a dedicated male to keep on humping while his head was being torn off and eaten. For the first time, he sort of understood the motivation. He’d risk a hell of a lot to get her naked and under him.

Not that Mrs. Wingate—Hell, what was her first name? He knew it, but he was in the habit of thinking of her as Mrs. Wingate and it didn’t immediately spring to mind. Right now his brain wasn’t exactly firing on all cylinders anyway. Remembering seemed important, though, as if it wasn’t right to think about getting her naked if he couldn’t remember her first name.