‘Can’t you give him something for the pain?’ She shot an imploring look at Rob.
‘It’s okay. Let him take a look... He knows what he’s doing,’ Euan said.
A short, sharp laugh from Rob. ‘Glad to hear you think so. I’m going to take the dressing off now.’ Rob paid him the professional courtesy of skipping the bit about keeping still and that it might hurt a bit.
It hurt a lot, but not as much as the tears in her eyes when she saw the wound. Not as much as the helplessness he felt.
‘It doesn’t look too deep.’ Rob seemed to be taking his time over probing the gash on his side. ‘Any loss of feeling in your leg?’
‘No, my leg’s fine.’ Euan tried to keep impatience from his voice. Everyone seemed to be forgetting that Sam had just been through a traumatic experience too. She’d come face to face with an intruder, had had a knife waved at her. Then she’d had to deal with dressing his wound and bringing him here. He hadn’t expected her to fall to pieces, Sam kept far too tight a grip on her emotions for that, but he almost wished that she would.
Rob seemed finally to have come to a conclusion. ‘Good. We’ll irrigate the wound first, and if there’s no sign of any other damage, I’ll stitch it.’ He snapped off his surgical gloves, throwing them into the waste bin. ‘I won’t be a minute.’
‘Yeah. Thanks, Rob. I appreciate it.’
‘All part of the service.’ Rob grinned at him and walked out of the cubicle.
‘Where’s he going?’ Sam leaned in close, whispering to him.
‘He’ll ask a nurse to clean the wound.’ Euan still couldn’t quite get his head around it being his own wound. He felt he should be doing something, not just lying there. ‘They’ll make sure there’s nothing in there, and then stitch it up.’
‘Hmm.’ She gave the cubicle an assessing sweep of her gaze. ‘They seem pretty good here.’
‘They’re very good.’ Euan frowned.
‘What’s the matter? Do you want me to call someone?’
‘No, it’s okay.’ Nothing was okay. He’d let Sam down, leaving her alone to face a kid with a knife, and now he couldn’t even comfort her properly. Adrenaline was still flooding his system, urging him to either fight or fly and he was expected to lie still. ‘It’s you I’m worried about.’
It seemed like a perfectly reasonable thing to say, but she rolled her eyes. ‘Is it really so hard to let someone take care of you, Euan? You never know, you might be good at it.’
‘I might not.’
‘There’s always beginner’s luck.’
She made him laugh, with that dry humour of hers. When he wasn’t laughing, she made him smile, in about a hundred different ways. He took her hand and swore a silent oath that as soon as he got out of here, he’d take much better care of her.
* * *
They seemed to have been at the hospital for about a week, but when Euan looked at his watch it had been a little more than a couple of hours. A policeman had turned up to take statements from them both and then Rob had declared him fit to go home, releasing him into Sam’s care. Euan had made no objection, largely because he knew that Rob wouldn’t let him go home alone.
He needed her help to get out of the car, but he could walk well enough. He’d be okay as long as he didn’t need to break into a sprint.
‘I’m going to call David. You should stay with him and Sandra tonight,’ he announced.
She’d followed him through to the kitchen and now she took the phone out of his hand and put it back into its cradle. ‘You’re supposed to be taking things easy. And the doctor said that you shouldn’t be on your own tonight.’
‘Don’t fuss.’ He’d almost snapped at her and regretted it immediately.
‘I’m not fussing.’ She flushed red.
‘Sam, I really appreciate everything you’ve done...’ Euan was usually too proud to beg, but these were special circumstances. ‘Please, do as I ask. I can manage for myself.’
‘No, you can’t manage for yourself. You’ve just been stabbed. So you can drop the macho act, stop being so pig-headed, and bloody well sit down.’
‘There’s no need to shout.’
‘What the hell do you expect me to do? You’re walking about, you won’t sit and take things easy. Any minute now you could start bleeding, or something could rupture.’ She flailed one hand in the air, to cover a multitude of unknown medical conditions. ‘Don’t you dare make me lose you, because I won’t do it.’ She was shaking now, tears running down her cheeks.