Her stomach clenched. “Please don’t
ask me to do that.”
“What?”
“Sew up the wound.”
“You wouldn’t?”
“I don’t have a sewing kit.”
“Lucky you. Manicure scissors?”
“Those I have.”
While he swallowed the two aspirin tablets, she took her makeup bag from her purse and produced a small pair of scissors.
“Good,” he said. “By the way, that pan is full.”
She exchanged the cook pan beneath the faucet with a plastic pitcher. He peeled the wrapper off a Band-Aid. “We’ll cut strips of the sticky part. Lay them like cross ties across the gash. It’s not stitches, but maybe that’ll help close it.”
His fingers wouldn’t fit into the holes of the tiny scissors. “Here, let me.” She took the Band-Aid and scissors from him, cut strips of the adhesive, and applied them to the wound as he instructed. “It’s barely bleeding at all now,” she said when she was finished.
“Cover it with one of those bandages.”
As gently as possible she patted one of the sterile gauze bandages from the kit into place over the wound. “It’s going to pull your hair when we take it off.”
“I’ll live.” Then in an undertone, he added, “I hope.”
CHAPTER
7
STARTLED BY HIS GRIM EXPRESSION, SHE ASKED, “Why do you say that? Do you have injuries I don’t know about?”
“Maybe. The whole left side of my body is bruised and sore. Ribs feel like someone’s tried to pry them apart with a crowbar, but I don’t think I have any broken bones.”
“That’s good, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, but something on the inside may be busted. Kidney, liver, spleen.”
“Wouldn’t you know if you were bleeding internally?”
“You’d think. But I’ve heard that people can die of internal hemorrhage before it’s discovered. If my belly starts to balloon, that’ll be a good indicator that it’s filling up with blood.”
“Have you noticed any distention, tenderness?”
“No.”
She pulled her lower lip through her teeth. “If there’s a chance you’re bleeding, should you have taken the aspirin?”
“The way my head feels, it was worth the risk.” He eased himself off the bar stool, went to the kitchen sink, and removed the pitcher that had been filling. “Assuming I live, we’re going to need drinking water for an indefinite period of time. What other containers have you got?”
Together they searched the cabin and began filling anything that would hold water. “Too bad you only have a shower,” he said. “We could use a bathtub.”
Once they’d filled all the pots and pans, even the mop bucket, they began thinking of other matters. “What’s the source of your heat, electricity?” he asked.
“Propane. There’s an underground tank.”