Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 76065 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 380(@200wpm)___ 304(@250wpm)___ 254(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76065 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 380(@200wpm)___ 304(@250wpm)___ 254(@300wpm)
“Yes. Fuck,” she said, wincing. “I’m afraid to look and see if I’m missing a piece of my finger,” she said, looking a little pale at the very idea.
“I’ll look,” I said, reaching for her wrist to pull it away from her chest. “Gonna have to unfurl for me here,” I said as she turned her head to the side like a little kid about to get a shot and not wanting to watch the needle slide in.
Her fingers slid open, all of them covered in a coat of blood. She was bleeding like crazy. Bad enough that I was a little worried a part of her finger would be sitting on the meat slicer too.
“Come here,” I said, pulling her with me toward the sink in the back. “I can’t see through the blood,” I explained as I ran the water warm and pulled her hand under the stream. “Okay,” I said, feeling better when I got a good look. “You aren’t missing any parts,” I told her as she kept her head diverted, taking slow, deep breaths. “You just kinda… split it. The skin is still attached but kind of just hanging on. I’m gonna have to put some butterfly closures on this. Unless you wanna go and get stitches.”
“Ah, no. I’d rather not. You’re sure I can just do the closures?”
“Yeah, I’ve treated shit worse than this with them,” I told her, grabbing some paper towels and wrapping them around her hand. “Squeeze hard. We gotta try to stop the bleeding so I can see what I’m doing to close it up,” I told her.
My hand went to her hip, guiding her with me toward my office, then pressing her down into my chair as I walked away to go grab the medical kit, having little flashbacks to doing the same thing not long ago.
“You alright?” I asked as I came back to spread the box of butterfly closures, a pack of gauze, and a saline solution tube on the top of the desk.
“Yeah. I think it’s slowing down,” she said. “I can feel my pulse in my finger,” she added, seeming to speak mostly to herself.
“That’s normal,” I told her, reaching for a package of disposable gloves.
“Have you ever sliced your finger like this?”
“Once.”
“On a meat slicer?” she asked, watching me as I put the gloves on.
“On a pocketknife,” I admitted, memory flashing to a back alley fight in my early twenties, back when Renzo was fighting tooth-and-nail to take back the neighborhood. All we did was brawl back then. Get knocked around. Break bones. Treat lacerations. Wonder how bad a concussion had to be before we sought actual treatment.
“What? Were you playing with it or something?” she asked as I pulled the tab off the tube of saline.
“If by playing with it you mean trying to stab someone with it while they beat the shit out of me, yeah,” I said, watching her brows raise, her eyes going round.
“Fought a lot when I was younger,” I told her, only half giving her the truth as I leaned the saline against the kit to pull her hand over to me and remove the paper towel. “And this area used to be a lot rougher back then,” I added, checking the cut again before slipping some gauze under her finger, and spraying the saline over her finger to make sure it was clean before I sealed it up. “You good?”
“Yeah. It just burns. It’s not that bad now,” she said.
“It’s probably gonna be throbbing for a day or two,” I said as I carefully applied the butterfly closures. “I used one of these,” I added, reaching to pull a finger brace out of the kit, “for the first few days, so I didn’t keep accidentally bumping the finger while it healed. We’ll tell Ricky that you’re off the slicer for a week or so,” I told her.
“That’s, like, half my job,” she insisted.
“Someone else was handling it while you were home recovering. They can do it again for a few days. There’s plenty other shit to do around here,” I told her as I tossed the saline and reached for a new small roll of gauze wrap. “Gonna wrap it for now. But you’re gonna want to check it occasionally, make sure it’s not looking red or puffy. It should be fine, though.”
“Okay,” she agreed, watching me as I squatted in front of her and started to wrap her finger up and secure it with some paper tape.
“You’re on a bad luck run lately, huh?” I asked, pressing her hand onto her thigh when I was done, my hand still resting there, even though I knew I should pull it away, move away.
“You have no idea,” she said with a deep exhale, her gaze looking haunted for a moment before her expression went blank.