“You look pale,” I tell him.
He blinks slowly. “Thanks.”
I tilt my head. “That wasn’t a compliment.”
“I was being sarcastic.”
My brows rise, a smile at my lips. “I know.”
Maximoff grimaces and rests his hands on his head like communicating with me is brutal. The times we talk, I like irritating the shit out of him, but today’s different. He’s my patient.
“Jesus Christ,” he growls under his breath.
“Moffy—”
“I’m fine,” he says strongly, his hands dropping to his sides. “If I thought I wasn’t, I would’ve gone to the ER. Alright, you can go do whatever the fuck you do on a Wednesday afternoon. I’m sorry you had to come up to Cambridge.” His apology sounds extremely sincere.
“Don’t be,” I say. “I’m supposed to be here.”
Right here.
Right now.
This was my choice. I could’ve told my father no, but I said yes to this call. To Maximoff, and I’m not leaving until I’m sure he’s safe.
He cracks a knuckle and stares off, lost in thought.
I wait and comb a hand through my dyed hair. A few pictures line his desk, most of siblings or with his best friend Jane. I recognize one group photo from St. Thomas with all the families squished together, a summer vacation. The picture leaked on the internet a few years back.
“So you’re not leaving then?”
I look back at him, his attention focused on me again. “Not until you tell me what’s wrong, and man, you don’t need to describe why anything happened. I can work with a bare-bones story.” Not having the full picture will irritate me a little bit—shit, normally it wouldn’t. But I’m already craving to know more about him.
I skim Moffy in a short once-over and look away.
He’s Maximoff Hale.
I almost laugh to myself. Fuck, he’s too pure. Too wholesome. And I just got out of a long-term relationship—there are reasons I wouldn’t. So many more reasons that he wouldn’t.
Not now.
Possibly not ever.
“I cut my leg,” he suddenly says, but the words come out slowly like thick tar on his tongue.
I eye his jeans while his rigid stance hardly shifts. “Where?”
“My thigh.”
“That’s a problem,” I say easily. “Your femoral artery—”
“I would’ve bled out hours ago if I cut my femoral artery. I’m okay.”
I try not to smile because it’ll just agitate him. “Web M.D. says you’re okay, but I haven’t yet.” I squat and unzip my trauma bag. “I still need to see the wound. What’d you cut yourself on?”
Maximoff stops protesting, and he unbuttons his jeans. “I don’t know.”
I frown and open the packaging on a pair of gloves. “What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“I was off-campus last night with some guys on the swim team. It was dark.” He steps out of his jeans. Bandage is wrapped around his muscular thigh, gauze thick beneath. He dressed his wound perfectly.
Maximoff notices me staring, and he starts smiling. “Better than you would’ve done, huh?”
I snap on one medical glove. “I’m still better than you at everything, wolf scout. Don’t get excited.”
“Excited around you? Yeah, I’m never even close.”
I didn’t mean it sexually, but here we are.
I look up, just as he looks down, and he swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing. Shit, our banter hasn’t exactly taken this route before.
Since I’m older and wiser, I decide to eliminate the strange tension with “professionalism” and I ask, “Did you clean the wound?”
“Yeah.”
“Take a seat on your desk chair.” I stand and slide my trauma bag closer with my foot, just as he sits like a fucking board. His gaze plasters to my movements. I lean over his chest, the smell of chlorine rushing towards me, and with my ungloved hand, I grab his Fundamentals of Philosophy textbook.
“What are you doing?” he asks, hating to be in the dark. Clearly.
I put the textbook in his palms. “Read, take notes, study. Don’t watch me.”
“Farrow—”
“Trust me, wolf scout.” I crouch, snap on my other glove, and start undressing his bandage that edges close to his gray boxer-briefs. I pause not even one-fifth through when I catch him staring and overthinking. “You don’t need to overanalyze what I’m doing, Moffy. Just focus on your own shit.”
He glares. “My leg is my own shit, thanks for asking.”
I roll my eyes into a smile. “You’re welcome.” I continue unwrapping the bandage while his gaze is attached to mine. Trust me, trust me, I try to emote until he finally gives in and reads his text with a frustrated breath.
I concentrate on his wound, blood seeps through—fuck. I unwrap faster. “You bandaged your thigh without stopping the bleeding first?”
He glances down. “It was stopped.”
I reach for my suture kit. “When’d you cut it?”
He shuts his book and thinks. “Uh…” Maximoff pinches his eyes. “Three, four in the morning. I was out—”
“With your swim teammates, I heard that part.” I kneel on one knee for a better angle. Blood completely soaks the gauze, and I try to gently pull it off the cut.
He winces and grips the edge of the desk. “Fuck.”
“Sorry.” I discard the gauze in a plastic bag and squeeze his cut closed with my fingers. A couple inches higher and that would’ve sliced through his artery. “You were lucky.”
“I know.” He rubs sweat off his forehead with his arm. “I wasn’t drunk last night, if that’s what you think.”
“That’s not what I’m thinking.” I pull out more supplies. “You’ve been bleeding out consistently since early this—what’s your pain level from one to ten?” I cut myself off and ask since he’s sweating and gritting his teeth.
His nose flares, wincing. “It doesn’t matter. I can’t take a painkiller.”
“It does matter.” I planned to disinfect the wound first, then administer a shot of lidocaine, then suture, but I change the order and hurriedly unpackage a syringe and needle.
He white-knuckles the desk, the room deadens while I work and he concentrates on breathing. I give him a shot of lidocaine to numb the wound. Then I wipe the area with an antiseptic and irrigate with saline.
In less than two minutes, I’m done with both, and I start suturing the deep cut. I break the quiet first. “When was your last tetanus shot?”
“I was eight.” Too long ago.
I look up. “You sure?” I really don’t want to open his medical records, and I need him to be sure.
“Pretty positive.”
I trust him enough. “I’ll give you a tetanus shot before I leave.” I pierce his skin with the needle and weave the stitch.
Maximoff clears a ball in his throat. After I finish the sutures, I redress the wound with clean gauze and bandage. He slides forward on the chair.
“I can do that,” he says and reaches for the gauze.