He Caged Me for Fifteen Years novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: Stitching the Caffrey

The doctor who treated Caffreys lived two hours away, and he would not drive out before dawn.

"Then I'll do it," I said.

Niall lay on his bed with his arm laid across a towel, and his face was gray.

"You don't know how."

"I stitched a dog once."

"That's not funny."

"It wasn't a joke."

His father's men had carried him up the stairs and left without a word.

Nobody wanted to be in the room.

I found the farm's first aid kit under the kitchen sink, a curved needle and black thread and a bottle of whiskey that had gone dark with age.

I washed my hands in the bathroom until they were red.

I came back, and I pulled the chair to the side of his bed.

"Hold still."

"Maeve."

"Drink this."

He drank. He coughed.

I poured the rest of the whiskey over the wound, and he went rigid and swore at the ceiling.

I picked out the pellets with the tweezers, one at a time.

There were seven.

I dropped each into a saucer, and they rang against the china.

"That's the last of them," I said.

"Good."

"Now the long one."

The worst pellets had plowed a furrow across the meat of his arm, the length of my hand.

I pinched the edges of it together.

"Look away," I said.

"No."

"Then look at me."

He looked at me.

I put the needle through his skin.

His breath hissed out, and his whole body locked.

I worked slowly, and I tied each stitch off the way my father had once shown me on a torn glove, back when I was ten and thought everything he knew was good.

Eight stitches.

My hands did not shake until the last one.

Then they shook so hard I dropped the scissors.

"You did that very well," Niall said.

"I did that to you."

"You did it for me."

"Don't."

"Don't what?"

"Be nice. I'm angry at you."

"I know."

"I'll be angry at you tomorrow."

"I'd think less of you if you weren't."

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