Chapter 7: The Spare Room

Erin's POV

The spare room smelled like a candle somebody had burned down to the wick.

It had a double bed made up with gray sheets and a closet with a few empty hangers.

I set my bag on the mattress and stood there with my coat still on.

Eight months of being a wife, and I had never once been inside the home my husband actually lived in.

Warner Stancliffe knocked on the open door with his good hand.

"Towels are in the bathroom," he said. "The lock on this door works. I tested it."

"You tested it?"

"I tested everything after Friday."

He leaned there with his shoulder against the frame.

The gauze on his left palm had gone a dull brown at the center.

"That's more than three days old," I said.

"My sister changed it Saturday. She's an ER nurse."

"And I'm a pharmacist. We've both seen what happens to a wound that gets taped over and ignored."

"I haven't ignored it."

"You've typed with it for two days. Sit down."

He sat on the edge of the bed, because apparently I was someone people obeyed.

There was a first-aid kit in the hall bathroom, a real one, with the good tape.

I washed my hands and pulled on the gloves I always kept in my bag.

I unwrapped the gauze slowly.

The cut ran from the base of his thumb halfway across the heel of his hand.

It had opened again at one end, and the skin around it was red and tender and hot.

"You need a doctor to look at this," I said. "Not me."

"Is it infected?"

"It's close. If it's worse tomorrow you go in. Hold still."

I took his hand in both of mine.

His palm was warm and wider than I expected, with calluses at the base of the fingers from something that wasn't typing.

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