Chapter 8: Stitches

Marta's POV

I got him in by the arms and dragged him down the hall on his own coat.

He weighed more than I did by a hundred pounds, and I did it anyway.

I'd spent two years lifting an old man out of bed and into a chair, and my back knew how.

I got him onto the kitchen table and cut his shirt up the middle with my grandfather's tailoring shears.

"Don't you dare die on this table," I said. "He ate on this table."

"I'm not dying," Ilario said between his teeth. "It's a graze."

It was not a graze.

A bullet had gone through the soft side below his ribs and come out the back, and the hole was open and welling.

I washed my hands with the dish soap, and I did what the nurse had taught me.

I pressed the wound with a folded towel, counted to sixty and let it ease.

The bleeding slowed.

"It went through," I said. "It missed everything that matters, or you'd be quiet by now."

"That's comforting."

"Hold still."

I threaded the curved needle from the nurse's kit, and he watched me do it with his head turned on the table.

The first stitch went in, and the muscle jumped under my hand.

His whole stomach was hard, and warm, and I could feel him breathing in short, careful pulls.

I had known Ilario's body my whole life without ever looking at it.

I had seen him swim, and skin his knees, and carry my grandfather's groceries.

I had not touched him with my hand flat on his ribs while he lay with his eyes on me.