"Move, Mike. " Big Mike looked at Frank. Frank nodded once. Mike stepped back. Sarah looked at the wound.
It was a jagged tear, shallow, but bleeding heavily. A piece of metal debris was lodged in the oblique muscle. It wasn't a bullet, but shrapnel. "I need vodka, the high-proof stuff, and a lighter," Sarah commanded. She didn't look up.
She was in the zone now. The bar faded away. This was just flesh and physiology. Snake handed her a bottle of Everclear. Sarah poured it over the wound.
Jimmy screamed, his back arching off the pool table. "Hold him down," Sarah said calmly. Big Mike and Snake pinned the boy's shoulders. Sarah worked with a precision that silenced the room. She used sterilized tweezers to extract the metal shard.
She cleaned the edges. Then she pulled out a suture kit from her bag. "You carry that in your purse? " Mercerer asked, his eyes narrowing. "I live in a bad neighborhood," Sarah muttered, threading the needle.
For 10 minutes, the only sound in the bar was Jimmy's ragged breathing and the soft snip-snap of Sarah's work. She stitched the wound closed with neat, tight sutures. She dressed it with gauze and tape. "He needs antibiotics," Sarah said, stripping off her bloody gloves and water. Lots of it.
" "But he won't bleed out. " She looked up. Every man in the room was staring at her. It wasn't the predatory look from her first night. It was respect.
Frank walked over to the pool table and inspected the work. He looked at Jimmy who was already breathing easier. "Good work," Frank said. He turned to Mercerer. "She stays.
" Mercerer didn't say anything. He just lit a cigarette, stared at Sarah with those cold blue eyes, and walked out the back door. The silence he left behind was louder than any shout. Later that night, as Sarah was wiping down the bar, now scrubbed of Jimmy's blood, Frank sat down on a stool across from her. "You're handy," he said.
"I try," Sarah replied. "Why didn't you finish? " "Finish what? " "Nursing school. " Sarah paused.
She looked at the reflection of the neon sign in the polished wood. "Gary," he gambled my tuition money. Then he gambled the rent money. Then he gambled the car payments. By the time I realized what was happening, I was working double shifts at a diner just to keep the lights on.
School was a luxury I couldn't afford. " Frank nodded slowly. "This "Gary," he sounds like a piece of work. "He was charming," Sarah said bitterly. That's how they get you.