Page 61 of Levee

The blood would stop; it had already slowed significantly.

I didn’t really need to be checked out.

But I needed somewhere to go to get myself together. The clinic seemed as good as anywhere else.

It was a long, low building in a strip mall. The blinds were drawn but the light was streaming through them.

The lot was mostly empty, so I got to park close and shuffle my way up to the door.

There was a metal detector and security guard. But one look at my face and he just waved me inside where I got to check in at the front desk with the male nurse whose eyes went sad as he took in my injuries. I imagined that in the nursing profession there were a lot of women who ‘ran into a wall’ with their faces. The same ones who would come back a few months later with a broken wrist from ‘trying to catch their fall’ or whatever other excuse they came up with to keep themselves safe from getting abused worse from their partners.

“It should just be about half an hour,” he told me, waving me toward the waiting room where a mom was struggling to console her pink-cheeked, feverish-looking toddler with an impressive amount of snot escaping her nose.

They were called back first, leaving me alone with the painfully bright lighting in the waiting room, staring blankly at the TV screen that was issuing a hurricane warning. CategoryTwo. I learned from the locals that no one even blinked an eye until it was looking like a Four.

“Jade?” the male nurse called, making me pop up out of my seat. A little too quickly. Anxious. God, I felt like I was going to shake right out of my skin. “The doctor will be right with you,” he assured me as he set me in a small, but newly renovated room.

Actually, for a clinic in a rough area, the whole place seemed like it had been redone. New dark wood click-flooring instead of the old, peeling linoleum I’d been expecting, new cabinets, exam tables, and freshly painted walls.

I scooted myself up on the table, taking a deep breath through my mouth since my nose was still lazily leaking blood.

I heard the low buzzing sound of the hand sanitizer outside of the room before the door pushed open.

And there was a really gorgeous woman with her long, dark hair pulled back from her pretty face.

She had on a long white coat on that she left open to make room for her very pregnant belly.

Her name tag saidCall me Ama.

Not Dr. Something-or-other.

Her first name.

I liked that.

“I hear you… walked into a wall,” she said, glancing down at the clipboard in her hand.

“Ah, yeah,” I said as her gaze continued to scan my chart.

“Jade,” she said, her head popping up, brows pinched. I had a second where I tried to place her since she was looking at me like I was in some way familiar to her. She quickly tamped down the shocked look on her face, giving me a tight professional smile instead. “That’s a very pretty name,” she said as she walked over to set down the clipboard. She slipped on gloves, and started to pile some supplies onto a rolling metal tray.

“Alright,” she said as she got in front of me. “Let’s get you cleaned up a bit, so I can see the damage underneath, okay?” she asked, giving me a soft smile. “I would say that this isn’t going to hurt, but that would be a bold-faced lie,” she told me, getting a little laugh out of me before she started to wet gauze and wipe the blood away.

“I’m just gonna roll this up and stuff it up your nostril to stop the blood,” Amarantha told me just before doing exactly that then gently starting to probe around my nose.

“I don’tthinkthis is broken,” she told me. “It still seems pretty well-aligned and you have no bump. I think the impact just broke the blood vessels that caused the bleeding. I could be wrong,” she was quick to insist. “But you’re not even very swollen.”

“There’s not really anything to do for it if it is broken anyway, right?” I asked.

“I mean, I know a few men who just… yank that thing back into place,” she said, shuddering a bit. “But not really. Splinting it. Ice. Over-the-counter pain meds. You’re starting to get a decent shiner, too, though,” she told me.

“I think I’ll skip the splint,” I said, getting a nod from her as she turned her attention to my cheek. “Alright, we have a couple choices for this,” she said, pressing the skin on either side of the cut. “I can put some butterfly stitches on. Or I can do some skin glue. You don’t need real stitches.”

“I guess the glue,” I decided. I hadn’t seen it myself, so I had no idea how bad it looked. But judging by the long strip of liquid bandage she put on me, it was pretty big.

“Alright. That should cover it,” she said, taking her tray over to dispose of the bloodied gauze. “You can pull that gauze out of your nose in a few minutes. I would definitely get some ice going sometime tonight,” she told me.

“I will,” I told her, my stomach twisting in knots that this was over so fast, that I had to go back to my building now. Without the kid to protect me, solve this problem.

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