Page 122 of Long Way Down

With obvious reluctance, he pulled back. His hand was bloody, she noted, numbly. “I’ll find you after,” he said. “I’ll be there.”

“I’m fine,” she repeated.

He left, dragged off by his friend, and then there was a lot of commotion after that. Uniforms arriving to clear the scene of civilians, rolling out the yellow tape to cordon off this part of the hallway. There must have been a back staircase, because no one tromped through the scene. That’s what it was, after all: an active crime scene. Contreras caught her by both shoulders with a quiet “whoa,” for some reason, and insisted on easing her down to this bench. The paramedics arrived, two crews, and Doug was loaded onto and then cuffed to a gurney, unconscious still. Contreras seemed reluctant to leave her; stood over her bench while the medic swabbed her face clean and sealed the cut with a butterfly bandage; uniforms went with Doug, as he was wheeled toward the stairs, knee bundled up with tons of clean packing and padding.

“You need stitches,” the medic told Melissa, standing and snapping off her gloves. “Even then, it’ll probably leave a scar.”

“I’ll get her to the ER,” Contreras assured. He and the medic shared a look that Melissa didn’t like, but which she couldn’t fully decipher at the moment. Her head was so veryheavy.

“Come on, you.” Her partner caught her under an arm and hauled her to her feet.

“I’m fine,” she said.

“Uh-huh. Which is why we’re gonna go get a nice doctor to confirm it.”

The next little bit was a blur. She was aware of walking, of the strong, sure grip of Contreras’s hand on her arm. Outside, there were lots of revolving lights, flashing blue and red on the building façade and in the puddles on the pavement. It was raining, she could hear it, but she didn’t get wet, somehow. There was a car. A voice talking, but not to her.

Some indeterminate amount of time later, she became aware that she was sitting down on a firm surface that crinkled when she shifted, and that the light was very bright, and that she held a paper cup of something warm. It was the heat bleeding into her hands that brought her round, and she blinked down into what appeared to be coffee with just a dash of cream.

Unsure of what else to do, she lifted the cup to her face, breathed in its fragrant steam – yes, definitely coffee – and took a sip. There was sugar, too, lots of it, and the warm, velvety heat of it coated her tongue. That first conscious sip become four, and when she lifted her head, her best friend stood between two parted, blue curtains the exact same color as the scrubs she wore beneath her white coat.

“Better?” Leslie asked, head tilting, smiling.

“What the fuck,” Melissa said, flatly.

Leslie’s grin widened. “Ah, there it is.” To the corner of the room, she said, “I think she’ll live.”

Melissa blinked, and turned to find Contreras seated in a chair there, both their jackets across his lap. She didn’t remember taking hers off. “Did I have a stroke?” she asked.

“Nah.” Leslie stepped into the room and pulled a pair of nitrile gloves from the box mounted to the wall. “We can schedule a CT if you need one, but I’m pretty sure that’s just the trauma, babe. Look at me.” She touched Melissa’s chin with two fingers and clicked on a penlight to shine into her eyes. “Now look left. Then right. Good.” The light, blessedly, went off. “Normal pupil response.”

Melissa blinked again and the afterimage of the light flared behind her eyelids. “Wait,” she said, as her synapses all struggled to come back online. Leslie was opening a drawer and pulling out a suture kit. “Why are you here? You’re a trauma surgeon.”

“She’s observant, this one,” Leslie said over her shoulder to Contreras, who snorted.

“No, seriously.” The kit was laid out on the paper-covered table – the source of the crinkling sound, it turned out – beside her, and Leslie did one last alcohol swab down the length of her temple. It stung this time, and she hissed a little. “Don’t you have a GSW to patch up? I know nobody sent you here to do a few stitches.”

“We’ve got a whole batch of new interns,” Leslie explained, and shielded her eye before the sharp prick of a needle injected lidocaine into the skin around the wound. (“Holy fuck,” Melissa swore, and tried not to wince too hard. A moment later, the blessed numbness descended.) “Dr. Patel has plenty of extra hands in the OR, and I’m technically on break. Rob called so I came to sort you out.”

“He called you?” Melissa frowned. “How did he – why did he–?”

“Apparently, you told him I was your best friend and the most capable surgeon you know,” Leslie said, sing-song. She’d always been the sunshine cheer to Melissa’s rainy day pessimism. Their dynamic wasn’t too dissimilar from that she had with Pongo…only minus all the sex, and minus the urge to punch Leslie in the face half the time.

“Your phone isn’t password protected,” Contreras chimed in, helpfully. “So I looked up her number.”

She started to turn toward him, but Leslie gripped her chin, briefly, to hold her still, and she felt the faint tug of the suture needle going in. “You went through my phone?” She couldn’t decide if she felt betrayed by that. It felt a bit like the lidocaine was working its way through her whole body, numbing her down to her toes.

“Only your contact list, and Leslie was right at the top. Might wanna think about a password, though.”

“Yeah.”

Melissa knew firsthand that Leslie did beautiful stitches. Years ago, when she was still in middle school, Melissa had cut herself on a metal desk and then let Leslie stitch the wound on her arm closed both for practice, and so she didn’t have to take her lack-of-medical-insurance ass to the hospital. It had hurt, but after, the tidy little caterpillar of stitches had looked like the work of a talented seamstress; the scar was barely noticeable. She wasn’t worried about her wound, in that sense, and sat still while Leslie did her thing: quick and clean.

When she was done, she said, “Good as new,” and stepped back with a satisfied look. Then she turned to Contreras. “Give us a minute?”

“Oh, yeah, sure.” He stood, both their coats in his arms, and hovered a moment at the curtain. “I’ll be in the waiting room.”

“Thanks, Dad,” Melissa and Leslie said in unison, and he made a face on his way out that left Leslie chuckling.

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