Page 78 of The Pushy Pixies Are Going Down
Chaos did as he was told, and when Miles walked upstairs, Aeson asked, “Was Miles an EMT or something?”
I was about to sayno, but paused. “Not that I know of. I think he had to do some training for his old job, though.” It would make sense for him to need basic first aid training when he was a police officer, wouldn’t it?
Aeson nodded and opened his mouth for more questions, I was sure, but Miles came back downstairs with a huge bag. I blinked. I’d expected one of those little red cases full of bandages and things like that. I definitely hadn’t expected a big-ass bag full of all kinds of medical equipment.
Jesus. Maybe he really had been an EMT at some point.
“Were you an EMT?” I blurted.
Miles snorted as he dropped the bag, knelt in front of Chaos, pulled off his leather gloves, and replaced them with either latex or vinyl ones—I couldn’t see the box. “Nope. Just did a lot of extra training for work, and then even more before… before Laney.”
I winced. Right. Made sense. Of course he’d want to be super prepared for his foster kid. He was that type of person.
“Who’s Laney?” Chaos asked quietly as he pushed his hair out of his face and let Miles examine his injury.
Without the hair there, it looked even worse than I’d thought. I winced in sympathy because that had to fucking hurt like hell.
I prepared myself to step in in case Miles needed a save, but he surprised me by answering him. “She was my foster kid. She, uh…” He cleared his throat. “She was forced to go back to her father even though I fought to keep her, and she… she died.”
That was a little bit more information than I’d had before, but it was clearly still only part of the story. Lyric’s eyes met mine over the top of Chaos and Miles’s heads, and I sent them a sad smile.
Chaos stared at Miles for a long moment before whispering, “I’m really sorry to hear that.”
“Me too, Miles.” Aeson cleared his throat.
My boyfriend sent them each a sad smile. “Thank you. She was a really great kid. I miss her. A lot.” He cleared his throat again. “Anyway, let’s take a closer look at this.”
He began poking and prodding, and even though Chaos winced and hissed a few times, he held still and let Miles move his head this way and that. There was apparently a cut under his eye, so Miles cleaned it really well and closed it with some skin glue or something.
When he finished, Miles said, “Alright, it doesn’t look like anything’s broken, but we’ll have to keep an eye on it, just in case I missed something since I don’t have an X-ray machine. You sure you won’t go to the hospital?”
“I’m not going.”
Miles nodded, letting it go where I would’ve pushed. But… I trusted him with this. He seemed like he knew what he was doing when it came to kids in situations like this, and I supposed pushing them too hard about certain things would make them pull away. And we didn’t want that. We wanted to take care of them as much as they’d let us.
“Alright. Then I’m going to give you a few extra bandages and ice packs that you can take with you to have on hand. I want you icing it for twenty minutes at a time at least once an hour until the swelling goes down. Your eye itself looks okay, and that cut isn’t terribly deep, but please keep it clean so it doesn’t get infected, alright?”
“We will,” Aeson said. “Thank you, Miles.”
“No problem.” He sent them both a smile.
Chaos cleared his throat. “Thanks, Miles. I appreciate it.”
That made my guy smile even wider.
Miles took out a ton of first aid supplies, found an old duffel he insisted he didn’t use, and basically put together a very nice first aid kit for the kids. It was a hell of a lot more supplies than they’d need just for Chaos’s black eye.
Now the guy was going to be giving them medical supplies and food all the time. I shook my head, half amused, half feeling like I wanted to offer some help as well.
When he took his kit back upstairs, the twins had a whispered argument—Aeson wassopissed that Chaos had hid it from him—but I couldn’t really make out most of their words. And I didn’t try because that was between them. Instead, I got up, made myself another plate so I could pig out, and sat beside Lyric for a little while.
“Is Maggie still coming?” they asked me.
I shrugged. “She’s supposed to, but she hasn’t texted me or anything. They’re over a half hour late already, so who the hell knows?”
They nodded, then reached over and gave my forearm a squeeze. “It’ll be alright, whether she shows up or not. You’ve got family here already.”
That made my chest tighten before warmth gathered there. They were right. “Thanks, Lyr.”
