Page 59 of Rafael (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 28)

The smile faded and she shined a little light in my eyes, made me follow her finger as she moved it. “You are not fine. You are in shock.” She looked up at Claudia. “You said this blood wasn’t hers.”

“Most of it isn’t.”

Doc Lillian sighed. “The curtained areas are full, but we need to see her wound.”

They had three curtained-off areas in the locker room area, like a makeshift version of an emergency room. Someone was screaming and someone else was cursing in Spanish loudly enough to be heard over the screaming. The third curtained area had blood flowing out from under the curtains like the blood of... I looked away from the blood. I’d seen enough for one night. The rest of the room looked like a nice locker room at most MMA gyms, except for the big mirror in the one wall, which was usually something you saw more often in a gym that catered to mostly women.

“I need to see your wound, Anita,” Doc Lillian said.

“Okay,” I said.

“That means I need you to undress enough for me to see it.”

I nodded. “Sure.”

“I need you to take your pants down enough for me to see, Anita.”

I nodded.

“Can you do it now?” she asked.

I reached for my belt and started undoing it. I vaguely knew that I’d normally not want to be standing in plain sight for dropping trou, but it just didn’t seem like a big deal now.

Doc Lillian knelt beside me. A man I didn’t know appeared with a tray of medical supplies. Once it would have bothered me for a strange man to be in the circle with my pants halfway down my legs, but he was wearing scrubs and it was all very medical professional; besides, Pierette was my lover so the days when I was embarrassed by just men were long past, and if anyone got that big a thrill out of just seeing a little underwear and naked thigh, they could go fuck themselves.

My leg didn’t even hurt anymore until Lillian squeezed antiseptic cleaner all over it. The sharp sting of it cut through the fog in my head, and when she wiped the wound with a piece of gauze, the edges of the wound caught on the gauze. The sensation made my stomach roll.

“It’s not bad,” Lillian said, “but it will need stitches.”

I had to swallow past the nausea before I could say, “Can you numb me first?”

“Does your body react to drugs like you’re still human?” she asked.

I had to think about it. “If it’s an ordinary wound, it heals too fast for regular medical care, but this doesn’t seem to be healing that fast, so maybe?”

“It was a silver blade,” Claudia said.

“Had they tried with a regular blade first?” Lillian asked.

“No,” Claudia said, “I believe Tony meant to kill her.”

“He was trying for my inner thigh, but I turned so he couldn’t get my femoral,” I said.

“You turned so the cut would be to your outer thigh,” Lillian said.

“Yeah.”

“I believe we can numb the area before I stitch you up.”

“Great,” I said, and I meant it, because I really hated getting stitches without painkillers.

“We can wait for one of the private rooms to open up,” she said.

I shook my head. I’d decided to grit my teeth and just do it, so... “I’m short, I can stretch out on a bench by the lockers.”

She smiled at me as if she was proud of how brave I was being. Dr. Lillian had worked on me before and she knew what a terrible patient I usually was, but there wasn’t time for that today. I needed to get to Rafael. I don’t know if it was seeing the blood on the floor or what, but I suddenly felt an urgency to be with him. Then I realized he was worried about me, wondering where I was. I was feeling his urgency, not mine. I could control some of the connection between us, but he was powerful enough to be able to push against that control. Either way, he wasn’t wrong.

“How many more fights until the main one?” I asked as Doc Lillian ordered how she wanted me to hold the leg while I half leaned, half lay on the narrow bench.

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