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“Of course, she’ll know. That’s not the point.” He looked out the window. “The point is whether she says anything about it.”

I had the whole drive to think about what I was doing and didn’t come up with one honest answer I was willing to say out loud in front of him.

The lot was gravel. One window lit at the back. The same wrong angle I’d parked at Friday night, front wheel cut too far left, except this time I was in a truck and had no excuse for it.

“You going in?” Freak asked. “Or are we sitting here?”

I went in.

Chapter Six

Maren

The knock came while I was wringing the mop.

Three raps, firm, and then nothing. Not a late client. A late client knocks and then keeps knocking.

I crossed the surgical suite without drying my hands and opened the door on Patch, and behind him in the gravel lot, Freak leaning against a truck.

“He’s supposed to be resting,” I said.

“He’s supposed to be a lot of things,” Patch said.

“I’m right here.” Freak pushed off the truck and came up the step. “And I’d like the record to show I rode in a truck like a grandmother.”

I stepped back and let them through and pointed to the table.

The dressing came off in one piece. Clean lift, no adhesion, no fresh blood. Two closed incisions, sutures pink and slightly raised, drain running clear out of the inferior margin.

“Drain output’s clear,” I said. “About ten mils since the change. No redness at the margins, no heat, no discharge. Nothing’s pulled.”

“Is that good?”

“That’s very good.”

“You say it like it’s a weather report.”

“It is a weather report.” I reached for the saline. “This is going to be cold.”

“How cold?”

“Cold.”

He hissed through his teeth when it hit. “You could’ve oversold that a little, damn.”

“I could have.”

“Doc would’ve oversold it.”

“Whoever Doc is, he isn’t here.”

“He’s on a beach,” Freak agreed, “and I’m stuck here with a woman who tells me the God’s honest truth about water temperature. Worst damn week of my life.”

I blotted the site dry, laid the new gauze, taped the edges. Four minutes, maybe five.

Somewhere in the first two of them he’d stopped performing. I’ve seen it happen a hundred times, usually in men. They come in braced for the soft voice and the careful hands and the you-poor-thing, and when they don’t get it, one of two things happens. Either they get louder, or they go quiet and start actually watching what you’re doing.

Freak went quiet.