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“Keep it dry,” I said. “New dressing every twenty-four hours. If the output turns pink or the edges go red, somebody calls me. I don’t care what it is.”

“Every twenty-four.”

“Yes.”

“And the tube?”

“Comes out when you’re putting out less than five mils a day. Four days, maybe five. Don’t pull it yourself.”

“I wasn’t going to pull it myself.”

“People sometimes pull them themselves. Of course, then they would most likely have to go to the ER.”

“People are damn idiots.” He looked down at it. “How much less than five?”

“You’ll know.”

“That’s not a number.”

“You’ll know,” I said, “because you’ll look at it and think, that’s hardly anything. That’s five.”

I stripped the gloves and went to the sink and scrubbed to the wrists the way I do whether the patient is human or not, and the chapped skin at my knuckles lit up the way it does, and I ignored it the way I do.

Patch hadn’t moved the whole time. He’d taken up a position near the counter with his hands in his jacket pockets, and he’d been watching my hands since I pulled the first glove on. Not the wound. Not Freak. My hands.

It should have made me nervous. It didn’t. There’s something almost restful about being watched by a man who understands the value of not being in the way.

Stitch came out of the break room at his own unhurried hobble, wound once through Freak’s ankles to establish jurisdiction, and carried on toward the food bowl.

“That cat’s down a leg and he’s still got more swagger than anybody in my chapter,” Freak said.

“He doesn’t know he’s down a leg.”

“That’s the swagger. That’s exactly the swagger.”

“He lives here.”

“Lucky him.”

* * *

Patch’s hands came out of his pockets, and one of them had cash in it. He set it on the counter beside the instrument tray. Not slid, not offered. Placed. Hundreds, folded once, edges squared. Half an inch thick.

Two thousand dollars, near enough. Which was the problem. It wasn’t an insult. It was almost exactly right. Low against what a human ER would have billed, and about correct against what the night had actually cost me in supplies and time. Although, if I lost my license, no amount of money would be worth it. I picked it up and pushed it back across the counter. “No.”

“It’s not charity.”

“I know what it is.”

“You pulled controlled substances off your own shelf for a man you’d never met.”

“I’m aware of what I did,” I said. “Take it back.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s two thousand dollars in cash and I can’t put it in a bank. You want me to explain this or do you already know?”

“Explain it.”