David swam against the current, into the kitchen. Maureen wanted the door closed. He closed it. Maureen wanted the bloody water dumped, both pans. He dumped them. What Maureen wanted, Maureen got.
Maureen crouched, tense, like a leopard strung out on speed, swabbing a scrape on Brian's forehead. Jo sat on the corner of the kitchen table, holding a soaked towel to her lip and glaring at her sister. David felt a crackling energy between them, like two storm fronts full of thunderclouds pushing against each other.
Just a quiet evening at home.
David forced himself to pick up the phone, sweating with the effort. Maureen didn't want him doing this.
"No calls." Her voice cut his resolve like a whip.
"Got to get an ambulance." His hand trembled. The phone went back into its cradle.
"No," Brian muttered. "Can't go to the hospital, can't see a doctor. My visa's expired. They'll deport me."
"Man, you need blood, you need X-rays, you could have internal injuries or a cracked skull or anything! Maureen's just sewed up your arm with a darning needle and a length of binder twine. Tetanus shots, antibiotics--you name it, you need it. You got a death wish?"
"Be okay. Was a medic in the army. Told her what to do. Needle's clean, wound’s bled enough to wash any crap out of it."
David surrendered to the pressure. It was the easiest way out.
"What happened to you, man?"
"Car. Hit and run."
"Bullshit. That's a knife wound."
Maureen's stare froze his tongue. "Shut up," it said. "Obey." That glare had nothing but imperatives in its vocabulary.
Charisma. Beaucoup charisma, mon ami, the commanding aura of the truly insane. Like maybe Hitler. David found himself wondering if Jo could do that. The idea ran icicles down his spine. It was something to think about. Something to seriously think about.
This family was weird.
* * *
Maureen jerked her attention back to Jo. "Stay away from us," she warned. "Keep your hands where I can see them. Both of you stay where I can see you.
"Don't even think of trying to get to the bedroom phones," she added, half to herself.
The knuckles of her right hand still ached from the punch. Served her sister right, attacking an injured man. First she stole David, then she waltzed in and tried to kill Brian. Who was the crazy one here?
She dabbed iodine on Brian's forehead and then the slash on his arm, still keeping half an eye on Jo and David. Brian winced at the antiseptic bite around the stitch-holes. That was good. It proved he was still all there.
It was going to get a little involved here, wrapping gauze around that arm. She'd need both hands and some attention. She picked up the gun and set it on the floor, close to her knee, farther from Jo and David. No unnecessary risks.
Jo called her paranoid. Paranoid delusions didn't carve five-inch slices out of arms, didn't break ribs, didn't carry the rusty lengths of iron pipe she'd unstrapped from Brian's leg and tossed in the corner. God above, Maureen knew what paranoia looked like.
Her own fears had nearly pulled the trigger. He'd stood there filling the doorway, made some growling noise deep in his throat, and reached out for her. She'd cocked the .38 and was about an ounce shy of blasting five hollow-points into his chest when she'd realized he was already falling. When she'd seen the blood.
The next instant, she'd been dragging that Neandertal carcass into the kitchen and swearing a blue streak at the damage she found. It didn't make sense. Or maybe it did. She stopped and stared at his blood, sticky on her hands.
There's no way you ever could have met him half way. You had to have control. You had to feel safe.
But there'd still been that gap, when her instincts took control and overruled the terror. Dissociation: temporary but drastic modification of one's personality. Recognizing a symptom and naming didn't make it a bit less strange.
It still felt odd, touching a man, wiping his skin, moving his arms and legs around like lumps of putty wrapped around a frame of sticks. The smell of blood, the smell of man, they ought to scare her. They didn't. She glanced at his crotch, at the lump in his underpants. That thing ought to scare her. It didn't.
Brian grunted as she moved his arm. Must hurt. She ran her hands down the muscles to each side of the cut, flowing cool energy from her skin into his. Weird sensation.
"Maureen, I'd help if you let me."
Jo winced back as if Maureen's eyes were daggers. Good. Stay away from this man, she thought. You touch him, I'll kill you.
Her mental critic pounced. Sounds like the same thing you told him, two hours ago. A little paradox, girl? That glamour thing Fiona talked about? You call a man a rapist and then threaten to kill your sister to protect him? Why aren't you afraid of him?
He'd come to her for help. He was hurt, in danger, alone, and he came to her for help. Nobody had ever come to her for help before.
He was too weak to threaten her. Besides, if he tried to touch her emotions, fuck with her head, she'd know it. Certainty.
Voices again? Voices in your head, Maureen? No trees in here to tell you things. No trees to guard you. You're walking in the world of men.
She didn't need trees. She could feel it in her hands. Brian wasn't dangerous.
Meanwhile, her fingers played ER nurse without her command. Gauze pads covered the wounds. Gauze strips bound them in place--wrapped two handed, gently, only enough pressure to hold the bandage in place. It seemed her hands knew what to do. Her hands told her not to squeeze the wounds; it would be dangerous to slow down circulation.
"David, get away from that fucking phone!"
He jerked back as if he
