Not good. He had no color and barely looked conscious.
“What happened?” she asked.
“He got shot,” the man with the buzz cut said, ever so helpfully.
“He needs to go to the hospital,” Thalia said. Gut wounds were more than just tricky, they were a fucking disaster. Too much could go wrong and too many vital organs to hit. Doc had been an actual doctor, albeit unlicensed. Thalia was, at best, an orderly and sometimes paramedic. “Seriously, a hospital.”
The men ignored her and hauled Nathan onto the table. He moaned in pain, the poor bastard.
“Hey! You, buzz cut, don’t put him on the table. I have to clean that,” she said as the men hoisted Nathan onto the kitchen table. Shit. Fine. Whatever. Nathan would be lucky if he survived long enough to worry about infection. “Remove his shirt.”
“I’m not your servant, and my name is Blade,” he said.
“Of course, it is,” she muttered, snapping on latex gloves. “How exceedingly original.”
“You think you’re hot shit, but you ain’t nothing Nicky can’t replace,” Blade said, stepping toward her.
“We’re all replaceable. You gonna hold Nathan down or am I going to tell Nicky that his best friend died because his minion had to front?” Thalia asked, suddenly tired. She took her scissors to the ruin of Nathan’s blood-soaked T-shirt. Gut wounds were the trickiest. Gunshot wound, dead center of the abdomen. Sloppy. Hits were normally a single shot to the head. Boom. No chance of survival. If Nathan had been the target, someone wanted him to suffer. “Roll him to one side. I need to check the exit wound.”
Nathan’s bulk moved enough to expose his smooth, unblemished back; sans exit wound.
Fuck.
The bullet was still in Nathan, which meant dying horribly on the kitchen table, and Nicky would blame her.
Thalia pressed the wadded-up ruins of the shirt against the wound, helpless to do anything else. Short of surgery, she could only alleviate the pain. She could pour whiskey down his throat and try to get him to swallow enough pain pills to make his last moments bearable.
“Get me some towels,” she ordered. “And a bottle of whiskey.”
“Drinking on the job? Must have learned that trick from Doc,” Blade said. He jerked his head to the door, and the other man went to fetch the towels.
“It ain’t for me,” she said. Not that she had to explain herself to anyone but Nicky.
The back door banged open, bringing in a draft of cold air.
Speak of the devil.
“He needs a hospital,” Thalia said, moving Nathan to rest on his back again.
“Not an option,” Nicky said, elbowing past her. He leaned over his wounded friend, his black wool coat falling open and the ends of his scarf brushing against the bleeding wound.
Thalia bit her lip to hold in her snarky comments about no one caring to keep the wound clean. “The bullet is still in there.”
“Then get it out.”
“With what? My fingers?” Thalia held up one bloody gloved hand. “He needs to go to the hospital.”
Towels arrived and she pressed one to the wound, leaning forward with all her weight.
Nicky frowned, his demeanor shifting from concerned to cold. “Mitchell would patch him up, no questions asked.”
Thalia shivered, afraid to anger Nicky. Somehow, she found her voice. “Doc went to medical school, but he wouldn’t be able to do much with the bullet somewhere in that mess. I’m not qualified here at all.”
“Didn’t I send you to him to learn? Are you telling me that I should have sent your stuck-up ass to walk the streets?”
Thalia shook her head. Blade snickered, no doubt loving Nicky putting her in her place. He just needed a bucket of popcorn to go with the look of utter glee on his big, dumb face. “He’s lost a lot of blood too. He needs a transfusion.”
“Do it. I’ll have one of the boys donate.”
“I need equipment, an IV, a PICC, and I don’t even know Nathan’s blood type. The wrong one will kill him. Please, Nicky, he has to go to the hospital.”
“If I get you the equipment?” He had out his phone, already typing orders. Brand new medical equipment would arrive in minutes if she asked for it.
“I don’t know how to use it. Doc never did anything like that. I’d have to read up and Nathan doesn’t have that kind of time.”
Nicky fixed her with his cold blue gaze. His eyes were empty. Soulless. She swallowed but did not flinch or look away. Tougher guys than her had caved to that heartless stare. “Tallie, Tallie, Tallie,” he said, drawing out her name. She hated that nickname. “Doc’s only been in the ground for three weeks and you’ve done nothing but tell me no.”
Her eyes fell to the floor, all submission, and she whispered, “I’m sorry.”
“You tell me ‘I don’t know how to do this’ and ‘I don’t have the tools,’” he said, pitching his voice in a mockingly high tone. Blade and the other meathead snickered. “Did you learn anything from Mitchell, or did he just keep you around to suck his cock?”
She flinched. It hadn’t been like that with Doc. At all. Doc had been, if not a good man, a decent man. Decent in his own way, at least.
Thalia lifted her eyes. Doc taught her a lot, but he also taught her to know her limitations. “If I dig around in Nathan for that bullet, I’d be going in blind. He will die. If I pack the wound with the stuff the military uses to stop the bleeding so we can take him to the hospital, he could live.”
Nathan circled the table, his hands making a mess of his hair. Calmly, too calmly, he took off his well-tailored suit jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. The leather of the shoulder holster contrasted sharply with the brilliant white
