“We should get going,” I said, pulling myself from my thoughts.
“I’ll start taping along the top of the cabinets and leave the lower stuff for you.”
We worked in relative silence for the better part of an hour, but my fingers were starting to chill and I was cold. We were almost done taping, but we still had a lot of work to do, so I needed to warm up a little.
I looked up at Andrew, walking on top of the counter to reach above the cabinets. “Hey, I’m gonna run upstairs and grab a sweatshirt.”
“Yeah, no problem.”
I ran upstairs and pulled a sweatshirt over my long-sleeved shirt. The chill in the house wouldn’t be gone until all the windows were replaced, but at the rate that winter was approaching, I wasn’t sure that could happen until winter was coming to a close. However, Eric assured me that they could replace the windows during the winter, and that it would actually save me money considering how bad the windows were.
I shut my bedroom door and headed downstairs, but I was only halfway down when I heard a loud crash. Pausing on the stairs, I called out for Andrew, but he didn’t respond. I rushed down the stairs and into the kitchen, looking around, but I couldn’t see him.
“Andrew?”
Still nothing. I rushed further into the room, and then I saw his boot sticking out from behind the island. I ran around it and saw him lying on the ground, blood gushing from his head.
“Oh my God!” I knelt down beside him and shook him slightly. “Andrew, are you okay?”
He didn’t say anything. He just laid there, blood pooling under his head. I ran out of the room and grabbed a towel sitting in a laundry basket in the living room, then ran back to him. Lifting his head slightly, I saw that the blood was coming from the back of his head. I pressed it to the wound and immediately freaked the fuck out.
This was so bad. I couldn’t have another man die on me. It would look so bad, especially while I was trying to get the funds for my trust released. Not to mention, and maybe I should have thought about this first, I actually liked Andrew, and the thought of something happening to him had me panicking. I snatched my phone off the counter and tried to dial 9-1-1, but something was wrong with the connection. I glanced outside and noticed that the wind had picked up quite a bit. Snow was blowing hard outside, so hard that I could barely see the trees anymore.
But I couldn’t just leave him on the floor. He could have a serious head injury. I couldn’t call his brother to help or even a nurse to tell me what to do. I would have to drive him to the hospital. I got up and ran to the front door, ready to rush out and start the car to warm it up while I somehow lifted Andrew and got him outside. But when I flung the door open, I knew that wouldn’t work. The snow drifts were so bad already that there was no way I would get down my driveway. How had it gotten so bad in only an hour?
Shutting the door, I wracked my brain, trying to come up with a solution to my problem. What if he died? What if he lived, but had severe brain damage? I rushed back over to him and shook him again. This time, he roused slightly. I let out a sigh of relief and shook him again.
“Andrew, can you hear me?”
His eyes fluttered open and he groaned. “What the hell happened?”
“You don’t remember?”
Oh, shit, did that mean he had brain damage? Fuck, this was so bad.
He shook his head slightly. “The last thing I remember is talking about painting.”
He tried to sit up, but I pushed him back down. “Don’t get up. Your head is bleeding.”
He tried to touch his head, but I stopped him, pulling the towel away slightly to look. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the bleeding had slowed.
“Is it bad?”
“I have no idea. It’s not bleeding as much now, but it was bad for a few minutes.”
“Do I need to go to the hospital?”
“Probably, but there’s no chance of that happening.”
He looked almost scared for a minute, so I tried to reassure him. “The storm kicked up. The phone isn’t working and the driveway is drifted over. I could probably dig us out, but the driveway is so long that it would probably drift over again before I finished. But the good news is, we have plenty of firewood chopped.”
He swallowed hard, almost like he was resigning himself to something and nodded slightly. “Do you know how to do stitches?”
I had only ever done stitches one time, and that was when my dad cut himself on a broken bottle of alcohol. The only reason I hadn’t taken him to the hospital was because we had no money, and we already owed so much in bills, I was sure they would turn us away.
“I have a first aid kit, but I’ve never done stitches on someone’s head.”
“Well, I guess we should give it a try, right?” he laughed. “Better than bleeding out.”
“I doubt you’re going to bleed out, but we do need to close the wound.”
I held out my hand, which he hesitantly took. I didn’t understand. Was he worried about looking weak in front of me? He had a head wound, for Christ’s sake. I helped him to his feet and he swayed slightly, before shaking it off and walking into the living room with me. I helped him sit down and then rushed out of the room to grab my first aid kit from upstairs.
I was shaking as I gathered the supplies. The memories of doing this to my father were sitting right on the edge of my brain, trying to fling
