Page 62 of Patch

This one could have told me. He didn’t. He just held his arm out and looked at the wall.

The wound was shallow for most of its length, deeper at the proximal end where the bullet had dug in before exiting. The edges were inflamed. Red. Hot to the touch when my fingers brushed the margin. Infection setting in. Maybe twenty-four hours old. Someone had tried to close it with butterfly closures that had pulled loose when the swelling started.

“Entry point lateral forearm. Depth variable. Superficial distally, approximately half an inch. Deepens proximally to an inch at the exit. Bleeding is venous. Not arterial. Pulse present at wrist.” I said all of it in the same register. Narrating to the room because the procedure was the only thing that mattered and the people watching it were scenery. “No major vessels compromised. Infection present. Timeline approximately twenty-four hours. Can’t close it. It’ll abscess.”

I reached for the gauze. Unrolled a length. Folded it into a pad. Pressed it against the deepest part of the wound. The man hissed. His good hand gripped the couch cushion. I held the pressure. Counted silently. One-one-thousand. Two-one-thousand. Three.

“Hold this.” I put his right hand on the gauze. “Firm pressure. Don’t lift it. I need both hands.”

He held. His fingers were shaking. I didn’t comment on it.

I reached for the hydrogen peroxide. Poured it over a fresh gauze pad. The liquid fizzed against the cotton. Old chemical reaction. Probably useless as disinfectant at this point. Better than nothing.

“Cleaning it. This will burn.” I didn’t wait for acknowledgment. Pressed the soaked gauze along the wound margin. The man’s jaw locked. His breathing went shallow. I worked methodically. Each pass with fresh gauze. The peroxide foamed pink against his skin.

The first one, the polite one, appeared in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room. He stood with his hands in his pockets. His head tilted slightly to the left. The posture of a man watching something he hadn’t accounted for. His gaze moved from my hands to the wound to the man’s face and back to my hands. His expression didn’t change. The pleasant neutrality held. But something behind it shifted. A recalibration, the moment when an assessment revised upward.

I was aware of him watching. Didn’t stop. Didn’t acknowledge him. My hands kept moving. Gauze. Tape. The trauma shears cutting lengths of medical tape that I applied across the packed wound in parallel strips, leaving the center open for drainage. Each movement precise. Each decision spoken aloud in the same clinical voice.

“Need more gauze.” I didn’t look up. Didn’t specify who I was talking to. The room could figure it out.

The heavy one reached into the kit. Handed me another roll. Our fingers didn’t touch. He stepped back against the wall by the window where he could see both of us and the driveway, and stayed there.

The wounded man watched my face. His expression had changed. The initial surprise had given way to something quieter. Almost relief. The look of someone who had expected less and was quietly reassessing the room he was in.

I finished the packing. Taped it secure. Checked the distal pulse. Radial artery. Strong. Steady. The hand was warm. Capillary refill less than two seconds. Good perfusion. The arm would keep.

“Change the dressing daily. Don’t close it. If the redness spreads past this line…” I drew a finger along his skin two inches proximal to the wound. “…you need antibiotics. Real ones. Not what’s in that kit.”

He nodded and let go of the gauze and flexed the hand twice. The shaking had stopped somewhere in the last ten minutes and neither of us said anything about it.

The polite one was still in the doorway. His hands were still in his pockets. His head was still tilted. The reassessment was complete. I could feel it in the quality of his attention. Sharper now. More specific. He had watched a resource demonstrate its value and was calculating what that was worth.

I wiped my hands on a clean corner of gauze. The blood came off in streaks. Pink against white. I balled the used gauze and set it on the coffee table beside the kit.

The room stayed quiet. The overhead light hummed. My hands were steady. Completely steady.

The polite one’s focus stayed on my hands. On the blood. On the certainty with which they had moved. “Thank you,” he said.

Pleasant. Measured. No emphasis. No weight. Just two words, flat as a road sign.

I didn’t answer.

* * *

The front door came in fast. Not a knock. Not a pause. The sound of something that had been waiting its turn and decided waiting was over. Wood against frame. Hinges that gave all at once. Then boots. Multiple sets. Moving with the coordinated weight of men who had done this before and weren’t wasting time on the pretty version.

Shouted commands overlapped. I couldn’t parse them. Too many voices. Too much echo in the small space.

I was still on the couch. My hands were still bloody from the dressing change. The gauze roll sat beside me on the cushion. The trauma shears on the coffee table. The water glass untouched.

The polite one moved.

Not toward the back of the house. Not toward the kitchen where the rear exit waited. He moved toward me. Three strides across the laminate. His hand reached for my arm. His fingers extended. He had identified the valuable thing in the room and wasn’t leaving without it.

I was the thread. He was a man who did not leave threads.

His fingers closed on air, because the heavier man hit him.