Chapter 82
Rob jerked and swore fluently as the bloody T-shirt was ripped aside—Eli nearly threw up at the sheer amount of blood soaked into the thin material—and a handful of gauze was slammed into place.
“Oh Jesus,”Rob grunted. His hand started to shake violently in Eli’s. “Fuck, fuck, fuck—”
“Don’t you dare pass out on me,” Eli demanded, shaking his face lightly. “C’mon, Rob, ambulance isn’t far now, and then they’ll hop you up on the really good stuff, and you—you can’t, you can’t do this…”
“Eli,” Danny snapped. “Help me.”
Eli swallowed and kissed Rob’s knuckles before letting go and twisting back to Danny.
“Hands here,” Danny ordered brusquely, clapping Eli’s into place over the already bloody gauze. The copper laid his own hands, warm through the rubbery blue gloves he was wearing, over the back of Eli’s to increase the pressure on the wound. Hot blood squished through Eli’s fingers. Rob groaned deeply. Danny was bending over him and muttering very fast. Eli caught the word ‘fucker’ several times.
“He was defending me and my sister,” he croaked to the policeman. “He was…he’s my boyfriend, he’s my partner, my sister broke down and texted me asking me to pick her up and I thought he might be closer so I texted him, too, and then…then he interrupted those kids…”
Eli talked, because it was better than listening to Danny swear at Rob and not hear Rob’s replies. Then there was another scream of sirens down the main road, and a policewoman was running into the road to flag down the ambulance. It rocketed into the car park with less finesse than the abandoned Suzuki, one of the paramedics jumping out before it had even completely stopped, then Eli and the cop were roughly elbowed out of the way.
“What’s happened?” the paramedic barked.
“He’s been fucking stabbed, what d’you fucking think?” Danny shouted.
“If you want me to help him, I suggest you shut your lip and give me what I bloody well need to help him,” the paramedic snapped back, not in the least bit perturbed by the attitude. “Conscious and breathing?”
“And in fucking pain!” Rob snarled. His voice was reed-thin, but still clear.
Eli’s heart jumped in his chest. He scrambled up Rob’s other side to cup his face in both hands and kiss his forehead, the skin cold and clammy.
“Where’s the fucking drugs, eh?”
“I’m a paramedic, not a bloody pharmacist,” the man retorted as his colleague dropped beside him. Despite his words, their gloves worked quickly over the wound. “Male, mid-twenties, conscious, breathing, aware, stab wound to the lower left abdomen, doesn’t appear to have ruptured the bowel…”
“Fucking great, I’m not gonna shit myself to death,” Rob groaned.
Eli slapped his cheek lightly.
“You’re not fucking dying,” he spat furiously. “You fucking jumped in front of an armed robber for me and Jen, I’ll drag you back here myself if I have to.”
“Whipped, bro. You’re so whipped,” Danny laughed hoarsely, his dark eyes wild. He was clutching at his jacket over Rob’s shoulders, his lips bloodless and grey.
“Call ahead to Northern General, he’ll need to go straight in, bleeding’s not coming under control…”
“M’bleeding to death on a car park floor,” Rob complained. “This ain’t the bar fight you promised, Dan.”
“Piss off, I distinctly said you’d be forty-five when you coughed it in the local,” Danny snapped.
One of the paramedics vanished back to the ambulance with the cop. Rob took a deep, shaky breath.
“Hey, Eli?”
“Uh-huh?”
“I am never picking up your sister ever again.”
Eli laughed, hating the high sound of his own voice. He swallowed against the heavy lump in his throat. “Me neither. And I’m never borrowing Dad’s car either. I’ll borrow yours. Nobody’d steal your car ever, it’s a stinking piece of shit.”
“Oh, fuck you…”
The stretcher was banged roughly on the ground and Danny and Eli were shooed away while the paramedics and the cop struggled to transfer Rob’s heavy frame onto it. The thin quality to Rob’s voice was passed over for his usual loud, coarse language. But when they finally lifted the stretcher, his skin was completely grey in the harsh blue lights of the emergency vehicles.
“Oh God, Rob…” Eli whispered. He started forward like a string was pulling him along, determined not to lose sight—or sound—of Rob’s twitching and swearing, the proof he was still here…
“Eli!”
Danny’s hand was firm on his shoulder; Eli tore his gaze away from the stretcher, and rested them instead on his own bloodied fingers.
“Eli, mate, your sister needs you, yeah?” Danny said. “She can’t fucking come wi’me, she don’t know me from fuckin’ Adam and she’s freaked enough. Go wi’ your sister.”
“But…Rob…”
“I got Rob.”
Eli locked eyes with Danny’s—the same shape, the same size, even the same way of flicking the gaze from left to right and back when staring at you, as Rob’s. But not Rob’s.