“Does she really have cancer?” he asks.

“Of course she does. I wouldn’t make up something like that.”

“Do you read books about serial killers?” he asks, then adds “or books about psychology?”

“What? No, no, never. Why?”

“No reason,” he tells her, and he’s suspicious that she’s trying to relate to him. She’s using his name a lot, and the story about the mum with cancer is supposed to make him feel sympathetic . . . that’s what he read in the books about serial killers, but if she doesn’t read those books, then she wouldn’t know to say these things. She’s not trying to trick him—she’s a nice person. Hanging around with people who aren’t nice is making him look for things that aren’t nice in nice people.

“Do you have any antiseptic, Adrian?” she asks.

“Huh?”

“Antiseptic.”

“Oh, yes, sure.”

“Can I have some?”

He moves around the bed and unties the ropes. She sits up, carefully so the sheet doesn’t drape from her body. She rubs at her wrists while he unties her feet. Her wrists are red and the skin is broken and it must be hard being tied up for nearly a week the way she was, and he’s annoyed at Cooper for doing that to her. Cooper could have just locked her in a room. When her feet are free she slowly leans forward and rubs at her ankles.

“Can I have the antiseptic?” she asks.

He passes it to her. She takes off the lid and starts to rub cream into her ankles and wrists. He watches her work, going from limb to limb, and he wants to offer to help but he doesn’t. He likes the idea of rubbing cream into her and helping her, but he doesn’t think she’ll like the idea as much.

“It really hurts,” she tells him.

“I’m sorry. Next time it’ll . . .” he stops talking, realizing his mistake. He looks down, unable to look her in the eye, waiting for her to pick up on it, waiting for her to say Next time what? You said you were letting me go. He doesn’t know how to finish his sentence, and thankfully he doesn’t have to because she lets him off the hook.

“Let’s take a look then, shall we?” she says, missing his comment, and he is pleased. “What happened?”

“Somebody shot me.”

“Oh, you poor man,” she says, and her voice is soothing and already his leg doesn’t seem to hurt as much. The image that comes next is immediate—he sees himself sitting with this woman on the porch watching a sunrise and not with Cooper. His chest is warm and he feels a little light-headed and he isn’t sure what’s going on. Her wrists are shiny from the cream. He can’t stop looking at them.

“It doesn’t hurt that much,” he says, but it really does. He doesn’t want her to know how much pain he’s in. “You know, I’ve had worse,” he adds and immediately wishes he hadn’t.

She tucks the sheet beneath her armpits and clamps her arms down on the outside of it. “Is that everything in the plastic bag?”

“Yes.”

“We should start by washing the wound,” she says. “Is that okay? Do you want me to do that for you?”

“Okay.”

“You have nice legs, by the way,” she says.

“Oh. Oh, really?”

“Surely, Adrian, you’ve heard that before?”

“Umm . . . no. Never.”

“Never? I find that hard to believe,” she says, and her smile makes him smile. “Now, do you have any cotton balls?”

“In the bag.”

“Then let’s get started.”

He hands her the bag and she goes through it, placing the items on the bed next to her. Along with the antiseptic, there are other ointments, bandages, gauze pads, tape, a safety pin, pills, creams, a pair of scissors. He keeps his eyes on the scissors. He wants to take them away from her, but at the same time he doesn’t want to say anything mean to her. He needs to take them away without sounding like he doesn’t trust her. He’s really starting to think it would be a waste if he gave her to Cooper.

“Is that pad stuck on the wound?” she asks, leaning forward to get a better look. Her hair is draped down her back, the sheet open like a curtain through which he can see her spine, it looks like a row of knuckles down her back, her skin is smooth and pale. The skin on her neck is tight and there are beads of sweat sitting on the surface. He has the urge to run his finger over them and send them dripping down her body.

“Yes,” he hears himself saying.

“We’re going to need to remove it.”

“The leg?” he asks, the image of him pacing uneven laps in his room comes back to him, and he can feel the blood drain from his face. He wants to be sick.

“No, the pad,” she says. “That would be awful if we had to remove the leg,” she says, and she says it in a way to not make him feel stupid about his mistake. He doesn’t know why he thought she meant the leg—it makes no sense. He feels silly. In the past others would have laughed at him for getting something so simple so wrong.

“It’s going to hurt,” she warns him, “but I sense you’re not going to have a problem. Here, let’s soak it first. It should come away easier.”

“Okay. Thank you.”

She soaks one of the cloths in water and he watches her fingers, her arms, the way her hair sticks to her face. His heart is racing. She squeezes the cloth and he loves the way the water sounds sprinkling back into the bucket. It makes him want to go for a swim, something he hasn’t done since he was a boy. She places the cloth and holds it against the pad on his thigh and she looks up at him and smiles and his legs are starting to turn into jelly. He wishes he were sitting down. She peels the corner of the pad away. It’s still stuck but not as bad.

“Just a little longer,” she says. “Or I can just rip it straight off. Would you prefer that?”

“Yes,” he says, and the word hasn’t been out of his mouth for more than half a second when rip, it’s torn from his thigh. “Ah,” he says, “ah that . . .”

“Was really brave of you,” she says, and smiles at him.

He smiles back, hiding the pain. She reminds him of Katie, Katie the girl he fell in love with, only Emma is much nicer than Katie. Far more beautiful, and friendly, and even though she’s much younger than Adrian he can feel himself falling. It’s as if he’s thirteen again. Of course his mother would say he’s becoming obsessed, but his mother would be wrong.

“Now, let’s take a look,” Katie says—no, not Katie, Emma. When they’re sitting on the porch watching future sunsets, he’s going to have to be careful not to make that mistake. “Hmm, it looks nasty. Let me wash it down,” she says, and she soaks some cotton balls in antiseptic.

“It’s old,” he says, nodding toward the same antiseptic she put on her own wrists and ankles.

“This stuff lasts forever,” she says. “Trust me, they only put expiration dates on it to make sure you keep buying more. It’s perfectly safe.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. I used it, didn’t I?”

She did, but she didn’t know it was old, and he feels bad about not having told her before she used it on herself. He has a decision to make—does he believe her or not? Does he trust her? He decides that he does. She’s a nice person, that is obvious, and nice people can be trusted.

He nods. “Okay,” he says, “use it on me.”

She smiles. He never wants to see her not smiling. She pads two cotton balls against his thigh, then slowly wipes them downward. “You’re doing really well,” she says. “Not much longer to go.”

“Okay.”

“You really should get stitches, Adrian.”

“I can’t.”

“Then we’ll do the best we can. Now, I need to cut some gauze into the right size.”

“I’ll do it.” He leans over to the bed and picks up the gauze and the scissors. “What size?”

“Just a little bigger than the wound.”

“Oh, of course.” He uses the scissors then hands her the gauze. He puts the scissors into his back pocket. She holds the gauze in place and puts another medical pad on top of it.

“Now I need you to cut some tape to the right lengths.”