Blood Debt by M. K. Murphy

Author:M. K. Murphy [Murphy, M. K.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollinsPublishers
Published: 2024-05-02T17:00:00+00:00

Chapter 34

AT THE HOSPITAL CLINIC, the nurse was a chatty Lancastrian. She told him as she cleaned and tidied up the area around the wound that it was healing nicely, and that it might not need stitching.

‘So I can stop wearing the dressing?’ he asked, eager to get back to work.

She pursed her lips. ‘It’s not all the way there, yet, chuck,’ she said. ‘And wounds open to the air usually scar worse than the ones we keep nice and moist.’

Rick’s stomach roiled at the thought of a ‘nice, moist’ wound. ‘How about a plaster, then?’ he asked. ‘My boss is giving me a hard time – says I can’t come back to work till the dressing’s off.’

‘What I wouldn’t give to stay home under boss’s orders.’ She gave him a shrewd look. ‘Put your feet up, get a bit of shut-eye – you look like you need it.’

‘Thanks,’ Rick said, with a wry smile.

‘I speak as I find,’ she said, laying the northern brogue on thick, for comic effect. ‘Look, here’s how it is: you’ve suffered a bullet wound to the head that took a chunk of skin almost clean off. You’re lucky that it left a flap with enough healthy blood vessels to start the healing process so – fingers crossed – it’ll reattach itself.’

Rick began to feel decidedly queasy.

‘But it’s a delicate process,’ she went on, oblivious. ‘The skin that’s still attached to your skull is also damaged, and if you use sticky plaster to cover it, when you lift the dressing off to clean or replace it, you could tear off the flap of skin along with it.’ She pinched air between her finger and thumb and moved her arm in a wide arc, graphically illustrating the action. ‘So—’

‘Okay,’ Rick interrupted. ‘No more. You convinced me.’

She chuckled. ‘It’s always strapping great men that come over all funny when you give ’em the gory details.’

She stood back and admired her handiwork. Satisfied, she binned the kit of saline and swabs from the trolley, stripped off her vinyl gloves and said, ‘Sit tight, and I’ll fetch a doctor – they’ll tell you if it wants stitching.’

Rick waited for ten minutes. After another five, he dug his phone out of his pocket and saw that the unidentified man at Jason Floren’s murder scene had become a hot topic.

#limpingman, #Florenkiller and #pandoraunboxes were all trending. Recalling the Deptford Waters development, Rick was touched by the rather sweet picture of family life and community watchfulness he’d witnessed there. What Floren had done was horrible, but he wondered if the man had tried to make some measure of reparation by building this beautiful oasis out of a grey corner of south London. Could there be redemption for a man like Floren?

After twenty minutes, beginning to think he’d been forgotten, Rick hopped off the bed and opened the door. A girl with a bandaged hand sat morosely next to an older woman – her mother, judging from the practised resentment on the kid’s face.

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