Page 104 of Corrupt

Fuck.

That man had patched me up before. Not here, though. No, he’d done it somewhere else. Knelt on Tristan’s floor with blood on his hands and panic in his eyes. He’d patched me up with shaking fingers and sworn under his breath while Tristan held me as if I might break in half. This doctor had seen me stripped bare in ways no man ever should.

The doc blinked.

Once.

Twice.

And I stared at him hard, silently begging him—don’t say it, don’t react, don’t fucking acknowledge me. Pretend I’m another body leaning against a cubicle wall. Pretend you’ve never seen me bleeding out on your friend’s bedroom floor.

But I saw it the second his jaw tightened.

He remembered.

“I’m Dr Redmayne.” He turned his attention on Tyler, professional instinct snapping into place. “What’s happened?”

“Was jumped,” I said for him.

“Right.” Henry nodded. Then assessed him, pulling on gloves, checked the obs clipped to Tyler’s finger, watched the numbers for a second too long. “Any loss of consciousness?”

“No.”

“Chest pain?”

Tyler didn’t respond. I felt it like a held breath.

Henry’s eyes lifted to my face. “And you’re…?”

“No one.”

Henry nodded. Then went back to Tyler.

“Okay. I’m going to have a look, all right?” His tone was calm, steady, the kind that made people do what they were told without thinking. “I need you to tell me if anything hurts when I press.”

He palpated Tyler’s abdomen carefully. Tyler flinched.

“There?” Henry asked.

Tyler gasped.

“And here?”

Another sharp intake of breath.

Henry straightened, scribbling on the notes. “We’ll get you some pain relief. And I want a chest X-ray. Possibly bloods. You’re breathing too fast.”

He paused. Looked at me again. Not as a doctor.

As someone who knew exactly what sort of trouble had walked into his cubicle.

“Right.” Henry snapped the notes shut. “I’ll be back in a moment.”

He stepped out and pulled the curtain closed behind him. The second he was gone, my legs went weak. As if whatever had been holding me upright finally realised it could stop pretending. Whatever story I was feeding the rest of the department, Doctor Redmayne wouldn’t buy a single fucking word of it.

“You got your phone on you?” I asked Tyler, low.

He shook his head, eyes glassy, unfocused.