Clown Girl - Monica Drake [90]
“Shit.”
He said, “Now I have.”
I smiled. “Just like getting a bikini wax.”
“Really?”
I laughed again. “How would I know? I’ve never had a bikini wax. I’m a clown, not a beauty queen.”
Jerrod rubbed my skin until the pain quieted, then slid the IV out. Blood ran, dark and red. He pressed against the spot and blood seeped between his fingers.
I said, “I’m disease-free.”
“I believe it.” He kept pressure on the back of my hand.
“And why? You barely know me.”
With my free hand I helped him pull the backing off a Band-Aid. Between us, blood dripped onto the plastic that covered the mattress and mixed with soot. Evidence. Jerrod put a square of cotton against the back of my hand and drew the Band-Aid over it. He opened the aluminum package of a disposable damp cloth and ran the cloth over my soot-covered arms. The cloth was cool and smelled like baby oil.
“You’re a nurse,” I said. The Band-Aid tightened when I closed my fist, then relaxed as I opened my hand again.
“Just a little professional development training.” He ran the damp cloth down my arm, sent shivers down my spine. “I had the chicken and that white plastic horseshoe all week. Just found Chance yesterday. But I’d been looking forward to this, to returning everything.” He said, The best part of my job is when I can make somebody happy, and get it right.”
It was true, he’d returned everything. Everything except Rex Galore. And the lost baby, the child I would’ve had with Rex. Or my parents. Nobody could bring back my family, future or past, because I was the single stalk of a failing family tree. I smelled the future the unborn baby should’ve had in the clean scent of the waterless wipe Jerrod used on my skin.
He said, “The whole idea behind policing is about making the world better, but somehow, nine times out of ten it doesn’t work that way.”
“This is a pretty good start,” I said. My voice broke, caught on a sadness that crept in.
“You’re lucky the burns aren’t worse.”
He put ointment on my blisters. His touch was light. He unrolled gauze, started at my wrist, then followed the gauze in circles. Chance followed his hands with her nose. With each turn I felt closer to Jerrod; his hands moved up my arm, and I held my breath. He dressed the wounds, but it felt more like he was undressing me; close enough to unbutton a shirt, unhook a bra, adjust my collar. I wanted to touch his knee, his jaw, his Steve McQueen ears.
I wanted Jerrod as a medicine against the sadness.
He wrapped my arm like a long white glove. His breath on my skin was a shoulder tap, a secret hello. I pulled back to see into his eyes. He held on to the gauze and as I pulled away the wrap tightened against my skin like a Chinese finger trap.
He snipped the gauze with scissors. The tension released against my wrist, but stayed in my chest, my heart; I was waiting, but didn’t know what for. He tucked the end of the gauze under another loop and his fingers brushed my skin.
“You’re hot,” he said.
Sexy? Fevered, more like it. I said, “Jerrod, we should talk.”
He looked up then, at me, all blue eyes, and his eyes were so clear, and at the corners, those wrinkles, he was almost laughing. He held my arm, held the gauze, and equally steadily he held my gaze. With the first aid cream and scattered bandages, we were adrift in a medical picnic, the mattress our blanket in a forest of confiscated goods. My blood on the mattress between us was like seeing the back side of my skin, my insides, a secret—Jerrod had seen me inside and out, burned and in the psych ward. And still here he was, beside me. But the blood and the burns were all circumstantial, a string of bad luck, the anomaly. I didn’t want to think that was me—a wreck, a mess, a mortal.
I said, “This isn’t a date, you know. We still barely know each other. Right?” I added.
He worked a metal clip into the end of the gauze to hold it together, then let go. I pulled my arm back. He said, “I know a few things about you.”
“You know where I live, that I have a dog and I’m a clown. That’s it.”
“And,” he said, “I know that you