Worth Dying For_ A Reacher Novel - Lee Child [50]
Reacher asked, “Do you know who they are?”
The doctor said, “No. They’re not from around here.” His words were thick and indistinct and hard to decipher. Loose teeth, split lips. And a hangover, presumably. “They said they were representing the Duncans. Not working for them. So they’re not hired hands. We don’t know who they are or what their connection is.”
“What did they want?”
“You, of course.”
Reacher said, “I’m very sorry for your trouble.”
The doctor said, “It is what it is.”
Reacher turned back to the doctor’s wife. “Are you OK?”
She said, “They didn’t hit me.”
“But?”
“I don’t want to talk about it. Why are you here?”
“I need medical treatment,” Reacher said.
“What kind?”
“I got scratched by thorns. I want to get the cuts cleaned.”
“Really?”
“No, not really,” Reacher said. “I need some painkillers, that’s all. I haven’t been able to rest my arms like I hoped.”
“What do you really want?”
“I want to talk,” Reacher said.
They started in the kitchen. They cleaned his cuts, purely as a way of occupying themselves. The doctor’s wife said she had trained as a nurse. She poured some thin stinging liquid into a bowl and used cotton balls. She started on his face and neck and then did his hands. She made him take off his shirt. His back was all ripped up by the long scrabbling escape from under the truck. He said, “I had breakfast with Dorothy this morning. At her place.”
The doctor’s wife said, “You shouldn’t be telling us that. It could get her in trouble.”
“Only if you rat her out to the Duncans.”
“We might have to.”
“She said she’s a friend of yours.”
“Not really a friend. She’s much older.”
“She said you stood by her, twenty-five years ago.”
The woman said nothing. Just continued her careful ministrations behind his back. She was thorough. She was opening each scratch with thumb and forefinger, and swabbing extensively. The doctor said, “Would you like a drink?”
“Too early for me,” Reacher said.
“I meant coffee,” the doctor said. “You were drinking coffee last night.”
Reacher smiled. The guy was trying to prove he could remember something. Trying to prove he hadn’t been really drunk, trying to prove he wasn’t really hungover.
“A cup of coffee is always welcome,” Reacher said.
The doctor stepped away to the sink and got a drip machine going. Then he came back and took Reacher’s arm, like doctors do, his fingertips in Reacher’s palm, lifting, turning, manipulating. The doctor was small and Reacher’s arm was big. The guy was struggling like a butcher with a side of beef. He dug the fingers of his other hand deep into Reacher’s shoulder joint, poking, feeling, probing.
“I could give you cortisone,” he said.
“Do I need it?”
“It would help.”
“How much?”
“A little. Maybe more than a little. You should think about it. It would ease the discomfort. Right now it’s nagging at you. Probably making you tired.”
“OK,” Reacher said. “Go for it.”
“I will,” the doctor said. “In exchange for some information.”
“Like what?”
“How did you hurt yourself?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“Call it professional interest.”
The doctor’s wife finished her work. She tossed the last cotton ball on the table and handed Reacher his shirt. He shrugged it on and started buttoning it. He said, “It was like you figured. I was caught in a hurricane.”
The doctor said, “I don’t believe you.”
“Not a natural weather event. I was in an underground chamber. It caught on fire. There was a stair shaft and two ventilation shafts. I was lucky. The flames went up the ventilation shafts. I was on the stairs. So I wasn’t burned. But air to feed the fire was coming down the stair shaft just as hard as the flames were going back up the ventilation shafts. So it was like