He read over the chart, then looked up at Cain, taking in his injuries. “Yikes. That must have been quite the deluxe tool kit you dragged on top of yourself.”
“Yeah, I, uh, got it for Christmas last year from my Uncle Mike,” Cain offered. He'd never had an Uncle Mike, but he figured the more minor details he could color this story with, the more plausible it would sound. “He knows I'm into fixing up old bikes and stuff like that, so...”
“Sure, sure,” Dr. Lemuel nodded, unconcerned. He was already shining a pen-sized flashlight over the cuts on Cain's face and scalp. “Can you tell me the month, the date, and the day of the week?”
“December twelfth,” Cain answered. “Or thirteenth now, I guess, since it's after midnight. Which would make it Tuesday.”
“Very good,” the doctor said. “Can you name the current president and the one before him?”
Cain almost gave Hunter's name, then realized what the doctor meant and named the current president of the United States, as well as the previous one.
“Excellent,” Lemuel said encouragingly. “Since this happened, have you experienced any nausea, vomiting, dizziness, blackouts, or blurred vision?”
“Yeah, I threw up some blood after it happened,” Cain answered. “None of that other stuff, though.”
Lemuel nodded again, jotting down a few notes on the chart. Then he turned to Missy. “And you are...?”
“His girlfriend,” Missy replied. She hadn't even thought about it—the lie just popped out easily. “I heard him fall and found him in the tool shed, so I drove him here.”
“Okay,” Lemuel continued, “so Mr. Vale will need a substantial number of stitches for the deep cuts in his head, and I'll want him to get cranial MRI and CT scans tonight to make sure there's no serious damage up there. But the good news is that he seems to have avoided a concussion. The blood he threw up was probably due to some internal injuries, and we'll have a much better idea of how serious they are after we run the tests.”
Cain almost spoke up to remind the doctor that he was sitting right in front of him, but took a deep breath and tried to calm down instead. The last thing he wanted to do was piss off the medical staff so they'd remember him. Better to just keep his mouth shut, nod politely, and do whatever it took to get the hell out of here as soon as possible.
“The broken arm will need a cast, naturally,” Lemuel continued. “We'll want an x-ray of that first, but at first glance, it looks like a clean break, so I don't think any physical therapy will be required. Would you please help him remove his shirt, so I can examine his ribs?”
Missy gingerly pulled up the t-shirt Cain was wearing as he let out several hisses of pain. Even with the dark purple bruises and crimson welts eclipsing the flesh of Cain's torso, she still couldn't help but admire the chiseled muscles of his chest and abs, or the powerful slope of his broad shoulders.
She remembered how abrasive he was to her in the car and felt a faint blush of embarrassment color her cheeks. She didn't want to acknowledge being attracted to someone who could act like such a jerk, but her eyes couldn't help but take in his lithe, athletic frame and wonder what it would feel like pressed against her body.
Well, maybe it would feel good to me, she thought, but in his current condition, I doubt it would feel very good to him, having anything pressed against those broken ribs. Ouch.
Dr. Lemuel looked at the bruises on Cain's body, frowning. Cain followed his gaze. He could see faint boot marks imprinted on the skin, and he knew the doctor could too.
“There were some, uh, old work boots on the top shelf of the tool shed,” Cain lied. “They must have come down on me.”
Lemuel raised an eyebrow. “Unless those 'old work boots' were filled with lead, I highly doubt they left marks like these. Is there anything else you two would like to tell me about what happened? It'll be a lot easier for me to treat these wounds if I know what really caused them. And if you're afraid of someone...”
“I'm not afraid of anyone,” Cain snapped. “I just fell, that's all. Can you fix me up, or not?”
The doctor sighed. “Okay. If that's the way you'd prefer to proceed, we'll certainly do everything we can for you. I'll arrange those scans I mentioned, plus x-rays for the ribs so we can make sure they won't puncture anything when we tape them up. From the look of them, though, I doubt they will. I assume if I recommend that you stay here for a day or two, you'll object?”
“Yeah, that won't really work for me,” Cain said uneasily. “I've got some things I need to...”