A/N: The first three scenes were about deepening the story/characters of the film. This scene is about filling a gap in events. I find much to love about this movie, but the last ten minutes or so don't satisfy me. Too much is skipped over. Again, thanks to all who have reviewed so far. Glad you are finding my little scenes worthwhile.
Warning & Disclaimer: See chapter one.
When the skidding, burning motion stops, she's sure they're both dead. Then science whispers in her ear that death is the end of sensation, not the beginning. Her hip throbs. Her shoulder throbs. Her back aches. She grips one thigh to leverage herself into a sitting position. Beside her, Aaron rolls over from his back and tries to get up. He can't raise himself even an inch off the cement.
"You okay?" she whispers, leaning closer.
He rolls onto his back again, nodding, letting his arm fall to his side. He doesn't open his eyes. Marta's stomach clenches. Aaron is supposed to get up. He's supposed to grab her hand and pull her along the fringe of the crowd, keeping his body between her and the threat. He's not supposed to shut his eyes and surrender.
She reaches toward him, and her hand misses his jacket. Okay, maybe the world's still spinning a bit. Through the roaring in her ears, she realizes Aaron's breathing is as rough as hers, another thing that's not supposed to happen. Get up, Aaron, get up! He lifts one hand, and she grabs hold. His fingers curl around hers. Weakly.
She squeezes his hand. "You okay?"
"Yeah … yeah," he barely whispers.
She catalogues the last fifteen hours of his life: a nearly lethal virus, a dash over the rooftops that involved climbing and jumping and whatever else he had to do to reach her in that alley, brief hand-to-hand with those cops, two gunshot wounds, and no food at all.
No wonder he can't move.
Marta sits back to breathe and think. Her hand shifts in Aaron's, and he presses it too lightly but the message is clear. Don't let go. She won't. She'll create a plan and execute it. She'll save them both. Somehow. The heavy smell of saltwater fortifies her resolve. Aaron wanted to get them to the water, and he did. She's hunched on the chill concrete under the wharf, boats lining her vision to the left. And … oh. A Filipino boy in a neon green tank top stands beside one of the dock's cement pillars. Staring, of course. Did he see the crash?
A middle-aged man rushes over to him, murmuring a few syllables in Tagalog or maybe just admonishing with the boy's name. The man turns slowly and seems to see her for the first time. He lifts a hand toward his face as if to erase the scene in front of him, then stands gaping.
She grips Aaron's hand as hard as she can, trying to signal. A witness. Danger. Get up, Aaron, get up get up get up. The labored breathing behind her proves he's conscious. His hand twitches, then goes limp.
With a bruised shoulder and hip, she probably can't even drag him to some hiding place before the cops show up. She was wrong about saving him. She wants to be that woman, but she isn't.
"Can you help us?" she says to the man.
He stares over her head, the direction the bikes came. Yes, he saw the whole thing. Trusting him is ill-advised at best, and if he doesn't speak English, they can't even communicate. But Aaron is motionless and bleeding. This stunned stranger is her only hope.
"Please." In another time and place, she might hate the quaver in her voice.
The man's eyes narrow, and then he nods. The moment he arrives at decision, he follows with action. He rushes to Aaron and scowls at the blood leaking from his shoulder, dripping onto the cement from his thigh.
And no, he doesn't speak English. What is he trying to tell her? Agitation contorts his mouth as he glares from her to Aaron … until Aaron answers him. For a minute, they seem to be arguing, and then Aaron releases Marta's hand long enough to tug off the security guard's gold watch and hold it out. The man doesn't smile, but he takes it and nods.
When his hand skims Aaron's shoulder, Aaron tenses despite whatever pact the watch seems to have sealed. But he allows the man to drape his arm over his shoulder and half-drag him onto one of the boats. At least, Marta tells herself he's allowing it. The possibility that he's too weak to resist sets a stone on her chest.
As they're stepping onboard, his dull eyes find her. "You swim?"
What? "I can.…"
"…'Kay."
The man's name is Danilo, and the boy is Amado. Danilo lowers Aaron to a hammock in the cabin, leaves and returns with a slapdash first aid collection: clean white rags instead of gauze or bandages, masking tape instead of medical tape, and tweezers. At least there's a clear plastic bottle of—Marta sniffs it—yes, alcohol. Danilo and Aaron have a brief conversation, and Aaron reaches for her hand as the man hurries away.
"Marta."
"I'm right here."
She wraps one of the rags around the graze in his shoulder, which isn't bleeding much now, and presses another to the wound in his thigh. He doesn't flinch, but the cloth rapidly soaks with bright red. Her stomach balls into a cold knot. She's not squeamish exactly, but there are reasons she went into virology, and her residency is years in the past. Not as if she ever watched surgery to remove a bullet, anyway.
They have no scalpel, of course. Will the tweezers be enough? They'll have to be. She will have to be enough. "Don't worry, Aaron. I can do this."
He seizes her wrist with the grip of a child. "Wait. First … I …"
"You what?"
He clenches his eyes shut. "I … have … to … eat."
"Did you tell him—Danilo?"
Aaron nods. In a minute, Danilo returns with a small crockery bowl of shrimp, tomatoes, eggplant, something that might be okra … and other vegetables. It smells delicious. Maybe Marta should have acquainted herself more with the local cuisine when she was last here for work.
Danilo gives Marta the food and says, "Dinengdeng," then leaves them again.
Aaron's arm trembles as he pushes himself up, but he waves off her attempt to help him. She sets the bowl on his lap, and he forks a bite, then another, with a slow, shaking hand. Marta crouches beside him and replaces the bloody rag with a fresh one. Five minutes later, his fork is clinking against the bottom of the bowl. His breathing has steadied, his gaze has sharpened, and his grip appears stronger—all in five minutes.
"Mm." His voice remains faint, but using it no longer seems to require effort. "Pinakbet."
"Not dinengdeng?"
"Same difference." He leans down to set the bowl on the floor and winces as he straightens.
"I think 'accelerated' is an understatement."
He smirks.
"Are you ready for surgery?" she says.
"Are you?"
"Absolutely not."
His hand closes over hers to remove the rag from his leg.
"I can do it," he says. "But if you could tear the tape, that would—"
"You're not serious."
He looks up from the wound with arched eyebrows. No, that wasn't a joke. "You think I've never dug a bullet out of my body before?"
"Aaron."
"It missed my femur, so no bone fragments. And I wouldn't suture it, even if we had suture on hand. All I have to do is irrigate and pack the wound. Once the bleeding stops, I'll be fine."
The synapses from her ears to her brain must be breaking down. No other explanation for this crazy speech of his. Marta grabs the tweezers and the alcohol bottle. "I'm doing this. Lie back."
"You said you weren't ready."
"I wasn't when I said it."
The defiance stays etched into the frown lines around his mouth and eyes, but it's overshadowed by the tremor in his hands and the color leaching from his face. Food deprivation might outrank blood loss on Aaron's metabolic priority list, but that doesn't mean he can bleed from two major wounds unaffected. He pulls a knife from a sheath at his ankle, and Marta sanitizes it as well as the tweezers.
Propped on his elbows, he folds the remaining clean rags into squares and holds the tweezers until she needs them. Marta swallows fear and uncertainty and nausea, then cuts away the leg of his jeans. He's silent as she peels the fabric off the wound and cleans around it. Silent as she slices through skin and fascia. Silent as she probes with freaking tweezers and finally has to dig inside with her glove-less finger. By then, the blood is dripping through the hammock to the deck beneath. When her fingertip grazes the bullet, inadvertently pressing it against torn muscle, Aaron's short gasp nearly breaks down the wall around her emotions. She blinks hard. Now isn't the time to feel … anything.
He's watching her face, not her hands. His voice is sandpaper. "That's it, Doc."
Probably he intends the nickname only as support, a reminder. That's right, I'm a doctor. But the emotions behind the wall hear it as an endearment. A soft sob escapes.
"Hey," Aaron says. "Focus. You can do it."
You can make it. You're a warrior. If he only knew. But she'll be a warrior for this moment. She probes with the tweezers, fits them around the slug, squeezes them tight, tugs … and the bullet is out.
She holds it up to show him. "Done."
Aaron nods, teeth clenched, breathing long and deep through his nose. "Good."
By the time she's cleaned and dressed the now gaping hole, Aaron's arms have given out, and he's lying flat on his back, gaze tilted down to watch her.
"Finished," she says, and her wall crumbles.
She braces against the hammock's support beam, leaving a bloody handprint on the wood. The front of her hoodie is blood-smeared, too—when did that happen?—so she tries to wipe her hands clean on the opposite sleeves. So much blood. How is he still conscious? How did she do what she just did?
"Marta."
She lifts her head and sniffs back tears. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah."
"Stop it, tell me the truth, are you okay?"
"Yes. That's the truth. Okay? I'm fine. In a week, I won't even be limping."
"You need something for the pain."
"Don't worry about that."
"Maybe I'd worry less if you'd cry and whine like a real man."
A sheen has broken out on his forehead, and he's white as a lab coat. He tips his head to one side, and the smirk he doesn't have energy for plays behind his eyes.
"So I'm not a real man?"
"That's not exactly what I said."
"Kind of is."
His eyes are starting to close, but he's fighting it, the same way he always fought anesthesia. It's a knife thrust of a memory now. Aaron struggles to sit up, and the hammock sways.
Marta pushes lightly on his chest. "Rest."
The levity is gone from his face. He manages to force himself upright. Here we go again. Stubborn man. What should she do? And then she knows.
She cradles his head and tilts it back. The blood left on her hands is mostly dried and doesn't smudge. Confusion flickers on his face, then recognition. Yes, we've done this before. In the days when he called her Dr. Shearing and she called him a number in her chart notes and nothing to his face. No more than a week ago.
He resists and mumbles something between "No" and "Um."
"Aaron," she says, and he stills. "Aaron. It's okay to rest."
Aaron closes his eyes, and tension seeps from his body until only her hands hold him up. "Okay."
