“Are you going to the hospital?” Jana asks.
My mind’s a little blown right now, as I can’t imagine why two people would want to stand and talk to someone in my position.
“Hadn’t planned on it,” I tell her. “I really need to go.”
“Are you doing it?” the brunette asks.
“What?” I return, baffled.
“Are you going to be the one treating the wound, and if so, do you have any experience as a paramedic, nurse, or a doctor?” she asks.
“You’re kind of freaking me out a little here,” I tell the woman. “What, do you see my skull or something?”
“No,” she says, “but I’m pretty sure that’s just because of the blood.”
Jana’s looking a little pale.
“Yeah,” I tell her. “I was going to just jump in the shower or something and put a bandage over it. I’m sure it looks worse than it is.”
“You really need to get that taken care of now,” the brunette says. “And I really think you’re going to want to have someone who knows what they’re doing take care of it.”
“Ash, if we’re going to be drunk and dancing by midnight, we should really get going,” Jana says.
“Hold on a minute,” the brunette woman, apparently Ash, says and comes a little closer to me. “Do you have any communicable diseases?” she asks. “AIDS? Hepatitis? Anything blood borne?”
“You’re going to touch his blood?” Jana asks. “Eww!”
It is a rather odd direction for her to go, given she has no idea who I am beyond my name and that I’ve been in a fight very, very recently.
“Not without gloves,” Ash says. “So?”
“No,” I tell her. “Clean and healthy, that’s me.”
“Okay,” Ash says. “Come on.”
She turns and starts walking.
Jana and I just look at each other a for a few seconds.
“Your friend’s kind of weird,” I tell her.
“Yeah,” Jana says. “You got no idea. We better follow her, though. You look like you just crawled out of a collision with oncoming traffic.”
Jana turns and catches up with her friend, who either hasn’t noticed or doesn’t care that I’m still not there, and I’m torn between two possible options, neither one of which make much sense.
Things didn’t end badly with Jana, they just kind of fizzled out, so I have no reason to believe the two of them are going to lure me back to their place and end up stringing me up from the ceiling. Still, it’s been a while and she doesn’t seem quite as sure about having me go with them as her friend does.
Then there’s Logan’s place a few blocks in the other direction. The only problem is that I’m not sure if he’s home, and I don’t have my phone to call him.
I can’t afford to take a chance that I’m going to get there only to have to turn around again. That, I suppose, is all I needed to figure out.
“Hey, wait up!” I call and catch up to Jana and Ash.
Who says you can’t have an exciting Saturday night in a small town?
* * *
“Did you win?” Ash asks as she dabs at my forehead with some sterile cotton balls, dipped in rubbing alcohol.