A Deal of Blood and Roses

Chapter Three - Doc

"God almighty, I wished you'd brought him to the hospital," Ivy muttered as she placed the duffle bag down on the floor and knelt down beside the boy's leg. "I don't fancy doing surgery in this place. There is more bacteria in here than a gas station toilet."

Winston stood back and leaned against the wall as Ivy cautiously picked his blazer off the boy's leg, "My car's worth too much," he simply muttered, his voice drawn low. He had one leg pushed up against the wall with his arms crossed against his chest.

"Don't get too comfy there. I need help, ya know. Get down here." Ivy snapped and patted the floor to her right, not lifting her eyes.

Winston rolled his eyes and grumbled faintly under his breath. He was not in the mood tonight to be playing doctor. "Come on, hurry, granda," Ivy playfully sneered, turning to look at him with a smirk on her blush lips.

"You're older," he murmured.

"By a year and a month," she threw back, with a shallow yet playful voice that made her mood undistinguishable. He lowered himself down onto one knee like he had done minutes before. "Hold," she commanded, taking her hands off his blazer as she unzipped her bag and took out a pair of scissors. "Take off his shoe. You're closer."

Winston breathed through his nose and sent a venomous glare to her, not moving his hands, "Winston, cooperate and help me, or we go in your car one way or another!"

Sensing the irritated tone in her voice, without argument, he moved his hand and ripped the dirty trainer from the boy's foot and tossed it at the wall with the blazer in tow. Not wishing for a verbal fight with Ivy. He gritted his teeth and pulled off the black sock, which reached no further than his ankle.

Ivy turned back to him and waved for him to move. He leaned to the right, and Ivy began cutting away his faded jeans from his ankle to his knee. She peeled back the denim to reveal deep golden skin tainted and stained with sticky red blood. Both of their lips quivered at the pungent scent.

Winston truly did admire Ivy for having such high discipline when she was around bleeding and injured humans all day. Surely he would have snapped by now if he was in her profession.

"Shit," she breathed, "Go into my bag and pass me a gauze," she commanded, and she pulled the bag around her back so Winston could grab it and drag it over to him. He reached his hand, and quickly he pulled out a white gauze pad and passed it to her. "Right, put some anti-bac solution on it, blue bottle."

It took him a little longer to find this time, but he handed her a bottle of an aqua blue solution, labelled with a large chemistry sounding word that made no sense to him. Lightly she dabbed the gauze, saturated with the solution against the bullet wound.

"Alright, here's the tricky part. Getting it out," Ivy said to no one in particular. She only wished the boy didn't wake up. With no anaesthetic or numbing, he'll be in a lot of pain. It was not what she needed. Trying to remove a bullet from a screaming, squirming body.

Ivy took a deep breath and tucked her hair behind her ears. She placed the bloodied gauze pad onto the floor beside her, and she reached into her bag and took out a pair of blue gloves.

"Hold your phone light above his leg," she said, pulling the gloves on. Winston reached into his trouser pocket and took out his modern, sleek black phone and as commanded, and held it above his leg to give her light. "No, too close," Ivy said, clicking her tongue. With a small grunt, he lifted his hand a couple of inches higher as she ripped a pair of tweezers open out of the packet. She took another deep breath.

It was not like this was strange to her. She had practically written the handbook on - How to Remove a Bullet in a Dingy Apartment. She had been doing it for almost a hundred years now. She would always rather be in a sterile operating room with nurses and anaesthetics at her disposal. However, a derelict apartment with her incompetent best friend would be all she would have to work with.