Fall in love with an assassin

Chapter 15

Nikolaj walked through the front door and headed to the bathroom without noticing that Belle was sitting on the sofa in front of the TV. She followed him. She realized that something had gone wrong. When she walked into the bathroom, he was hunched over, holding his right shoulder.

She jumped back when she saw that his shirt was dripping blood and his fingers were shaking while trying to put pressure on his wound.

"Oh, my God!" Belle blustered out while Nikolaj took his jacket off and she saw a bullet hole on his shirt; that shirt was redder than white.

"Don't worry, Belle!" He said more calmly than ever. "I've had worse injuries." He confessed.

Belle helped him out of his shirt. She could feel her hands shake too when she got a glimpse at the long and deep wound on his skin. She turned her head slightly to get a look at the back of his shoulder but the bullet had hit him sideways only frontally.

Damn! There is something inside the abrasion! She cursed, noticing that some pieces of clothes had got inside stuck under his skin.

Nikolaj cleaned his hands with some disinfectant. He opened the drawer under the sink in front of him and took out some gausses, a pair of scissors, alcohol and some cotton balls.

"What are you doing?" Belle asked taking a few steps backward as if someone was threatening her with a knife.

"I'm going to extract the piece of cloth, baby." He explained simply. "Even if is going to be difficult with one hand."

Belle squinted. She felt faint at the sight of blood. Then she noticed that Nikolaj fingers were shaking.

"Why don't we have a doctor check you out?" She asked.

Nikolaj stared at her half smilingly and replied sarcastically: "What would the hospital think if I were to walk in with a gun wound?"

Belle thought about it for a second and realized she had asked him a stupid question. He perceived insecurity and said: "I have a doctor friend, but first I want to see if it is worth calling him. If the wound hasn't compromised any veins, capillaries or vessels, I would rather do it myself. The less I am in contact with other people, the better it is" he said looking into her eyes, lowering his voice. "Both for them and me."

Belle was silent for a few seconds, staring into those cold but, at the same time, warm eyes.

"Can I help you?" She hazarded.

Nikolaj, who was grabbing a twenty-inch long metal instrument, turned around and looked at her surprisingly. At first, she felt as if she were in an improvised parody of «Grey's Anatomy»: Nikolaj was the surgeon handing her a bizarre thingy that she had no clue of what it was and how it worked. It looked like a pair of tweezers with toothed gills.

Did you steal surgical tweezers? She asked him mentally.

Then Nikolaj handed her the tweezers as if that was the most normal action, without seeing the preoccupation painted in her eyes. Firstly he had jeopardized his job for that girl and then it was like he was handing her the dagger with which she could have killed him.

I'm going crazy. He thought.

Belle grabbed it and sifted through the wound.

"It's going to hurt you?" She asked him.

"Yes." He replied. "But looking at you will ease the pain." He confessed and put one of his hands on her knee.

Belle took some cotton and saturated the injury with the disinfectant.