Cut by Patricia McCormick Read Free Book Online Page B

in one swift motion. She unwinds a roll of gauze, wipes away the blood, then washes the cut with some kind of solution. It burns, but for a moment at least, the throbbing lets up. I can see then that the cut isn’t that deep, that it’s no worse than the others, and I wonder why it bled so much, why I showed it to Ruby.
    “It’s a bleeder,” she says, pressing a square of gauze to the cut. “But it’s not deep. No need for stitches.”
    She closes both her hands around my wrist, as if she were praying, and pulls them to her chest, so close I can feel it rise and fall as she breathes. She presses with such a sure, steady force that after a while the bleeding stops and the pain begins to drain away.
    She lowers my hand finally, puts another bandage over the cut, wraps gauze around my wrist with a dozen or so quick twists, and secures it with a couple of pieces of tape. We stand there a minute regarding her work. Then Ruby lowers herself into her chair, using one arm to support her weight. She drops into the chair with a sigh.
    My body feels light all of a sudden, so light it might float off. I imagine myself as a giant Macy’s Parade balloon, floating up, away from Ruby’s desk, high over Sick Minds. I have to sit down.
    Ruby leans forward, takes my hands in hers, and pulls them into her lap.
    “Scared yourself, did you?” she says.
    In the brown-black center of Ruby’s eyes is a tiny, scared reflection of me.
    “Why do you want to do a thing like that?” Our hands—ashy white and deep mahogany—are intertwined in Ruby’s lap, the fabric of her dress soft from so many washings.
    “Hmmm?” she says, as if I’d said something she hadn’t quite heard. “Why don’t you tell us what’s bothering you?”
    I consider pulling free of her grasp, but it would take too much effort and I’m tired now, very tired.
    Ruby sighs. “Whatever it is, baby, it can’t hurt worse than this.”
    Ruby walks me back to my room, her arm around my waist. This time, there’s no question of how much distance to keep between us; I let myself sink against her. She tells me I’m lucky, that the cut wasn’t deep, that I might have to get a tetanus shot, and that she’ll have to file an incident report. “Standard operating procedure,” she says. It occurs to me that I could be sent home or to Humdinger, and I wish Ruby would tell me one of her home truths or even just what standard operating procedure is, but when we get to my room she seems distracted. She lets go of my waist, reaches into the closet, and pulls out one of the nightgowns my mother bought.
    “Put this on, child,” she says. “And give me those clothes to wash. I’ll be right out here waiting.” She steps out into the hall.
    I change into the nightgown, gather up my clothes, and start walking to the door to give them to Ruby. Something holds me in place halfway between the bed and the door, some vague sense that that I’m forgetting something. Then I walk back to the bed, pick up the two jagged pieces of the pie plate, turn, and bring them to Ruby.
    The green neon numbers on Sydney’s alarm clock say 6:04 a.m. Last time I checked, it was 5:21. I brace myself on my arm and a dull pounding starts in my wrist. There, at the foot of the bed, is a neat bundle of clean, folded clothes. Ruby must have put them there before her shift ended.
    I push back the covers, get up quietly, put on my clothes, and slip into the still-dark hallway. I tiptoe toward the bathroom, sneak past Marie’s empty chair, past the phone booth, past the new girl’s room, past the dayroom, the Group room, down the hall, past the Emergency Use Only door, until finally I’m sitting outside your office waiting for you to come to work.
    I don’t know how long I’ve been sitting here, but finally you’re standing in front of me in your blue coat and scarf. You don’t look surprised. You don’t even say hello right away. You pull your keys out of your purse, bend down and turn on the UFO