Dr. Knox Read Online Free PDF

quiet, baby? Just rest.”
    I peeled off my gloves, tossed them in the garbage bag, and stood. I stretched my arms over my head. “That should do it.”
    “You’re finished?” Astrid said. “Teddy’s okay?”
    I nodded. “He was lucky—the bullet didn’t hit gut or bone. He should be all right if he takes it easy and gets some looking after.”
    “What kind of looking after?” Astrid said.
    I began stowing gear in the black duffels. “He’s going to need antibiotics for at least a week. I can leave you some, but he’ll need more. And his ass needs maintenance. A wound like that, there’re always foreign bodies in it—bits of fabric, maybe bullet fragments, grit, who knows what. It needs to be drained, cleaned, and re-dressed periodically, watched for infection.”
    “Aren’t you supposed to do that?”
    “I’ve done what I can for now. As far as anything else, I’ll tell you what I tell everyone I see in these circumstances: he should see a qualified health professional for follow-up care.”
    Astrid squinted and looked at Sutter. “What the fuck does that mean? Isn’t that you?”
    He smiled. “We get paid, we’ll be here, hon.”
    Astrid shook her head. She said nothing, but her look was eloquent:
Assholes.
    On the way down the hill, I asked Sutter if he thought Astrid would call for follow-up care for Teddy. He laughed.
    “He’ll be lucky if she doesn’t turn him into barbecue.”

CHAPTER 5
    I awoke with a bar of sunlight across my eyes, tangled in a cotton blanket, sprawled on Nora Roby’s sofa. There was a shower running somewhere, the smells of brewing coffee, oranges, and toast, and music coming from speakers on the bookshelves behind me. I had fragmented memories of calling Nora from Sutter’s pickup the night before as we rolled down from the hills, of meeting her at a dim, noisy cave in Silver Lake, of Nora’s long hair—jet, shot with gray—against the leopard-print upholstery of a corner booth, of too many hipsters and too much irony, of Nora driving me to her house. The sound from the bookshelves resolved into a song: acoustic surf music, twangy, retro, and earnest.
    I turned and fell off the sofa, tagged my elbow on the coffee table, and upended one of the empty wine bottles there. It spun across the Persian rug and the tiled floor, and came to rest against the French doors that led to the garden. I sat up and squinted in the light flooding through the Los Feliz cottage.
    “Fuck,” I said, rubbing my elbow. My throat was lined with steel wool.
    The shower went off, and Nora called from her bedroom. Her voice was amber and smoky. “You talking to me?”
    “Your sofa’s too small,” I said. “Also, your house has too much light.” I wrapped the blanket around me and searched among the cushions for my clothes. I found my jeans and Nora’s panties, but couldn’t locate my own underwear.
    She laughed. “That’s what the listing said:
convenient to Hillhurst restaurants, and too much light for your hungover guests.
It’s what sold me on the place.”
    Nora walked into the living room. She wore cutoffs and a sleeveless black tee shirt, and her arms and legs were long, firm, and graceful. She was tall—just a few inches shy of my height in bare feet—and her pale face was striking, if not television pretty. Her eyes were large, searching, and nearly black, her nose was strong, and her mouth generous—warm when she smiled, somber and daunting otherwise. At rest, it was an icon’s face, a grave Madonna’s, a scholar’s, but in motion something mischievous was there, something wayward. She ran fingers through her damp hair and grinned, and looked a decade younger than her forty-two years.
    I hitched the blanket up. “Also, your music’s too loud.”
    “I think it’s last night’s Merlot you’re hearing,” she said.
    “And you feel fine?”
    “I didn’t drink as much, and I already ran five miles this morning.”
    “Nobody likes smug,” I said, and fished my