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unpacking. (Thinking of how much the small, though deep, cut had hurt, she couldn’t imagine what Roland must be experiencing.) She had been unable to get it to stop bleeding, and the box containing her first aid stuff had remained stubbornly elusive. Since she hadn’t had health insurance at the time (she could barely afford it now), a trip to the emergency room would’ve proven too costly, so she had wrapped a washcloth around her hand, held it in place with a tight layer of duct tape, driven fifteen miles to the nearest Walmart, and bought enough gauze, nonstick pads, first aid tape, butterfly closures, and antibiotic ointment to take care of the cut and any other gashes the moving boxes’ contents might inflict during the next few months.
    Fortunately for Roland, there had been very few.
    Dumping the gauze and other paraphernalia on the coffee table, she went back for washcloths and two bottles of witch hazel, swung by the kitchen to grab a couple of bowls, then added them to the pile.
    Sarah seated herself beside Roland on the futon, her hip touching his. Her gaze fell to his groin and lingered wickedly. The towel remained where it had fallen on the kitchen floor, leaving him bare.
    He was very impressive. She felt guilty for noticing, considering the condition he was in, but … how could she not?
    Forcing her gaze away, she poured witch hazel into a bowl, saturated a washcloth, wrung it out, then carefully began to bathe away the blood and dirt that coated Roland’s skin.
    His face had escaped much of the devastation to which the rest of him had been subjected. On the left side of his high forehead was a pink mark that would be a large bruise tomorrow. Another darkened the opposite cheekbone, disappearing into the coarse stubble. His full lower lip was split. Other thanthat, his face was flawless. No swelling marred his lowered eyelids or the skin his crescent-shaped lashes shadowed. His straight nose, neither too long nor too short, was unbroken.
    He really was handsome. Not a soft, pretty-boy, male model handsome, but an overtly masculine, smoothly angular,
I’m hot, but can kick ass
handsome.
    His hands made her want to cry. Again. And she was not one to cry easily. If she weren’t so exhausted, she would have held it together much better earlier. But two nights of little or no sleep had taken their toll. (Damned students, stressing her out. Thank goodness the spring semester had finally ended.)
    His fingers were long and tapered, his nails neatly trimmed … and a hole the width of a nickel went all the way through each palm. It was despicable, the atrocities some people could commit without a qualm.
    Sarah rinsed the first hand well with witch hazel (she had chosen witch hazel over alcohol to clean his wounds because it would hurt less), applied thick sterile nonstick pads to both sides, then wound gauze around and around it, topping it off with first aid tape. The other hand received the same treatment.
    She opted not to use antibiotic ointment because she thought she had read somewhere that it wasn’t supposed to be applied to the insides of puncture wounds. She did spread the ointment over the numerous lacerations on his arms, torso, hips, and thighs, though. Some of those were shallow. Some were so deep she had to use the butterfly closures to hold the sides together.
    Witch hazel. Antibiotic ointment. Butterfly closures if necessary. Gauze. First aid tape. She really didn’t know what else to do.
    None of his wounds were still bleeding, which was good.
    But weird.
    Her hand had bled for hours, stopping only while she had kept pressure on it. When she had later removed the duct tape and towel to replace them with bandages, it had started tobleed all over again and had done so off and on for a couple of days.
    Yet Roland didn’t appear to be bleeding anywhere. Not even his hands.
    How was that possible?
    Was it part of his illness? Did whatever caused his photo-sensitivity also make his blood clot