The Bro Code

39

39: Hannibal: When Amir's Making Babies With White Girl And Alfie's Had Sex With Victoria's Secret And All You've Been Was Raped By A Man

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"It should hurt some, but there's little risk of infection. You're lucky it found your spleen, and not a very vital organ. Else you might not be here now."

Alfie nodded, his hand clasping the dressed wound in his stomach. It had been stitched by Hosni Tawfeek Khan himself, and wrapped by his daughter, who, despite her meager age of thirteen, was all too giddy to be in contact with Alfie's bare abdomen. 

"Your spleen should heal itself quickly. The body is wonderful like that." Hosni reassured. My hand involuntarily flew up to my own spleen, which was wrapped but the gauze was now peeling off and stained with dried blood. I wondered if I would risk infection, since Alfie had dug in my innards with a fork to rid the spleen of shrapnel. I decided not to worry about it.

"And Mr. Crayston, your leg?" Hosni offered. Gauze had been thrown on it in a hurry early this morning, but it wasn't near enough to staunch the flow of blood and take the bullet out. 

"Call me Hannibal," I insisted meekly, then as Alfie dismounted the bed I got on and positioned my leg with much pain on the white sheets.

"You're going to want to bite down on something, Mr. Crayston," Hosni instructed, gathering his tools. His daughter offered her own hand for me to bite down on, but I refused, and Alfie just took my hand. Hosni rolled up my pant leg to the knee, revealing the blood-stained bandage around my calf, and unraveled it with care. He discarded the used gauze and brandished a pair of thin tongs, to which I cringed.

"On the count of three," Hosni began, "squeeze Mr. Manson's hand." The young man positioned the tongs just above the wound, and I could feel my heart pound in my chest. "One," the tongs inched ever closer, and my teeth began to chatter, "three!" The tongs dug into my flesh and it took all the willpower I had not to scream out in agony. I could see my vision blurring around the edges and could feel my hand clamping down on Alfie's so hard that he instead exclaimed a choice word of pain, earning him a distrustful glance from Hosni's daughter.

"Wonderful," Hosni beamed. My chest rising and falling quickly, I righted my vision and noticed that the worst was over with. Hosni had the small bullet clamped in the tongs, blood dripping off of it, and placed it on a cloth atop the night table. "Wonderfully done, boy. It takes a man to suppress his pain." He shot a distinct look at Alfie.

Hosni began to stitch the small wound, blood oozing out of the hole and down the side of my leg, staining the white cloth beneath. "Guitar string," he explained, his eyes narrowed on his work, "I would use something more substantial if I hadn't run out. Lot's of people need my assistance when travelling through the desert."

"Why is that?" Bryan asked, standing off to the side and staring adeptly at the string entering and exiting my flesh in precise movements.

"I'm a doctor," Hosni explained, tying the loose ends together. "Of course, I choose not to always work at the hospital. People know where I live well enough, and come if need be. I always take them in, whether they're poor, rich, old, young, lame, dying, or just have a simple cold. Hospitality is a big part of our culture."

"Interesting," Bryan said, keeping the ball rolling. "How long have you been in the field?"

"Only three years," he said, rubbing the stitched wound with a soft cloth soaked with something. "It took me years and years to get my degrees, and I'm only twenty-eight after all." 

I looked from Hosni to his teenage daughter. The room went into silence then, as Hosni wrapped a fresh length of gauze around my wound and fastened it tightly. "Wonderful," he said. "We're good to go. Mr. Crayston, the pain shouldn't be too relevant, though take it easy for the next day or so." Hosni looked at each of us in turn, then the doorbell rang. "That'll be my patient," he explained, standing up from his chair and throwing the roll of gauze onto the night table, "make yourself at home. You're welcome to stay as many nights as you need, and please take any food you want." And with that he left the room, and his daughter followed.