Shawn's Law by Renae Kaye

his glasses skew on his face. “Well, now you know. C’mon. I need to climb some more trees.” I wasn’t angry at him at all. It wasn’t his fault that his father had never shown him a bull ant nest.
    I managed two more trees before I had to stop and examine my hand again. It had started to swell and my fingers had spread apart from the inflamed skin. I was having trouble gripping the branches, since I couldn’t make a fist properly. In desperation, I pulled my glove on and left it, hoping the tight fit would keep the swelling down.
    I hid the injury from Shawn, knowing he would feel bad about it. Besides, he was bitten eight times and wasn’t whining about it. At noon, we stopped for lunch and I wrapped my swollen hand around the iced drink to try to relieve it. It wasn’t working, and eventually Shawn noticed.
    “Are you okay? You look like you’re in pain or something. You didn’t hurt yourself climbing that last tree, did you?”
    I grimaced and checked out the bloody scratch on my leg. I’d been favoring my hand on the last tree and slipped, scraping my leg on a branch and bruising my thigh as I fell. “My leg will be fine in a couple of days. But you’re right, I think we should head back. This hand of mine is getting worse, and I think I need to get some proper ice on it.”
    “Your hand…?” Shawn looked down in surprise and blanched. “Oh, fuck.”
    I noticed he had no problem with the swear word then. “Hmm” was all I could think of to say. My first two fingers were rather puffy and the glove was straining at the seams. I was also beginning to be a bit light-headed.
    “Harley?” Shawn said sharply. “I think we should go now. I’ll carry that bag, ’kay? You grab this water and drink it for me. Now which way is the car?”
    I was sweating by the time we found my jeep, and the heat was getting to me. My fingers were sticking straight out now, distended to their fullest. I handed Shawn the keys without being asked. I was in no state to drive.
    He talked to me the whole way home, demanding I answer and wanting to know all about my childhood, my travels and my arrests. I didn’t even notice he’d bypassed our suburb until he pulled up in the parking lot of the hospital.
    “Huh? Why are we here?” I asked, confused about our slight detour.
    Shawn smiled at me, and I admit that I’d have followed him anywhere when he gave me that look. “No reason,” he lied. “Just to check on your hand.”
    I looked down at the distorted appendage that was attached to my right arm. “Oh. That’s my masturbating hand. We need to fix this fast. And I forgot to give you your blow job in the middle of the bush. Remind me when we get home, okay, babe?”
    Shawn told me later that several people were walking through the car park and heard my comment, but I was beyond noticing them. I just looked at Shawn and tried to keep up with the pain levels in my hand. It took mental strength not to yell and cry from the agony.
    Fortunately I was with Shawn, who’d been to the emergency department many times before. He marched straight up to the desk and said, “Hey, Christine. How’s that baby of yours going?”
    The pretty young nurse turned and smiled in recognition of my man. “Shawn. How are you? Please don’t tell me your mother has hurt you again?”
    “Nah. I have a new person to torture. This is Harley. I think he’s having a bit of an allergic reaction to an ant bite, so I brought him in to see my favorite nurses.”
    The nurse looked at my bloated hand and did a double take. “Oh, good one. How long since you were bitten?”
    “About three hours,” Shawn replied for me. Christine ushered us into the triage room and cut my glove off. The skin was red and angry from the tips of my fingers to an inch past my wrist. She made a pen mark on my arm to indicate where the swelling was so they could monitor it. Then she pried apart my fingers, and I was shocked at the sight of the pus-filled blister that had