Monk got them both to the ER.
He had a bloody towel wrapped around his hand where her needle had stabbed him. The pain was bad, but his heart hurt worse.
Patty said nothing on the way. Not a word. She could not look at Monk, or at his hand. She couldn’t look at her own hand. Her right hand was balled into a fist and every now and then she pounded it down on the top of her thigh. After the eighth or tenth time, Monk laid his palm on her leg, as much in the path of the blow as his other hand had been in the path of the needle.
It stopped her.
For the rest of the ride, and for the forty minutes they sat together in the waiting room, she looked away until the nurse came for her.
They were going to take Monk first because of the bloody towel, but then the nurse got a closer look at Patty’s face. A moment later Patty was gone, whisked away by staff who kept throwing suspicious looks back at Monk. He tried to go with her, but they wouldn’t allow it, and Monk knew better than to try and claim he was her husband.
So he sat down and waited.
A half hour crawled by, leaving shells of each long minute on the floor. During that time a cop came and looked at him from across the waiting room. Didn’t say anything to Monk, but he spoke quietly to the intake nurse. Then the cop disappeared from sight, but Monk could feel him somewhere, maybe watching on a monitor.
Shit, thought Monk. He knew where this was heading.