MAN

Nadia's POV

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Getting him off the ground was its own ordeal.

He was heavy in the way that had nothing to do with dead weight — all of it was solid, deliberate, like even his body resisted being helped. He made it to his feet on the second attempt, one hand braced against the car, the other hanging at his side with a rigidity that told me he was absorbing pain and converting it into stillness.

I'd seen that before. In soldiers. In people who had trained themselves to feel things privately.

I didn't comment on it.

"Arm over my shoulder," I said.

He looked at me like I'd suggested something offensive.

"I'm not going to drop you," I said. "I'm stronger than I look and you're worse off than you're admitting. Arm. Now."

A beat.

Then his arm came over my shoulder — carefully, with a control that told me he was managing exactly how much weight he put on me. Even half-conscious and bleeding he was calculating.

We moved slowly. Four minutes stretched into seven because I set the pace and I meant it, picking the flattest parts of the path, steering us around the worst of the uneven ground. He didn't complain. He didn't speak at all, actually, which I appreciated because it meant he was conserving energy like I'd silently willed him to.

My apartment building appeared at the end of the street — a narrow four-storey walk-up with a rusted gate and a landlord who fixed things on his own timeline.

I felt him take it in.

"Don't," I said, before he could form whatever thought was forming.

He glanced at me.

"Don't downgrade my house." I pushed the gate open with my hip and kept us moving toward the entrance. "It's what I can afford and I got it myself, with my money. So whatever you're thinking, keep it there."

He said nothing for a moment.

Then, quietly — "I wasn't going to say anything."

"You were doing the face."

"I don't have a face."

"Everyone has a face." I got the front door open and guided us inside. "Yours just has less expression than most."

The staircase was narrow. First floor, mercifully — I had thanked God for that every single time I came home with heavy grocery bags and I was thanking Him again now as I shouldered my front door open and got us both inside.

I deposited him onto the chair nearest the door — the old one with the patched armrest that I kept meaning to replace — and went straight to my room for the kit.

It was a proper one. Not a basic first aid box — I'd built it myself over two years, adding to it each semester as I learned more. Suture kit, antiseptic, saline, gauze, surgical tape, gloves, a small penlight. I grabbed it all and came back.

He was exactly where I'd left him, which I appreciated. Sitting upright, jaw set, eyes moving around the apartment with that same quiet assessment he'd had on the ground.

I set everything on the coffee table and pulled on my gloves.

"I'm going to remove your jacket and shirt," I said. "I'll try not to damage them but I can't promise anything."

"The jacket costs more than your rent."

I looked up at him.

He looked back at me, and I realized with mild irritation that it was the driest joke I'd heard in months.

"Then you should have thought about that before you got shot," I said, and reached for the jacket.

He let me work. That was the thing that surprised me most — once he'd made the decision to trust the process, he surrendered the control of it cleanly. No flinching away, no grabbing my hands. He sat still and let me peel back the layers and assess the damage properly under real light for the first time.

The wound was clean entry, no exit. The bullet was still in there.

I sat back on my heels and looked at it for a moment.

"I can clean this, close the surface, and manage the bleeding," I said carefully. "But the bullet needs to come out by someone with surgical equipment. I don't have what I need for that here."

"Can you do it anyway."

It wasn't a question.

"Did you hear what I just said?"

"I heard you." His eyes met mine. "Can you do it anyway."

I stared at him. He stared back. The apartment was quiet.

"What's your name?" I asked.

A pause.

"Man."

I stopped. Looked up at him slowly.

"...Man."

"You asked."

I stared at him for a long moment. He stared back. Completely unbothered. Bleeding through my good gauze and unbothered.

"Okay," I said flatly, turning back to the wound. "Okay, Man. This is going to hurt. And I need you conscious through all of it."