Dita departed for the upstairs bar, and Mr. O’Hara opened up Fiona’s linen closets. He got an armful of thick towels and laid them on Terry’s worse wounds, then began ripping the sheets into strips as the towels soaked up Terry’s excess blood. In a few minutes, he had Terry roughly bandaged where the worse wounds were. He had gone through four whole sheets, and he thought the boy looked like a bloodstained mummy.
To Mr. O’Hara’s dismay, Terry began to come around during this. He was laid out on the floor, and as Mr. O’Hara tore cloth beside him Terry’s eyelids fluttered and he let out a low, weak groan. Slowly, his arms began to move, and the moan hitched to a higher pitch as his burned arm rubbed against the carpet.
“Hush, boy.” said Mr. O’Hara, leaning over him and stroking his brow. “Hush now.” Then he got up and ran into the bathroom, where he soaked a washcloth with water from the tap.
“Open up now, that’s a good lad.” He squeezed some of the water between Terry’s bloody lips, then spread the washcloth over the boy’s brow.
Terry groaned again, then was mercifully quiet. Mr. O’Hara checked his pulse, then finished the bandaging. By the time he was done, Dita had returned.
“I told Mrs. O’Hara what happened, and she’s bringing the car around.”
“Good. I’ll carry Terry up to the car when she gets here, but for the time being I’d like you to watch him. I have to go up and close down the pub.”
Dita gazed at Terry with apprehension. “Uh . . . sir, I don’t know if I’m comfortable with that.”
Mr. O’Hara gave Dita an understanding look. “He came around a bit while I was bandaging him, but I don’t think he’ll wake again for a while. If he does, just make sure he’s got that washcloth over his eyes, and sweet-talk him until he drops off again. With his wounds, the periods o’ consciousness won’t be long.
“You can give him some water, if you want.” he added. “That might be good.”
“Is he . . . infected with anything?” Dita asked.
Mr. O’Hara was blunt. “No time for questions. We’ve got to get this boy home if he’s going to live.”
Still, he was only halfway through the splinters of the door before Dita stopped him again with a timid “Uh, Mr. O’Hara?”
“Yes, what is it, lass?” he snapped.
“Well, Fiona’s still in the stairwell. She wouldn’t say anything, but I don’t think she wants to go in here, and she can’t go into the bar naked like she is.”
Mr. O’Hara groaned with exasperation. “Everybody has delays!” he cried, then: “Quick, girl, fetch me some clothes, and doan go picking out ones that match!”
Dita darted into Fiona’s closet, then returned with a flaming pink sweater and sky-blue leotard bottom which, true to request, did not match at all. Mr. O’Hara snatched them from her, then gazed about the room distracted until he spotted her shoes. Snatching them up, he departed from the room without another word.
On his way up, he encountered Fiona crouching naked against the outer wall of the curving stairs. She whimpered at the sight of him, but he shoved the clothes at her and continued up without another glance. She began to weep as he departed, and did not stop until after she had emerged into the alley backing the pub, very oddly clothed.
It might have taken a distressingly long time for O’Hara to clear out the pub, filled as it was with heavy-set, drunken men (what Terry had recently thought of as Rough Overcoats), had he not been a participant in some of Fiona’s other problems - namely, a night three years back when her succubus possessor had attempted a hostile takeover of the barmaid’s mind, and had her shrieking and banging in the downstairs room until O’Hara and his wife could tranquilize her. After the problems of getting everyone out that time, O’Hara had hired a bouncer.
The man stood beside the door, not in shadow, but dressed so that he very nearly blended into the wooden walls. Surprisingly many customers didn’t seem to know he was there at first, but then when a brawl turned dangerous with a broken bottle he stepped into the spotlight like a monster come out of hiding. There were actually screams of horror as his tree-trunk arms wrapped around one combatant and, with a single titanic hurl, tossed the man from the middle of the pub through the door and onto the sidewalk. He didn’t get a chance to make another throw; every other fighter had already fled. There were no more fights that night, and only two or three more in the days since. The pub became popular with more civilized, peaceful people, and the bouncer became a happily inactive living legend. But O’Hara kept the bouncer on anyway. After all, it wasn’t for fights that he had been hired.
Now O’Hara made his way over to Bruce. The man was standing beside the door, arms folded, as he was every night. As Bruce towered two feet over the fairly tall O’Hara, in the noisy din of the pub he would have had to lean down awkwardly to hear anything his employer said. Instead, O’Hara just nodded to his enforcer. Bruce got to work.
The pub was empty less than a minute later. O’Hara thanked Bruce, and sent him home.