Holding up his hand to stop her, Justin told her, “Wait, let me guess. It’s going to hurt like Hell.”

“More than likely.”

With a grimace, he said, “Okay, let’s get this over with.”

Positioning herself at his feet, she grabbed a handful of jeans and told him, “Don’t think about what I’m going to do. Just tell me about the fire.”

While he was telling her the story of how he had opened the window to allow in some fresh air, then began working on the rough sketch for a new painting when a fire had ignited in the middle of the room, she suddenly pulled on the jeans with all of her weight behind her, ripping them away from his burnt flesh.

Screaming in agony, Justin writhed around on the bed in intense pain as air hit the newly exposed tissue of his shins. As the pulsating waves of pain began to ease, he sat up and stared down at his legs, where the raw flesh had denim imprints seared into it, and blood was oozing up in several areas. “At least the jeans are off.” Looking over at the first aid kit, he asked, “Now what horrors do you have planned for me?”

Rubbing her hands together to warm them, she answered, “Well, for starters, I am going to bathe you in antiseptic. Then, just as the pain is starting to diminish, I plan to douse you in iodine. After that, I’ll rub on some of the Silvadene cream, left over from when I burnt my arm on the radiator last winter, and then mummy-wrap your legs in gauze.” As she was explaining all this, Susan had taken the supplies out of the kit and arranged them on the bed around Justin’s legs.

While she administered to his wounds, she told him about the information she had discovered during the morning. Once she was finished, she gave him a pain pill and tucked the sheets around him, then told him that she was going to go make him some soup.

Susan went downstairs and put a can of soup on the stove to cook. After she had turned it down to simmer, she headed into the studio to clean up.

The rags that had been burned, she threw into a wire mesh trash basket. “Well,” she said, as she surveyed the damage, “at least the fire didn’t have an opportunity to spread to the office side of the room. And it’s probably a good thing I haven’t unpacked my supplies and computer equipment yet.”

With the burnt cloth cleared away, she saw that the fire had centered around Justin’s glass jar of paint thinner. Shaking her head she said, “I told him not to store flammable paint thinner in a jar.” She picked up the cracked bottle and using her cupped hand to catch any leaking drops, carried it to the kitchen sink.