Rodeo watches her pull the fabric away from Wheeler's wound, revealing a wad of goddamn duct tape, and he feels a twist of guilt wring in his chest. That duct tape shit, that's likely his fault. He's the one who started acting like tape and rags were effective medical dressings. But when his brothers dragged him home with knife holes in his back, nobody slapped tape on that shit. They paid a doctor their weight in food and water and antibiotics to come stitch him up. Rodeo ought to be doing the same for his men, but he hadn't even known Wheeler had been shot until it started to fester. He's frowning, his brow furrowed, when Lita looks his way for the tweezers. He grabs them, holding them out to her and trying to neutralize his expression.
"Nah. My mama didn't have much a sense of anything," Rodeo says, shrugging his shoulders. And maybe his hand touches Lita's when he's handing the tweezers over, but the gloves don't let him enjoy it much. "But my friends, they sure think they're funny." They gave him the name after he spent a summer at a juvenile detention program on a ranch, and they'd seemed to find it a real laugh riot at the time. After that, it just stuck.
When she accuses him of being able to find out her name anyway, Rodeo does his best to make his expression look innocent, which only makes him look more suspicious. If she hasn't realized who he is, he doesn't think he wants her to know. He isn't about to spend any time trying to analyze why he'd want to hide his identity as the Dog King from her, so he moves right along and focuses on the wound she's uncovering instead.
Damn.
It's a mess. He doesn't have to know a damn thing about medicine to know that. It reeks, it's oozing, it's turning funny colors. He should have realized earlier, before it got so bad. Rodeo looks up from the wound when she addresses him, much of his grinning roguish bravado curbed for the moment. His blue eyes are somber when they meet hers, and he nods shortly in response to her question. He moves forward, coming around to the head of the table to brace his hands against the man's upper arms, preparing himself to push them down and pin them if he has to.
"How long you been a doctor?" Rodeo asks her as he holds his friend down. "You ever see a bullet hole look this bad? How'd it turn out?"