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"You guys sure you know what you're doing?" I heard myself asking, completely out of character for me. What could I say? I was worried for her. It was bad enough that she would be branded for life; I was hoping she wouldn't have a raging infection to go with that.
"I was a paramedic," the guy said without looking up, threading the stitching scissors.
"And I was a nurse in the army," the girl added, grabbing the tweezers. "Don't worry. We have seen and dealt with a lot worse than this," she said, looking up at me for a second before they moved in on her back.
After that, the only conversation was between the two as they slowly worked.
Me, yeah, I was occupied trying to keep Penny's body as still as possible as she writhed in her unconscious state.
"Ow!" she shrieked a few minutes later, the Hailstorm guys only about halfway done stitching. Her head shot up and her wide-open, confused, and pained eyes were on me, tears making them blurry. "Ow," she whimpered again, shaking her head at me.
"You're getting stitches," I told her, trying to keep my voice calm as the tears welled up and slipped over her lashes and slid down her cheeks. "You have a nasty cut on your back and it needed to be stitched up."
"It hurts," she said, voice deep with feeling. "Everything hurts," she added.
"I know, baby," I said with a small nod. "Just hang on a couple more minutes and it will be over. They'll give you some pills to cut it," I added, not knowing if they would, but figuring if they came equipped with a full fucking medical kit complete with a numbing agent, that they likely had some damn Oxys or Vikes in their bags too. And if they didn't, hell, I'd hit the fucking streets and buy some if I had to.
"Here," the guy said suddenly, drawing my attention as he left the woman to continue and moved toward us with two pills in his hands. Penny looked at him, shaking her head as she looked at them. "Look," he said, putting the pill closer. "See? It says Vicodin right on it, sweetheart," he encouraged. And, sure enough, the oval pills did. "Take them. Don't be a hero. Let us finish without you screaming through it."
Penny looked up at me as if seeking a second opinion. Feeling wholly unqualified, I gave it anyway. "Take them. No need for you to have to bite a bullet through this. Miracles of modern medicine," I added with a small smile I didn't feel.
She turned back to the guy and opened her mouth and he put the pills in and reached for the discarded beer on my nightstand to hold to her lips. She curled her face up, but took a swig to push the pills down.
"Fifteen minutes," he told her, putting the beer down and moving back beside his partner on the bed.
"I don't under..." she said, looking up at me, shaking her head.
"Don't. Don't think about that right now," I urged, releasing her shoulders so I could push her head back onto my chest. "Close your eyes and take deep breaths until those pills kick in." I let my fingers drift into her hair for a second until I felt her take a few deep breaths, then closed my arm around her shoulders again, tighter.
The woman looked up at me from behind Penny and gave me a wince and I figured if she was giving me that look, being an Army trained nurse, that shit was about to get worse.
"Oh my..." Penny shrieked, her entire body trying to buck against me. But I tightened my hold, closing my eyes as she started sobbing into my chest. My arm slipped lower on her back, my palm crushing into one of her hips, keeping her from using her legs to wiggle.
"Shhh," I said, resting the side of my face on top of her head. "Shh. Almost over," I promised but I knew fuck-all about if that was true or not, but needing to give her whatever comfort I could, even if it was false.
"Stop," she begged. "Please please stop," she cried, her hands going around my back and digging in hard enough to cut into my skin if I didn't have a shirt on.
Helpless, I kept whispering to her, not even fucking sure what I was saying, as my hand stroked over her upper arm, trying to give her something that wasn't the sensation of something stabbing into her back.
"Okay. Okay. That's done," the woman said and I saw her toss the bloodied threaded scissors down on the towel, smudging the white material with red. "Breathe, honey," she said and she was right, Penny was holding her breath. At the instruction, she let out a choked breath that came out on a sob. "We are just going to put a little salve on it and then wrap it, okay?" she asked, genuinely waiting for permission.
