“I don’t know much,” Perian apologized. “It happened so fast, and then all I could worry about was Molun. Sorry.”
“It’s all right,” Cormal said. “I’ll take care of it.”
Perian nodded. “Thank you.”
Cormal disappeared again, and Perian refocused on Molun. The doctor had already cut away the ribbon and bandage. Someone was sponging off blood as she peered at the wound and snapped out instructions.
“He’s going to be fine, right?” Perian asked before it occurred to him that she probably needed to concentrate.
He pressed his lips together and tried to remind himself that now it was time for others to work, and he needed to not interrupt. He felt like he was going to crawl out of his skin.
“I’m going to do everything in my power to ensure that he is.” Her eyes darted to him, and then she continued, “You know, I think you were right, and he wouldn’t like to be alone right now. Would you come and hold his hand and tell him that he’s going to be well? Positive reinforcement is veryhelpful.”
Perian nodded hurriedly, even though this made the world swim a little. But the doctor had given him apurpose.Perian pulled the chair closer to the table and squeezed Molun’s hand, which was limp in his grasp. But that was all right, because it was definitely better to be unconscious when the doctor was sewing up part of your leg and some of the parts that were usually on the inside were on the outside.
“It’s actually kind of gross,” Perian told the unconscious man in a low voice. “But that’s all right. The doctor is making sure that your insides stay on your insides and your outsides are on the outside, the way it’s supposed to be. Nisal and I tried as hard as we could with our clothes and the ribbon, but the doctor actually haspracticeat this. It’s her whole job.”
The moment when the doctor reset the bone was one of the most disturbing that Perian had ever experienced—which he would have thought he’d maybe hit his limit on, what with all the blood and the bits of Molun’s insides that he’d seen. But when she set it, he could actually hear the sound of bone grinding against bone, and Molun, even as unconscious as he was, had let out a groan of pain.
“Oh, wow,” Perian said, stomach a little queasy. “I’m so sorry that hurt so much, and I’m really glad you were unconscious for it. But now your leg is straight again, which is really awesome, and if I never have to hear that sound again, I would be perfectly happy with that.” He gazed at the doctor. “You really just… pull it into place like that, huh?”
For a moment, his mind had spun totally blank.
She huffed out a breath and sounded almost amused, though her face was still pinched with worry, and her hands were covered in blood. There were bloody towels around her workbench, where she kept wiping them clean.
“Just like that,” she agreed.
“Good, good,” he said, nodding like an idiot. “I’m really glad you were the one to have to do that and not me. Let’s add that as another thing I’d do for you if I had to, Molun. I promise I would try, but there’s a chance I couldn’t do it. It just sort of snaps into place from the sound of it, but I’m not sure I could get it right.”
The doctor offered, “The way the bone snapped, it was exposed through the skin. I had to pick out the bone fragments and then line it up again.”
Perian made a face. “Ooh, did you hear that? The doctor picked bone fragments out of your wound. I guess you’re probably getting dirt out of there, too.”
The doctor nodded, and Perian looked back at Molun’s still face.
“That makes sense, right? Before she sews your leg up, she needs to make sure that only parts of your leg are in there.” He grimaced. “I never thought I would actually say something like that. She’s cleaning you off and is getting bits of bone out of you and bits of dirt—and there might be leaves and twigs, and maybe some horse hair, and possibly fabric from our clothes, and if that’s the case, I apologize. We didn’t have any bandages, which I now see is another oversight.”
Perian made a face again and confessed, “I wasn’t very prepared, as it turned out. I don’t know what we would have done without Nisal. It’s such a good thing that we were a team and that Prince Horsey decided he was on our team and that we were able to get you back here. And the doctor is an honorary member of our team. That’s fine with you, right, Doctor?”
“Absolutely,” she agreed, not looking up from the wound.
“She’s putting you right back together again,” Perian explained to Molun. “We knew that you’d be all right if we got you back to the doctor, and here you are, exactly where you need to be. You’re going to be fine, because she’s amazing. She can fix bones, and she can actually sew bodies back together.”
Perian boggled at this for a moment.
“Which, when you think about it, is almost better than elemental magic, isn’t it? I mean, you can all do amazing things, but actually being able to take needle and thread and stitch body parts back together so that everything heals again? Maybe it’s not quite as good as Life Magic, but it’s definitely wonderful. I love you, I really do, almost as much as Arvus does and almost as much as I love Brannal—just in different ways—but I don’t think I could stitch you up, not even if you really needed it.”
He considered this for a moment and then amended, “I mean, all right, I guess if I’d happened to have a needle and thread in my bag, I could have tried. But I think it’s way better that I’m just here for moral support, even if that means that you’re going to wake up just to tell me to shut up, which I would totally understand.”
Perian wasn’t ready for it to be silent. Just the thought of that endless, echoing moment when he’d been kneeling beside Molun in the forest and he was so still and there was so much blood… No, no, not thinking about that.
He cleared his throat. “You’re going to have the best scar ever, and we all know that Arvus is going to cuddle you and put on salve and bandages every single day. You’ll probably get even more sex out of it. So, you know, while I’m not saying youshould go out and get your leg torn apart by a demon, if itdoeshappen, I’m pretty sure there are some upsides. I bet Brannal will even let Arvus off work so he can take care of you, because he might look all tough, but he has a squishy inside, and he’ll want you to get better as fast as possible. It’s always better when you’re with friends to heal.”
There was the slightest pressure against Perian’s hand, and his eyes snapped to Molun’s face. His eyes weren’t open, and his expression was still lax. But Perian was sure that was pressure. He was crying now, sniffing while he talked, and he was a total mess, but that was fine.
“Yeah, I would want to tell me to shut up if I were you, too, but you’re going to have to do more than squeeze my fingers. I’m not going to stop talking until you tell me to actually shut up with your own mouth. So you’d better get better in a hurry, or you’re going to learn just how much I can talk.”
But it was actually hard to talk and cry when you were crying this hard, and Perian was trying to wipe at his face with his free hand, but everything was coming away tacky and red. He’d forgotten about the blood. And was it freezing cold in here, or was it just him?
