My chest tightens as he drops a pair of metal snips into my other hand. I clear my throat, wrapping my fingers around the sharp instrument. “Got it.”
* * *
“It’ll hold, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
The man I just stitched together scowls at my handiwork, lets out a gruff sound, and pushes to his feet, making for the door without looking back.
I swipe the dappled sweat from my forehead, then move toward Jerid sprawled in the adjacent cot with a blood-soaked tourniquet bound around his arm.
His gaunt stare swivels to me.
“Last I saw, you were climbing the mainsail. What happened?” I ask.
“Was in the n-nest. Wrapped my hand in … r-rope so I wouldn’t float away,” he stammers between short, sharp breaths. “Ship s-self-corrected … turned my body … into a wh-whip.”
I wince, arching back so I can peek past the draped material for the medis. He’s elbow deep in someone’s abdomen three cots down the line.
Dammit.
“I’ve never set a bone before,” I admit, stepping closer, meeting Jerid’s wide-eyed stare. “But I can give it a shot?”
“Fuck me,” he mumbles, then accepts my bottle of rum and takes a generous swig, hissing through clenched teeth as I unwrap the bandage and gently unpack the wound.
My stomach knots.
A jagged piece of bone has punched through his skin, leaking blood like a faulty faucet. He’s also sporting an angry rope burn around his wrist and hand.
Pressing the sodden lumps of gauze back into place to stem the flow of blood, I retrieve everything I need from the med box and set my supplies atop a small wooden crate beside his cot. I look between the different instruments and frown. “Wait here.”
“Where else would I go?” he tremors, lips nudging into a wan smile.
I rush to the back of the room, though as I pass the end cot, I feel the probe of someone’s gaze against the side of my face, down the lines of my body.
Pausing, I seek the source.
Vanth is seated on the edge of a bed—shirt undone to the sternum, hair askew, azure eyes snatching my breath like a phantom hand sliding around my throat.
Tightening.
There’s blood dripping down his face from the meaty gash through his eyebrow and up into his hairline, a bottle of rum snagged in his grip and hanging between his wide-open thighs. He leans back, tips his head against the wall, and watches me from below heavy lids as he draws a deep glug.
There’s something in his leer that’s hard for me to rip away from, but I do, barreling down the steps toward the galley on the lowest deck. The last three are immersed, and I’m forced to slow as I wade into the murky water.
I pluck a path to the galley, the water peppered with rolled oats and bobbing apples that bump against my legs as I rifle through the drawers. Finding two wooden spoons, I head back toward the stairs, footsteps hurried when my bare feet hit the deck of the infirmary.
Standing beside Jerid’s cot again, I dig into my pocket, and pull out a piece of damp night bark. “It’ll help with the pain.”
His eyes flash with relief before he opens his mouth and lets me place it on his tongue, which surprises me. He’s not the first person I’ve offered this bit of bark to.
Heisthe first person not to screw up his face or tell me pain relief is for pussies.
While I wait for him to work through it, I pour alcohol on my hands, thread a needle, and fire the tip—ignoring the swarm of fluttering nerves in my belly.
“Now, bite down on this,” I say, weaving the handle of a wooden spoon between his teeth while he flicks me an anxious look I try to ignore. The moment his jaw clamps down, I draw a deep glug of rum, wincing at the bulb of fire easing down my throat.
I pull the material from his wound and splash it with alcohol to the haunting tune of his muffled screams. I don’t give him the chance to work through the pain before I grip his arm in two places and wrench the bone back into place.
His howl almost rips a hole in the atmosphere.
