She worked the jacket off his injured side, easing the fabric over the shoulder with the care she’d use on a fracture patient. He helped with his good hand.
His breathing stayed too steady. Like he was forcing it.
Close now. Too close.
Her knees bracketed his thigh, her hands were on his arm, his body heat bleeding into hers through wet fabric and skin.
“Can you feel your fingers?” she asked.
“Yes.”
She pressed two fingers to his wrist. His pulse was strong. “Move them.”
He did, nostrils flaring.
Good enough to try, but not good enough to like it.
The shoulder was a mess. Swollen, dropped, the joint sitting too far forward beneath the skin. Anterior dislocation. She’d bet her medical license on it.
“Anterior dislocation. No obvious fracture, but I can’t be sure without imaging.” She sat back on her heels. “I need to reduce it. Here. Now. It’s going to hurt.”
“I know what it feels like.”
“I’m going to use external rotation,” she said. Doctor mode. Calm, clinical, the voice she used in the ER when she needed a patient to trust her. “I’m going to rotate the arm outward. Slowly. When the muscle releases, it’ll slide back in.”
“Just do it.”
She took his arm.
His eyes dropped to her hands. Tracking. Always tracking.
His skin was warm, the muscles rigid with pain and tension. She flexed his elbow, cradling the joint, one hand on his wrist, the other on his upper arm. She could feel the wrongness of the joint beneath her palm—the bone sitting where it shouldn’t, the soft tissue stretched and angry.
“Try to relax the muscles. I know that sounds impossible, but the more you tense?—”
“Harper.”
“Right. Okay. Okay.”
She began the rotation. Slow and careful, his arm moving outward degree by degree, never forcing past the resistance.
His breathing changed.
Shorter. Harder. Controlled—until it wasn’t.
She kept going, willing the thing to give, knowing it would if she didn’t force it. “Almost there.”
The muscle spasm released. A subtle give, a shift in the tension under her hands. She rotated another degree, and the humeral head slid back into the socket with a deep, grinding clunk she felt through her palms.
Pav’s good hand slammed flat into the ground. His breath tore out of him. A sound dragged from somewhere behind his teeth?—
His eyes squeezed shut, and the tendons in his neck stood out like cables.
“Fuck.” His breathing came in ragged pulls, his hand pressed flat against the ground, fingers white, every knuckle visible.
She held his arm steady, supporting the joint, giving it a moment to settle. Her thumb pressed into the inside of his wrist, his pulse hammering under the pad of her thumb.
“It’s in.” She checked his wrist again. “Fingers.”
