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Sombra leaned against her and whined softly, offering and needing comfort in equal measure. Gutsy bent and scratched his head. “You’d probably have been better off if you went feral and stayed out in the Broken Lands. You picked a real winner when you adopted me.”
Sombra wagged his tail anyway.
25
“MOM,” SAID ALICE SHARPLY AS she peeled back the bandage and gaped at her mother’s hand, “you didn’t tell me it was this bad. God. You need to have them set your fingers.”
“I’m fine,” Mrs. Chung insisted. “It’s just a sprain.”
Her mother’s hand was swollen and had turned a violent purple. The fore and ring fingers jutted out crookedly, each slanting at a forty-five-degree angle from the big knuckles.
“Come on,” said Alice. “I’ll take you over to the hospital so they can—”
“No,” said Mrs. Chung sharply. “They’ve got enough to worry about over there. It’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing. What if they heal like that?”
“I can soak them in cold water. It’ll be fine.”
“No, it won’t,” said Alice, getting scared and angry. “If you won’t go to the hospital, then I’ll set them myself. You know I can do it.”
That sparked an argument that rose into a yelling match. Mrs. Chung was like that, always hating anyone to make a fuss over her. Alice won the fight, though. The clincher was when Mrs. Chung tried to prove the injury wasn’t as bad as it looked and attempted to make a fist. Her resulting scream got the neighbor’s dogs barking furiously. Alice sat back in her chair, arms folded across her chest, head cocked to one side. She sat like that, in a stony silence, until her mother sighed and nodded.
Alice went and got a tongue depressor from her first aid kit, a flexible bandage, and a thin leather belt, which she held out.
“What’s that for?”
“For you to bite down on.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Mom, you tried to make a fist and screamed loud enough to kill birds in flight. Setting those fingers is going to hurt a lot worse. Use the darn belt.”
“Don’t be fresh.”
“Bite,” growled Alice, holding out the tooled leather belt.
Her mother glared at Alice for ten long seconds. Then she took the belt and put it between her teeth. Alice took a breath, steadied her mother’s wrist with one hand, and with
the other took each finger one at a time and pulled sharply. The broken bones came apart, and when she released, they snapped back into place.
They were both glad Mrs. Chung had the belt.
26
THE FOLLOWING MORNING GUTSY HEADED over to the Cuddlys’ place to see if Alethea and Spider were up yet, but ran into Joe Ledger along the way. He came striding across the street with his massive combat dog trotting beside him.
“Hey, kid,” the old soldier said amiably. “You going anywhere in particular?”
“To see my friends.”
“Can it wait?” he asked. “I’d like to talk with you.”
“Um… sure… ?” she replied. It came out as a question.
“Let’s walk.” He set off without waiting, and she hurried to catch up. “Listen, Gutsy, Sam and I are going to be heading out in a few hours. We should already have gone, but Sunny-Day Ray said they might get one—or possibly two—quads working. If there’s a chance of that, then it’s worth waiting a bit. If nothing else, it’ll give us more options if Site B isn’t where we think it is.”
“Okay,” she said, seeing the logic.
