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Blood.
Oh, heavens.It was a blessed thing she wasn’t the fainting type.
After feeling a little further, she dug her hand under the man’s body and felt the underside of the wound. Well, that was a relief. It had to be a bullet and it must have gone clean through.
Shifting to access the bottom of her petticoats, Giulia ripped off a length of fabric and turned back to the patient. How was she to wrap him if she could not get him into a sitting position?
“Sir, are you alert? What is your name?”
He mumbled, but the sound was incoherent.
Giulia did her best to focus her gaze. “I need to wrap your shoulder and it would ease my job immensely if I could get you to sit up. Or lean, perhaps. Do you think, sir, that you might be able to lean?”
A muffled groan sounded in the darkness. Giulia tried to take a calming breath and crawled to the opposite side of her patient before leaning down to get close to his face. Groaning was a good sign usually; it showed a level of consciousness. Now she only needed to determine just how conscious he was.
She placed a finger beneath his nose and felt his breath. It was coming in short, rapid spurts, but she already knew that by the quick rise and fall of his back. She could see enough of his face to determine that it was pinched, and sent a prayer up asking for guidance. How was she going to help a nearly incoherent stranger when she was stuck in the middle of nowhere, no buildings for miles?
She brought her face nearly level with the patient’s, her body contorted so that she could look him in the eyes without actually lying down in the dirt.
“Please open your eyes,” she murmured calmly. “I need to be sure you are awake so I may talk you through my treatment plan.” What she truly needed was to assure herself that the man would remain alive long enough for her to fetch help, but she would keep that to herself.
His eyelids fluttered slightly before peeking open.
Success!
Then they closed. She frowned.
“I would like to turn you over and lay you against my valise. We need to elevate your torso to slow the bleeding. And it will make my job of wrapping you a tad easier.” She waited a moment and watched his lashes flutter. He grimaced deeper, if that was possible, and opened his eyes again with what appeared to be determination.
Giulia grinned. That was a welcome trait for a man in his position. She retrieved her bag in haste, returning to his side. “Do not strain, sir. I do not wish to cause further stress to your injury.”
She positioned her valise near the man’s good shoulder.
Giulia took a breath. “When I count to three I am going to roll you onto the bag. Ready?”
She slid her hands under the man’s chest and wished, not for the first time, that Ames was with her. His strength would have made this an easy task. Harnessing power from the inner confidence that this was a necessary action to save the man’s life, and the simple truth that she had no other option than to attempt it alone, Giulia took a sustaining breath.
“One. Two. Three!” She grunted on the last count and heaved with every bit of strength her body possessed. To her astonishment, he rolled easily. Whether by sheer will or the unlikely possibility that he may have helped, the injured man was turned over and propped up on her valise, making his shoulder accessible and elevated.
Perfect.
“Splendid,” Giulia said cheerfully as she clapped her hands together and sat back on her heels. “Now, don’t you go anywhere. I am going to fetch my sewing shears and then we will have this coat off of you in a jiffy.”
He grunted, seemingly in response, and she moved to her trunk to retrieve her scissors. Father often said her excessive talking was a virtue and not a failing, but she sometimes wondered if it would be better for her mouth to remain closed. This man seemed somewhat lucid; just how lucid, she could not determine. If she could do anything to distract him from her poking and prodding, it was worth trying.
“I suppose I ought to introduce myself, given this extraordinary circumstance. I am Giulia.” She sighed. “I wish I knew your name. That would make our situation less awkward, do you not agree? Perhaps I should give you one.” She slid the scissors between the man’s neck and her valise, using her fingers to guide them, and began carefully snipping the coat away. She was used to assisting the doctor in the dim light of a ship’s cabin as it rolled upon the waves, but even then she’d had at least one candle to light the room.
“Just a nickname, of course,” she continued, then wrinkled her brow. “Though I cannot see your face clearly, so that adds a level of difficulty to the act of naming you. I must come up with something, however.” She hummed for a moment while she thought and continued to snip away the fine coat. “This is certainly a shame, is it not? What a fine coat to utterly ruin in such a barbaric manner. Though, to be fair, the large hole in the shoulder rendered it ruined long before I came at you with my sewing shears.”
Giulia clucked her tongue. The wound was substantial, from what she could tell. She only hoped she was successfully distracting him. “I’ve got it! I will call you Trouble! That is what we are in, don’t you agree?”
He groaned and she ceased cutting. “You do not like Trouble? No, you are right. It does not roll off the tongue so easily, does it?” Giulia looked up as clouds began to move away from the moon on the horizon, lighting the scene around her and giving her a better view of her patient. “Glorious. We must thank the moon. How kind of her to come out right when I could use her light. Now, where were we?” She resumed cutting and noticed the grimace back on the man’s face. It was easier to decipher now, though not by much. The blood that dripped from his wound gleamed in the moonlight and hastened her work.
“Right, we were naming you. Hmmm, I think…yes! I’ve got it! Danger. I shall call you Danger. It is fitting, don’t you agree? You clearly are in some yourself, though how that came to be is not hardly fathomable to me, given our location. And has your horse run off, Danger, or were you walking along this lane alone?” She unbuttoned the front of the coat and pulled off the portion she had cut off, talking while gently removing the clothing. Then she moved on to the waistcoat, working as quickly as her chilled fingers allowed her to. The man’s injury was alarming enough, but in the back of her mind, Giulia couldn’t stop thinking about who caused the injury in the first place; she had no guarantee the aggressor wasn’t still a threat. She would not be comfortable until they were removed indoors somewhere, safe.
Nerves loosened her tongue further. “I suppose I cannot say it is totally unreasonable to go without a horse, since I was walking along the lane alone myself. But I cannot say it is normal behavior, for it certainly is not normal for me.”
Giulia made quick work of the waistcoat, removing it from the injured shoulder while leaving what she could on the rest of the man to warm him. His loss of blood was evident in the pallor of his skin and she did her best to distract him with her chatter while no doubt adding to his pain. Once she got to his shirt, she removed his cravat and set it aside while cutting a hole in the shirt for access. Whoever this gentleman was, he clearly maintained activity that built his physique, for Giulia had done her fair share of nurse work on other men, and few had come near this man’s breadth or firm display of muscle. Had he not worn the clothing of a gentleman, she would have assumed him to be a laborer.
