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“Are you insane? No!”
“Please,” he begged. “Please.”
This whole thingwasinsane. All of it. I was no doctor, and this disgusting mixture would probably kill him. If he didn’t bleed out first.
His silver-blue eyes cracked open slightly and pleaded with me. My heart dropped at the thought of what he asked, but how could I refuse this man what could be his last dying wish?
“Fine, all right. Hold still, you masochist.”
Grimacing, I worked the herbal mixture deep into the oozing hole, apologizing every time the man groaned and jerked at my torturous poking.
Finished, I applied a fresh compress that I cut from the blanket, then bound it in place with a thin strip of cloth around his chest. I seriously doubted that any of this would help and fully expect to wake up tomorrow morning in the company of a rotting corpse.
“All done. You should be fine now,” I lied, covering him with another blanket.
Managing a weak smile, he rasped, “Th...”
“You’re welcome,” I finished for him. “Rest now.”
He started to say something else, but his eyes closed and body went slack. Frantically, I felt his jugular for a pulse, and breathed out with great relief when finding it. It was faint and thready, but it was there.
With Bryant temporarily taken care of, I prepared to settle in for the night myself, lighting the oil lantern on the kitchen table and candle on the mantle. I was about to light the fireplace kindling, then decided against it. It wasn’t very cold inside the fishing cabin, and more importantly I didn’t wish to give directional smoke signals to any friendly neighborhood Arcan Hunter lurking about.
With no other life-threatening dangers to worry about for the moment, I began to relax and feel the full brunt of my own injuries. My head throbbed like a roaring jackhammer, and my entire swollen left foot and calf felt like an elephant had stepped on me.
Since I might have a concussion, I needed to stay awake for the next several hours. I picked up the old fashioned camper’s coffeepot hanging from a metal arm in the fireplace and swirled the contents around, feeling the slight sloshing. Opening the lid, I took a sniff and instantly jerked back. The crude oil caffeine inside would definitely help me stay awake, but only if my roiling stomach didn’t revolt and bring it back up with interest.
“No thanks,” I muttered, hooking the coffeepot back on its metal rod.
I searched around the spartan place for any aspirin or pain reliever, then gave up and plopped down in the log chair in front of the fireplace.
Gingerly I pulled off my hiking boot and woolen sock, then examined my ankle that was now turning black and blue and throbbing like a Led Zeppelin drummer on tour. Thank goodness I hadn’t broken any bones, I assessed, at worst only tearing a muscle or ligament or two.
Either way, I wasn’t going anywhere but the few painful feet from my chair to the corner bed to attend my unconscious patient until the morning.
I only hoped he would last that long.
FATED MATES
CHAPTER 5
Should I Stay or Should I Go?
The morning sun shined in through the window and across my closed eyelids, groggily waking me. Still, it took another moment for my muddled brain to register that I was lounging upright in a very stiff, uncomfortable chair with my left foot elevated on a small whiskey cask. There was a small cracking fire going now, one I know I hadn’t set.
“Bryant?”
“Here,” he called quietly to the right.
He was in the makeshift kitchen area, slicing a loaf of brown bread on the wood counter underneath the window. He wore a different buckskin shirt of dark fawn coloring with blue and black shells and beading, but it was the fact that he was standing there looking in the peak of health that startled me fully awake.
“Wow, you look...better,” I commented. “Much better.
Particularly for a man who only a few hours ago wasLivin’ on a Prayer.
Numerous images flashed through my mind, recalling the anxious night sponging his heat radiated face, neck and torso with icy water that I hauled from the creek in a wooden bucket, listening to his fevered ramblings and moans and watching the expanding blue streaks snaking further towards the middle of his chest.
There had been a few gut-wrenching moments when I couldn’t find a pulse or a breath, and I screamed at him to hang on, just hang on, ordering him to hang on like a furious drill-sergeant until he breathed again.
