Remi-niscent

Chapter 16:

Ty's P.O.V
We don't stop, not once, not even when hours later the sun begins to rise up above the trees, gently stretching out its tendrils of light that cast a goldy, pink glow over the water and in doing so chases the darkness away. Everyone is beyond the point of exhaustion, their heads are drooping, only weakly still fighting the urge to give in and just fall asleep where they sit.

But while I'm concerned about their health as well, it's worrying me even more that Remi has yet to wake up, or at least give me a minuscule sign that her body isn't in the process of shutting down completely. There is dark purple, blue bruising around her cheekbones and jaw a stark contrast in comparison to how deathly pale the rest of her face is. But it's the raised lump on her temple that's causing me even more concern at the moment, as bruising while painful and irksome, will heal naturally on its own but something like internal bleeding not so much.

Eventually I have to call it a day, "Guys," I rasp, "We need to rest. Carrying on like this is insane. Look at us all. We're dead on our feet."

Unanimously the others nod in agreement and it makes me think that they've all been waiting for someone to say those words for a while, so when we see the next cove coming up ahead we change direction and start paddling towards it. After pulling the canoes ashore, everyone quite literally flops down onto the damp sand right where they are standing and are out like lights within seconds.

Wishing more than anything to be able to join them and get some much needed rest, I force my eyes to stay open more with pure stubbornness than anything else and stumble over to Remi. Carefully lifting her bodily out of the canoe, I cradle her against my shoulder the same way you would with a small child so I that still have a hand free to reach over into the canoe next beside us. Tucking the emergency kit under one arm I walk slowly, taking care not to bump my precious cargo and head towards a small grassy patch above the strip of sand to lay Remi down on.

Taking a seat next to her, I gently pull her body forward just enough so that her head rests cushioned in my lap. Brushing rogue wisps of long blonde hair behind her ears, I gently wipe her face clean with an antibacterial wipe to see the full extent of her injuries. Once all the blood and dirt has been removed, the bruises stand out even more prominently against her pale skin and from the disfigurement around her jaw, I just pray that it is only swollen from the beating it received but not broken or fractured. Rummaging through the contents of the emergency kit I find a salve that is supposedly good for healing bruises, so after scooping a generous amount of it onto my fingers I carefully spread the cream over the dark splotches. Once it has at least partly been absorbed by her skin, I apply four small butterfly stitches to a small gash just under her jawline and one to her split lip.

Because I keep having to move her slightly to treat her wounds, her hair keeps getting stuck in the salve. Not wanting it to get stuck to the stitches I gently pull a spare hair tie off her wrist and then pull her hair back into a simple ponytail to keep it out of her face. Seeing as the last time I we had seen each other while both conscious her hair had been tied up, I can only assume that she must have lost the other one during the fighting.

Not knowing exactly what had happened during the fight, my only other indication that Remi has some other external injuries is the sheer amount of blood that seems to cover a startling expanse of her clothing. Unable to tell if it is hers or not while she lies on her back I brace myself as I slowly roll her over onto her stomach. Gingerly sliding her out of her jacket and shirt, my heart sinks when I see the nasty gash stretching diagonally all the way across her back. The dark, rusty colour of dried encrusted blood surrounds the area making it hard to judge it's severity, so I quickly pull out more antiseptic wipes to clean the wound to reduce the risk of infection. But the more I clean the worse things look and I feel like I'm physically about to be sick. Because from what I can see, from this point until Remi wakes up, I won't know whether the laceration is deep enough to have reached her spinal cord. If it has, because of the limited resources out here in the wild, she'll never walk again and even if it hasn't it's still going to be a long road to recovery and that depends on if she even wakes up.