When All is Lost

Chapter 12

My tears had dried up soon after they'd started and Ian gave me a piece of bread to eat, acting as though it had never happened. Ripping the bread into tiny bits as I ate, I made sure to be careful with my hands. At one point I held a bandaged hand up to Ian. "Did you do this?"

Ian looked surprisingly sheepish. "Probably not my finest work."

"No. No, it's fine. A little hard to move my fingers, but it's fine. Thanks, by the way, for you know..."

He nodded. "I know." An awkward silence fell over us for a moment, then, as though to release all tension, Ian stretched his arms above his head. "I was actually pretty impressed. You should have seen yourself stumbling through the parking lot. I'm amazed you could even walk." He pointed to the bandage on my chest, "You lost a lot of blood. I had to give you stitches."

I brought a hand to my chest.

Stitches? With what?

He'd said I'd been close to dying, which could have been overdramatic, so I had just assumed a nice, thick bandage had done the trick. I rolled a shoulder back feeling the pull on my chest wound from the slight stretch. I took a deep breath in through my nose.

I had to ask. "What did you use to do it?"

"Needle and thread. I found them in your backpack."

My stomach rolled.

Should not have asked that.

"Hands too?" I asked, somewhat afraid of the answer.

Ian gave me an apologetic grin. "Yeah," he answered, brushing his hair back. I watched his gaze slide away from me. "For future reference, any other stitching should really be done by you. I did the best I could, but... it wasn't pretty."

"Okay." I agreed, but mostly because I didn't want to think about that. The repulsive memory of receiving the stitches was itching at the back of my mind and I did not want to acknowledge it. Instead, I flopped back into my pillow and closed my eyes, wishing I could close my mind off from my thoughts just as easily. "I'm tired."

Ian coughed a little, making me wonder if he was covering up a laugh. "Go back to sleep. When you wake up you can eat more."

I cracked an eye open again. "You sure? You've already been on watch a long time."

"I'm sure. I'll wake you up in a couple of hours."

A couple of hours of rest was all I needed.

---

A couple of hours of rest turned into a week. A week of nothing except eating, sleeping, and being on watch. While my body was slowly healing, the downtime left us to stew in our own worries, frustrations, and griefs.

The worst of it was on day two of resting. Nothing could have mentally prepared me for when Ian finally let me see my stitches. Horrified wasn't a strong enough word to describe how I felt at the sight of the red, puckered, raised flesh across my chest. The foot-long wound made it look as though I'd been ripped apart and put back together again with a few pieces missing. I didn't recognize my own body and for the first time in my life, my flesh felt foreign to me. I knew I was shaken and that it would probably be less unseemly once the string stitches came out, but hated the sight of it to the core of my being. I was stuck with the knowledge that it would scar and I would be forced to always carry my mutilation with me.

By day seven, I was cracking. With each passing day, I had become more desperate to take the stitches out. Ian had been patient with me, talking me down each time I'd previously threatened to claw them out of my own chest, but both of us were on edge.