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“Jesus Christ, Melanie.”
Melanie opens an eye and regards his cloudy expression, visible just under the brim of her cap. “Mm?”
“Have you seen anyone about that?”
She rolls her eyes shut, not bothering to ask for clarification; she doesn’t need it. It’s obvious what Bennett’s referring to, and Melanie can already see where this is going. “It’s fine, Ben. Just leave it.”
“It doesn’t look fine.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I’m guessing it hurts.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I can see blood on the bandages.”
“Uh-huh.”
“When’s the last time you changed them?”
Melanie has opened her mouth to offer another glib ‘uh-huh’, but stops when the question actually rings reasonable. “Uh…”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”
Bennett motions for her to show him her wrist; Melanie sighs with a deliberate air of melodrama, and then concedes. To his credit, he does do his best to unwrap the bandages as gently as possible, but there’s just no helping it: Melanie grimaces, cringes every now and then until the last of the cloth is pulled away, skin raw from the unwrapping and the exposure to air for the first time in days.
“Holy fuck, Mel.”
Melanie’s eyes are closed. “Should I look?”
“Yes, Melanie, look. Look upon your sins.”
She cracks an eye again, and makes a face when she sees the mess of red and yellow and white and black. The burn is a lot worse than when she’d last taken a look at it- and yeah, that was quite a while ago, because when something as relatively trivial as a burn isn’t hurting that badly it becomes an out of sight, out of mind situation. Melanie wears many, many hats on Snowpiercer, and it is unbelievably easy to become distracted from anything that is not a matter of life and death.
That being said, she’s smart enough not to say it out loud. Melanie knows Bennett well enough to know that his response will be “It is absolutely a matter of life and death.”
“What even happened here?”
“I was tweaking a pipe, lost my grip, and…” Melanie shrugs. “That’s what happens when you smack your wrist against a pipe full of boiling hot water.”
“No, this is what happens when you smack your wrist against a pipe full of boiling hot water and then refuse to seek any sort of medical attention for it.” Bennett wrinkles his nose. “You’re probably going to need a full course of antibiotics for this. It’s pretty rank, Mel.”
He’s right. He’s absolutely right, because even now Melanie can smell the faint stench of infection rising from her wrist. The burn was not too deep, but it had spread across quite a bit of skin. Now that she pays attention to it, it is throbbing and pulsing with an unpleasant heat. Leaving it any longer will be pushing her luck in a way that even Melanie finds risky.
“Sure.”
“I’ll hogtie you, drag you along the sub-levels until we get to the nearest infirmary. You will not escape me.”
Melanie sticks her tongue out at him, partly because she has too much pride to admit that he’s right, but also because he’s the only person alive now that she allows this sort of behavior around. Ruth would probably have three strokes if Melanie ever stuck her tongue out at her. “Fine, I’ll go when we trade off.”
“Alright then, let’s trade-off.”
Melanie groans. “I just sat down. Now I’ve got to put the uniform on-”
“You do not have to put the Hospitality uniform back on just to walk to the infirmary.”
“It’s about the image, Bennett.”
“Think your ‘image’ will suffer if you’re missing a hand, Melanie?”
They stare at each other for a long moment, a silent showdown.
“Take the sub-levels; almost no one will see you. I’ll keep the chair warm until you get back.”
Melanie’s eyes roll shut. “Fine.”
“Thank you.”
She makes a real show of hauling herself out of the chair, drawing out her efforts with languid, low-energy movements. Once she’s standing, Melanie starts to amble towards the door, takes her sweet time doing it too- and then an arm catches her around the waist, and a face presses into the space between her neck and shoulder. She sighs, but then reaches her uninjured hand up, cranes it behind her to scratch through his hair.
“You have the train,” she mumbles.
“Just until you get back,” Bennett says, lips brushing against her ear and jaw.
“Just until I get back.”
-End