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The River Camp, autumn, Third Age 2981
She finally cut deeply enough to scare herself, one day. The edges white, something soft and strange-colored bulging up, and then the blood started and wouldn’t staunch.
She didn’t know why she did it, except that it was the only thing that hedged back the creeping unease that grew over her spirit now like an ivy. Always with her, winding those tendrils a little deeper into the cracks. Sometimes she just had to dig them out with a knife. The stinging cleared the cloud for a while, and cleaning up after made her feel like maybe other things would start to heal for those little ministrations.
Her uncle, whom she lived with now, didn’t know about it. Her mother would have helped her, but it had only started since…
She could have gone down to the apothecary on Second Street instead, but the proprietor kept leeches in a jar behind the counter and they made her stomach churn. She used to go there for the tonics her mother had wanted. She had never been to the Ranger’s hospital compound but it wouldn’t stop bleeding, even after an hour, and finally she scraped up her courage and made up her mind. She knew her folk were welcome to take their troubles there.
An Elf-woman behind the counter smiled kindly and bade her wait in the tented entrance and said if it wasn’t urgent someone would be with her in a few minutes.
It wasn’t urgent. Wasn’t even worth being here. There was a handful of other people waiting, old soldiers, mostly, and a woman with a sick baby; no one would know the difference if she just slipped away…
“You can come with me, now,” said the Elf-woman.
She waited alone for a while in a screened-over alcove. It felt private enough, but she could hear the sounds of people going back and forth beyond the curtain.
Finally the screen pulled aside and someone came in around it. A man, that was good, she supposed. Less prone to scoldings and hysterics. Elvish—even less so. Wearing grey Ranger fatigues… well, maybe he wouldn’t notice anything but the one that was bleeding. Soldiers seemed straightforward that way.
“Hullo,” said this person, as he took the other seat across the alcove. “I’m Elrohir. What’s your name?”
“Sammariel.”
“Hi, Sammariel.”
“Hello.” She paused. “It’s Sam, actually.”
“Hi, Sam.”
“Hi.”
She fiddled with her fraying skirt-pocket. What was she doing here? She had always taken care of them herself, when that sated feeling finally came and she could be done for a while. Sponge them off and cover them up. Watch them scab over, day by day. Surely this one would be no different, if she gave it long enough…
When she dared to look up his dark head was tipped a little, his keen eyes steady on her. “You need to understand that whatever you have to tell me in here will stay between us. Do you know that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Elrohir is fine.”
“Elrohir.”
She knew there was not a single spare moment in any of the lives of the workers here, or anywhere else in the River Camp, for that matter. The lot of them scratching and scraping to keep their own families alive. The great tent city, and now winter coming again. Even so he did not look the slightest bit impatient, but sat observing her easily, absently twisting the slender gold ring on his forefinger so the engraving faced up again.
“You are married?” she heard herself ask.
“I am indeed.”
“Do you have children?”
“Someday, One willing. A mansionful.”
She smiled a little.
“When I have them, I hope they’ll be able to ask for help, if ever they need it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Elrohir.”
“Elrohir. I… cut myself.”
“Badly?”
“Well, I’m here.”
“You’re here.”
Pause.
“Should we have a look?”
He would see the old markings, all there in a row.
She whispered, “I am afraid to show you.”
“Sam. Sweetie. Look at me.”
She did. His eyes were very gentle.
“I have been a healer for an Age now. Wars, and the ruins of wars. Do you think I will be shocked to see whatever you have brought here?”
She shook her head.
“I’ll go find someone else, if that’d be easier for you.”
She shook it again, and said, “It will not stop bleeding.”
“Then you need to let me see it, kiddo.”
She pulled her skirt up, slowly, as he dragged his chair closer across the board floor. She could pretend the others weren’t there as clearly as if they were inked in red and white across her skin. But only as the crude little bandage edged into view, soaked through for the third time, did his hand come hovering over.
“May I touch you?”
“Yes.”
He peeled up the dressing. It was straight across the top of her thigh, a perfect pristine slice. Like how you put a deep vent in a loaf of bread for the oven. The sides of it sagging away from each other. He caught a runnel down the side with the corner of the cloth, and then covered it again.
“Here’s the deal, pal,” he said, his hand pressing firmly over it and his eyes holding hers the same way. “This needs stitched up, okay?”
“Okay.”
“We’ll get it nice and numb first.”
“’Kay.”
“Can you hold this here a minute? Like the lid on a hornet jar, good and tight. I’ll be back in minute.”
He was, with a handful of accoutrements, a clear bottle under his arm. All of this he heaved onto the wheeled stand in the corner. He snagged thin blue gloves from a box on the counter and patted the table and said, “Alright, this’ll be easiest for both of us if you climb up here and lie back.”
The pillow was thin and smelled like cleaning spirits. She pushed up on her elbow. “Can I watch?”
“If you want to. Don’t faint on me.”
“I won’t.”
He nudged a towel against her hip. “Here, we’ll put this under to soak up the runoff.”
He worked the mechanism on the chair-stem until it was more the height of a stool and rolled it up along the table and sat and pulled the stand close. On the tray was a fat swab standing in a dish of dark brown liquid and a slim syringe already drawn up with clear fluid. The swab came first, all around the edges of the wound, coloring it yellow.
He traded swab for syringe and tossed the needle-cap onto the tray. “Alright, least fun part.”
It was not fun. By now the warm haze that made stinging things more tolerable had retreated, and the needle going in made her pack her hand over her eyes and lean back against the pillow. It burned and burned, and then it didn’t, and she dared to look again. In time to see him put the needle straight into the gape, and the sight made her a little lightheaded, even though she couldn’t feel it. Still, she had said she would not faint.
“Still with me?”
“Yep.”
“You ever had stitches before?”
“Nope.”
“Oh, it’s a party. Can you feel that?”
“Not a thing.”
“Good.”
The towel was soaked when he finished flushing the wound out. He used half the bottle he had brought, at least, and then heaved the sopping towel away into a bin. He was busy for a while over the stand with paper packets and new, white gloves and silver instruments, while she laid her head back for a minute, feeling strangely sleepy.
When he straightened it was with a little scissor with loops for ends strung over his gloved fingers, a curved, floss-threaded needle bitten in its jaws. She sat up again to see.
“Now what, just like a hole in a shirt?”
“Not far from it. See here, where the edges are white? That means it’s cut down through the dermis, or the deep layer of the skin. And here this bit of yellow?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Hey, you said you wanted to watch…”
“I do! What’s the yellow?”
“It’s called adipose. Fatty tissue.”
“Fatty?!”
He laughed at her, a little. “Settle down, we all have it. If you didn’t you’d freeze on a nice day, or starve to death. But the fact that you can see it isn’t too good, so we’ll tuck it back down where it belongs.”
Watching the curved needle go in without feeling it was strange. The first stitch drew the edges together right in the center, and the yellow mostly disappeared. He didn’t actually sew like a seamstress, but nipped the thread off and tied it with the forceps, three quick wraps, and again, and again. Tug the knot to one side so it didn’t sit right over the wound.
Start again. The way he pinched up the edge of it in the mouth of the forceps was gross, but she saw why he had to, to make sure the needle came out the right place. Another stitch. His hands so quick. All along the length of it, alternating sides. Eighteen altogether, she counted, and he tied the last one and dropped his tools on the tray.
“You’re pretty good at that,” she said.
“Thank you. I have worked hard to become so.”
“I might lie down a minute, now.”
“You go right ahead.”
His fingers, now free of the bloody glove, pressed lightly into her wrist.
“You doing okay?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“I’m going to cover this up now, alright?”
“Alright.”
“Tomorrow I want you to look at it. It’ll be red and puffy, right here around the sutures, that’s normal. But you keep an eye on it. If the red starts to spread, or it starts to leak anything yellow-colored, or if you start feeling like you’re getting sick, you get your butt back in here, you hear me?”
“I will.”
“Good girl. And stay out of the bath in the meantime, okay? Showers are fine, just don’t soak it in still water. In about ten days you come in and we’ll get them out for you.”
“Okay.”
“Do you know if you’ve ever had a tetanus shot?”
“I don’t know what that is.”
“Alright, we’ll take care of that too before you leave.”
He busied himself for a while with ointment and gauze pads and tape.
“Sam?”
“Elrohir?”
“You have anyone you can talk to, about this?”
The floor dropped out of her stomach. What had she thought, that he hadn’t noticed? The ladder of scars to the top of her knee?
“I…”
Talk to? Mother was gone. The nightmares were not. She’d lived in a tent for six months now, with an old man who was so equally wrecked by what had brought them there, she felt like another one of his ghosts. Like she could walk right through him, and all he would feel was the vapor of her passing. So much work to do she should be exhausted, but still she could not rest, so she sat awake and bled.
Her hands were shaking. “No.”
“Okay. Okay. Hey…”
His hand was lean and brown and did not shake as it pressed down over hers. When it lifted a minute or two later, she felt suddenly like she wanted to sleep. Really sleep. The way you feel when you’re little and lay in a sunny spot in the middle of the afternoon. Like all your dreams will be filled with dust and honey. Not the sick, cloying, sandy-eyed exhaustion that drags you right under, ready or not.
Peaceful drowsiness.
“It’s been a long time since you’ve slept well, hasn’t it, sis.”
A long time. Yes.
“Why don’t you get up, that’s not the best place for it. I’d hate if you rolled off on the floor.”
She sat on the edge of the table while he ducked out one final time for another syringe, another needle, another pinch high on her arm.
Then she put her feet on the floor and followed him out to a far corner of the tent-compound where he pulled back a curtain to reveal a row of low cots, military-issue and likely hard as rocks. Someone was sleeping out of sight under a thin blanket on the one nearest the wall. It all looked quiet and magnificent.
“You’re here by yourself so I’m assuming you already took care of it, but do I need to let anyone know where you are?”
“It’s fine.”
“No one will wake you here. The nightmares won’t, either.”
“How can you know that.”
He pulled the curtain closed and said through the last gap on his way out, “Those elves, you know, they’re full of little tricks. Go to bed. Someone will be here when you wake up.”
Someone was, another medic, a woman who walked home with her. That night when she readied for bed—that sweet natural weariness coming over her spirit again—she hung up her skirt and found in the pocket a note in a clear hand: You know where to come, if you need to talk. I’m here through the end of the Fading. Or if you want a second opinion, this lady is pretty good with your sort of trouble. She’s a friend, don’t be afraid to look her up if things get too hard to handle.
They used a certain system, this tent-city, its narrow streets, so they could find one another, and pass on their correspondence. Addresses, you might call them, and for a copper the pigeon-boys would carry your letters around.
Still, there was none under the name he had written. Didn’t need to be. Everyone knew where the families of the Peredhil resided.