Chapter 11: The Bruises Faded While The Wound Turned Worse
By late morning, the bruises along Liam’s jaw had changed again. The deep purple had thinned into uneven yellow and brown, like old paint drying at the edges. The discoloration beneath his neck was fading too. It made his face look less damaged in the cold light from the tall windows, and for a moment the improvement tried to persuade me that the rest of him might be following.
Then I lifted the edge of the abdominal dressing.
The smell reached me first. Sweet and foul beneath the antiseptic, stronger than it had been during the night. I kept my breathing shallow and looked closely before touching anything. The skin around the wound remained red and swollen. Along one side, the edges had darkened. A thin line of wet fluid had collected beneath the dressing, carrying fresh red through the older brown stains.
Liam watched me from the massive bed. His pale blue eyes moved from my hands to my face, waiting for a verdict I was not willing to give him.
The bruises were healing because bruises could heal while a deeper problem continued underneath. I had seen that kind of false reassurance before. A surface could calm while the body spent everything it had fighting somewhere else.
I set the clean supplies beside me and pulled on sterile gloves. The snap of the nitrile sounded too loud in the room.
“I’m changing it,” I said.
The words came out before I could stop them. They were not an explanation or an argument, but they still felt like a challenge. Liam’s fingers tightened against the sheet. The metal rods of the external fixator rested beside his right leg, rigid and bright under the weak lamp. That injury had been secured by hardware. The wound in his abdomen had only gauze, tape, and his willingness to let me near it.
I chose the wound.
I worked slowly, peeling away the dressing in small sections. Liam’s breathing changed when the adhesive pulled at his skin. The oxygen concentrator continued its steady mechanical hum, filling the pauses between us. I stopped whenever his body tensed, not because I was asking permission, but because a sudden movement could tear tissue that already looked fragile.
Under the dressing, the exposed skin was more inflamed than before. The center looked wet and angry. At the lower edge, a patch of tissue had lost its healthy color. I did not touch it until I had cleaned around it. The gauze picked up fluid in rusty streaks, then brighter red when I reached the tender border.
Liam turned his head slightly toward the window. The fading marks on his jaw were easier to see from that angle. They might have comforted someone who wanted to believe recovery was simple. I watched them for only a second before returning my attention to his abdomen.
I measured what I could without a monitor, noting the heat in his skin, the sweat gathering near his temple, the way his strength seemed to disappear whenever the cleaning reached the discolored edge. I kept the morphine syringe within reach but did not use it. Pain mattered, but it could not become a curtain between me and the wound.
When I finished, I laid fresh gauze over the opening and secured it carefully. The clean dressing looked almost absurd against the damaged skin, too white and orderly to belong there.
Liam’s eyes came back to me.
May you like
I did not tell him that his face looked better. I did not let the fading bruises become evidence of anything except fading bruises. I gathered the stained materials into the disposal bag and sealed it, leaving the room with the infection still unresolved and the next change already waiting.
For the first time, his cooperation felt less like a condition of the job than part of the treatment itself. I needed his body still, his strength conserved, and his resistance narrowed to something I could manage. The crisis had become smaller in one sense—one wound, one dressing, one decision at a time—and more dangerous in every other.
