Chapter 13: The Reading Lamp Stayed On Through The Worst Inspection
The reading lamp threw a narrow yellow circle across the bed, leaving the rest of the room in shadow. I kept it on. The darkness had made the dressing look like an answer before; under the lamp, it became a question I could not avoid.
Liam lay still while I loosened the tape. His right leg remained fixed in its metal frame, rods and pins holding the injured limb above the mattress. The bruises along his jaw and neck had faded toward yellow and purple, but his face was damp with sweat. He watched my hands instead of the wound, as if my fingers were the greater threat.
I pulled the first layer away slowly. The gauze had adhered in places. When it lifted, a thin line of fresh red followed it, bright against the older brown staining. The smell reached me a moment later—sweet, foul, and heavy beneath the sharper scent of antiseptic.
I set the removed dressing on a clean pad beside me rather than discarding it. I needed to see how much had soaked through and where. The center was wet with new fluid. The outer edges were stiff with what had dried there. None of it belonged under a fresh covering without being examined.
Liam's hand moved against the sheet.
I stopped before he could reach for me. His fingers tightened, then remained suspended between us. The hostility in his pale blue eyes had not lessened. It had changed shape. He no longer looked only as if he wanted me gone. He looked as if he understood that he needed my hands and hated the fact.
I put on sterile gloves and raised the lamp closer. The skin around the opening was red and swollen. Along one side, the edges had turned a dull gray-brown instead of the angry pink of healthy tissue. Small areas looked flattened and lifeless. The necrotic tissue did not announce itself dramatically; it sat there, quiet and unmistakable, refusing to be mistaken for ordinary healing.
I checked the surrounding skin with the back of my gloved fingers. Heat spread beyond the dressing line. I did not press into the wound. There was no reason to make pain another form of measurement when the evidence was already in front of me.
His breathing became shallow. The oxygen concentrator worked steadily nearby, its mechanical hum filling the silence between us. I reached for the morphine syringe and held it where he could see it, then set it back down without using it. The immediate task was cleaning. Sedation could blur the changes I needed to observe, and I could not afford to lose the sequence.
I used sterile fluid in small amounts, letting it run across the surface rather than forcing anything deeper. Brown residue loosened first. Then the red fluid gathered and slipped into the absorbent pads. I changed them repeatedly, counting each one in my head. The wound did not suddenly improve. It revealed more of itself.
Liam's hand closed around the sheet. His knuckles paled. I continued.
When the surface was as clean as I could make it without cutting or probing, I placed fresh sterile material over the opening and secured it without sealing the swollen skin too tightly. I left room for drainage. The discarded dressings, the stained pads, and the times written on the care sheet remained together on the bedside table.
That record mattered. So did the wound itself. I would not let either be hidden beneath a neat bandage.
May you like
I stripped off the gloves and looked at him. The lamp caught the sweat at his temple and the exhaustion beneath his eyes. The immediate bleeding had slowed, but the discolored edges remained. The necrotic tissue remained. Nothing about the dressing changed what waited underneath it.
I wrote the findings down while they were still exact. Then I kept the lamp burning over the bed, because the next decision would have to begin with what we had both seen.
