Ink Stained

77: for you*

She stepped back and turned around, searching. She went over to a sink on the other side of the room and washed her hands as fast as she could, trying not to let her emotions overcome her as she glanced down at her pyjamas and dully realized that she'd need to wash them soon if she didn't want the blood to stick. She hated that she already knew and could perfectly imagine the soapy water turning pink, then red, with blood that was not her own.

She eyed the cabinet propped up against the wall beside the sink as she scrubbed at her hands, harder than was entirely necessary. Kagetora might not have been lying about the poison wearing off after an hour, but if the wound got infected because she was careless, things would get complicated.

Once she dried her hands on the clean white towel next to the sink, she stepped to the side and yanked the doors open, flinching a little when they banged loudly against the tables set on either side of the cabinet. She pulled out more gauze than she thought she needed, plenty of cotton wool, antiseptic, iodine, a curving needle and wiry thread specifically for stitching up open wounds, and put it all out on a metal bowl set on the sink. She didn't think she would actually need all of it, but it was better to prepare it in case she did.

She looked back in the cabinet and pulled out another bowl, the metal clattering on the sink as she grabbed a clear plastic squeeze bottle that was filled with what she hoped was distilled water, and squirted it into the bowl. She kept on until the bowl was three-quarters full of water before setting the bottle aside and took it back to the bed Shin lay on.

She cast a worried glance over him, noting his utter stillness. He was staring fixedly at the ceiling, but, "Not moving helps with the pain."

"Oh," she mumbled, carefully putting the bowl on the small bedside table. "But, um...I need you to take your shirt off."

"Of course." He groaned as he started to lift himself up off the bed.

She put her arms around his shoulders as she tried her best to keep him from moving more than was necessary. Once he was semi-upright she quickly pulled his shirt off, discarding it in the waste basket at the foot of the bed before returning to him and helping him lay down again. He inhaled sharply and she froze, wondering if she'd done something wrong. When he finally let himself relax back on the bed, she realized it must've been the poison doing its treacherous work inside him.

She quickly went for the second metal bowl and brought it back, setting it on the table beside the first. As an afterthought she rushed back, washed her hands again, and took out another bowl and a pair of latex gloves, then returned to Shin, putting it on the bedside table on the other side of the bed. She would need somewhere to put the bloodied wads of cotton wool while she cleaned the blood away.

She slipped on the gloves and knelt on the bed by his side, glancing at him to check that he was still awake. She didn't know if it would be okay to let him sleep. Kanou had never mentioned if anything bad could happen in situations like these. You weren't supposed to let a person sleep if they had a concussion, right?

He wasn't unconscious. He was still staring at the ceiling unseeingly, chest rising and falling slowly as he tried to control his breathing, control the pain.

"Okay," she said, her voice tremulous with nervousness. "I'm going to clean the blood away now."

Shin didn't say anything, but she saw the slight movement of his head. She assumed it was a nod for her to go ahead. Slowly, she saturated a ball of cotton wool in the distilled water and started dabbing it on the wound, wiping away the blood without aggravating the torn flesh or making it more painful than it needed to be for him. Once all the blood had been cleaned away, she saw that the wound was clean, and not as deep as she'd feared it might be.