Nolan shakes his head. “She needs to be seen to as well.”
“Are you also injured?” asks the healer.
I shake my head, my mouth groping for words I don’t know how to communicate.
“No. She went into labor,” Nolan says.
The healer looks around. “Is there a child in this house that needs to be seen to as well?”
When Nolan and I don’t answer, just stare blankly at the floor, the healer grunts awkwardly. “Very well. I’m sorry for your loss. For the pain you’ve endured tonight.”
The words mean nothing to me. Slip right over my icy heart. The healer, Nolan, and I file back into the living room so he can examine me on the couch.
The process of examining me is clinical, violating, but I don’t have the energy to argue. And besides, it’s not the healer’s fault that processes like these feel perverse to me.
When he has decided that I need no stitches, he leaves me and pulls Nolan aside, whispering something to him. If it’s anything like the way the healer used to speak to my father whenever my mother fell sick, I imagine he’s talking about me as if I’m a child.
But who am I to argue with that notion at this point?
I catch a few words here and there—warnings to Nolan. That he’s to watch for signs of me breaking. Of my mental state unraveling.
I wonder what it’s like for Nolan to hear this after he, too, has lost his child. I wonder what it’s like to be told to be the strong one when it was my weakness that got us into this situation in the first place.
Eventually, the healer leaves. Nolan lies on the floor on a pallet beside me. Throughout the night, there’s no evidence that either of us sleeps.
When the healerreturns in the morning, he informs us that Charlie’s condition is stable enough for him to operate. He lets none of us remain in the room except for Maddox, as he assumes Maddox is Charlie’s husband.
Maddox goes to argue, but Nolan just shakes his head, and Maddox clamps his mouth shut.
After the procedure, Nolan and I are called back in. Maddox is holding a cloth in his hand. Inside is the bullet that had pierced Charlie. I would’ve expected it to be spherical, like it was when she loaded the pistol. Instead, it’s bent, dented, and there even seems to be a part that splintered off.
“I don’t see the splinter,” I say.
“He wasn’t able to remove all of it,” explains Maddox, still staring at the marred bullet.
“She’s lucky,” says the healer, cleaning the blood off his hands into a water basin.
I look at Charlie, who doesn’t look lucky at all. There’s still a sheen of sweat on her forehead, and her clothes are drenched through.
The healer tells me he has assistants waiting outside who will help change her. He doesn’t want us disturbing the wound by moving her too abruptly.
“She’s going to be all right?” I ask.
The healer dries his hands off from where he’s been washing them in a basin, then rubs the back of his neck. “It’s difficult to say in these situations. The bullet—as you call it—skimmed past any vital organs. I can’t say whether she’ll face infection. That’s our main concern at the moment.”
He hands Maddox a set of vials.
“This one twice a day. This one three times. This one, just as needed,” he says, indicating each with a pointed finger. “They should help with the infection—or at least attempt to.”
I don’t like the lack of confidence in his voice.
“And this one’s for pain,” the healer adds, grabbing another vial from his kit.
“Can you overdo that one?” asks Maddox.
“Depends on how much pain she’s in. And whether infection sets in,” says the healer.
The three of us exchange grim looks, understanding the healer’s unspoken sentiment.
