“Get over here and help me with this,” he said, sending a frown her way. “I tried my best before but I’m not used to this and it’s a bit of trouble for me.”
Her stomach crawled at the thought of nearing him, but she didn’t have other options besides following his instructions for now. Slowly, she pushed herself off the couch, feeling relief when she didn’t immediately stumble from weakness in her body. It looked like she’d recovered from the shock he’d given her earlier. When she walked the few steps to him, though, she noticed that her legs, her entire body, still trembled a little.
Maybe not completely back to normal yet.
She would also have to worry about if he would feed her or not. For the moment, the most important thing to do was conserve energy in case something happened.
So much to worry over…
She kept as much space between them as possible, but when she sat gingerly down on the love seat, she had to be right next to him. Not only because the seat wasn’t nearly as big as the couch, but also because if she was going to be treating his shoulder, she would need to touch him.
Camila would just have to grit her teeth and bear it.
“There should be everything you need in there,” he said, handing the bag over to her. “Just wipe the wound and bandage it.”
She was glad when Adrien faced away from her, allowing her to reach out and start to unwind the bandages he’d wrapped over the wound. She had to tug carefully because the bandage was thick with congealing blood. Just like the jacket, when she got down to the skin, the bandage separated wetly from his skin. With a grimace, she let it drop to the floor.
He’ll probably make me clean that up later.
Inside the bag, she found some wet wipes, alcohol free, and she pulled out a couple to start wiping the blood around the wound, without coming close to touching it just yet. Several bloody wipes dropped onto the floor before she thought it looked clean enough.
“Could you talk?” Adrien said, voice sounding almost snappish, glancing over at her. “What exactly are you doing over there? Don’t think that you can do something stupid just because I’m not looking.”
Camila rubbed her lips together, for the ninth time rearranging the words that wanted to come out of her mouth. This time, though, because he had said it directly, she had to speak. He was probably worried she would try to incapacitate him, maybe stab into the wound with something to hurt him. It at least proved to her that he wasn’t entirely crazy, he was still being wary of her, but that didn’t make her happy at all.
“I’ve never done something like this before,” she admitted. “I mean, I’ve cleaned some scrapes here and there, small accidents when I was out hiking, but I’ve never cleaned out a bullet wound before.”
“It’s pretty much the same thing,” he said dismissively.
Uh, it’s really not,she thought.
“Just clean it up properly and wrap it, like I did before. It’ll be fine, eventually.”
Camila didn’t argue with him. She wasn’t worried about him or anything, but if he hurt and he got irritable because of it and started taking it out on her… she was worried because she was like that, too. When she knocked her knee, or elbow, or toes or fingers somewhere, or got any sort of injury that made her feel pain without being too serious, she had little patience for dealing with others. In most cases, she broke out in colorful curses, even though they weren’t like her.
So even though she didn’t want to, because seeing him in pain might help some of the anger she felt behind all the fear, she couldn’t try to deliberately hurt him.
Leaning closer, Camila checked out the wound. It was a clean entry. He didn’t have any other bloody patches, and the wound didn’t look disturbing. She didn’t see an exit hole. He was probably still carrying the bullet.
“Shouldn’t you have the bullet taken out first?” she asked, keeping her voice quiet. “I don’t think it’s something I can do. I don’t think there’s even the supplies here…”
“I didn’t ask you to remove the bullet,” he said, sounding vaguely annoyed. “Just clean it up and bandage it. Sometimes, wounds close around bullets and it doesn’t kill you, you know? It’ll be fine.”
She was tempted to just take his word for it, but…
“It will probably get infected if you don’t go to a hospital,” she warned. “First aid isn’t actually a replacement for seeing a real doctor or nurse, and neither of us have experience with this kind of thing.”
“Just shut up and do it already,” he demanded, shooting her a glare. “I wanted you to talk, but don’t run your mouth, Camila, or you’ll annoy me.”
She kept her mouth shut, still hesitating.
He noticed and it only made him more annoyed. “If you think it’s a risk then just make sure it doesn’t happen,” he said. “You should know how to do that much, right?”
Camila frowned, before smoothing her forehead again. If he wanted her to do something, then she was going to. Screw whatever she’d thought before, if he wasn’t going to listen to reason, then fine. She was only worried about him making it her business, but he was making her do this.
In the bag, there was a silver flask. She knew what she was looking at wasn’t a proper first aid kit, it was something someone had thrown together, so there was a high chance the flask held alcohol, and not the medical kind. Sure enough, when she opened it, a strong smell came out of it. She wasn’t so familiar with alcohol to be able to tell what it was, it smelled way stronger than beet.
Feeling a little vindictive, she brought the flask up to his shoulder, and poured the alcohol directly into the wound.