Promised Read Free Page B

cut away the looser fabric, then used a sponge to wet the caked blood and carefully peel the rest away. The wound was ten centimeters long, and deep, scraping along his lowest rib. The edges were ragged and pink with infection.
    â€œBad, huh?” Dinah asked.
    â€œYes.” Gaia glanced at her brother’s face, considering carefully. Jack was out cold.
    In the past year, there had been dozens of times when a medical situation needed more expertise than she had, and she’d come up with a policy. She was brutally honest, always, with her patient, and she let the patient decide what she would try. Sometimes it had been deemed best to do nothing, and the patient had died. Other times, she had done nothing, and the patient’s body had healed itself. Most times, the patients had wanted her to try cleaning, stitches, compresses. Once she’d amputated a man’s crushed hand, and he’d survived. But digging around in people was not something she excelled at, and she was loath to do it without their consent.
    â€œAny ideas?” Gaia asked Dinah.
    Dinah left Angie for a moment and came nearer, holding her braid back as she leaned over Jack’s wound. “It isn’t bleeding too badly anymore,” she observed.
    Gaia narrowed her eyes as she inspected the wound again. “I’m going to irrigate it.” She poured some of the boiled water into a separate bowl, dropping in three leaves of cohosh and a twig of witch hazel. She swirled it to let it cool before she poured half of the solution into Jack’s wound. It bubbled a little coming out.
    â€œThat can’t be good,” Gaia muttered.
    With her scalpel she evened off the roughest edges of the wound, then stretched the opening a bit wider, trying to see further in. A black, triangular sliver of knife tip was briefly visible in the deepest layer of the cut before oozing blood obscured it.
    Gaia worked carefully with her tweezers to extricate the sliver, then irrigated the wound repeatedly until the bubbling stopped and the water washed out smoothly. She put in a drain, drew the muscle tissue together again, and wrapped a bandage to keep the wound closed. She wished they had some antibiotics.
    â€œWhat’s your brother like?” Dinah asked when Gaia at last sat back.
    â€œI hardly know him,” Gaia said. She glanced over to see Dinah had finished with Angie’s hand. “We’ve only talked a few times. I know he’s brave, though, and selfless. He saved me from the Bastion once. He was an Enclave guard, like Leon.”
    â€œHow old is he?”
    Gaia calculated. “Twenty, now. Leon’s age. Why?”
    Dinah was regarding him thoughtfully. “He just looks older.”
    Gaia thoughtfully regarded her brother’s face, seeing it faintly flushed in the firelight, his lips dry and cracked. Her gaze lingered over the planes of his face, seeking and finding a resemblance to her mother in the lines of his eyebrows and the curves of his closed eyelids.
    â€œIt’s going to be interesting, meeting some new men,” Dinah said.
    Gaia glanced up. “You’ve never had a shortage of men liking you.”
    â€œDoesn’t mean I’m not curious,” Dinah said.
    â€œIt isn’t going to be easy,” Gaia said. “Our women won’t be special in Wharfton the way they’re used to. It’s going to be an adjustment.”
    â€œI’m not worried.”
    Gaia took a second look at her friend, and guessed she was probably right to be confident. Certain women would always be prized, no matter what society they landed in, and Dinah was lively, smart, and uncommonly pretty. What Gaia was going to miss was the closeness she had with her women friends in Sylum. She missed Taja and Peony, who had stayed behind with their families in Sylum. Already, with the responsibilities of the exodus, Gaia saw little of her nearest friends, like Josephine, and she hoped she