"I'm so sorry." She mumbled the words through the knot in her throat. The last thing she wanted was to hurt him worse.
She took more care removing the undershirt, its fabric just as soaked through as the outer garment. Once she pulled it off, she tried not to look at his skin as she reached for the dry shirt.
But with her senses so alive, she couldn't stop herself. Even from the back, his muscles flexed with every shift of his movement. His torso tapered to a lean waist. This man was in the peak of condition. In his prime, despite the limp that he didn't let hold him back.
She forced herself to focus on not scraping the side of his head as she pulled this new shirt in place. At last, she had him ready to lie down again. "Before you rest, let me move your bed underneath you."
"Trousers wet." He sat with his head lolling forward and his shoulders slumped.
She pulled one end of his bed pallet to where he could lay back on it. "They'll have to stay wet. But we need to get you warm and wrapped up. Can you scoot over onto this?"
As he lifted himself over, she helped shift his injured right leg. He sucked in a sharp breath but didn't cry out this time.
Still, when he slumped back to lie on the blanket, what color had returned to his face before now leached out.
He met her gaze. "You're going to need to cut through both layers of pants, all the way up to the knee. See how the swelling is. See if the bone broke through. It needs to be splinted, but we might have to set it first."
The color of her own face must match his. Set his broken leg? Her heart pounded, and her breaths came in tiny shards.
"Please, Katie." His gaze turned earnest, but then another coughing fit broke through his focus, and he turned aside as his shoulders shook.
With her own chest aching, she moved to her carpet bag and pulled out Neil's hunting knife. The blade should be sharp enough to slice the fabric easily. But first, she should pile blankets on Aaron’s upper half so he could start to get warm.
She gathered the extra covers, then all of her own quilts. As she passed by Sarah's crate, her daughter stared up at her, as though questioning what was happening. "We have to get Aaron warm." She kept her voice low. "Keep praying for him." A reminder to herself, of course.
God, help Aaron. Take away his pain. Show me what to do for him.
As she spread the blankets over Aaron, he grabbed them and pulled them close to his shivering body. "Th-thank you."
She moved to his leg and knelt, taking up the knife again. "I'm going to cut your trouser leg now. I'll be careful."
He didn't answer, so she grasped the hem and adjusted her hold on the knife. The blade was long and thick, which made the work awkward. But once she'd pierced the fabric the first time, she used a sawing motion to work her way up the leg. As he'd said, a pair of woolen underpants lay beneath, just as wet as all the other garments had been.
Once she'd cut the outer layer to his knee, she started on the next. These fit his leg much closer, but she pulled them out as much as she could to keep from slicing his skin.
As she cut, she tried to make out anything unusual on his leg beneath. The limb was far more substantial than she'd expected. No puny leg this. Yet was that all muscle, or swelling from his injury too?
Once she finished slicing the fabric to the same place as the other, she laid down the knife and tugged both sides apart. Her chest tightened.
She could more clearly see the definition of his calf, but near the base of the thicker muscle, another puffiness rose higher than the rest.
"Do you see the bone?" Aaron's voice rasped, but at least it didn't tremble any longer, though his body still shook.
"There's no bone protruding. There's some swelling though. Right here." She touched a light finger to the place.
His leg jerked. "That's the spot. There’s no break in the skin?"
She moved her head to see underneath. "No." That was good, right?
"Is there a bend or a twist in the leg? Does it look crooked?"
She rose up on her knees so she could see from the top down. "I don't…think so. It's hard to know for sure with the swelling, but the other side looks straight."
He released a long breath. "Maybe it doesn't need setting then. Might be just a crack. But we need to splint and wrap it to keep the crack from spreading."
She blew out her own spent air, forcing out her tension with it. "All right."
Surely she could do that. For Aaron, she would do anything.
