“Feeling humble today?” Lochlan elbowed me in the ribs, right over the injury.
Unbidden, a cry of pain escaped from my lips. I cut the noise short, clamping a hand over my mouth and squeezing my eyes shut.
“Ha! You sounded like a girl.” He patted my shoulder jovially as I righted myself, clutching at my torso and trying to hide the pain I was in. “Don’t worry, your voice will change soon enough.” He stopped and looked closely at me. “Are you sure you’re all right? You look very pale.”
“I’m fine.” I tried to pitch my voice as low as possible, which made Lochlan smile.
“No need to force your voice down, Gil. Time does that on its own. We’ve all been there.” He continued to tramp through thewoods, taking on the bulk of the work pulling the cart. It was all I could do to keep up. The handcart jolted to a halt.
“Stupid rocks,” Lochlan muttered, going back to look at what had obstructed the path.
The moment he was preoccupied, I snuck my hand under the thick rawhide jacket again to test my tunic beneath.
It was soaked.
My hand came away smeared with blood again, which I hastily wiped on my brown breeches. Lochlan couldn’t know. The skin would mend in time. I tugged the jacket lower to hide the shirt’s hem as Lochlan came back, saying something about too many rocks on the path. I just needed to get back to the cottage and have some time alone to tend to my side. We continued on, but the longer I walked, the more light-headed I became and I began to stagger. Nausea caused my head to swim, and my thoughts became slow and sluggish.
“Gil? Gil!” Lochlan’s voice rose to penetrate my stupor. “Can you hear me?”
Feeling like I was moving in slow motion, I tried to nod and nearly fell over. His gaze snapped down to my waist. My tunic had come untucked from my breeches, and the telltale crimson stained the fabric.
“Hold on,” Lochlan said, lifting the thick jacket to expose my shirt underneath. “You’ve lost a good amount of blood here. You must’ve gotten scraped in that pipe. Why didn’t you mention it?”
“It’s nothing.” It was harder to form words than normal. My breath came in short, tight bursts. “A little blood doesn’t bother me. It’s not that bad.”
“Prove it. Take the jacket off.”
Glad he hadn’t asked for the whole shirt and confident that my chest wrappings would hide my faint curves, I shrugged off the jacket and felt my heart drop down to my toes as I lookedat the stained shirt. Everything from my ribs down was a bright scarlet.
“That’s a good deal more than a little blood,” he noted, eyebrows jumping up into his hairline. “You’re lucky you’re with a healer right now, or we’d have to take you to that hospital we escaped from. All right, off with the shirt.” He began rolling up his sleeves.
“No!”
“Just sit down and take your shirt off,” he snapped impatiently. “If you don’t want an infection, I need to tend to that. You don’t have anything to prove by trying to tough it out.”
“N-no,” I stammered. Tight bands were constricting my chest worse than ever. “I’ll be…I’ll be fine.”
Lochlan huffed in annoyance. “Bleeding out isnotfine.”
I tried to run. Lochlan, much faster than I was in my light-headed state, reached for my shoulder to prevent my escape, grabbing at me as I lunged sideways. A loud ripping noise accompanied my fall as I thudded to the ground in a puff of dirt. I screamed, unable to stop myself as agony ripped through my body. I’d landed on my injured side.
Cold air rushed across my exposed torso. Lochlan’s thumb must have caught a hole in my tunic and torn it clean open. My chest wrappings still bound my chest, but the truth was out. I clutched at what remained of my ragged tunic and huddled tightly to the dirt.
Lochlan staggered back in shock. “You…you’re…” Then he almost inaudibly whispered, “You’re a girl.”
I met his shocked gaze as fear crept in to settle on my chest. Would he tell? Was he the type of person who would take advantage of an injured young woman? I still couldn’t tell which Lochlan was standing before me—the devious schemer who plotted with Roderick and would leave a young boy at a hospitalwithout warning, or the man who kindly helped Mable, knitted, and smiled at children. I could only hope for the latter.
Lochlan stared at the long strip of cloth wrapped around my chest, then hastily dropped his gaze, a deep flush creeping up his neck. I struggled to my feet, careful to keep my back to him.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” Still studying the ground, he handed the ripped fabric back to me. I stood to take it, wondering how long it would take to patch the tunic back together.
But I’d lost too much blood and had gotten up too fast. My knees buckled under me and I began to fall before I could take the cloth. Lochlan caught me before I hit the ground, and I cried out again as his hand pressed against the gash up my side. The landscape swirled as my vision swam and light-headedness threatened to overpower me completely.
“I… I need to look at that,” he said, then hastily added, “Just your injury. Nothing else, mind you.”
I shook my head and pushed him away but staggered. “No, don’t. I’m…I’m fine.” Each word was heavy on my tongue and my legs felt like lead. I couldn’t get medical treatment.
“Gil? Gil! Listen to me.”
