Chapter 3

It took several hours, but eventually Melinda had done everything she could to make John as comfortable as possible.

Once his clothing was removed, she could see that most of the problems she'd need to work on were confined to his hands and his feet. He had various scratches and cuts in places across his body, but none requiring more than cleaning and bandaging. His hands, though, were such a mass of small cuts and nicks that it was impossible to tell were one ended and another began. Luckily, none of the cuts appeared to be infected, and there was no indication of any glass or metal in any of them. In the end, Melinda washed both of his hands with astringent soap and hot water, bathed them in alcohol, and then bandaged them from wrist to fingertip so he wouldn't pick at them as they healed.

If the hands were bad, the feet were worse. Once his shoes had been removed, it became obvious that sometime during his journey, John had sprained both his ankles, perhaps more than once. The skin around them was so swollen that the bone was hidden, and the severity of the bruising had turned the skin black. Still, Melinda was sure they would heal if he kept off them for several weeks.

Worse still was the bottom of each foot. As soon as she saw the bloody bottoms of each of his socks, she knew that there was trouble, and she was not wrong. There were blisters evident on virtually every inch of his feet from toe-tip to heel. Only a few of them were still intact; most of the rest were suppurating, bloody holes. Worst of all, the telltale signs of infection - a runny, greenish residue - was mixed in with the blood. With such massive damage to the tissue, she had no way to tell exactly how deep the infection had gotten. All she could do was wash, soak, and bandage the feet, and hope that continuous treatment might still keep the infection from spreading.

She saved his head wound for last. Carefully probing the area where the blood matted in his hair, she found no indication of any fracture to the skull. Giving a huge sigh of relief, she washed the blood from Watson's hair and began to clip away, until she had removed enough hair from his scalp to have a good view of the wound itself. She'd seen enough like it to know that someone had hit him in the back of the head with enough force to disorient him, but not enough to do permanent damage. She disinfected the wound, and then placed gauze over it, winding a bandage around his head to hold it in place.

Melinda had been forced to tie John to the bed during the course of her treatment, as he would writhe and struggle to break free each time the alcohol touched his wounded skin. When she started working on his feet, Melinda had Shamus come into the room and lie across Watson's legs to keep them from kicking her while she bathed and cleaned the blisters. Now, finished with her work, she unfastened the strips of cloth that had secured him. Though he was never coherent, he had screamed and cursed at them as he struggled. Now, he seemed pale and gaunt, almost lifeless. Melinda only hoped she had done enough to ensure that he would recover; now, all she could do is let him rest, make sure he ate, and let nature take its course.