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dragonscale-unofficial · 1 month

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Reunion (Scene from my wip)

Infection, Medical Whump, Fever, Mage Whumpee and Caretaker,

The sound of incessant knocking roused Whumpee from her uneasy sleep. Good grief, who could it be? She hadn’t forgotten to pay her rent, had she? Whumpee dragged herself to the door, every part of her body aching. In a moment of clarity, she remembered that she hadn’t been able to unlock the door earlier. Exhausted, she fumbled with her key again.

“Damn it! Damn it, damn it, damn it.” Whumpee repeated through gritted teeth, barely able to see through the tears in her eyes. Resting her forehead against the door as she shivered, the cold finally catching up to her, she heard a scratching sound. Tired and confused, she listened to it until she felt the door pushing against her face. With a burst of energy, she scrambles to her feet (when had she fallen on the floor? She couldn’t say), leaning on the door for support. She cried out in pain as the motion strained her back. With little choice, she opened the door and blinked. It couldn’t be true, but her friend was still there.

“Hey Whumpee. May I come in?” Caretaker asked, hardly waiting for Whumpee's shocked, stiff nod before striding in.

“How -Why- are you here?” Whumpee fumbled, staring at Caretaker.

“Not now, Whumpee. You look awful, no offence. You need to sit down- Where’s your furniture?” Caretaker asked sharply.

“I didn’t get around to buying it yet.” Whumpee admitted sheepishly. Caretaker sighed.

“Whumpee, it’s been three months. Please tell me you at least have a bed.”

“It came with the apartment.” “...Of course it did. Well, come on then, get to bed. Give me your key, I’ll lock the door. Sorry if the lock’s scratched up, I was in a hurry.”

Whumpee handed her the key and went to comply. “Not that key, Whumpee, that’s the key to your Oquara apartment. Why do you even still have that? Give me the other one.”

Oh. Whumpee fumbled with her pockets until Caretaker told her to drop it and just go to bed, shutting the door. Whumpee stumbled to her room and collapsed onto her bed again, instantly regretting it when pain seared through every part of her body life freezing needles. She could hear Caretaker rifling through her cupboards and fridge and sighing. She feared that her friend would be doing a lot of that in the future.

Caretaker stepped into Whumpee’s room, only now realising that her friend’s back was bleeding through her thick hoodie. Her sheets were covered in blood, Caretaker realized with a sinking stomach. How long had Whumpee stayed like this, without even cleaning her wounds? She could smell pus and rot throughout the room and tried not to gag. Whumpee was groaning in pain, laying face down on the bed. Fuck. She needed to do something, but so many things needed doing. Whumpee needed to eat, she needed to sleep, her wounds needed to be tended to, this room needed to be set on fire with everything in it. The smell of rot could only be coming from the bed, she needed to get Whumpee away from it. That was the most urgent thing. Whumpee’s wounds were infected, Caretaker didn’t need to see them to know that. A rattling cough shook Whumpee’s entire body, wracking her with pain and causing her to yell out in agony, only to bring herself more pain.

Panicked, Caretaker ran to the bathroom, finding a towel on the radiator, and found some clean clothes in Whumpee’s bag, though they couldn’t compare to the veritable mountain of dirty clothes in the corner of the room. Whumpee’s first aid kit lay scattered on the bathroom floor. Was it safe to use? It didn’t really matter since most of it had been used up already. She cleaned the thread and needle, which seemed to had been unused anyway, in the sink, and picked up the one bandage roll that hadn’t spent who knew how long on the uncleaned floor. She added a pair of scissors and a nearly full bottle of iodine to the pile of safe to use supplies, noting the empty bottle under the sink. No painkillers in sight, but she found two large sheets of plasters, the kind that you cut however much you needed off of. Good enough, hopefully.

Okay. She needed to calm down. Step one, get Whumpee off that rancid bed. She took a deep breath before entering the bedroom and picked Whumpee up, trying to be careful with her injuries. Reflexively, Whumpee elbowed her in the face, hard enough that Caretaker heard her nose shatter with a sickening crunch, warm blood splattering onto her face. She blinked rapidly as some of it somehow found its way to her eyes.

“It’s okay! Whumpee, calm down. I need to get you out of here.” Her nose hurt like a bitch. Whumpee continued to struggle, so Caretaker stopped time to pick the taller woman up, but she badly miscalculated the amount of force needed, largely due to the weight Whumpee had lost since she’d last seen her, so she tipped forward. On reflex, she fell to her knees and leaned back, feeling a tugging pain in her leg joints but avoiding hitting Whumpee with anything. She staggered to her feet and carried her to the bathroom, gently placing her in the bath. Carefully, Caretaker tried to peel the hoodie off of Whumpee’s back, only to discover to her horror that it and the shirt had matted to Whumpee’s open wound. It too had started to rot, the pungent, sickly sweet smell leaving no doubt. Caretaker’s eyes teared up as she tried to cut the fabric loose with her weapon, Daybreak. She could hear the sound of her blood dripping into the tub, the only sound beside her haggard breathing in this timeless silence. The lights were dim, the enchantment on them fading.

She restarted time as she carefully cut any fabric not matted to the wound away, trying to ignore Whumpee’s cries of pain, which over time turned to tortured sobbing. “Please stop. I’m sorry for leaving.” Whumpee begged desperately in between sobs.

“I’m not doing this because you left. I’m doing this because I don’t want you to die, so let me work in peace.” Blood poured into Caretaker’s mouth, and with nowhere to spit it out, she swallowed it, forcing herself not to throw up as the metallic taste compounded on the smells of pus and rot.

Removing the rest of Whumpee’s clothes proved far easier, which left Caretaker to properly examine Whumpee’s injuries. Her back aside, she seemed to have an open wound on her head, which meant that her hair was matted with dried blood. Bruises covered the rest of her body, and she clearly had a fever, not to mention the amount of blood she’d lost.

Throwing the clothes aside, Caretaker turned on the shower. She waited for the water to warm up, knowing how Whumpee despised the cold. She would have given Whumpee some encouragement, but one mouthful of blood was enough for one day. Speaking of drinking, when was the last time Whumpee had drunk anything? Exhaling irritably and wishing that she’d thought of it before, she clambered out of the tub, her clothes, wet with blood and water, clinging to her uncomfortably as she made her way to the kitchen. She found a clean looking glass, which she rinsed for good measure before filling it with water and taking it back to Whumpee.

She handed the glass to Whumpee, though better of it upon seeing her shivering like a leaf. Instead, she held the glass to her friend’s lips. “Come on, Whumpee. You need to drink something. Please.”

“Will you stop hurting me if I do?” Whumpee asked hesitantly. On one hand, if Caretaker said no, Whumpee might remember that she had magic and make a break for it. On the other, if Caretaker said yes and proceeded to continue tending to Whumpee’s wounds, she would lose what trust she had in Caretaker until she recovered enough to understand that Caretaker was healing her.

“I’ll try to be gentler, yes, but I need you to understand that I’m not trying to hurt you. I’m trying to help you, believe it or not.” Caretaker compromised. Whumpee’s eyes closed as she drank, small, shallow sips, but she was drinking.

The skin around Whumpee’s back wound was red, glossy, and inflamed, not to mention hot to the touch. Whumpee flinched as Caretaker touched it. “Sorry.” Caretaker had given up on preventing the blood from her broken nose from pouring into her mouth, resolving to get used to the constant taste of blood. The wound itself was a mixture of dark brown congealed blood, yellow-white pus oozing from the cracks where the wound had scabbed over and been torn open again, and the green and grey fabrics of her shirt and hoodie.

Caretaker climbed back into the bath and turned the shower on again, gently soaking the gaping wound in hopes of at least easing the fabric out. Carefully, she rubbed the blood away, gently shushing Whumpee whenever she cried out. Over the course of twenty minutes, she managed to remove the fabric and most of the blood, leaving her with a considerably cleaner, though still thoroughly infected wound. Caretaker let it be for now, turning to her friend’s head injury. Slowly, she washed the blood out of Whumpee’s hair, relieved to discover that not only wasn’t the wound infected, and it was also much smaller than expected. Still, Caretaker decided that it should be stitched up. She grabbed the needle and thread and softly warned Whumpee that this might hurt a bit. Whumpee braced herself and Caretaker started stitching her up, listening to her own blood pattering down into the tub, mixing with the water. As she worked, she started to hum a Beliori lullaby that her mother had sung to her as a child, telling of storms in the middle of the night, shielding those that slept withing its eye.

Whumpee barely felt the stitches Caretaker gave her, focusing on the gentle lullaby she was certain she’d heard before, images of a guardian floating above storm-tossed seas, striking at monsters with lightning if they came close floating through her mind as she listened to Caretaker’s deep, raspy but somewhat slurred voice. Almost unconsciously, she started to doze off. “Hey! Stay awake. I still need to figure out what to do about your back.”

“Sorry.” Whumpee watched the bloody water drain out of the bath as Caretaker resumed her humming, eventually starting to sing under her breath.

Suddenly, the entire building shook and it felt like the temperature had dropped by twenty degrees. “Probably an Earthquake. I’ll go check once I’m done fixing this.” Caretaker mused, unbothered. After dabbing her wound with iodine, she stuck something to Whumpee’s back and wrapped it in bandages as the temperature continued to drop. Finally, Whumpee pointed it out, a little shakily. “It is a little cooler, isn’t it? Well, I think I’ve done as much as I can for your back, so just put these clothes on, alright?” Caretaker brushed it off coolly, handing her a pile of clothes, which Whumpee put on, with some difficulty. Caretaker folded a clean towel in the corner of the bathroom, near the radiator and helped Whumpee settle onto it. She must have noticed Whumpee's confusion, because she explained: “Your bed’s a mess, I’m worried that your infection will get worse. I’ll do something about that once I’ve checked on the earthquake.”

Caretaker left the bathroom, her face falling as she stepped out. It had been so hard to keep her composure in front of Whumpee. Once the building started shaking, Caretaker had stopped time and gone to check, only to find that the living area’s entire wall was frozen over in its entirety. At this point, the temperature in the apartment was below freezing. Armed with Daybreak, she shattered the frozen window before slashing at the ice, setting it on fire. Soon, it had melted enough for her to slip through. She slashed the ice a few more times on her way down from the second floor, but as she looked around, she realised with mounting horror that that house wasn’t the only one. The entirety of the Night Hunters’ mercenary housing was frozen solid, who knew how many mercenaries still stuck inside. Worse, the culprit was still in the area, a gigantic blue and white dragon circling the air. Caretaker froze, waiting for it to pass. Why was it here? How had it gotten past Belior’s defences? Were there any other survivors?

This is from my WIP. I changed the characters' names for the time being. Until I introduce them, I'll probably keep doing that.

#whump #whump writing #not a prompt #whumpee #caretaker #fever whump #scared whumpee #magic #stressed caretaker #character injury #comfort #medical whump

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