Brightly (Flicker #2) (52 page)

If Jason understood, he didn’t show it. He touched Nasser’s shoulder and said, quietly, “We’ll be right outside.”

Reluctantly, Lee stood. She started to pull away from Nasser, and he clung to her hand for a moment too long. He never knew quite how to let her go. She tried to smile reassuringly as their fingers broke apart, but her eyes were still brimming with tears.

When they slipped into the hall and the door clicked shut behind them, Amelia lowered herself into the chair Jason had vacated.

“The Guild has received reports of a curse on this island,” she began. “They sent me to investigate. The day after I arrived, the four of you returned from Otherworld. When your friends carried you into the house, you were half-dead from infection.”

Nasser tried to think back, but the last thing he remembered was falling asleep with Lee curled up next to him and thinking that there were worse ways to die. He hadn’t really expected to wake up. Everything between then and now was blank. “What happened after that?”

“I saved your life. You didn’t make it easy for me.” Amelia smiled kindly, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “By the time you were brought here, you were extremely sick. The infection was spreading. Not even my healing spells could slow it down. I tried everything I knew, but there was simply no saving your leg.”

He stared up at her, sure he’d misheard. “What?”

Gently, Amelia said, “I had to amputate your leg. It was killing you, Nasser. You improved immensely once…”

Nasser didn’t hear the rest. He pushed himself up onto his elbows. Fighting the rush of dizziness, he focused on the other end of the bed.

The white sheet covering him rose around his left leg and foot. But on the right side, the sheet was flat against the mattress. His right leg had no foot, no ankle, no shin, and no knee. Below his thigh was nothing.

It was as if his chest had caved in. He couldn’t breathe. Nasser struggled to sit up the rest of the way. His arms shook from the effort of holding him up.

Amelia squeezed his shoulder. “Nasser,” she said firmly. “You’re still very weak. You need to calm down before you hurt yourself.”

But her words had turned to meaningless buzzing in his ears and he didn’t think he would ever be calm again. His heart pounded. The room started to spin, but his gaze was riveted on the place where his leg should’ve been.

Amelia reached over and touched one finger to his forehead. A flare of misty energy shot into his skull like a frozen bullet, the cold spreading rapidly through him, and he felt his body go slack. He slumped backward, and everything went dark.

Nasser didn’t know what time it was. The room was dim, the curtains drawn. The IV was still in his arm. A few slender shafts of light slipped around the curtains and skipped over the floor. It might’ve been morning or afternoon. He didn’t even know how long he’d been awake, but it felt like a long time. Too long.

The first time he woke, he’d been floating in a painless haze, but whatever medication he’d been given had worn off. White-hot pain lanced up what remained of his leg. That was what woke him, what robbed him of even a split-second of believing that everything that came before was just some horrible dream. He lay perfectly still, but it made no difference. The world shrank to the throbbing in his stump. He hadn’t known anything could hurt so much.

The bedroom door opened with a thin creak, and he knew who it was without looking. He didn’t have to look to know where she was any more than he had to look to find his own hands. He listened to her cross the room and set something on the nightstand.

“Lee?” Her name was a rasp, but it felt good to say it.

“I’m here.” She laid her hand on his shoulder. “It really hurts, doesn’t it?”

He nodded, grateful that she already knew, that he didn’t have to tell her, because it was too much to say. “How long was I out?”

“Just a few hours.”

“And when…. When did she do it?”

“The day before yesterday. Nasser, I’m so sorry. If there were any other way to keep you alive—” Her voice cracked and she cleared her throat. “Amelia gave me something for you to take. For the pain. Can you sit up a little?”

He turned over and pushed himself onto his elbows, careful of his stump. Moving it made the pain blaze.

Lee smiled at him, but she looked haunted, her eyes ringed with shadows. He saw what she’d placed on the nightstand—a glass of water and two small pills—but for the moment, he didn’t focus on that.

“How did you complete the spell?” he asked. “Did you find the salt?”

“No. We met a couple of dwarves. They sold us some salt.”

“Is that where your hair went?”

“Small price to pay.” She smiled again, a little warmer this time.

“The crystals,” he said. “Did you—?”

“We found them. They worked. Everyone’s fine. Alice is fine.”

“Oh.” Relief washed over him. For a heartbeat, it eclipsed the pain. Then the pain came flooding back, somehow more intense than before, and he caught himself glancing at the nightstand, at the water and the pills. He didn’t have to ask; she turned and reached for them.

As soon as he swallowed the pills, he lowered himself back onto the mattress, rolling over again so she couldn’t see him squeeze his eyes shut against the pain.

“Lee?” he said again. One of his hands was gripping the sheet, hard; the other was feeling blindly, reaching for her.

She threaded her fingers through his. “I’m still here.”

“Please stay.”

“I will,” she promised.

He pressed his face into the pillow to muffle the low, pained noises that escaped him, and Lee ran her other hand in slow circles over his back. As if from a distance, he heard her murmuring, “It’s okay. You’re okay. It’ll stop. Any minute, it’ll stop…”

By and by, it did. The stabbing, pulsing pain receded until he could actually breathe, and then receded further, until it was a dull ache. The absence of pain was such a relief that he wanted to cry, but he didn’t have the strength even for that.

The bedroom had no clock, but Nasser guessed that it was midmorning. That made today the fourth since the surgery.

He was already starting to regret waking up. His head was still somewhat cloudy, but he could feel the pain medication beginning to wear off. He was uncomfortably aware of the pulsing ache in his leg. He could bear it for now. It was later that concerned him.

When Amelia arrived, her steps were light as she crossed the room, the tread of someone who had learned to pass unnoticed among sleeping patients. She held a pair of latex gloves, a roll of gauze and two wide, elastic bandages. “How do you feel?”

“Like I got hit by a truck.”

She nodded sympathetically, as if she weren’t the person who had sawed off his leg. “The dressing needs to be changed. Are you feeling up to it?”

He wasn’t feeling up to much of anything, but he shrugged and looked away from her. Taking that as an affirmative, Amelia folded the blanket back, uncovering his legs. She pulled on the gloves before she started to unwrap the mound of gauze that swathed his stump.

“You might as well look,” she said, almost kindly. “You have to learn how to do this yourself, anyway.”

Nasser hesitated. Part of him wanted to see it. Another part was afraid of what he’d find. But she was right. He had to face it eventually.
Like ripping off a Band-Aid,
he thought, taking a deep breath.
Just get it over with.

Reluctantly, he looked. Then he stared. Nasser’s right leg ended mid-thigh. The end of the stump was swollen and red. That was from pooling blood, Amelia assured him, not from infection. She claimed that was normal and would eventually go away, but he knew that wasn’t true, not really. Nothing about this was normal. None of it was going away.

As she inspected the surgical wound, she said, “You’re healing very well. Davis’ salves have helped quite a bit. The sutures should be ready to come out soon.”

He said nothing to that. She seemed a little too pleased with her handiwork.

“I know how difficult this must be, but you’re lucky to be alive,” she went on. “Try to focus on that.”

When Nasser felt a burn behind his eyes, he had to look away. He forced his gaze upward.

“Nasser,” said Amelia, a moment later. “Please try to understand. Your leg was
poisoning
you. Every minute increased the probability of organ failure and death. Amputating your leg was the last resort—the absolute last resort. Even then, I thought you might be too far gone. But when the source of infection was removed, you began to respond. It was still touch and go for a while, but the amputation saved your life. None of your organs were damaged. You’ll make a full recovery.”

“I have
one leg,
” he snapped. “How is that a full recovery?”

He didn’t miss the slight shift in Amelia’s expression. She hadn’t expected him to react that way. In any other situation, he would’ve apologized, but just now, he couldn’t find it in himself to do so.

Amelia’s eyes were somber. “I’m truly sorry it had to go this way. I did everything I could, but magic can’t fix everything.”

“I know that,” Nasser muttered.

He was silent as Amelia bandaged his leg with gauze, then showed him how to wrap the elastic bandages around his stump and explained the importance of keeping the wrapping tight. His leg throbbed, but Amelia said that was normal, too.

“You’re going to have to do this a few times a day, to maintain proper compression,” she concluded. “I know it’s uncomfortable right now, but it’ll help control the swelling, which means less pain for you. It’ll also help shape your limb in preparation for a prosthesis.”

For a second, Nasser stared at her. Back in Bridgestone, he was fairly certain that there would be no prosthetic leg. Something like that was bound to be expensive, more than they could afford. Amelia had no way of knowing that, he supposed, but he knew all too well.

“What kind of doctor
are
you?” he asked.

“Pardon?”

“You seem to know a lot about…” He gestured vaguely toward his leg.

“My older brother, Hammond, is a Seer,” she explained. “He’s always loved working in the field, getting his hands dirty. When I was sixteen, he was sent on an assignment to clear out a wyvern nest. One of the wyverns tore off his foot. He was twenty-one then, just a journeyman, and he took it hard. I watched him go through the whole process—the compression dressings, the prosthetic fittings, everything. For a while, I thought I would specialize in working with Guild members like my brother, ones who lose limbs in the field.”

“Are there that many?”

“It’s more common than you might think. Guild folk live dangerous lives, all of us. I always knew that, but I never quite understood until my brother lost his foot.”

Nasser was curious despite himself. “What happened to him?”

“Hammond? He’s a Guild master now. Still works in the field. Still loves getting his hands dirty. No more wyvern nests for him, though.” She smiled a little as she peeled off her gloves. Then she paused. “You’re going through an adjustment period, Nasser. It’s not going to come together all at once. You have to give it time. All right?”

Nasser looked away from her again, back to the stump. He felt like his leg wasn’t the only part of him that was missing.

When Filo visited later that morning, he stalked over to the bed, looking torn between punching Nasser and bursting into tears. In the end, he just sat down and said, in a tight voice, “I thought you were a goner.”

“That’s what I hear,” Nasser said, surprised at how calm he sounded. He’d taken another pill half an hour ago. For now, it didn’t hurt. As long as he kept his gaze up, he could sort of, almost pretend.

“You scared the hell out of me.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize,” Filo said. “Just… don’t do it again, okay?”

“I don’t plan on it.”

At that, Filo smiled tremulously. “I’ll hold you to it.”

Nasser tried to smile back, but found that he couldn’t manage it. Cautiously, he asked, “Did you… talk to anyone?”

“No. I didn’t want to jump the gun.”

“Fair enough.”

“I would’ve talked to them,” Filo said, a moment later. His shoulders were hunched, like he was bracing himself. “I mean it. If you had—” He broke off, looking pained. “I would’ve told them.”

“I know,” Nasser said, and he did. He’d trusted Filo for a reason. Filo didn’t break his word if he could help it. Beneath the layers of hostility he’d so carefully built to protect himself, Filo had a steadfast heart, one he didn’t like other people to see. But Nasser knew it was there. “Thank you.”

“How do you feel?” Filo asked quietly.

“Fine,” Nasser said reflexively, wincing internally as the word slipped out. He hadn’t even thought about it. “Don’t worry about me. Okay?”

Filo nodded once, but his eyes told a different story.