Broken Arms and Shattered Nerves (Open)

[Aftershock]

Cainith slowly trudged into the infirmary. His face was drawn and pale, and his right side was soaked in blood from his armpit down to nearly his waist. His left arm hung uselessly at his side, obviously dislocated at the elbow from how it swung, and his stride was a bit wider than normal, though part of it was obviously because of exhaustion.

After his battle with F'ur out in the jungles, and the bluerider's rescue by Sel'n, Cainith had left to return to the Weyr, not wanting to hang around with F'ur, his dragon, or the brownrider who treated the bluerider so kindly. He'd also left without Ivy, figuring the female Candidate could get a ride back with the others, since she seemed to care more about F'ur than Cainith all of a sudden. Anger and frustration was what drove him to walk all the way through the jungle with only the ability to use his right arm bent at the elbow, his right bicep having to remain pinned to his side to stem the flow of blood from the deep knife wound down the inside of said same bicep delivered by F'ur.

However, even with rage driving him, the fight with F'ur, followed by the long trek by himself through the jungles and the large amount of blood loss from his wound even with it compressed like it was, were all finally catching up with him, and he collapsed into a chair, which creaked dangerously at the sudden weight upon it, but luckily did not break and spill the giant Candidate on the floor. Letting both arms flop loose at his sides, the huge man tried to say something, but finally just gave up and let his head flop down onto his chest, breathing deeply as his vision threatened to black out.

[dragon]

Dorava had only just arrived at the infirmary, and technically wasn't even on shift yet. Mostly because she'd arrived early out of sheer boredom in search of something to do when everything else had failed her. It was close enough to her shift that she couldn't go out on a Search ride, either. It would take too much time. So ... showing up early is what she did, spending the time helping to clean up a bit and talk to some of the other Healers that were about yet.

But she stilled when a walking wall of a youth came stumbling in, completely soaked down one side in blood. A smell that had only been masked by the potent herbal solutions she'd been handling. "Dear Faranth." Dorava muttered under her breath, putting down everything she'd been doing to hurry over to where he had more or less collapsed. It was a good job the chair was sturdy, for adding a splintered chair leg up his bum would have been worse than insult to injury.

"What happened to you?" Dorava asked, taking the briefest of moments to check his eyes before quickly locating the source of all that blood. Quickly she applied pressure, stripped away the surrounding clothing, and tied a pack to it firmly to help get it stopped completely. Later she would clean it and stitch it. But for right now, getting his life fluids to stop leaking all over the place was the priority.

That and making sure he stayed conscious.

Once the knife wound was stopped up (and it was obviously knife inflicted, claws and blunt objects weren't nearly that neat), she turned her attention to the dislocated joint. Getting that set on someone as big as him was probably going to take more oomph than she had in her possession. Despite being a rather robust woman coming from a cothold beastherding background followed up by Riding for most of her life.

He was sharding huge, and all those muscles were going to be knotted up in pain. Which wouldn't help any. Stepping over to a cabinet quickly, Dorava grabbed out a few herbal tinctures and some soap. Without much ado at all, she washed the afflicted area to ensure it was clean before applying the tinctures, mixes that would help all that abused muscle to relax enough to allow the joint to be moved about back into place.

"What's your name?" She asked, attempting to keep him thinking and talking, anything to keep his attention not only off what she was doing, but also to keep him from passing out. If he passed out and tumbled to the floor, there was no way she was going to be able to move him.

[Aftershock]

Cainith jerked back to consciousness as he felt the woman begin talking and working on him. Catching her face with bleary eyes, he slurred a bit as he responded, "Wash in tha jhungle... ffffound man... or man fffound ush... F'ur, bashtard..." Fading out a bit again, he shook his large head a bit to try and clear it and continued, "Ffought him... tried to proteck Ivy... got hurt, but hurt him, too..." His eyes cleared a bit as anger flushed his features, and he concluded, "Brownrider came, was all nice to him... I left, came back here on foot. Didn't want to be around any of them anymore."

Hissing a bit as the woman worked the cut beneath his arm, and prodded at his dislocated joint, Cainith responded to her other question with, "Cainith. I'm a wher Candidate." As he saw her look at his dislocated elbow with apparent dismay, Cainith grunted and said, "I'll fix that, don't worry..." Reaching out with his now-bandaged right arm, realizing he no longer had to worry about bleeding out by using it, he grasped his left wrist firmly and gave his left arm a quick tug and twist, gritting his teeth and grunting in pain as he reset the joint. "Not the first time that's happened," he grunted, settling back down and letting the woman do whatever else she needed to do.

[dragon]

Dorava slowed and stilled as she sorted through the mushy replies she was getting. One thing did jump out clear as a bell on a still night though. "F'ur. You tangled with F'ur? You're one special kind of idiot." She sighed, shaking her head as she went back to work. "Nobody tangles with F'ur and walks away unscathed, I promise you that." She rather doubted the part where he said he got a good lick in on the bluerider, too ... F'ur was too fast to get caught. She'd battled it out with him once before, herself.

"You're lucky you're not dead." Dorava informed him, as he reset his own elbow. She winced slightly at the sound it made, and again at his admission that it wasn't the first time. What in the world? That had to mean that joint was seriously buggered up on the inside ... and probably would be for a very long time to come due to repeats. "F'ur doesn't usually miss, and if he was stabbing at your armpit, he was after your artery. Lucky you, it didn't get nicked, or you wouldn't have been walking anywhere." She pointed out. "Now hold still. I have to clean the wound. Don't move either arm, by the way. That elbow is going to need a rest."

First she tied a length of cloth about his neck, and then stuffed the wrist of the afflicted elbow into it to help hold it stationary. "I'll tend to this later. The cut is more dire and in need of attention. I'll be right back. Don't move, and for Faranth's sake don't stand up." If he did, he would be very likely to pass out from lack of blood pressure.

Quickly she stepped back to the cabinet for the things she would need. Namely some redwort, some gauze, needlethorns, catgut, numbweed, hotpepper tincture, and finally some of a salve that had about a dozen different herbs in it all for speedy healing. Carting that back, she carefully undressed the press she'd snugged into the wound. Dragging a tall stool over she set it where he could easily rest his elbow on it so she could easily access the area. First she hit it with the hotpepper to get it to finish up stopping the bleeding despite being open. Rinsing it out with the cleasing redwort solution, Dorava took a moment to look at the area in a rather dismayed fashion. "What a mess." She muttered before fetching a razor. Before she could do anything at all, she had to shave the whole area of the inside of his arm. That done, she numbed out the edges of the wound and started stitching, tying careful knots for every stitch to keep it from pulling out. Once it was all stitched closed inside and out, she smeared the whole area with a healthy helping of the healing salve and rebandaged the whole thing with new, clean gauze and cloth.

"I suggest not trying to reach out or over your head any time soon. For about a week at least." Dorava mentioned, clearing away everything and carefully lifting his arm down from the stool it had been propped on. "Are you hurt anywhere else? You're rather drenched and hard to inspect. You're probably going to need someone to help you wash up. I also suggest drinking copious quantities of milk, first chance you get. You lost a lot of blood."

[Aftershock]

Cainith grumbled a bit having to hear about F'ur again. After she spoke, he grumbled under his breath, "Whatever you wanna think. Ask him yourself when he gets here..." He sat quietly and uncomplaining as she cleaned him up, put his arm in a sling, and stitched his knife wound closed. This wasn't the first time he'd had to be fixed up in the infirmary after a fight, and it wouldn't be the last, he was sure.

As she asked him about any other injuries, he replied, "Bastard kicked me in the groin, but that's about it, other than the arms." Fixing the woman with a look that was a mixture of appreciation and fatigue, he added, "I've been in my fair share of fights. I appreciate the help, but don't worry, I've dealt with this before. I can take care of myself, just like I always do..." His thoughts turning to Ivy, and the poor display of even friendship she showed out in the jungles earlier that day, and he scowled and looked at the floor. He had suspected the relationship would not last forever, but had never imagined anything like that would happen...

[dragon]

Dorava blew a sigh through her nose. "I assure you I won't be asking F'ur anything, if and when he shows up. And I dearly hope to Faranth that he doesn't. If I were you, I'd avoid him like the plague. Smart people do. He does not have any compunctions at all toward killing folk, just so you know. And he's sharding good at it. He's originally Fort trained, after all." She pointed out. "But, I also daresay that given how you looked when you got here, and how you look now? You weren't taking care of yourself. You were barely alive. Take my advice and tone it down before someone kills you. Better than half the people in the area are war veterans after all, with decades of experience in killing people of any caliber under their belt."

She reached over and grabbed another tincture jar, and poured a teaspoonful of it into a cup. This, she offered to Cainith. "Here, this will help promote bloodflow and ease any aches and headaches you may have, once the numbweed wears off." It was just a treebark tincture from a water tree, but it was quite effective.

"Unfortunately, short of giving you copious quantities of numbweed to rub into your nether regions, I can't do anything for a kick to the family gems." Dorava admitted, surprised he was walking at all if he'd been kicked like that. Knowing F'ur, it hadn't been a love tap either, but rather something more akin to a kick to make his balls spurt out his ears.

"Where did you find him? I need to let some people know that F'ur's in the area - preferably before he actually finds us." Dorava asked, settling into a seat not too far from where Cainith was more or less propped vertically. She really couldn't imagine that he'd even want to move much, after all that. He was pretty badly beat up.

[Aftershock]

Cainith gave a mirthless snort at that, and replied, "Glad to hear I'm not the only one he isn't on the good side of. Too bad you weren't the one they sent to retrieve him, or you could have finished the scum off as he was laid out on his back. As it is, the rider who arrived seemed happy to see the asshole. Even called him 'Sunshine' or something." Scowling a bit, Cainith added, "Hopefully he'll remember what I did to him and leave me the hell alone from this point forward... though his dragon did say he's 'more fragile than he seems', so at least I have that going for me if he attacks me again..." He trailed off, and didn't respond to the rest of the woman's statements... he didn't need to prompt any more speeches treating him like some kind of child or invalid, especially from a woman who looked at most around his own age. One of the joys of being a Candidate... people sometimes seemed to assume he had the mental capacity of the younger children that most Candidates consisted of.

Accepting the cup, he carefully drank the solution down, taking care not to stretch his stitches while doing so. Putting the cup down on the stool he was previously resting his elbow on, he grunted a, "Thanks," to the woman, then nodded understandingly as she mentioned there was nothing to do for his groin... he figured as much, as they'd never had anything for it when it had happened to him before.

Looking across at the woman, still towering over her as she sat, even slumped down as he was from fatigue, he growled, "Out in the jungles. He looked... and smelled... like he'd been out there a while. Had some kind of crude spear, at least until he dropped it and I snapped it in half." Chuckling softly for a second, he then continued, "Find us? From how the rider who came out was speaking to him as I left, they're inviting him back here. I supposed you'll just have to hope they don't assign him to a weyr down the hall from you," he concluded, shaking his head ruefully.

[dragon]

Dorava paused upon hearing the tale recounted of the retrieval. She hummed low in her throat for a moment. Given the things he said about it, she was willing to bet a month's marks that the rider Cainith was talking about was Sel'n. She'd found out the hard way that Sel'n and F'ur were something of estranged buddies. Or ... rather. .. more than buddies. But she kept her mouth shut on that point as she watched Cainith struggle to his feet.

"You ... might not want to do too much walking around. If you want to use a cot here for a few hours, feel free." Dorava pointed to the nearest one that was both unoccupied and out of the way at the same time. A place where a tired, battered body might get some rest without having to go too far.

"I'll make sure someone hears of what you have told me." She assured him, though she wasn't entirely sure who to tell. Maybe G'tor, even if he wasn't a 'second anymore. Or ... possibly Mi'rah. She'd heard he was around again. She hated to disturb S'rei ... he was always so busy-looking.

[Aftershock]

Cainith looked at the tiny cot with a leery glance, and responded, "Thanks, anyway, but I think I'll just head back to the Candidate Barracks and lie in my own bed, since I built it myself to contain my... ample frame. I'm not quite sure that thing will support me, to be honest."

To her other statement, he said, "Good luck with that. I hope you get something done about it, but I'm not holding my breath, not after what I heard and saw out in the jungles from that brownrider..." Shaking his head ruefully once more, he bobbed his head in Dorava's direction and said, "Thanks, again, for everything," and started slowly clomping out of the room on his way to the Candidate Barracks... and possibly a bath.