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“I’m fine.”
I know Athos is lying as he waves me off and totters on. The side of his head is caked with blood that is still oozing from a wound hidden underneath his hair, and from his wide stance I can tell that his balance is off. But I let him be. We both know the drill, and I will stay close to him until we’ve reached the garrison, ready to catch him if his legs give in on the way.
Walking beside him, watching the determined set of his jaw, I wonder if it’s always going to be like this with Athos. Him getting hurt and denying it when all the world can clearly see how badly hurt he is.
Not all the world, perhaps. That hat of his, pulled deep into his face, is effective camouflage. Those repellent glares from underneath its brim are impressive. That poker face could fool anyone. But it doesn’t fool me. Not any longer.
Of course, as the regiment’s designated healer, I’m supposed to notice pain. I always have, since childhood. Pain, even when hidden, isn’t invisible. It radiates and oozes. Shoulders tighten, fists ball, eyes darken with it. You can hear it not only in screams, but in the grinding of jaws, in quickened breaths, in the uneven steps on gravel. There is a smell to pain, too. Iron and copper when blood flows. The festering stink of infection. Sweat, sour and cold.
With Athos, the signs are more subtle, but those who’ve learned how to read him see pain written all over him. Not only now, after that blow to his head which clearly left him concussed and in need of stitches that he will accept, later, eventually, when we’re alone in the garrison’s infirmary, away from all curious eyes.
I’m talking about a different kind of pain. A permanent one. Day after day, I see my brother-in-arms fighting the slump in his shoulders, squaring them against the pull of an invisible injury. As if someone had cut him open and left him with stitches that were never removed. He self-medicates, most nights, in a tavern, with wine as red as blood. Still, the pain eats away at him, like a disease, and sometimes I’m afraid it will kill him some day.
I do what is in my power to do. I patch up the additional damage Athos sustains on duty and off. I peel musket balls out of his flesh, sew slashes and cuts and splint the occasional broken bone. Sometimes, he listens to my orders to rest. Sometimes, he accepts a tincture or poultice from my meager supply of remedies. Most of the time, he doesn’t.
So I do what I’m doing now: I walk beside him and, while Athos will not admit to his pain, I hope he at least knows that he no longer carries it alone.