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There wasn’t space.
It was the first thing Aodhán thought of, staggering alongside Oliver as the other man bore the brunt of his weight.
The sickbay was small, cramped, the fold-out bunk so low that anyone over five and a half foot would hit their head. Aodhán cleared that easily— it was half the reason they’d sent him up into the ice-slick rigging in the first place; his reach meant that even in poor conditions he could scale the ropes like a monkey. Someone’d had to go up to check the shrouds; the creaks and snaps under the weight of haze-borne ice confused their sounds in the wind, and they’d all thought something had broken.
“I can manage,” he wheezed, teeth grit through the first thrums of pain. He could feel Oliver about to buckle with how much he was leaning on him, and tried to hobble a little more over his own feet.
“You’ve not got to, though.”
He’d not dared to look down yet. But as the rigging had caught him, as the ice had shattered into a million prismatic shards— he had heard a telltale, awful snap.
The cold was sparing him. That he knew. In this sort of weather, you’d lose feeling in seconds, long as you stayed still— and he’d been frozen, nearly, reeling from the whoosh of wind past his ears and staring into an ice-white sky. He still couldn’t quite remember how he’d got down, just that the nauseating thrum of adrenaline had kept him steady as Gin ran down to alert sickbay.
“Mister Arnett,” Maxwell greeted. She was only a little thing, nearly up to his shoulder in her tackety boots, but there was something in her voice that scared the hell out of him. “And Mister Fletcher, hello.”
“He’s definitely broke it,” Oliver said, before Aodhán had even opened his mouth. “He’ll tell you he’s not but he’s definitely broke it.”
“As I’ve been told.” Maxwell was already bustling about with various horrifying tools and carbolic. “Lie him down for me, please? I’ll go fetch Enfield.”
Both of them, then. This was going to be bad. Aodhán just laid back on the scratchy little pillows and tried not to let the fear get to him.
“Y’know.” Oliver was fiddling with his pocket knife, a lifelong nervous habit. “She’d be a right stunner, if it weren’t for the attitude.”
“Aye.” Aodhán risked turning his head to look at him, calculating very carefully so he wouldn’t just dump himself out of the little bunk. “But she’d as soon bite you as suck you, so I’d not risk it.”
“Coward.” Oliver grinned. Reached into his pocket again, finding this time tobacco and papers. “You want one?”
“Please.”
He’d got the first few puffs in when the pain really started to hit him. The sickbay was the warmest room onboard, a thin wooden wall away from the kitchen, and the soothing act of smoking was knocking back the surge of terror that had numbed him at first.
It was a hot, dull ache— radiating out from a place halfway between his knee and ankle. It throbbed, bright and burning, with every beat of his heart, even as he sucked too hard on the cigarette and burnt his tongue.
It would only get worse. This he knew.
When Maxwell reappeared it was with Gin Enfield, and her own little daughter. The girl looked like her mirror image, both of them with their white-blonde hair tied back, matching stern expressions.
“Enfield, Fletcher,” Maxwell said. “Hold him down for me. Arnette, bite this.”
It was a little strip of leather, perhaps cut from a belt. He wedged it between his back teeth, trying to ignore the mounting terror as she moved. Maxwell was a damn good surgeon, but that didn’t mean dirt out here in this hell of a place, the walls sweating along with him from the damp. He felt sick, scared in a way he hadn’t been since he was a boy.
“We’ll get the boot off, then cut the socks and trousers,” Maxwell was explaining. When he lifted his head, he could see the smaller Maxwell nodding studiously along, far too seriously for a girl still shy of ten. “Both could be mended, but for the sake of the instruments we have to be careful.”
Hands gripped his heel, and he hissed through his teeth as pain needled out from the swollen flesh of his lower leg. A bad break, then, and god why couldn’t he have the morphia now rather than after? Then there was a slight tug, and his vision flickered, teeth digging into the strap.
“You’re alright,” Oliver soothed, bold as brass for a man currently pressing his full weight down on Aodhán’s shoulders. “It’ll be over in a tick.”
“Fine for you to fucking say,” Aodhán hissed, slobbering around the strap. There was another minute movement, and his entire body jerked, a stifled scream wrenching itself from his chest. “Jesus, stars in heaven—”
It was a miracle that all he did was blaspheme. Far worse rested on the back of his tongue.
He heard, slow and definite, the sound of shears. The cool of cabin air seared against his skin, brutal as any touch was. Moreso did the surgeon’s nimble little fingers, pressing about the wounded area like knives. He groaned, fighting the urge to kick out, pinned by Oliver as he flung his head back.
“It’s a clean break, at least,” came Maxwell’s reedy voice. “You should be thankful, Mister Arnett. No surgery.”
“Bitch,” Aodhán mumbled, half convinced she was drawing it out on purpose.
“I’m going to set it now, gentlemen,” Maxwell announced. “Flora, do stand back. He’ll fight.”
Aodhán was about to ask what in the devil she meant by that, but then it started. Slight hands closed about his ankle, the other men pressing down hard on his chest and thighs to keep him still, and then the world went up in flames.
He’d had bones set before; his childhood had been like any other boy’s— but always with ether, with chloroform, with morphia or a nip from a flask beforehand. Not in a circumstance where medicines were rationed to the drop.
He screamed. He would convince himself later that any man would have screamed, would have wept, as he did, would have wrestled a hand free and struck out against the wall so hard that their fingers would be all over black and blue by morning. Brilliant agony seared all the way up to his hip, inescapable, convulsive in its fury. He wailed between clenched teeth. If not for the leather he would have cracked at least one clear through.
It seemed to go on forever, even as he lost himself to instinct and battled against it, the brackets where the bunk met the wall juddering and creaking. The room seared itself on his memory in dreadful flashes— Oliver leaning close, braced against the floor, and when had Aodhán blacked his rapidly-swelling eye? Gin, red-faced with exertion and frostnip, staring up at him as if he were possessed. Maxwell, leaning back, heaving on the limb as if she were bringing in a rope.
And then as soon as it had started, it stopped. Something settled.
Maxwell let up, rolling out her wrists. Slowly, following her lead, Enfield and Oliver relaxed their holds.
“See,” Oliver said. “That wasn’t too bad, was it?”
Aodhán was still blinking dancing flecks from his vision. Getting his breath back as Maxwell sent her little assistant for bandages and began mixing up plaster. He would swear that the agony had gone right to his heart, in those moments.
“Ollie,” he managed. “Say that again and I’ll fuckin’ lamp you.”