Chapter 144 WORSE

Chapter 144 WORSE
LYRA

It wasn't a wild speculation, it was a genuine question that came with the weight of an expectant answer. Because why else would he risk his position at the Academy to bring me in? Why else would he be sitting on the bed beside me reading tournament history to a girl who did not remember watching the tournament? Why else did he look at me the way he looked at me?

I felt the flutter in my chest at his closeness and I did not try to dismiss it because it felt like dishonesty.

“I have a class now.”

Yvaine’s voice from the desk and it  pulled me back into the room. I turned to find her already packing books into her satchel.

She walked to the door, put her hand on the handle, and turned back once.

“Don’t have too much fun with those books without me,” she said, and there was something in her expression. 

“Bye,” I said.

She stood there for just a moment, her expression changing to something that I couldn’t quite name, it looked somewhat like a smile. Then she was gone, the door closed behind her. What remained was the room, Kai, the books and the afternoon light through the window. 

I turned back to him.

He was looking at the illustration again, about to continue the explanation, and then I felt it.

The pain came to my ankle with cruelty. It started at my ankle and spread through my foot in a wave that was sharp enough to take my breath away.

I hissed through my teeth.

Kai was on his feet before the sound had fully left me, the book sliding to the chair as he stood, his face full of concern

“What’s wrong?” He was beside me in two steps. “Where is it?”

“My ankle,” I managed. “It’s…there’s a stabbing pain, it went through my whole foot—”

He was already crouching to look at it, his eyes on the bandaging, and something on his face tightened.

I pressed my hand against the mattress and tried to breathe through. I hated having to worry everybody, exhausting the academy’s help like this. I did not want it to backfire on Kai, after all the Principal was so kind as to let me stay here if she grows annoyed she could punish Kai.

I pressed my lips together. “I hate not being able to understand what’s happening to my own body.”

He looked at me when I said that. 

“I’m going to get Coraline,” he said.

He reached up and cupped my cheek with his hand, the gesture was brief, warm and entirely natural, his thumb moving once across my cheekbone before he lowered his hand.

“I’ll be back,” he assured. “Don’t move.”

He left.

I sat in the room alone. I tried to breathe and hold my ankle very still while not  thinking about the warmth his hand had left on my cheek or the flutter in my chest. I managed none of that.

~

He came back with Healer Coraline twenty minutes later.

She came in with her kit. She looked at my ankle first, her eyes making the assessment before her hands did. Kai sat on the far side of the bed and took my hand.

He did not ask,  just took it and folded his fingers around mine. I held on and looked at the ceiling while Coraline began unwrapping the bandaging.

The unwrapping was careful and methodical but entirely unpleasant. The removal of the bandaging came with the revelation of what was underneath it, and the sounds Kai made when my ankle was uncovered told me before I looked that what was underneath was not what either of us wanted to see.

I looked.

The bruising was deep purple-black spreading from the ankle bone outward across the foot and up toward the lower leg. I looked at it for a moment and then I looked at the ceiling. I could not stand to look, it was like the pain was increasing the more I saw how discolored it looked. 

Coraline turned my foot in her palms slowly, feeling along the bone with the pads of her fingers, pressing in specific places and watching my face when she pressed. I did my best not to give her the reaction she was looking for and did poorly.

When she finished she applied the paste, it was cold and sharp-smelling, the kind that initially made the pain worse then she rebandaged with fresh wrapping pulled tighter than before. She stood and moved to my head bandaging and unwrapped that too, setting it aside.

I pressed my fingers against the point on my forehead that had been the concentrated point of my headaches and felt the pressure there without the bandaging over it. 

Coraline stood with an expression I had not seen from her before, something genuinely uncertain. 

“What is it?” I asked. “You look confused.”

She looked at me for a moment. Then she said: “I’m going to give you exactly what I’ve observed, without the qualifications I would normally use, because I think speaking directly  is more useful to you right now.”

“Alright,” I nod

“Your ankle is not healing,” she revealed 

Kai’s hand tightened around mine.

I looked at her. “What do you mean it’s not healing?”

“I mean the injury has not progressed in the usual way,” she started. “The bruising should have begun to lighten by now. In a normal sprain at this point in recovery, the discolouration would be moving from dark purple toward yellow-green. What I am looking at instead is bruising that has deepened since my last examination.” She paused. “The injury has worsened.”

“It’s only been a senight,” Kai said, and his voice trembled slightly. “It’s too early to say it’s not healing.”

“Under normal circumstances a week would be too early to say it definitively,” Coraline said. “I am not saying it based on the timeline. I am saying it based on what I can see. The evidence of what is in front of me indicates worsening rather than improvement.”

I looked at my bandaged ankle.

I thought about that night. About waking up in the corridor with no memory of leaving my bed. About walking on it apparently, inexplicably, without the pain I should have felt.

I did not say any of this. Beside me, Kai also did not say any of this.

“Is there anything you can give her?” he asked. “For the pain.”

Coraline looked between us both “Milk of the poppy,” she said. “A small measure, carefully prescribed. No more than I specify, it intoxicates if taken too much and I do not want her dosage interfering with her body’s natural state overnight.” She looked at me directly. “And you do not put weight on that ankle. Whatever is happening needs to stop, your ankle will not recover while it is being used.”