"Okay, I'm not going to lie," Gerard said, wincing and leaning back on his heels. "This is really going to suck. I'm going to temporarily -- actually, you know what, you probably don't want to know."
This was way beyond of the emergency mediwizardy he'd practiced during the war, but he was used to improvising, and really, there weren't any other options. He basically planned to flash-cauterize the wound to seal off the contact with the knife, then very delicately encase the blade in something nice and inert. Gold would be a good counter to the silver, he figured. A professional healer should be able to seal the wound later -- Gerard was just going to get the knife out and then patch it.
What that all boiled down to, though, was 'it'll hurt like a bitch.'
"It'll just be about thirty seconds," Gerard promised, and glanced at the shadows again. Buggering fuck. He refreshed the Incendio and turned back to William. "After that you shouldn't feel it at all, honest. Thiry seconds. If the shield falls for that long, we're probably okay, so just do your best."
Gerard took a deep breath of the smoky air and put a hand on William's hip to keep him from struggling and hurting himself. He got started.