Re: log: chicago - atticus/matt
"Need to see it to believe it," he quipped, setting aside the gauze and bottle of saline aside for a moment. This would be easier with a clean towel to catch the moisture.
From the bathroom, he heard Atticus run through his list. "People who care what happens to you," he said, as he pulled a small stack of towels from beside the sink. If he was man enough not to take a helping hand, he was man enough to take the pain of having the wound cleaned. But Matt did feel some guilt. He wasn't so angry that he'd ceased to care whether it was painful, and it was bound to be that.
He settled back on the bed again. He had a flash of a thought about where they kept meeting, too. Now wasn't really the time for that kind of thinking.
It was a fresh thing, having people around who he could call friends, or whatever he was to Atticus. "You should wait this out here," he said, defiantly. He would get his grumbling in, thanks.
He pulled the saline bottle from the kit. "Pack leader." He absorbed that idea while pulling the cap off, using the strangely gentle fine motor control of his metal fingers. "No. Didn't know there were any wolves in Repose aside from her. She always talks like she's totally on her own." In a way that worried him, as a matter of fact. That needed dealing with too.
He opened a fresh gauze pack and set it down on his knee. "Just a little," he confirmed, with a faint smile. It faded as soon as Atticus grit his teeth. "Hold still. Grab my shoulder or the bedstead if you want something to squeeze, that can help. Painkillers after."
He tipped the bottle of saline over and squirted the solution into the wound. It was so broad and livid with infection that it had to be painful, there was no way around it, but it wasn't meaningless pain. Whatever Atticus thought about his chances for survival, cleaning the wound regularly might just help keep him alive. If nothing else, that was a good enough reason to do it.
He picked up a towel and placed it under the wound on Atticus' back to catch the saline. He flipped the bottle over, and, squeezing gently, he poured the solution into the wound. He could have just wet the gauze, but this would be quick, and any foreign matter his wolf friends had missed would be washed out in the flood. It wasn't a pretty process, but it was efficient. If painful.
He started talking as the liquid ran through the wound and down over Atticus shoulder into the towel. "More used to this than you might think," he said. "Used to sit up with Steve when he was sick. Which was all the damn time. His ma worked, so when she wasn't around I'd sit up wit him, make sure he ate something. Later on I'd sew him up or get him a chip of ice from the neighbors for his black eye." He rolled the towel upward over his fingers, exposing a dry patch, and squeezed the bottle again. "Almost done," he said, and continued rolling along. "So you're gonna be fine, because you've got me. And I've got experience patching up idiots."