log: cat, matt, emily
[Matt didn't know who he was being enlisted to treat, but it said a lot that he was willing to meet Cat without more information about their destination. Protocol itched at him to get full details from her, the when, why, and how of her friend and where she lived. He didn't ask, and that meant he had decided Cat was not a person he had to ask to be sure of the outcome. In other words, she'd earned a scrap of trust. He didn't know why. Some past association, now forgotten, said that she wouldn't turn on him, despite every bit of evidence pointing to the contrary.
Burns didn't take a month to heal unless they required skin grafts, something Matt wasn't equipped to do. But he needed to see the injury first. He'd treated burns on animals, and one or two on people, but nothing as Cat was describing. He'd seen burns that deep, though. Bone-deep burns brought up the smell of charred flesh, and the black/white flare of explosives.
Halfway through the woods, a pack over his shoulder, he stopped long enough to pull back from that memory. It was a minute or two before he'd put it safely somewhere out of reach.
He wore a thick green coat and work boots that had seen better days, and when he arrived at the cave mouth, he came around the edge with a deliberate step. No sign of a tail, no sign of backup, no sign of a trap.
And there she was, in front of that lazily yawning gap.
There was a saying about that feeling, in English, when someone touched part of you that was dead. He couldn't call it up, looking at her. Nothing English came to mind, staring at those dark eyes, stock still at the cave edge. His arm felt heavier than usual. He hadn't seen her since the bar. Since target practice and no, he wasn't going down that hole again. There was a girl with a burn. She needed help.]