Chapter 3 #2
It helped that Noah was tall, and the top of Senga’s head only came to his shoulder. Of course, she was used to treating men, and sometimes handsome and strong men. It had never bothered her, never distracted her before. It was work, and they were patients, not really men at all.
Somehow, this particular case seemed to be a little different.
You must be serious, she warned herself.
He is only another patient. But he was tall and she was not, so she could concentrate on her task then and not bother to look up.
She could focus on rolling the bandages carefully over ripples and swells of muscle, hard-won muscle, the sort of strength that came from years of swinging swords and axes.
And the scars!
When they parted all those years ago, Senga had been able to list every scar on his body in her head.
There was a crescent-shaped curve on his knee where a dog had bitten him; a knotted line around one forearm where he’d broken his arm as a child, and a series of short, angry-looking lines on his calf where they’d once been attacked by a particularly vicious chicken.
Now, Noah’s body was littered with more scars than she could count.
The knotted line on his forearm was still there, almost hidden by a welt of bubbled and scalded skin, the scar probably inflicted by a burn.
There were raised lines of pink and white scattered across his chest, back, and arms, undoubtedly made by blades, and three circular gouges on one shoulder blade, which made Senga think of arrows.
And, of course, there was the curved scar on his cheek, cutting a white line through the dark growth of stubble there. There would undoubtedly be more scars that she could not see.
What has happened to him?
Silence lingered in the room, broken only by the rough slide of gauze over skin and Noah’s tight, pained breathing. He sucked in a breath when she tightened the bandages, and she resisted the urge to glance upwards.
“It has to be tight,” she responded, answering a question that hadn’t been asked. “I know it hurts.”
“I did not complain,” came the bitten-off response. “I can handle pain. Don’t worry about me. I have never balked from discomfort before, and this is not the first time I’ve had a healer cut me up and stitch me back together again.”
“Hopefully I won’t do either,” she shot back and felt his eyes land on her heavily. She fought not to look up.
“I’m sure ye won’t,” he remarked dryly.
Senga tightened her jaw, teeth squeaking together. She tied off the knot, casting one last glance over her work to see if she’d made any mistakes. She hadn’t.
Now for the arm. Senga briefly toyed with the idea of asking Noah to sit down so that she didn’t have to reach up to clean it and apply the mixture, which would make her arms ache quickly.
But that would put them on eye level, and so far it was easier to avoid his eye and pretend that he was simply just another patient.
Letting out a slow breath, Senga withdrew a clean rag from her pocket, dipping the end in the mixture and smoothing it over the gash. It must have been painful, probably more painful than bandaging the cracked ribs, but Noah did not flinch or react in any way at all.
“I thought ye were dead, ye know,” Senga murmured, her voice catching.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that muscle flex in Noah’s cheek once more.
“So did I,” he responded, voice tight.
With the wound clean, Senga dipped a finger into the glass jar, scooping out a generous fingertip-ful of the mixture.
She would spread it around the reddened edges of the wound before the bandage was applied.
It should slow the bleeding and help the wound clot, as well as hopefully preventing infection.
It was one of Sister Abigail’s concoctions, which included herbs like shadesflax, and had been so successful that every healer carried a little jar of the stuff.
“Ye don’t even have an explanation for me, do ye?” Senga whispered. She’d meant the words to stay inside her mind, but they were louder than she’d hoped.
Noah stiffened again, the muscles in his arm bunching. A fresh trickle of blood seeped out of the wound, and she wiped it away with a sigh.
“Nay,” he responded tightly. “I don’t.”
She dropped her hands, looking him fully in the face for the first time. He was already staring at her, and Senga suspected that he’d been watching her since her work had begun.
“Do ye mean to tell me that ye truly don’t want to talk about it? Ye don’t want to understand what happened to us?” she managed at last, the words echoing with incredulity.
After all these years, this surely couldn’t be how it all ended between them. Senga had imagined finding Noah’s grave one day or hearing the tragic story of his final battle from some misty-eyed old friend.
Either idea gave her pain, but she’d long since given up on seeing him alive again. She’d never imagined this.
Noah stared down at her for a long moment.
“I did once,” he said at last. “I would have sold my soul to understand it all. But that was years ago. I’ve spent all that time learning to live with the questions, with the uncertainty.
The thing about people, ye understand, is that they can get used to anything.
Anything. And me, I’ve gotten used to not knowing. I like it better this way.”
Senga blinked up at him, heart hammering. She felt dizzy. She felt the familiar twist of desire inside her. She felt something almost like resentment, the feelings all mixing together to create plain old nausea.
“Ye blame me for what happened,” she breathed at last.
That muscle twitched in his jaw again, and Noah glanced away.
“It’s best not to assign blame,” he responded shortly. “I don’t want to speak of it, and I don’t appreciate ye forcing yer way in here.”
Anger made Senga’s vision actually shiver and redden. She let out a breath and concentrated on his wound, wrapping the last of the bandages around it. Round and round she went, the gauzy material shaping around the thick swell of his biceps.
“Ye could always have asked me to leave,” she responded at last, when she judged herself to be sufficiently in control of her emotions. “I offered my help, and ye accepted it, remember?”
There was a long silence before he responded.
“Aye,” Noah admitted at last. “I remember.”
“Are ye a married man, Noah? A family man?”
His gaze locked onto her again. Senga wasn’t sure why she’d asked that question, but of course it was too late now.
“Nay,” he answered at last, his voice heavy. “I have no heart to give away. Ye took it with ye when ye left me.”
Senga tied off the knot of the bandages and stepped back, letting her hands drop to her side.
“Left ye?” she echoed incredulously, letting out a half-laugh, half-scoff. “Where did ye hear that?”
“Hear it? Everybody knew it. Laird Murray—”
“My father told ye I left ye and ye believed my father’s lies? Ye believed him?”
Noah stared down at her, eyes wide, and for an instant, Senga saw the boy she’d known waiting there, just behind his eyes.
“I don’t know what to believe,” he said at last, sounding exhausted.
“The thing with scars, Senga, is that they won’t heal if ye keep picking at them.
Opening past wounds is a waste of time. I’ve got plenty of scars, and I have no desire to gain any more.
Thank ye for yer help, but I wish ye had left Keep Grahame today. It would have been best for everybody.”
He took a step forward, then another, and Senga reflexively retreated before him. Before she knew what was happening, she had stepped across the threshold and found herself in the dark hallway once more.
Noah met her eye and gave a faint, exhausted smile.
“Goodbye, Senga. Ye stay in yer clean halls, and I’ll stay where I always was—out in the blood and dirt.”
Then he closed the door, leaving her outside in the darkness.