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Arthur. Noel is – he’s bleeding. It appears like…he’s been stabbed. Twice. One of the wounds is on his left shoulder, and the other is beneath his collarbone. He’s staggering towards us, leaning against the wall.
“Noel, what happened?” Arthur breathes out, shoving his hands deep in the pocket of his coat as the air sharpens around his form. Thank goodness it’s not as cold as the bloody snow of Addison, but it’s still very visibly January. Even John’s fist is clenched in discomfort, though it’s probably worse for him, dealing with the visage of Detective Noel covered in blood.
“It’s nothing, doll, really. I’ve dealt with worse.” His teeth sound gritted, and Arthur’d guess that he was twenty feet away, at most.
He’s breathing heavily. He doesn’t have anything to press against the injury so he’s just sort of holding his palm against it. His face is pale – like yours was, right after we left the Larson estate and before we started towards New York. His eyes are half-shut. I think he’s going to faint if he doesn’t take care of himself.
“We’ll take care of him, then,” he whispers to the voice in his head. Yes, Arthur, we’ll help. Then, aloud, “Uh, Detective – we have to bring you to Marie’s. It’s just a block away, a-and we don’t have anywhere to be.” His heartbeat spikes while John mumbles anxieties half to himself – what if Noel is denying their care because whoever stabbed him is still following, or what if Marie kicks him out, or Noel gets suspicious of the whole Arthur-lying-about-his-name ordeal. Still, Arthur can vouch for bleeding out in the cold being one of the worst things to experience, and they agree that they definitely owe Noel a little help.
“Right, but I’m not bleeding on your coat,” Noel shudders. He’s following us, Arthur. Let’s go.
“Can you walk?” Arthur responds to the syncopated footsteps tracing his.
“Losing a lot of blood, but for a while longer, yes.” Noel sucks in a breath. Arthur, you’ll have to wait to bandage him until we get there. If you tear off a sleeve, something like that, it’ll be too cold. Under his breath, Arthur agrees and tries to walk double time while still not leaving his friend behind.
Marie is home – that makes sense according to her schedule. “Parker, did you bring in a stray?” She says as the two detectives and one disembodied entity stumble through the door. “Hello, Ms. Pilon,” Noel calls before coughing into the hand that isn’t dangling at his side.
“You’ll have to introduce your friend here,” she drawls as they hustle into Arthur’s room. Noel drops onto his knees immediately.
Arthur! Ask him what happened; if he’s in danger. Arthur obliges while pulling a shirt out of his small brown suitcase. “How’d this happen?” John takes the shirt in his hand as well as Arthur’s and rips it in half. Noel lets out a groggy ‘hm’. We can’t let him pass out. I think you told me once, it’s bad for people’s brains. Arthur confirms with a whispered “yes,” as he ties half of the fabric as a tourniquet around his shoulder. It turns from pale brown to red almost instantly.
“John, do you think you can hold this against his wound while I talk to him?” Arthur asks aloud – and hell, he’s glad to be able to say it aloud. He’d be sick if he lost his friend’s autonomy after months of not having any to speak of, just because he couldn’t take care of some wounds. As Arthur moves his arm and John clutches the cloth, he finds himself thinking about how John probably knows what to do better than he does. John has saved his life with one hand and an intangible gallon or two of adrenaline.
Noel mutters again “Thanks doll – I think I need this,” but Arthur and John are far from done.
“Tell me about the clavicle injury,” Arthur asks John, but Noel answers anyway.
“Not too deep – I think my first rib stopped it from cutting deeper – it’s, mmm –” he shifts his position and winces. “Tingling. Getting numb.”
“John. You’ve dealt with my injuries before, what do I do?” Arthur asks what he’s been thinking. John is filled with a familiar heaping pile of panic – his mind can’t fail him now, he has to be here or Noel is going to pass out, maybe even die. After an eight-count of silence in both the air and Arthur’s head, he asks “are you there?”
Arthur, he sounds the slightest bit disoriented, but maybe that’s just the fear talking. Whatever blood vessel is between his collarbone and rib must’ve been cut. I’ll continue putting pressure on it, but it’d be better to give him stitches.
“What’s John saying?” Noel mumbles, checking in on his favorite noncorporeal voice that he still doesn’t know shit about.
“I think Marie left her sewing kit in the cabinet, yeah?” Arthur says. “We’ll use my lighter, sterilise the needle so he doesn’t get infected,” he thinks aloud with the knowledge that Detective Noel would like to know as well. Yes, Arthur. That we can do. The cabinet is against the wall. To your left, now bend down a bit. “Noel, keep that pressed to your wound,” he directs in the meantime.
They take the kit and open it, struggling with the thread and the needle – Arthur! We’re taking too long – Noel is faltering. The bleeding is lessening, thankfully, but he can barely hold the fabric to the cut at the base of his neck. “Noel, are you alright?” Arthur asks as he clicks the lighter. He wanders back over to the piece of floor where Noel is crouched.
“Quite, thanks to you. I was trying to interrogate a Fallen Star member so I could tell you what I learned–” “Fucking cultists.”
As Arthur starts making stitches and tying them off individually – a slower but more stable process which he can feel John’s impatience with, John asks something else. It’s sudden, but not unwarranted. Tell Noel that I’m glad he’s okay. John has a lot more he wants to say, too, about how this reminds him of Arthur’s organs on the mine floor and how he’s not scared, but it wouldn’t fit into place with the discussion.
“John says he’s happy. That you’re okay, I mean.”
“We’re getting there. I think my shoulder’s broken, though,” Noel says.
“John, do you know–?” Arthur hasn’t dealt with broken limbs much, including his own, so he’s out of his league. Make a splint, he instructs. Arthur ruins another of his limited collection of shirts – Noel’s certainly going to buy him more, that’s the sort of thing Noel’d do even if it wasn’t an exchange.
You need to take something, like a stick, and put them on either side of his shoulder. Oh!–a book I saw when we were going through things, it said we could use rolled-up newspaper. There’s some on top of the cabinet. They retrieve it and it sort of feels like a lull in the movement of the day. The tourniquet worked, so Noel isn’t bleeding, and John feels present though that means he’s present enough to think about what he was doing when he wasn’t. They untie the bloody fabric above his shoulder and hold the limb in place.
John squeezes Noel’s wrenched shoulder until it’s pulled in the right places while Arthur ties the clean piece of cloth around the newspaper right below his armpit and aligned with his shoulder. “One more thing,” Noel says. “Can you get me some water?” Of course – he lost a lot of blood.
Arthur. The door is to your right. Go to the kitchen down the hallway – there’s a cabinet above the sink. I’ve watched Marie in there. Arthur feels the blood on his hands and his heart skips a beat before remembering that this time, he and John helped.
“Can I borrow a change of clothes?” Noel asks, gesturing at Arthur’s rapidly depleting baggage. “I think I want to meet Ms. Pilon, or at least stay over. My apartment isn’t this…” loud? Blood-soaked? “Full of people I know.”