Twenty Six: Rope Burns
A/N: A very short piece, set after 'Flight 714'.
He'd come up with multiple questions as soon as he returned to consciousness.
For starters, what in God's name were they doing on a dingy little lifeboat in the middle of the ocean? We were supposed to be going to Jakarta! I don't remember our plane crashing…
Come to think of it, I don't remember getting on our plane at all.
His second main question arose when he realised how sore his hands and arms were. He found himself staring perplexedly at his wrists, the concern brewing as he examined the damage. The skin had been rubbed raw over an area around five centimetres wide around both wrists, with small pieces flaking away into the stiff sea breeze. He experimented with his range of motion, cringing as his skin cracked and began to bleed, dribbling onto his forearm.
Tintin furrowed his brow, ignoring how his quiff was audibly ruffled in the wind. If I didn't know better, I'd say these were rope burns. But how the hell did I end up with these?…Did we get kidnapped? I don't remember being chloroformed…
He was snapped out of his thoughts by Snowy's incessant barking. The faithful canine jumped into his lap, licking his master tenderly, though Tintin couldn't help but cringe when Snowy's tongue accidentally rubbed his wounds. "Ow! Ça fait mal!" He initially recoiled and cradled his injuries, but gave in to pat Snowy when the canine began to whine. "I'm sorry, boy, it's not your fault."
A quick glance at the sky told him it was near midday, though how long they'd be stranded in the ocean for, there was no way to tell. The sun's heat was also becoming uncomfortable, and he pulled at his collar in the vain hopes of allowing some cool air down his sweater. We must be somewhere tropical…I mean, we were going to Jakarta.
He gazed around the lifeboat, surprised to find that his companions were still unconscious. From a quick glance, no one else appeared to be injured other than himself, though whatever they had been drugged with was keeping them in a very deep sleep.
All he could do was delicately put his arms around Snowy and wait for rescue.
Not only did he decide the rescue plane was a miracle, but Tintin also considered it amazing that he wasn't kept overnight in hospital upon their rescue.
While the emergency medical personnel who examined them were able to do a better job to securely bandage the wounds, he still found himself pondering about the cause of injury. One doctor had said they were second-degree burns of some description and that they would heal with appropriate treatment, whereas another had said it was an allergic reaction and he would never know what caused it.
Tintin wondered what medical school the second doctor had graduated from. This was no reaction…something happened to me.
Upon consulting with Haddock after the doctors had finished their rounds, it seemed the same thing had happened to him as well, although his wounds were slightly deeper. What truly surprised Tintin, however, was how nonchalant his friend was about these mysterious injuries: "Maybe we were abducted by aliens or something; don't worry about it, lad! We've had worse, haven't we?"
"But Captain," Tintin had protested, "doesn't it terrify you? We have no memory of that day whatsoever, and we come out with unexplained injuries?"
"To tell you the truth, lad," Haddock sighed wearily, "I'm getting too old to care about these things. Maybe something happened, maybe it didn't."
"Captain, even the doctors don't know how we got these!"
Haddock had shrugged his shoulders and quickly redirected the conversation towards how desperate he was for a bottle of whiskey, though Tintin had already stopped listening. He supposed he couldn't help being curious about this mystery; he was a reporter, after all. This sort of thing would make a fantastic article, yet he had nothing to go off.
The mystery of these unexplained burns was a question that danced around his mind for many months, and one that he eventually realised would never be answered.
Eventually the redness faded away and new skin began to grow over the wounds, turning them into the beginnings of yet another addition to his ever-growing scar collection.
He gave up on trying to solve this mystery, and decided to just be grateful that they never became infected.
A/N: Ça fait mal - it hurts