Je Vous Fais Toutes Mes Excuses
Sorry this is so short, but I wanted to feel like I was processing something, no matter how painstakingly. I'm having writer's block, or writer's torture chamber?
Putting a candle on the floor, she sat awkwardly in the other chair, hesitantly leaning towards him brandishing the damp cloth. Sighing, feeling nostalgia cloy his mind, Erik complyingly removed his coat to reveal the spreading blood on his forearm. He had been enclosed in a grace period of shock, but the arm was starting to hurt terribly. He wasn't accustomed to physical pain. He inhaled, suspending his breath as he watched the cloth approaching his arm. He hissed, releasing all his air in the instant it took for the cloth to grate against his torn flesh. "Sorry," murmured Christine, furtively dipping the blood-stained cloth back into the water and moving it back towards his arm before he could rearrange it to be out of cloth range. He winced, closing his eyes. When he opened them again, she was looking at him. He couldn't gauge her expression during that moment, but there was no question that she was acutely embarrassed immediately afterwards.
Turning away while she rewet the cloth, she asked, "Did the bullet go in?"
He considered. "If it did, it's not terribly deep."
Christine thrust the candle towards his arm. He instinctively and abruptly moved it away from the approaching flame. Christine was startled by the previously languid Erik and she almost did manage to burn herself when she reacted reflexively, before she recovered herself and explained, "I'm only trying to see your wound." Erik gracelessly and wordlessly moved it towards her, embarrassed. She moved the candle near his arm, where they could both detect the glint of metal reflected from inside his arm. "I guess we should take it out now," Christine said with as much authority as she could muster, but he could tell her nursing skills did not extend to removing bullets.
"I'll do it," announced Erik. Before he had time to think about it, he ungently squeezed the skin on either side of his wound together until he drew the bullet up. Then he plucked it from among the blood that had come up with it and said, "I can throw it away- unless you want it as a souvenir."
Christine, whose piqued eyes were following the bullet's every movement, was looking greener than when she had been at the height of her amateurity and Erik saw it was time for bed. "Come, you can stay in the old room for tonight."