Day 24 - Bandages
A/N: Sequel to Day 4 Fracture. After awakening on November 13th 1955, Doc tends to Marty's injuries.
Doc had experienced his fair share of horror accidents. Sewing his fingernail into his mother's sewing machine, having his eyebrows singed off, receiving a concussion from wet porcelain; as unusual as they were, most had not been serious or life-threatening, and so he'd persevered with his scientific duties.
One look at Marty's hand was enough to make him nauseous.
If you could call it a hand at this point, that is. The skin of the appendage was so stretched and swollen that it resembled a water balloon more than flesh; most of it had been painted black and blue by an intricate web of bruises, with the deep red hue of burst vessels snaking along where veins had once sat. While the fingertips appeared to be unscathed, the base of each digit had swollen by at least an inch.
"Do I even want to know how this happened?"
Although he wasn't a medical doctor, it had taken approximately three seconds, two loud curses and one attempt to force the hand into a fist to determine it was broken. Marty could barely move his fingertips without complaining of them tingling as he did so, though he claimed it was still an improvement. "Last night I couldn't move them at all."
That's an improvement?! Doc bit back another sigh and tried to keep his voice level. "What happened, Marty?"
The young man stared glumly at the tiled floor of Doc's bathroom. "…Strickland," He admitted quietly. "And a chair." He gingerly placed the damaged extremity on a mostly-defrosted bag of vegetables across his knee and rubbed his suspiciously-red eyes.
"How exactly did you get me home last night? With one usable arm and no pain relief?"
Marty lifted his gaze slightly, the bathroom light doing nothing to improve the obvious lethargy and discomfort in his face. "…I dunno, Doc. A-Adrenaline, I guess?"
"Marty, you shouldn't have gone lifting hundred-pound men with a broken hand-"
"Well, what else was I supposed to do, Doc?! Leave you out on the street? The cops would've thought you were pissed off your face!" Marty suddenly snapped, rising from the edge of the bath that he'd been perched on. "I don't care it had fallen off trying to get you home, it wa-"
Marty trailed off as his legs buckled, being saved from a collision with the porcelain sink by Doc's quick reaction time. His eyes flickered, obviously delirious with pain and exhaustion. "S'rry…I-I need-"
"You don't need to apologise for anything, Marty," Doc struggled to hoist the teenager's dead weight from the awkward position he'd caught him in, wrapping Marty's good arm around his shoulders. "But I do think you need some rest."
"Nuhhh, Doc," Marty slurred. "Y-You're stuck…in the…stuck-"
"My future isn't going anywhere soon, Marty. You are going to have some tylenol and sleep as long as you need to."
Too drowsy to snap back, Marty let out a low groan as he succumbed to the blissful state of unconsciousness. The scientist's heart panged as he delicately carried his best friend upstairs, arranging his limbs carefully on the bed to avoid any chance of him rolling onto the injury and aggravating it. Now is probably a good time to wrap it up without him swearing enough to fill up a jar…
Satisfied that Marty was soundly asleep, Doc sprinted downstairs to acquire supplies, returning to the bedside armed with scissors, a fresh ice pack and half a roll of bandages. WIth a surgeon's precision, he slid the end of the bandage into Marty's palm before beginning the tedious process of wrapping the appendage. Maybe my new nickname should be 'Nurse' after all this…