1. I've heard teeth can explode in air this cold. Imagine.

[bestsir]

Who: Harry Goodsir and divers hands.
What: Continuations from Harry's TMD threads, plus open to anyone else who wants in.
Where: All around.
When: In the days leading up to September's event.

Harry has found a house. It's much like the others, but what catches his attention is that it appears to have been owned by a person—a woman, he concludes from the clothing and other belongings left behind—with an interest in natural history. There's a bookcase in the front room with a variety of scientific and medical texts—nothing scholarly per se, but popular studies accessible to lay readers. He cannot find any other trace of the former inhabitant—no body—and so after wrestling with his conscience for a bit, he eventually gathers up what seems most personal and puts it all in a storage closet. Just in case.

He'll open the door to anyone who stops by.

Otherwise, he is out and about, making himself useful where he can.

Comments

[bestsir]

Goodsir doesn't flinch at the sight—he's seen worse, after all. "You'll need a fresh dressing for that," he says. He may be from a time before germ theory, but at least he knows there's something to keeping wounds clean and properly dressed. "I believe there are supplies in the back—a moment."

He returns a moment later with bandages—unusually clean and white ones to his eye, sealed in paper packets—and a bottle that he might have ignored if it weren't for the words WOUND CLEANSER in big letters on the side. He briefly puzzled over what might make that better than water, then shrugged and decided he might as well use it for what it says on the label.

"Allow me," he says. He takes Thomas's hand and carefully sets about cleaning and dressing his hand.

cw: finger amputation, hand trauma, infection, gross

[missionem]

Thomas ought to know better than to let himself be in such a state. Germ theory or no, the smell of old blood alone should be inducement to take better care of his hygiene.

But it's difficult to attend to his injuries one handed, as Goodsir will be easily able to tell as he works apart Thomas' clumsy bandaging. Thomas hisses through his teeth as the surgeon works, then muffles a groan against the meat of his other hand as the last of the bandage is removed.

It's not only his fingers that are gone. The back of his hand is macerated, exposed to a grinding mechanical trauma that lays bare some of its inner workings. The lines of his tendons show through mangled flesh that shows the characteristic signs of early infection in its granulation. Thomas bites off a shout as whatever astringent is in Goodsir's WOUND CLEANSER bottle is applied, turning the rest into a grunt as new sweat breaks across his brow.

"And- all this before we've even- Christ- been introduced," he pants, inanely, as if talking might ward off the worst of it, "Thomas."

His name, if the the surgeon even has need of it.

[bestsir]

The sight of the injury laid bare is alarming, but the first order of business is to ensure that it's dressed.

"Harry Goodsir," he replies. Carefully, he wipes away any mess, then begins to wrap the bandages around the hand. "Some sutures would not go amiss, but I haven't the supplies as yet ... What happened? Were you attacked by someone or something here?"

[missionem]

Thomas contemplates a variety of answers to the question, from the matter of fact to the darkly wry to the outright macabre.

It's weakness and gratitude that curb him from the worst excesses he can come up with. A glass of water and a careful set of hands are enough, evidently, to buy a measure of decency from him.

"This happened before I arrived." So there's no threat of it happening to anyone else, at least not by the same mechanism it happened to him. "Some days ago, now. You've- seen injuries like this, yes?" Hardly a question; of course he has. "What do make of it?"

[bestsir]

"I once treated a woman whose hand was caught in a mechanical loom and her injury was similar," he says. "Is this your only injury? There is some sign of festering, but with luck we have caught it before it worsens. If I had some means of cauterising it, I would do so, but all I have is—" he holds up the bottle, which is actually rather wildly incongruous to his mid-Victorian appearance, "—this."

cw: drug seeking

[missionem]

A loom would be similar enough, Thomas supposes. He could ask after what happened to the woman, but perhaps it's better not to know. He can't imagine he'll last long enough for prospects of recovery to be an issue.

(So why did he ask at all? Habit, stubbornness, idiocy?)

"I've been stabbed," he says, instead, gesturing at his side, "But I think it well past ministering to, whatever you have in that bottle." His eyes glitter as he looks at Goodsir, a certain fey cast the surgeon might recognize from past patients flitting across his face.

"It's the pain that troubles me," he says, and once again, he should be ashamed of himself. "If you have anything for that."

[bestsir]

"Perhaps you can make sense of the medicines that were kept here," Goodsir says. "The names are all strange to me. I have some small amount of laudanum, in the kit that I arrived with, but if there is something better here already, you ought to use it."

Goodsir goes back to the cabin's medicine cabinet and returns with an array of things—mostly over-the-counter pain medications that would be familiar to anyone of the late twentieth century ... and also a couple of bottles of antibiotics.

[missionem]

He wants the laudanum, with a sickening pang of habituated longing, but the mention of there being only a small amount left gives him pause. He thinks on it as Goodsir disappears to fetch the alternative offerings.

He scans the labels of the drugs offered. The ones with unfamiliar names and plain packaging could be anything, but a few of them promise relief from pain in the excited declarations typical to pharmacy advertising.

"These will do," he says, nodding at the ones marked Advil for the sake of making a choice. Perhaps medicines of the future will prove even more effective than what he's used to. "I can't make sense of half the things here, either. Ahead of my time, so to speak." He pauses, eyeing Goodsir. "Are you familiar with The Time Machine? H.G. Wells?"

[bestsir]

Goodsir shakes his head as he hands over the tablets. "I am not. A book, is it?"

[missionem]

"A work of fiction. A man builds a time machine and travels to the future." Thomas attempts to pop the cap on the bottle, only to find it peculiarly fastened. He frowns, turning it again, feeling it shudder and skip on the threads.

"It seems our present circumstances align with Mr. Wells' speculations, to an extent. No sign of Morlocks yet."

[bestsir]

With a soft "may I?" Goodsir takes the bottle and tries himself to open it, and meets with just as much success as Thomas until he notices that there are words on the cap.

"Dare I ask what a Morlock is?" he says, squinting at the letters. Apparently one is meant to push down on the cap whilst twisting it—only Goodsir can't quite seem to get the knack of the action, not yet.