In the morning, having Kerr-Lonn-Ny’s consent, Tcho calls JT. She answers breathlessly, “Tcho! Are you okay?!”
“Why do you always assume I’m not?” he asks back. He holds his comm with his left hand while slowly flexing his right fingers, attempting some basic exercises though he has not yet worked up the energy to see to the injury.
“Because I usually find you in a bad way, Tcho. I hate to say it, but it’s true. I didn’t see you at the gala—Oh! That’s right, you—”
“It’s about that,” Tcho cuts her off, just in case. “Are you free right now? To join Kerr-Lonn-Ny and me?”
Partially-packed crates are all around JT, immersed as she is in cleaning up the cargo hold this morning. A stack of blue fabrics tumbles to the floor as she assures him, “Yeah, I can definitely make time.”
“Kerr-Lonn-Ny’s room.”
“Yup!”
Seeing Tcho awkwardly put the comm away with his left hand, Kerr-Lonn-Ny offers to look at his right arm. “I know some basic first aid,” she assures him.
The voyage of the Dame Metropolis has been a learning experience for Tcho. He has long been reluctant to have anyone else treat his injuries, considering that something he should be fully capable of doing himself even though his practicum at Coronet Hospital was cut short when he left Zann. His sense of shame, as well as his professional pride, have caused him enough problems. Here is a friend offering him help, and for once, he accepts it without hesitation. He slept last night thanks to exhaustion, painkillers, and sedatives, but it is past time to deal with this problem. As he unwraps the blood-soaked jacket from the torn up arm, Kerr-Lonn-Ny talks herself through some sort of meditative ritual.
“Just take a deep breath. Breathe in, breathe out.” Kerr-Lonn-Ny tries to find that peaceful calm of the Force wrapped around her, but she still feels too exposed doing this directly in front of someone. Her slow breath turns into a frustrated sigh.
“Are you sure you’re comfortable doing this?” Tcho asks her, not understanding the source of her mood.
“Yes, yes, it’s fine,” she assures him. “Maybe just a little trickier than I thought,” she mutters. She will have to do this on her own, relying on conventional training without any guidance from the Force on how to proceed.
“You could wait until JT gets here, if you want,” Tcho offers.
“Does she know much about medicine?”
“No, but she has some creative solutions to problems,” he says with a smile, thinking of the alligator clip sutures.
“Do you want me to wait for her? I don’t like ‘creative’ when I’m receiving medical attention,” Kerr-Lonn-Ny says uneasily. Tcho shakes his head, inviting her to proceed. Using the shears from his medkit, she cuts away his shirt sleeve, then carefully extracts all the fabric that has gotten mashed into the wounds. Tcho gets his first good look at his forearm, and it is a sobering sight. There is not much for Kerr-Lonn-Ny to do other than clean it out well and apply some basic sealant. There are actual chunks missing that need to be replaced, and Tcho does not have the materials for that. This will require proper surgery or at least a fair bit of synth-flesh. “Your body has been through a lot in the last couple weeks,” Kerr-Lonn-Ny says with concern.
“It’s true. There were far more blaster rifles and vibroknives than I expected on this ship. But on the plus side, I’m one of the few people who hasn’t been drugged!” he says lightly. More somberly, he observes, “You got beat up a fair bit more than usual, yourself.”
“More than usual,” she allows. “But I’m still standing. That’s what matters. I wasn’t knocked out, and that mutineer gave me a good run, but I can run all day, all night.”
They rewrap his arm in clean bandages. Since his shirt is ruined anyway, Kerr-Lonn-Ny cuts off the rest of it and lends him the only thing from her wardrobe that would fit his shoulders, an oversized jersey that she sometimes lounges around in. After helping him ease it on, she rigs up a sling for him to hold the injured arm against his chest. Tcho slumps back in the recliner, brow wrinkled in pain. Kerr-Lonn-Ny perches on the opposite armchair, trying to regain her equanimity. The Force is my ally, not my tool, she repeats to herself as a mantra. The Force is my ally, not my tool.