“Deal with it, Meow Mix,” Deuce advised as he carefully draped the strips over his shoulder to keep them clean.
“The Phillies will never win again if you tear up that shirt,” Ty told Deuce threateningly.
“We don’t need your lucky shirts,” Deuce claimed with a smirk. “Save those for your damn Redskins.”
“You can get a new shirt,” Zane pointed out. “New hand, not so much.”
“New hand, nothing,” Earl broke in as he knelt and began rummaging through his pack. “It gets infected and you won’t make it off the mountain.”
“Being a little dramatic about it, aren’t you?” Ty asked him with a small, hopeful smile.
His father turned his head and met his eyes. “No.”
Standing up, Zane took Ty’s good hand and pulled him to his feet. When Ty stood, though, his head swam, and he wavered. Zane placed a supportive hand on his lower back. “You okay?” he asked, his voice exposing new concern.
Ty nodded and brushed him off. “I’m good,” he muttered as he looked down at his hand. “Okay,” he sighed as he started trying to think of a way to immobilize the wounded fingers. Earl was right—the less he moved them the better. If an infection did get into the joints, it would spread faster if he were using the fingers. Besides, they hurt like a bitch.
Ty looked around the clearing, frustrated by how muddled his thoughts seemed to be. The pain when he kept his hand at his side was distracting, and he raised it up and cradled it to his chest unconsciously.
Finally, he turned and looked back at Zane appraisingly. “How much of your gear do you really need?” he asked.
“Just the canteen. Everything else important is on me,” Zane answered. Ty knew he meant his weapons. “The duffel we can leave behind.”
“No, no,” Ty corrected as he made a “hand it over” gesture with his good fingers. “The duffel’s what I need.”
Frowning again, Zane shrugged and took the several steps to snag it and bring it back, holding it out for Ty to take.
Ty nodded his thanks and took the bag, unzipping it with difficulty as he knelt. He dumped the contents onto the ground and then slid the hunting knife from its sheath at his thigh and began slicing into the thick padding of the shoulder straps.
Zane watched as Ty started cutting up the bag. “Are you making a sling?” he asked after a few moments.
“No, but that would have been brilliant of me,” Ty answered as he glanced up at Zane and smiled slightly. “I’m making a splint,” he added as the smile fell. “Pretty sure something broke in there. A little wrapping with that damn duct tape and this padding should be hard enough to do it.”
Nodding, Zane knelt down next to him and grabbed the roll of silver duct tape they’d been using to tape the prisoners up. “Let’s get you wrapped up then,” Zane said to him.
Ty knew that he couldn’t manage the feat with just one hand, and he relented with a grunt of displeasure. “Try to mold it as you wrap it,” he advised as he held out his injured hand in the shape that would work best. “Just curve the end of it.”
“Leave the man alone, boy, he’s got sense enough to know basic first aid,” Earl chastised as he clunked down a small plastic box.
Zane raised an eyebrow as he followed Ty’s instructions, making the mold fit the natural curve of his hand. Ty watched him as he wrapped it rather than watching his progress. Every time he thought too hard on it, an uncomfortable tightness formed in his throat and butterflies assaulted him. At least he now he knew the truth about himself and Zane. Looking raptly into Zane’s dark eyes, Ty wondered why he hadn’t realized he loved the man earlier.
“How bad is it? Really,” Zane asked, looking up to meet Ty’s eyes.
Ty swallowed hard. “Hurts worse than I thought it would,” he answered in a barely audible voice. Whether he was talking about his hand or something more, he really couldn’t have said.
He shook off any more thoughts along those lines and cleared his throat. He would let himself ponder that once they were off this mountain and in the clear.
He looked down at his hand and examined it, holding it out toward Zane. His shoulders ached where the cougar’s claws had sunk in, but his hand was the true problem. The side of it where the shallowest punctures had been was bruised and swollen, and the entire hand was red and painful. The two knuckles of his pinkie and ring fingers were twice the size they were supposed to be, and all his fingers were swollen and bruised as well. There was a puncture on his palm that made it impossible to grip anything hard. And since he’d wrenched his hand away from the pain when the cat had bitten down, the punctures weren’t just deep, they were rips that had torn up the skin, making it harder for the wounds to close. In fact, he’d had gunshots that were less painful than his hand was right now.
“Hurts,” he repeated. “It ain’t infected, though,” he surmised with a shake of his head.
“Keep an eye on it, tough guy,” Zane murmured as he kept wrapping the modified brace with the tape to bulk it up and make it stiff. “I don’t want to have to carry you out of here.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Ty assured him as Earl stepped closer and handed him a small tin of Rawleigh’s antibiotic ointment. “Thanks,” Ty said as he looked up at his father and took the tin.
Earl swished a bottle of water at him. “Time to clean it again,” he said grimly. Cleaning it the night before had been painful enough. Ty thought he might have whimpered through the whole process.
“Great,” Ty muttered as his father chuckled and took the mangled backpack and Ty’s knife just as Deuce held up the cloth, indicating for Zane to take the canteen.
“Ready?” Zane asked.
Ty glared at him. “Just do it quick,” he requested.
Glancing to Deuce, Zane waited until he nodded to start pouring the water in a thin, slow stream. Deuce held the cloth under it briefly, took Ty’s hand, and began scrubbing at it, hard and fast. Ty just closed his eyes and turned his head slightly, breathing in the cool air of the mountain as the little torn bits of skin were ripped up and away. It wasn’t as bad as he’d been expecting. He supposed most of the pain was coming from the bruising rather than the open wounds. He was almost positive the nerves around those were all dead, now, anyway.
When he looked back down at it, most of the dried blood that had caked his fingers and palm was gone, and Deuce was slathering it with ointment and wrapping it carefully with the strips of his T-shirt.