Page 32 of The Lost Art of Finding Where You Belong

He huffed a laugh. “I don’t think it’s squeamishness, Doctor, more a lack of awareness. It didn’t occur to me it could be bad enough to need stitches.”

She eyed him. “Do you want to faint before or after I go get the tonic?”

Perian snorted. “Go ahead.”

She made him hold a clean bandage to the wound.

So maybe he wasn’t particularly squeamish. He imagined most Warriors weren’t, either, but he appreciated her words. Mindful of the fact that it apparently was a wound that required stitches, he didn’t remove the bandage and try to get a better look at it while she was gone. Which was just as well, because it took her just a moment to grab the tonic.

He downed it, trying to figure out what it tasted like.

“Dittany?” he hazarded a guess because the doctor had already told him it had healing properties.

“That’s cheating, but yes.”

Well, she wasn’t wrong. He kept smacking his lips together and licking around his mouth, trying to re-taste it.

“Rosemary?”

“Yes.”

“Mint?”

“What kind?”

“Oh…”

And so, while she sewed up his arm, he tried to guess the ingredients in the tonic. Needless to say, she did a better job with his arm. Once it was stitched and cleaned, she let him take a look at it in the mirror. It wasn’t more than six inches long, but he agreed that hitting bone was not a good thing. He liked his bones untouched inside his body.

Neatly stitched like that, it didn’t look too bad at all, really. The tonic had helped a great deal with the pain, too, so it was just a faint sort of throb instead of a huge burning one.

Once he’d looked his fill, the doctor smeared salve over the wound and wrapped it.

“It needs to be changed morning and night, all right? More of the salve each time. And I want you taking tonic tonight and tomorrow. I’ll check it the day after tomorrow and update you. The tonic and the salve can do wonders, but time is needed as well. If it gets hot to the touch, or if you develop a fever or dizziness, you come back to me immediately. Oh, and if you’re in a safe location and able, you could let it breathe for an hour or two in the evening before you put new salve on and rebandage it for sleeping.”

“I’ll try to do that,” Perian agreed.

The doctor eyed him suspiciously. “Do I need to give Nisal the instructions as well?”

“No, no,” he hastened to assure her. “Morning and night, I promise. Checking for heat, fever, and dizziness. I just meant I wasn’t sure about airing it. I’ll do my best, I just… sometimes don’t know where my life is going.”

Her expression softened. “There is no shame in going with the flow or taking time to figure out what you want to do with your life.”

“Did you always know you wanted to be a doctor?” he asked.

She smiled. “Yes, actually. I was one of those children who was always bringing home injured animals and trying to fix them. If someone got hurt, I was the one who wanted to bandage them up and make them feel better.”

Perian smiled at her. “That’s nice.”

“It certainly gave me a focus,” she agreed. “But I know people who became doctors after a completely different childhood. And I know many leading very full lives without a vocation as definitive as mine. We all have to find our way in life. Especially when we are young. You have time, Perian.”

He nodded. Perhaps that was a part of his uneasiness here. He was surrounded by people with purpose, and it felt sometimes as though he was the only one who didn’t have one.

Well, his purpose right now was to see what could come of his relationship with Brannal. He couldn’t decide if that was all right even though it was different, or if it didn’t reallycount.

Because Nisal was very clever, they returned to the doctor’s with, instead of the supplies Perian had asked for, one of his shirts.

“I put the supplies in your rooms and thought you could use this.”

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