Page 70 of Blow Me Down
I positioned myself so he couldn’t possibly see Jez as she prepared to yank the wood out of his stomach. “This is all in your mind, Corbin. You’re notreallyhurt. Nothing hasreallyharmed you. Your brain just thinks you’ve been hurt, so it’s manifesting pain and all sorts of other things. All you have to do is be firm with yourself, and make your brain understand that you are just fine and dandy, physically.”
“It seems bloody real to me,” he growled. “What’s that woman doing down there? She’s not going to do what I think she’s going to do?”
“She’s going to remove the wood, but remember—the wood is just a figment of your imagination as well. Just tell yourself there will be no pain because there is no injury, and you won’t be the least bit uncomfortable.”
Jez wrapped both hands around the piece of wood and yanked it out with a quick move.
“Amy?” Corbin said, his entire body having stiffened up.
I kissed his nose. “My brave little cowpoke. You see, I knew you could get a handle on this mind-over-matter stuff.”
Tears collected on the outer corners of his eyes.
“Aaaaaaaaaargh!” he screamed, his back arching off the bed. I grabbed him by the arms and tried to hold him down as Jez muttered an apology before pouring a liberal amount of brandy on the open wound.
“Mind over matter, mind over matter,” I yelled at Corbin as he thrashed around on the bed, one long scream of pain ripping from his throat. Jez worked quickly to clean the wound out with alcohol, picking out tiny splinters of wood as I threw myself across Corbin to keep him (relatively) immobile. “You’re not really in pain! This doesn’t really hurt!”
He took a deep, shuddering breath and bellowed, “Like hell it doesn’t hurt! Tell that sadist to stop tearing me open!”
“She’s helping you, my sweet darling. She has to get all the bits out of the wound, or it’ll get infected.”
Corbin opened his mouth to scream again, but an odd look crossed his face instead. “What did you say?” he finally asked.
“I said that Jez has to pick out all the slivers of wood in the wound. She’s not trying to hurt you, Corbin; she’s helping. She’s a healer.”
“No, not about that.” He frowned, his beautiful silvery eyes dark with pain.
“What you said before that.”
“Mind over matter?”
“In between. You called me darling. Your sweet darling.”
“Oh,” I said, for once at a loss for words. I wasn’t ready to look at the warm emotions that seemed to be growing inside me for Corbin. I had too many other things to take care of, too much work to be finished. “Did I?”
“Yes, you did.” He donned a slightly petulant expression. “Did you mean it?”
I thought about telling him it was just a slip of the tongue, but something held me back. “I don’t say anything I don’t mean.”
“Darlingis a pretty strong endearment, andmy sweet darlingis just about tantamount to a declaration of love.” He took a deep breath, apparently uncaring of the fact that Jez was present, setting up a couple of needles and thread to sew up his wound. “Do you love me?”
I blinked at him a couple of times, taken aback by the bald question, unsure how to answer it without hurting him.
“Well?”
“I… I don’t know,” I finally said, unable to think of an answer, but aware that I was telling the truth. “Truly, Corbin, I just don’t—”
He laid a finger across my lips, silencing me more effectively when he pulled me down for a kiss. “Don’t worry about it, sweetheart We’ll work it out once I’m done being patched up.”
I smiled into his mouth, relieved that he hadn’t seemed to suffer any brain damage from the injuries or the near drowning. “I told you that if you put your mind to it, you wouldn’t feel Jez working on you.”
“Oh, I feel it.” His hand skimmed up my arm braced next to his head. “It just doesn’t matter as much as you.”
Corbin yelled a great deal when Jez started to sew him up, but a few kisses soon had him more engrossed in making me burn than in worrying about what she was doing to him. By the time she was done stitching the wound together, had covered it with crushed herbs wrapped inside a cloth bandage, and had forced a fever draught down his throat, Corbin was exhausted.
I was positively limp with fatigue. I thanked Jez for her help, paid her a couple of reales from Corbin’s stash of money, and begged her to keep his presence a secret.
She paused in the door and gave me a long look. “I will, but not because ye’re payin‘ me to keep me mouth shut.”
