Broken

:Chapter Fourteen:

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*Smiles* :)
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*****

"You wash the wound and take off the old cloth while I find something else to work as a bandage." He nods at me, walking back to the cave I assume. I walk lazily over to the creek and sit beside it on my knees.

Water starts to soak through my jeans but I don't mind. I have to bite my sleeve to keep from screaming as I peel back the bandage. It looks like it dried to the torn skin with blood, making it horribly painful to take off. I can feel my skin ripping apart the further I pull the cloth; I have never felt a relief as strong as when I finally finish. I lean back into a small tree behind me and let myself breath for a second.

Deep breaths in, and out. My vision is blurry and my arm shakes uncontrollably, but I'm done with step one. Now I get to wash off.

*****

I don't think even the arm breaking itself was as painful as that was. Then again I don't remember much of it so I could be wrong. Warmth from the sun hits my back and I sigh; it's such a beautiful day out. I shift so that I'm closer to the creek bed and slowly lower my arm into the fresh water. It burns at first and turns all the surrounding water dark pink.

It's probably not good that I'm losing so much blood; I can't imagine it being healthy. I carefully rub the surrounding skin with the palm of my hand to help get the dried blood off but it seems like every time I clear an area of blood, more comes to replace it. I need to fix this soon or I might bleed out, I swear this cut got deeper. My breathing has gotten more forced as I attempt to hold the wound closed. My efforts are erroneous at best though, so I hope Jayden gets back soon. Blood pours from between my fingers and I hiss, my vision is already turning black at the edges.

I hear something shuffle in the bushes and I turn my head to see Jayden slowly wandering towards me with an old pair of black jeans and a piece of beef jerky. He almost drops the food when he sees me, jogging towards me in a rush.

"Oh shit, Lib are you okay?" He says quickly sitting by my side and setting the stuff down on the grass. I nod at him.

"Oh yeah, I'm feeling pretty chill right now actually. Thought about taking a walk, maybe going for a quick swim. Do you feel like ice cream?" I say rolling my eyes and putting out my good hand.

"Give me the jeans I'm going to have to take out the seams and stitch this up or it won't stay." I hiss and wiggle my fingers to get his attention. He looks at me shocked, turning to see my still bleeding arm; then glancing at my open hand.

"Jayden come on I don't have all day!" I raise my eyebrows before grabbing the jeans from his open hand. "Do you have anything I can use as a needle?" I ask without looking up at him while I work on taking the thread out of the jeans. Luckily for me I've done this many times before and I know how to work it out fairly fast.

I used to get men's jeans and then cut them off to use as shorts in the summer, but if you cut the thread they unravel and don't last as long. So what I did was I'd cut about three or four inches below where I want the shorts to end and pull out the thread to tie it at the end. It was way easier to take out when it was cut first though - and having two arms to use helped quite a bit.

"Um, let me see. I'll be back again I guess." Jayden finally says, standing up and running down the trail again. It takes a while but I eventually get a good hold on the seam of the jeans and start pulling it out as fast as I can while still being careful not to break it. Funny the skills you think you'll never use. Just hilarious. I roll my eyes at the conversation going on in my head. A shadow falls over the ground and I look up to see clouds passing over the sun in groups. Every once in a while a cloud will pass and it'll get dark, and then light again. It takes a second to get used to but once I do I barely notice it.