Old Wounds Novels & Stories

The wound had healed poorly and now caused him constant pain. "The regular doctors said there was nothing they could do," he explained nervously as I examined the injury. "They said I would just have to live with the pain. But then I heard about your center. About how you can heal things other healers cannot." I placed my hands on the poorly healed wound and let my power flow. Golden light spread across his skin as I carefully broke down the scar tissue and rebuilt it correctly. The young wolf gasped as the pain that had plagued him for months disappeared.

After saying that, Lugh locked eyes with Logan, attempting to discern if Logan was merely trying to scare him. Logan maintained an impassive expression as he replied, "Two winters ago, your wound reactivated, and it actually worsened. At the time, you paid it no mind. Your injury will worsen as it has reached a relapse phase. It's just that you are unaware of it. "If you wait around and do nothing, your wound will soon rupture. The original scar will tear open again. I won't turn you away if you wait until then to seek treatment. I'll still welcome you as a patient regardless."

He filed it as such. The information said: the healing is real and it is not complete. The healing is a process with no arrival point. The sensitivity in the specific register of the old harm is not a failure of the process — it is a characteristic of having been genuinely harmed. It is the scar tissue. Scar tissue is not wound. It is something different. It protects and it restricts and it reminds.

Livia lay on the left; Marcellus lay quietly on the right. His face was pale, a sheen of cold sweat gathering on his brow. The bandages on his chest had been freshly changed, but a faint trace of red still seeped through. The doctors had said his old wounds had only just begun to heal—yet now, due to overexertion and repeated use of painkillers, the injury had torn open again.

The blood had seeped through his shirt and suit jacket, hidden by the darkness of the fabric. He was seriously injured. The doctor examined his wound and advised, "There's still inflammation. You sustained a serious injury this time. Please rest well and closely monitor your diet." Gloria and Brian nodded. The doctor reminded Winston, "You must keep the wound dry. It was torn open a few days ago and became infected after being exposed to rain. If it gets infected again, it could significantly delay the healing process." It was crucial to handle the healing wound with care and attention.

Olivia winced in her sleep as Heidi applied tinctures and herbs before wrapping it. In the chaos of the explosion, Olivia had been sliced open by something sharp. She would never know when it happened or what had pierced her stomach but she was lucky the cut was not so deep that her organs had been sliced open. It was a flesh wound and with time, it should heal. Or so Heidi hoped. She wasn't a healer, she was just a housekeeper, but she had experience dressing wounds. She hoped her knowledge worked on humans as well as it did on wolves. Most wolves could heal superficial wounds quickly and they didn't often need herbs to help the process.

Whatever Old Man had done, it was worse than death. He wanted to lunge for Haemos, tear his throat out, and be done with it. But the raw ache where his arm had been ripped off kept dragging his body back to reality. Blood and fire still sizzled along the torn edge of his shoulder, the stump throbbing in time with his heartbeat. He glanced at the wound and forced his focus inward, initiating his healing process.

“I’m already on my way there.” I found some fainting salts in Missus Lowry’s stock and knelt next to her. She was elderly and didn’t heal as fast as she used to. The gash was closing, but slowly. I yanked a clean rag from her workbench and pressed it against the wound while I uncorked the salts with my teeth, and held it under her nose. The old she-wolf woke with a scream and tried to sit upright. I threw the bottle of salts to the side, and gently pushed her back down with my free hand. “Careful,” I said and rested my hand on her shoulder. “You’ve been injured.”

I said. Oliver reached over to snag a chip off Trevor’s plate. “Not really,” he said. “Werewolves heal quickly, so it’s usually just in and out, recover at home. The most typical stuff we deal with is injuries from training, and that’s just set a bone and good as new in a few days, or sew them up and back to the training field.” I got a bit excited about that. “Does that mean I can get out of here sooner?” I asked.

But the damage underneath was the kind that would have developed complications by morning. Wren fixed it in five minutes. Five minutes she did not have, which she was using anyway, because Maret was nineteen and it was fixable and the alternative was leaving it and she did not do that. The third person. An older man she did not recognize—not from the village, she thought, or from somewhere in the village she had not spent time in. He had a wound on his shoulder that had been dressed with whatever was available in the camp, which was not much, and the dressing had done its job for eleven days but the job it had been doing was managing rather than healing.