Flash Fic Challenge: Old Wounds

Old Wounds

The bell over the door jangled, and I looked up as the customer entered. He was a lean man with a head of dark curls and a short beard and the sort of muscle that suggests frequent, heavy, lifting. I eyed the clean but much mended clothes and came down on the side of poor-with-steady-employment rather than brawler. "What can I do for you, Mr...?"

"Josephson." He filled in this year's name politely enough, though as ever I couldn't place his accent. "I'm looking for a good wound salve, please."

"A new wound?"

"An old one, that broke open again." He smiled ruefully and laid a hand on his side. "I was pushing too hard to get a job finished in time, and the scar didn't take the strain well."

I nodded. "Comfrey, Octavia," I ordered, and the spider automaton activated with a hiss of pistons and scuttled off along the shelves to retrieve the correct jar. While I waited, I rolled round the end of the counter. "May I see?"

He sighed, but seemed unfazed by my wheelchair. He carefully untucked his clean but shabby shirt and lifted it to reveal equally clean but shabby bandages wrapping his lower ribs, then stood quietly as I unwound them and inspected the wound.

It was a puncture wound, small and round and deep, the sort that is, as he had said, prone to split open when pulled the wrong way. Stabbed by a long, thin, knife, perhaps. I took the jar Octavia brought and sent her off after a few other things, while I measured out the herbs I wanted and ground them in my mortar, before beating them into the base cream I used for salves. The sharp clean scent filled the air of my apothecary.

I smoothed the first dose on myself. "Was the job worth it?"

"It paid for a lot of things," he said, shrugging the shoulder on his good side.

That was as good as it got for a lot of people, I knew. I rebandaged the wound, smoothing the folds down.

He smiled when I had finished, and tucked his shirt in as carefully as he had pulled it free. "How much?"

I named my price, and he grimaced faintly. I shrugged. "You wanted a good salve. You get what you pay for."

"True, true." He pulled out a thin purse from hiding and began to dig out coppers one by one, setting each down on the counter with a small precise clink, like clockwork settling into place. He got the required price laid out eventually and pushed the coins over to me with calloused fingers. "Here. My thanks."

I checked it over and handed him the little pot of salve, with instructions on how to use it.

He listened solumnly, nodded, and then vanished out of my door, leaving me to clean up the remains and close up for Easter.

He'll come back next year, I'm sure. He always does.