The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russell [156]
He had no idea how long he’d lain unconscious. It was daylight when they crashed. Both moons were up now. For a while, he kept still, concentrating on each limb and on the pain in his chest, trying to judge the seriousness of his injuries. His legs were numb and, heart drumming, he was horrified, thinking he’d broken his back. But when he moved his head cautiously, he saw that Sofia had been thrown onto him in the wreck and that the numbness was simply due to impeded circulation.
There was blood all over her face but she was still breathing. Marc slowly slid out from under her, trying not to jar her body, all Anne’s apocalyptic descriptions of compound fractures coming back to him. He was able to turn and cradle her head as he pulled his legs clear and, in his concern for her, he forgot to be worried about his own body. By the time he got to his knees, he realized that he couldn’t be badly hurt himself or the pain would have been worse.
He pulled his shirt up to see why his chest felt so awful and saw in the moonlight the exact outline of the safety harness, drawn in burst skin and ugly bruises; he almost passed out again, but put his head down for a few minutes and was better. Then he looked to Sofia and began to clear away hollow poles and guy wires and polymer film, all that was recognizable from the Ultra-Light. When she was free of the wreckage, Marc got up and made his way to the lander, unlocking the cargo bay door and flicking on the battery-powered lamp inside. When his eyes adjusted, he found the first-aid kit, a portable camplight and a set of insulated emergency blankets, which he carried back to Sofia.
In all their months together, Marc had kept his distance from Sofia Mendes. He found her rather cold, disturbingly self-sufficient, almost unfeminine, but her physical beauty sometimes took his breath away, and he had never permitted himself to draw her, to feel the shape of her with his hands, even on paper at a chaste distance.
Now he knelt at her side. I beg your pardon, mademoiselle, he thought, and with as much detachment as he could muster, still badly shaken himself, searched along her arms and legs for breaks and cuts. Her torso was undoubtedly as bruised as his own but, for many reasons, he simply could not bring himself to determine if she had ribs broken or abdominal injuries. There wasn’t anything he could do for such hurts anyway. So he laid out one blanket, moved her onto it and then wrapped her securely in the other before finding his way to the creek for a container of water.
He returned and dampened a clean cloth from the first-aid kit to wipe the dried and fresh blood from her face. He found the oozing source: her scalp was gashed. Fighting nausea at the sight of all the blood, Marc forced himself to feel along the edges of the cut. He couldn’t be sure but it seemed that there was no depression in the skull itself. Concentrating manfully on the task, he didn’t realize her eyes had opened until he heard her say, "If you’ve baptized me, you’re in a lot of trouble, Robichaux."
"Mon Dieu!" he shouted, falling back from her, tipping over the bucket of water, so shocked that the cloth flew out of his hand.
For several minutes, Sofia was treated to an impressive display of agitated Gallic emotion. Her French was academic and Robichaux’s dialect was almost incomprehensible to her even when he had not been scared senseless. Nevertheless, she understood quite clearly that he was veering wildly between relief and anger. "I’m sorry I frightened you," she said when he started to slow down.
He held up a hand, swallowing, and shook his head, still breathing double time. "De rien." It was a moment more before he could produce English. "I beg you, mademoiselle. Do not ever do that to me again."
"I’ll try not to, but I doubt that the situation is likely to recur," she said dryly. "Am I damaged? Are you?"
"As far as I have been able to determine,