When Reggie regained consciousness, he was acutely aware of two sensations as his eyes opened and found Erin kneeling next to him. First, he could feel the hard cool tiles of the floor against his skin and secondly, he could feel shooting pain coming from the wound in his leg. His pants and shoes were piled next to him on the floor down near his feet. He tried to sit up, but Erin laid her hand on his chest and gently pushed him back down.
"I know this has got to hurt, but I think I've gotten most of those barbs out of your leg." she said as she went back to his wound.
Erin had a handful of gauze in one of her hands that she was using to dab up the blood from the opening and the other hand held a pair of medical tweezers that she was using to dig around the wound with. Each time her hand moved the tweezers, the pain would shot through his leg and rack his body.
"Where did you get those?" Reggie asked through gritted teeth.
"There was a first-aid kit at the librarian's desk." she said, "I figured it was probably a good idea to clean the wound and pull any crap out that I could find. I just expect that there'd be so much."
"How bad does it look?" Reggie said as he tried to look over her hands and see for himself.
"It's quite nasty, but I'm not a doctor or anything, so I'm really just guessing."
"Well, I appreciate it nonetheless." he tried to say with a feeble attempt at a smile. "Even with the pain."
She returned his smile and said, "We'll see about that once I get these last few pieces out and then have to clean the wound. That's going to hurt like hell, especially without anything to numb your wound first."
Reggie looked down again. Except for his briefs and his socks, he was naked from the waste down so that Erin could work on his wound. Even from his vantage point, he could see the swelling and redness the sidhe's attack. He winced audibly and jerked his leg as Erin had to really pull hard to get a particular piece out that had gotten itself wedged in pretty good.
"So," he said once his breathing returned to normal. "Don't take this the wrong way, but you don't look like one of the normal students here. How did you get here?"
Erin remained focused on his leg, trying to be as gentle as she could. "I live nearby and I was on my way to pick up my kids from my ex-husband when I got caught in traffic behind an accident. While I was waiting for the emergency crews to clear the road, all hell broke loose. The next thing I knew giants and monsters were attacking everything in site and killing people who couldn't get away."
"A small group of us tried hiding, but those creatures found us and chased us here to the university. I was the only one left before you found me."
"So what about you? What's your deal? Are a student here?" she said without taking her eyes off his leg, even though she had stopped working on it for a few moments.
"Yeah, I am. I lived on campus here until my dorm was destroyed." He said. "I was actually driving into town on my way to work when I got caught by the same accident you did."
Erin set the tweezers down and started digging around in the first aid kit. After a few seconds she found what she was looking for and began to set things out in front of her.
"Well Reggie, I hate to say this, but the easy part is over. I'm pretty sure I got everything out, but I'm going to have to scrub the wound and clean out the infection to make sure you're going to be alright." She said with as much sympathy as could.
"For someone who isn't a doctor, you seem to know what you're doing."
"I used to be a lifeguard and I had to take a first aid class, which is lucky for you I suppose."
She gave him four pills and one of his water bottles as she continued, "I need you to take these pain killers now so that when I'm ready to clean the wound and stitch it, you won't black out again. I wish I new what those things were that we killed so I could be sure I'm doing the right thing."
Reggie finished swallowing the last of the painkillers and said, "Those things are called the sidhe and I think they're from Ireland."
"How do you know this?" Erin asked as she was began to prep his leg and the wound.
"Believe it or not, but I was reading about all this in here when you and your friends showed up."
Reggie then spent the rest of the hour telling her all that he had read before he passed out again from the pain. The last thing he remembered was Erin saying, "I think I've heard of the Spear of Destiny."
