He shrugged, wincing at the movement. She examined his injured side closely. “What caused this?”

“An exploding rock.”

She gave him a startled look. “Rocks explode?”

“They do if they’re thrown hard enough.”

She shook her head as she opened his jacket and spread it out in the air. “I guess that explains this, huh?”

Richard gaped at the sorry state of his jacket; the side of it was absolutely shredded, like a tiger used it to sharpen its claws, the deep rips somehow making the dried blood less disturbing. He tried to turn to look at his side, but stabbing pains stopped him cold. “Do I look like that too?”

“Pretty much,” she related. “This jacket saved your life. Good thing you were wearing something thick.”

“As opposed to Spandex,” he offered.

“Exactly. You’d be dead.”

He let out a hollow laugh. “Score one for cowboys.”

She walked off to reach for some equipment near the ceiling. “I’m going to need you to hold still for this. Pick a position that you can stay in for at least a minute.”

He shifted in his seat, trying to get comfortable. She swung a giant metallic arm toward him; at the end was an expensive looking camera, which he realized was the X-ray emitter.

“You’re qualified to do this?” he asked uneasily.

“Oh, please,” she dismissed. “Low-paid techs do this all the time; it’s not rocket science. Now, I’m going to take five X-rays, in different directions. The equipment will piece together a 3-D picture.”

“Like a CAT scan?”

“Not that precise, but it should be enough to tell how injured you are.”

He gazed uneasily at the emitter. “Shouldn’t I be covered with a lead blanket or something?”

“Covered where? I don’t know how far the injury goes. Besides, you’ll get more radiation on a typical summer day in this sorry berg.”

“Good point.” His brow furrowed. “I can’t believe he has a machine like this at home.”

“Yeah. He brought it here after upgrading the one at his office.”

He chuckled. “Rich people get all the nice toys.”

“Don’t they, though.” She finished adjusting the camera. “Now hold still.”

He did his best to remain motionless as she took five images in a half-circle around him. “The computer will take a little while to assemble the result. Meanwhile, I can patch you up.”

She grabbed some white towels and a bottle of hand sanitizer, squirting a large amount into her cupped hand. “Now this is really going to hurt!”

“Huh? That’s your bedside manner?”

She gave him a coy smile. “Sorry, I’m used to dealing with anarchists. They like to show how tough they are. Ready for a challenge?”

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Before he could answer, she splashed the entire handful onto his injured side. He winced, waited…and felt only a minor sting. His faced relaxed and he cracked a smile.

“See? Not so bad.”

“Is that a good sign or a bad sign?”

She carefully wiped away the dried blood, going through several towels. “Hopefully, it means you’re not very hurt. Or it could mean you have a lot of severed nerves.” She smirked. “But then you’d have other problems. I think you’re fine. But we’ll know soon.”

After disposing of the bloodied cloths in the room’s built-in incinerator, she washed her hands again. “Time to wrap you up.” She gathered together several sterile pads, a roll of stretchy surgical gauze, and her container of balm.

She noticed his confused gaze. “You shouldn’t be so surprised,” she explained. “Traditional healers are capable of a lot of techniques that doctors treat as somehow specific to them. But they’re not beyond the reach of everyday people.”

She smeared a handful of the balm over his injury; it glowed faintly from the fungus. She covered it with clean pads and then taped it down. “Battlefield medicine works like this too. Soldiers know enough to stabilize an injured comrade to get him to back to camp, people there can either fix him or stabilize him enough to get him to a field hospital, and they can either fix him or stabilize him enough to ship him to a full-blown medical facility. To the military, distributing medical knowledge is simply common sense.” She finished with a few bands of sterile gauze wrapped around his torso.

Something in the room played a tinny, synthesized tune. “Oh, the X-ray machine is done!” She made a few gestures on the touchscreen, then turned around and smiled. “I think you’re gonna make it! Come take a look.” He rose slowly and hobbled over.

She dragged her finger to rotate the image. “See? The only distortion is on the outside; that’s the visible injury. Everything else looks clear as a bell. I don’t even see any rock shards; those would show up brightly.”

“So I’m out of the woods?”

“Probably,” she predicted. “Check yourself over in the morning. Look for dark bruising that would indicate internal bleeding. And if you see any…get to the emergency room.”

They scooped up the debris and stuffed it in the incinerator, and Kelly pulled out a fresh sheet of exam paper. “I’ll get the help to burn it,” she revealed. “I don’t want to stick around to watch it finish, and it can’t be left unattended.”

“I don’t know how to thank you,” Richard burbled, almost coming to tears.

She retrieved his container from the refrigerator and waved it at him. “You already did. This stuff is gold.”

They headed to the front door. “So what kind of fungus is that?”

“It doesn’t have an English name, just a scientific one and a Chinese one. But the mundane version doesn’t glow.”

They turned right to enter the foyer. “Could you still use it in the salve?”

“Yes, but this variant⁠–” She waved the container again. “–⁠makes it work a lot better.”

They said their goodbyes at the front door and he drove home without incident.

The sun rose entirely too early for his tastes; it pushed through the blinds as if they were merely a halfhearted suggestion. He shielded his eyes and then worked to rise from his bed. Something felt tight, restricting his movements. Rockslide. Why was he thinking of a rockslide? The sound of small rocks rolling over other rocks played in his mind. Then the memories of last night suddenly came back to him. He sat up and looked around; apparently, he had fallen asleep on top of his bed, not bothering to change out of his clothes. He remembered the blood; it was still dry, none of it leaking onto his bedspread. Gingerly, he stood up, but there seemed to be no need; he wasn’t in pain. He stripped off his jacket and shirt as he shuffled to the bathroom mirror.

He examined the uncovered part of his torso; it was the expected pasty-white color. Didn’t Kelly say there could be dark bruising? Maybe it was under the bandage, he thought as he labored to strip it off. Hardly daring to look, he pulled back the large white pads; as expected, they were stained on the inside. Underneath, there was no sign of an injury.

Disbelieving his exhausted eyes, he continued to stare. There was no indication of last night’s deep lacerations. He touched the skin, feeling its rubbery smoothness under his fingers. Like a newborn baby, he thought to himself.

Courage returning from the corner where it had been cowering, he jumped around a bit, trying to draw out the pain, but it refused to follow his rules. He smiled and let out a happy bellow; finally, his fortune seemed to be turning! But was that a light at the end of the tunnel, or the headlight of an oncoming train? There was only one way to find out…the next lead to chase down…later. First, he was going to take most of today off; he felt he had earned it.

Richard took a thick blanket from the closet and hung it over his bedroom blinds; it did a good enough job of blotting out the sunlight. He prepared for bed properly and slid under the sheets. As his consciousness faded, he thought about the magic shop’s oddly noncommercial location, and whether that was related to some contact point with the border world, or just poor business sense. He fell asleep before he could reach a decision.