Roy picked himself up and struggled over to his bed, chucking the bass case onto it as he went. Roy sighed as he checked the time on his phone and realized it was after 1:00 A.M. Lucifer spoke up saying, "Set the limbs before we review everything we learned.”
Roy grumbled and walked over to the kitchen where he opened a drawer and grabbed some duct tape. He headed back to the bed where he sat down and grabbed his hand and foot out of the bass case. Using his teeth he stretched out the tape before wrapping his cut right hand onto the stump at the wrist.
He then repeated the same procedure on his foot and covered it with a sock for good measure. "How long do you think it will take to heal?"
"I estimate forty eight hours. I spent almost all of my energy during the fights and on stopping the bleeding. You already know reconnecting limbs is difficult since I need to open vessels, reconnect tissues and everything else along with fixing the cells damaged due to lack of blood flow and necrosis. With all that in addition to the normal wounds, this is not going to be a quick recovery."
"You know, I'd give just about anything to see the look on a doctor's face seeing me duct tape my severed foot and hand back on." "I imagine most have seen much worse than that in their time as physicians. In my brief time around those performing medicine during battles, I've witnessed severed limbs, blood and gore on scales you couldn't imagine."
Roy leaned back into his pillow on top of the bed and stared at the ceiling. "Well, I guess I won't be stopping by to check on the guys anytime soon." "It wouldn't be the first time you've ignored them for more than a few days." "Put it on my schedule then. First thing we do after recovering is make sure they're not slacking off. In the mean time, any stories about deception or betrayal?" Roy asked.
"I wasn't present for this event but it ranks as one of the most blood thirsty tales I know. The Massacre of Glencoe occurred in 1692 near Fort William, Scotland. The Jacobite rising of 1689 started what led to the massacre, but the massacre itself began when..."
Roy listened as Lucifer recounted the tale and wondered if he had made the right decision to leave his opponent alive. He looked over to the bass case where he knew the dagger and other weapons were stowed away. Roy turned back to the ceiling and slowly drifted off to sleep with thoughts of past battles and Lucifer's tale.
"Get up. It's been six hours," Lucifer stated. Roy groaned and sat up flinging his legs over the side of the bed. "I repaired most of the damage in your foot over night. Being able to walk instead of limp will make blending in easier for when you take care of laundry. We've been lucky so far but if you keep it up the enemy will smell you coming before the battle even begins."
"Alright. I get the picture. We'll do laundry. I doubt there's something more exciting than laundry, but do we need to do anything else today?" "Now that you mention it... I think a certain someone needs to take some online classes and finish their GED already."
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"Ugh. Fine I get the picture. Study and chore day it is. Might as well text the guys then." Roy sent a quick text message on his phone, before tossing it back onto his mattress. He traveled over to the pile of dirty clothes sitting in the corner and stuffed them into a bag. Slapping his pant pocket to check that he had his wallet, Roy walked out his apartment door and headed for the first floor laundry room with Lucifer in tow.
"My foot feels as good as new but my hand is still pretty much useless." "The limb is not completely fixed yet. If you put too much strain on the tendons, they'll snap like twigs." "You're so uplifting," Roy responded as he walked into the laundry room.
"By tomorrow morning, the foot will be back to normal and you should have some movement in your hand, but lingering weakness." "I'll be careful. The last thing I want is even more wasted days." Half the machines were running with many of the rest containing already cleaned clothes yet to be picked up.
Roy pulled a dollar out of his wallet and used a coin machine to get the quarters for the machine. He spied an empty machine off in the corner and toted his clothes to it. "I need to get my own soap. The stuff at this place always messes up my nose. At least it's free even if it does smell like pineapples."
Roy loaded the machine, inserted his quarters and poured the soap in to top it off before shutting the lid and walking over to a nearby chair to wait. "We still haven't decided what to do with the weapons we've been collecting," Roy mentioned as he lounged in the chair.
"We both know that's a nice way of saying you don't want me to absorb them until absolutely necessary. Saving them for a rainy day just leaves you hoping we get something useful when we could be absorbing them immediately and using that knowledge to move forward." "Touchy Aren't we?", Roy responded.
"I firmly believe you should use them now. For all you know we could get something easy to handle like gluttony." "Or we could get sloth which would be almost worse than where we are now. For all you know we could just get a smattering of everything that gets us nowhere," Roy retorted.
"At least that would be progress from where we are. I admit taking on sloth or lust would be a set back, but you will need to deal with them eventually." "I know that, but it doesn't make this any easier." "Do not fear. You will be strong enough. As my host it is all but guaranteed. You've already survived taking on pride which is much more difficult than most. It will only get easier from here on out at least in the short run."
"Okay. We'll do it this week sometime. Let's just finish the stuff we already agreed to do and then we can absorb the weapons." Different residents were coming and going from the room as Roy sat in the chair with his bass case behind him attempting to look inconspicuous. It took a full thirty minutes for the laundry to finish, but Roy and Lucifer were content to discuss plans for the future while they waited.
When the machine stopped rumbling, Roy refilled his bag with the now clean clothes and flung it over his shoulder before picking up his bass case. With only one functioning hand, he was forced to balance the shoulder straps of the bass while holding onto the bag of clothes. The process of getting back to the room was made difficult due to Roy having to stop every time he reached a door.
On the trip down, he had been able to lean into the bar on the door to open it without using his hands, but this was not the case on the trip back up. First, he had to set down the clothes sack. then open the door before finally contorting through the door so the case would fit and grabbing the clothes sack as the door closed.
The entire ordeal left Roy feeling annoyed and more tired than he would have thought as he finally made it back to his apartment.