“She did a good job, bro.” The medic said. “Any other problems? Heard you got blown off the front of the APC.”

“Yeah. Scared the hell out of me, I can tell you. My left knee’s bad.”

“Right. Will your trousers come off, or do we need to cut them?”

“I think they’ll slide off if I undo them.”

Simpson had stood up and glanced around the corner of the building but mustn’t have spotted anything because now she looked down at him with a grin.

“I could help.”

The medic was getting his left boot off while he tried to undo the righthand one.

Simpson leaned down and took over, undoing his right-hand boot, then helped slide it off his foot. She then moved sideways along his leg to get a little better position and reached for his belt. Her hand stopped short of the buckle, and she looked him in the eye, grinning just a little before going further. He could tell she was enjoying herself, and she smiled at him. He tried to shrug without hurting himself any more than he already was.

“Go for it.” He said and lay down, closing his eyes.

By lying there with his eyes closed and trying to ignore things down in his waist area, he was able to keep himself under control, particularly as he made a conscious effort not to try and differentiate between whether it was Simpson or the medic doing something. He felt his trousers being slipped down and then gentle prodding of his knee. He tried to think of a healing spell that would work, but generally, they didn’t work as well on your body as when used on other people.

“The verdict, Doc?” He said after a few moments when the gentle ministrations stopped.

“It’s a bit hard to tell here in the field, but at a guess, I’d say it’s an ACL when you landed.”

Andrew considered that.

“If you got a pad, you can show me a diagram of the ACL injury, mate?” He asked, sitting himself up on his elbows.

The medic shrugged, looking puzzled, but he pulled a combat pad out of his jacket. It was slightly different in design from the Ostrayan ones but worked the same. He fiddled with it for a little bit and then showed Andrew a picture of the ACL rupture. Actually, the pad had a series of pictures from different angles, and Andrew studied them all for a few moments, swiping backward and forwards on the screen as he lay slightly on one side to free up one of his arms while he rested on the other’s elbow while his free hand held the pad.

He mentally brought up the healing spell that he had memorized the best. It was suited cuts, even bullet holes, rather than a ruptured ACL. He couldn’t remember anything better in his grandmother’s journal, which he didn’t have with him anyway, so we set about modifying the spell on the fly. He must’ve looked a bit odd lying half on his side, staring into space as Simpson finally interrupted him.