Read Online End of Manners by Francesca Marciano - Free Book Online Page A

jacket to make sure there was no blood. I had to get my hands under his shirt to do so. I felt his warm, clammy skin. As I brushed his body I became aware of the intimacy of the gesture. It unsettled me.
    “Nothing here either,” I said out loud. I then ran my hands along his thighs and legs, trying to touch his body lightly, impersonally, in the same way airport personnel search passengers at metal detectors. I noticed a protuberance on his shin. I touched it and realized something was out of place. I took out the scissors from the first-aid kit we carried in a pouch and cut through the fabric of his trouser leg to see what was underneath. I did it with a show of self-assurance to counteract the embarrassment I actually felt at what I was doing.
    “Don’t worry, it’ll be all right, you’re fine,” I whispered to him the way I’d seen camp doctors do in movies.
    “Aha. It looks like there’s a fracture here,” I declaimed, staying in character for the scene we were both playing. A latex prosthesis strapped to his leg revealed lacerated flesh and a bone poking out of his shin.
    At this point, Obelix was still sitting back against the driver’s seat while I was trafficking with his trousers. He kept flopping his head repeatedly onto his chest as if to hint he would be better off lying down. And, of course, the bandage I had tied around his temples had come undone and the gauze was dangling over his face.
    “Now, in just a minute we’ll get you out of here, all right?” I offered tentatively. Obelix did not reply.
    “I can’t fix up your leg unless you’re lying on the ground,” I explained.
    He ignored me. Nevertheless, I managed to get him over my shoulder and haul him out of the car, adopting the method we had been shown in the lesson on casualty evacuation. There was actually a way, by using leverage on arms and shoulders, by which even someone of my size could move a man of Obelix’s bulk.
    “You’re hurting me like that, you stupid bitch,” he snarled as I was helping him to drag himself along.
    It shocked me that he would insult me. I had assumed personal affront wasn’t part of the game.
    “Yes, but what else can I do? I can’t fix your leg up if you don’t—”
    “Fuck off, you’re hurting me, can’t you see? Who the fuck sent you?”
    In class, Roger had warned us that the injured may not be polite. I tried to remember what he had said exactly and the specific way to respond: “A person who is suffering tends not to follow etiquette, but you have to be firm and keep doing what you know is right, even if it’s painful.”
    I laid him on a blanket (rule number three: always try to cover the victim, or put a layer between him and the ground; shock and loss of blood lower the body temperature and create hypothermia), then I started to work on the fracture, bandaging it tightly in a splint.
    “Don’t touch me, you bloody idiot! Call a doctor. You don’t know what the fuck you’re doing!!”
    “Stop being such a pain in the ass. Now,” I hissed with a forcefulness I didn’t know I had. “And let me work in peace.”
    I was amazed at the speed with which I’d shut him up.
    I wrapped him in the cover and while I was at it retied the loose bandage on his head. I thought I’d fixed him up pretty nicely. It was a treat to look at him all snug under the blanket, his bandages tight, looking so much cleaner and tidier than when I had found him.
    Now I knew for sure he was going to survive.
    More or less at this point, once we had all assisted our wounded, or evacuated them from the accident sites, the casualties leapt up like blood-spattered zombies, their heads and arms bandaged somehow or other, gauze hanging, their clothes slashed, and, in front of the group that had gathered around, gave their evaluation of the assistance that had been provided. It was a sort of quick, very technical overview, where oversights and errors were pointed out.
    Obelix jumped up like a bloodied jack-in-the