head with the butt of the whip. Nothing good waiting for him," says Bristel.
"Doesn't sound like much good for any of us," says Haymitch.
Snow begins, thick and wet, making visibility even more difficult. I stumble up the walk to my house behind the others, using my ears more than my eyes to guide me. A golden light colors the snow as the door opens. My mother, who was no doubt waiting for me after a long day of unexplained absence, takes in the scene.
"New Head," Haymitch says, and she gives him a curt nod as if no other explanation is needed.
I'm filled with awe, as I always am, as I watch her transform from a woman who calls me to kill a spider to a woman immune to fear. When a sick or dying person is brought to her ... this is the only time I think my mother knows who she is. In moments, the long kitchen table has been cleared, a sterile white cloth spread across it, and Gale hoisted onto it. My mother pours water from a kettle into a basin while ordering Prim to pull a series of her remedies from the medicine cabinet. Dried herbs and tinctures and store-bought bottles. I watch her hands, the long, tapered fingers crumbling this, adding drops of that, into the basin. Soaking a cloth in the hot liquid as she gives Prim instructions to prepare a second brew.
My mother glances my way. "Did it cut your eye?"
"No, it's just swelled shut," I say.
"Get more snow on it," she instructs. But I am clearly not a priority.
"Can you save him?" I ask my mother. She says nothing as she wrings out the cloth and holds it in the air to cool somewhat.
"Don't worry," says Haymitch. "Used to be a lot of whipping before Cray. She's the one we took them to."
I can't remember a time before Cray, a time when there was a Head Peacekeeper who used the whip freely. But my mother must have been around my age and still working at the apothecary shop with her parents. Even back then, she must have had healer's hands.
Ever so gently, she begins to clean the mutilated flesh on Gale's back. I feel sick to my stomach, useless, the remaining snow dripping from my glove into a puddle on the floor. Peeta puts me in a chair and holds a cloth filled with fresh snow to my cheek.
Haymitch tells Bristel and Thorn to get home, and I see him press coins into their hands before they leave. "Don't know what will happen with your crew," he says. They nod and accept the money.
Hazelle arrives, breathless and flushed, fresh snow in her hair. Wordlessly, she sits on a stool next to the table, takes Gale's hand, and holds it against her lips. My mother doesn't acknowledge even her. She's gone into that special zone that includes only herself and the patient and occasionally Prim. The rest of us can wait.
Even in her expert hands, it takes a long time to clean the wounds, arrange what shredded skin can be saved, apply a salve and a light bandage. As the blood clears, I can see where every stroke of the lash landed and feel it resonate in the single cut on my face. I multiply my own pain once, twice, forty times and can only hope that Gale remains unconscious. Of course, that's too much to ask for. As the final bandages are being placed, a moan escapes his lips. Hazelle strokes his hair and whispers something while my mother and Prim go through their meager store of painkillers, the kind usually accessible only to doctors. They are hard to come by, expensive, and always in demand. My mother has to save the strongest for the worst pain, but what is the worst pain? To me, it's always the pain that is present. If I were in charge, those painkillers would be gone in a day because I have so little ability to watch suffering. My mother tries to save them for those who are actually in the process of dying, to ease them out of the world.
Since Gale is regaining consciousness, they decide on an herbal concoction he can take by mouth. "That won't be enough," I say. They stare at me. "That won't be enough, I know how it feels. That will barely knock out a headache."
"We'll combine it with sleep syrup, Katniss, and he'll manage it. The herbs are more