He didn’t say anything until after she tried to stitch his wound, and then he begged not to be touched. She could sense that he was off-balance, and clearly had some trust issues, and she paused, not wanting to encourage him to act rashly. “Sir…” She said, her voice barely a whisper. “You are bleeding too much for it to be a graze. If you do not have your wound tended to, then you will only sit here and continue to bleed. I would normally suggest proper medical treatment, but I am pretty sure that if you could have gone to a proper doctor, you would have. So you have to decide. Option 1, you sit here until you bleed to death, and then leave me to clean up after… or you let me close the wound, and then you can leave and we can both get back to our lives.”

A part of her had thought that maybe he was stuck-up enough to think himself better than her, but he had already grasped her before, clamping his hand upon her mouth. Ruling that as unlikely, her next guess was that he simply had issues with trust. “Do you think that you can stitch this yourself?” She asked, her voice a bit skeptical. He was bleeding, there was no way that he could easily keep his hand steady enough to do more than just hurt himself more.

The woman was trying to be patient, but the sooner she stitched him up, the faster he would leave. After a few more moments, she gave another offer. Most people would think it was insane, and would serve no purpose, but to Rhys, it made all the difference, and maybe…just maybe, such was the case with this man as well. “I can put on gloves, if that would make it easier.” She offered. 

For Rhys, sometimes contact with the skin was too much. It was rare for her, as usually the haunting visions came in her sleep, but there were times, especially when she was under great stress, that she found physical contact to be too great. Touching someone showed her their future, or the future of their loved ones, and she couldn’t handle it. In the workroom there were thick gloves for handling large amounts of leather, but she also had a smaller pair that fit her more snuggly in her apron, for occasions when she was worried about being around other people. It was another reason that she wore two layers, one of which had long sleeves, even in the summer.