After-Action Patchup

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Belle: Well, *you* should learn to control your temper. Now, hold still. This might sting a little. [presses cloth to wound; the beast growls in pain] Belle: By the way, thank you for saving my life. Beast: [stops growling] You're welcome. —Beauty and the Beast

Jack suffered some minor injuries. All he needs is to have the scraps and cuts cleaned and bandaged -- maybe some antiseptic, or a few stitches, or a bandage. Fortunately, danger is no longer looming, and here comes Jill to do it; she is usually not The Medic, the injuries not being severe enough to require professional attention.

Like Post Dramatic Stress Disorder, if The Cavalry Arrives Late, this can keep Jack out of the way while they clean up all the loose ends.

It is a quiet moment after the battle or the chase, or however he suffered the injuries. Therefore, even though he is not suffering Post Dramatic Stress Disorder, he will often react more strongly to the pain than during the thick of things -- with the humanizing effect of Afraid of Needles, in the antiseptic variation. Using iodine will get a particularly strong reaction.

Jill often has to tell him to hold still when she treats the injuries -- often with a warning, in advance, that it will hurt. If she doesn't sympathize with him -- either in general or because she disapproves of how he got injured -- she may briskly inform him not to be a baby. She may try to soothe him if she does feel sympathetic, particularly if they are still in enemy terriority and he needs to keep quiet.

Regardless of how she feels about him, she may inform him that it was really stupid to get into trouble in the first place, which may or may not be followed by an acknowledgement of his courage, or even the Smooch of Victory. This is less likely if it was on her behalf, where appropriate gratitude may be expressed. She may, however, deny that his intervention was needed; that sometimes is true.

It also affords time for a tender moment after an action-packed scene (not to mention a Shirtless Scene), or merely for people to talk about discoveries made during the heat of battle. The first is usually a man getting patched up by a woman; it often advances the Florence Nightingale Effect, but seldom goes all the way from nothing to love because it's only one scene. If not, or if there is no UST, it's commonly the second, used for exposition, since they can talk.

When there is no one around to help, Self-Stitching may come into play. It tends to be far less pleasant. If she doesn't have a bandage handy, the subtrope From Dress to Dressing applies.

Contrast Minor Injury Overreaction.

Examples of After-Action Patchup include:

Anime and Manga

• Ranma ½: Akane does this for Ranma in the martial ice-skating arc. He's moping after a fight because a man gave him his first kiss, so Akane comes in to snap him out of his funk and bandage any wounds. This results in several Almost Kisses between them before their families interrupt.

Comic Books

• A variation occurs in both the comic and film version of Sin City. After the opening escape scene from the cops, Marv goes to Luceille's apartment to get patched up. He applies his own bandages since he snuck into her place but he is sure to ask her for meds.
• In Astro City, the police and ambulance show up after Steeljack brought down the villain, and the Honor Guard took him away. The EM Ts treat Steeljack, and a policeman fills him in on what the Honor Guard has done.
• A gender-swapped version happens to Stephanie Brown/Spoiler, where her boyfriend Tim Drake (Robin) tended to her wounds as she talks about her villainous father.

Film

• The famous "Well, dammit, Indy, where doesn't it hurt?!" scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark
• In Beauty and the Beast, the Beast rescues Belle from a wolf pack when she attempted to flee the castle. Belle takes him back to the castle to treat his wounds. He still acts like a hothead and refuses to cooperate, until Belle actually thanks him for saving her life.

Beast: ...You're welcome.

• After the beach house shootout of The Killer, Ah Jong and Inspector Li spend a scene tending one of the former's wounds, a gunshot to the arm, leading to Li using a bit of gunpowder from a shotgun shell and a match in order to cauterize the wound.
• After the Il Duce shootout from The Boondock Saints, all three of the title characters have wounds to tend to, which is shown in a montage that includes a heated iron.
• Terminator 2 has the scene with Sarah Connor removing bullets from the T-800's torso.
• A deleted scene in Johnny English Reborn has English giving a Badass Boast of the training he got in Nepal which gave him Balls of Steel, then a Gilligan Cut shows him shrieking in pain as the Love Interest treats his wound.
• The Thirteenth Warrior. The protagonist is being treated by a Viking woman who, on hearing his groans, tells him he's sounding like a woman, so he quips, "How come you're not doing it then?"

Literature

• In Dresden Files Charity dislikes Harry. Nevertheless, she treats a cut he suffered.

"I hear they make antiseptics that don't hurt these days. Charity used iodine."

• In Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian stories:
  • In A Witch Shall Be Born, much of how Salome took over is told by Valerius to Ivga while she tends his wounds, though they are unusually severe for this trope.

Her soft, nimble fingers were again at work, gently cleansing and closing the gaping edges of his raw wounds.

• • In The Phoenix on the Sword, Conan gets patched up while recounting what happened. At one point, he has to reject the notion that he was delirous.

Best stop your caterwauling and aid us to bind the king's wounds. He's like to bleed to death.

• In the Wizard Heir books, two characters have nice moment like this.
• Non-romantic example: Judge Dee has one of the judge's lieutenants massaging a medecinal ointment onto the other's shoulders where he was hit by a club.
• In PG Wodehouse's Summer Moonshine, Jane remembers that Joe suffered his bruised knuckle on her behalf and offers to bathe it for him. He turns it down as too trivial a wound.
• In Dan Abnett's Warhammer 40000 novel Brothers of the Snake, after the battle with the orks, Priad talks with Petrok while an apocathery tends his wounds, to tell him something he realized during the battle.

Live Action TV

• This is Jack and Kate's first interaction in Lost.
• Lampshaded and parodied in Community, when Jeff suffers an ACTUAL injury during the Paintball Episode and Britta patches him up, commenting on how the "wounded soldier fantasy" clearly means they're moments from doing it. They do it.
• Played for laughs on Angel, when Cordelia is patching up Angel from getting a rebar through his chest.

Cordelia: Stop breathing Angel I don't breathe Cordelia: Then stop flexing your manly boob muscle.

• Buffy and Angel's First Kiss is preceded by the former bandaging Angel's shoulder. ("Angel") Similarly, an ice rink skirmish is followed by Buffy tending to Angel's bleeding, bumpy forehead. ("What's My Line?, Pt. 2")

Angel: You shouldn't have to touch me when I'm like this. Buffy: I didn't even notice.

• • In "Helpless" when Buffy discovers that Giles injected her with a drug that removes her superpowers on the orders of the Watcher's Council, she threatens to kill him if he ever touches her again. At the end of the episode, after Giles is fired for his "fatherly love" toward Buffy, she allows him to clean her forehead where she's bleeding.
• Happens a couple of times in The X-Files, since Mulder tends to get himself into stupid situations and Scully is a doctor.

Tabletop Games

• Tends to pop up in Dungeons and Dragons as in-combat healing rarely outpaces the damage dealt, and stopping someone from doing damage is more efficient.

Web Comics

• In Sinfest, Fuschia cleans off Crimney's injuries. Giving him a chance to tell her You Are Worth Hell.
  • And again after dealing with bullies.
• In Blue Yonder, Lena treats Kevin's injuries.

Kevin: Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow Lena: Still bleeding. . . and still a wuss when it comes to iodine

• In Girl Genius, Zola starts one with Gil right after the fight with Dr. Merlot, and talks about past ones, where Gil also moved too much. Agatha is not pleased, but can't stop to make a girly fuss over him.
  • A non-romantic version: Moloch bandages Agatha's hand as she tells him about the test.
  • Snaug, on the other hand, deliberately plays up the romantic aspects as soon as she realizes she can use the black eye.
• In Wooden Rose, Lillian must stitch up the doctor. Unusually, she had to be persuaded to do it, never having had to give stitches before.