He is indeed bleeding, the hand cupped over the lower half of his face painted grisly vermillion.

"Bastard," is spat back, spittle and red and fundamentally reflexive, from behind it. Only he can't both shield his face and twist off the hot bolt of pain jagging through his shoulder, and so with a scrabbling lack of grace Ralston abandons the attempt in favor of bleeding freely across edge of the rug so he might dredge himself free of the chair.

There's no grace in the arrangement. Half sitting, half lying, he holds his right arm tight against himself. Had he caught himself that way? Twisted as he fell after the impulse to catch himself? Ralston reaches after the cane where it's rolled to a stop, the red heat of fury and mortification and the sick nauseous feeling that comes with sudden pain burning in his face and the back of his neck and low in his belly.