Help with sentence construction

The first sentence is constructed correctly, but it is an off-beat way of saying what you want. Unless the character saying it is eccentric, odd, or from another era, it sounds stilted.

Richard

A couple of issues.

First, what level of pain are you talking about? Agony refers to pain which is almost unbearable, so if you use the word "agony" to refer to something like a stubbed toe, it sounds too melodramtic.

"Comfort the agony" sounds like trying to make the agony feel more welcome. Instead of looking up alternatives to "help", try "ease":

ease the pain
dull the pain
deaden the pain

"A tea" is awkward. "A tea" sounds like "a <specific type of> tea". Perhaps "some tea". "To drink" is implied. "First" implies that there is going to be another action after the drink, so I'm assuming the tea is being used as some sort of anesthetic before "I" do something else to the patient. A shot of whiskey might help, too.

So, possibilities:

"I'll give you some tea first to dull the pain."
"Drink this tea first to ease the pain."

Hope this helps.

Calliopenjo said:

To answer the question of what level of pain, the patient has a deep cut that needed to be stitched closed. The wound became infected and now needs to be redone. Which leads to the sentence in question.

Click to expand...

OK, an infected cut probably hurts like !$%^$# so "agony" might be appropriate, however the person who's giving the tea probably would want to downplay the pain so the patient doesn't get any more upset.

I agree that a person administering to a patient would avoid the word "agony" and would be more likely to refer to it as pain.

Also that "comfort" is an odd choice of word. The tea could comfort the patient, or alleviate the pain.