Chapter 22 – — Professor Clementine, Endurance of Pain
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Angels were not made to feel the way we do. When the pain becomes too much, they have a choice we don’t. They can simply turn it off.”
— Professor Clementine, Endurance of Pain
Three days pass, and I’m still breathing.
It seems the dead don’t haunt you. They sit beside you, quiet, waiting to see what you do with the time they didn’t get.
I do what Draven told me to do, going to class and muddling through the usual routine. I don’t look at Jace when I pass him in the corridors, and he doesn’t look at me either. We’ve become experts at being in the same room without ever occupying the same space.
At night, I read Nella’s journal a couple pages at a time, because that’s all I can handle before the tears come and I have to stop. Poppy curls against my chest, and we fall asleep with the journal tucked under my pillow.
By the time Professor Rowan’s class rolls around on the fourth day, I’ve perfected the art of being numb. I sit in the back row where no one will notice me. I take notes without processing anything. I exist without really being present.
It’s easier that way.
“Today, we’re continuing our lecture on wounds you will encounter in the field and how to help them quickly when time matters,” she announces, her eyes sweeping the lecture hall.
She’s a thin woman with silver hair pulled back so tight it looks painful.
“When you’re deployed to a fissure site and the wounded start piling up, you won’t have the luxury of careful consideration.
You’ll have minutes, sometimes seconds. Hesitation will kill more patients than incompetence ever will. ”
I grip my pen tighter.
“Let’s start with wound sealing.” She holds up a small pouch filled with black powder. “Ash powder is made from burned ironwood mixed with crusite mineral. When you don’t have time for stitches, you pack the wound with this and touch a spark of current to ignite it.”
She demonstrates on a slab of meat on the table in front of her. The powder catches fire with a hiss, burning fast and hot, leaving the flesh cauterized and sealed.
“It’s brutal,” she continues. “The patient will scream. You have to keep going anyway. Ugly scars are better than death.”
This is what I signed up for. Death is everywhere at Ashwell.
In the wards, in the lectures, in the way the professors talk about loss like it’s just another lesson to learn.
People die here. Students die here. And if I make it through, if I become a Veilguard, I’ll spend the rest of my life watching people die and trying to stop it.
I wanted to make a difference, to be the person who stood between someone and the end, but no one tells you what it costs. No one tells you that every patient takes a piece of you with them, whether they live or not.
I can’t keep getting attached and caring so much. It’s going to destroy me.
But if I stop caring, what’s the point? What kind of healer saves lives without giving a damn about the people attached to them? Apparently the headmaster.
I don’t know how to find the balance. I don’t know if there is one.
Maybe that’s the real lesson Ashwell is trying to teach me. Not how to heal but how to survive the healing.
“Corrupted wounds are different.” Professor Rowan sets the pouch down.
“Ash powder won’t work. The disease fights back, resists the seal, keeps spreading.
You have to cut away the dead tissue first, down to clean flesh.
If the corruption has reached the bloodstream, ash powder is useless.
Your only options at that point are amputation or letting them die.
A bone saw is priceless in the field. Any Veilguard will tell you that. ”
My chest tightens.
“There are rumors of old techniques that could purify decay from within. Burn it out of the blood itself.” She exhales. “But that knowledge died with the older blood mages, so we work with what we have.”
A few students laugh nervously. Shouldn’t the headmaster have this kind of knowledge?
“Now let’s talk about twisted creature bites.
” She pulls out a jar filled with something I don’t want to identify.
“Glasswings and goreleeches are the smallest twisted creatures we’ve identified, and their bites inject a venom that slows healing.
You flush the wound with saline and pack it with ash powder. ”
I remember Professor Nestor describing glasswings in our second week, insectoid predators with translucent wings like fractured crystals.
Their bodies refract light and current, making them nearly impossible to target.
And when you do manage to kill one, they shatter explosively, sending shards in every direction.
Half the injuries from a glasswing encounter aren’t from the creature itself but from standing too close when it dies.
The tiny shards can penetrate the skin, even the eyes, and be just as bad if not worse than a bite.
Goreleeches are slug-like things that attach to open wounds and feed on blood and current simultaneously.
They look like debris, like a clot or a piece of torn fabric, until you realize the wound is draining faster than it should.
Professor Nestor said Veilguards are trained to check for them first in triage, because every second one stays attached is more blood and current lost.
“And crawler bites,” Professor Rowan continues, “their saliva carries corruption directly. A crawler bite that breaks the skin needs immediate amputation, or the necrosis will spread within hours, and the infection can make the victim themselves start to exhibit crawler tendencies.”
Hours between a bite and losing a limb. Hours between a wound and death.
This is what’s waiting for us out there, and we’re supposed to heal through all of it.
Professor Rowan picks up a bone saw from her table.
The same kind I held. The same kind I froze with.
“Sometimes amputation is the only way to save a life. Cut above the corruption, never through it. Tourniquet first, this is where you can use your serpent eidolons. They make excellent tourniquets and can smell the decay even under the flesh. Then you saw, second and cauterize third.”
She looks out at us with cold eyes, and I want to know what kind of battles this lady has seen.
“A healer who cannot amputate will watch patients die. It’s that simple. If you can’t stomach it, if you can’t make that cut when it matters, you don’t belong in the field. You’ll cost lives, including your own.”
I don’t know if she’s saying it intentionally to me or not. I sit there with my hands shaking in my lap, trying not to fall apart in front of everyone.
Class ends, and students file out around me.
I see Jace near the front of the room, gathering his things. He hasn’t looked at me once during the entire lecture. Hasn’t looked at me in days.
I can’t keep pretending we’re strangers when a week ago he was telling me he loved me.
I push through the crowd and catch him in the corridor outside. My hand closes around his arm before I can talk myself out of it.
“Jace, please, can we talk?”
He turns and looks through me like I’m not even there.
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
“There’s everything to talk about.” I don’t let go of his arm. “What happened with Malric—”
“I know what happened.” His voice is flat, empty. No anger, no hurt, nothing. “Malric was very detailed.”
My stomach drops. Malric told him a bunch of exaggerated lies I’m sure.
“Jace, I was in a bad place. Nella had died, and I wasn’t thinking—”
“You weren’t thinking about me.” There’s something amiss with his eyes. The light blue that used to be so warm has gone cold, like ice over a frozen lake. “That’s clear.”
“It wasn’t about you. It wasn’t about anyone. I needed—”
“To feel something?” He scoffed. “Did it work?”
I can’t answer that.
“I would have been there for you, Maelis,” he says. “I would have caught you. All you had to do was fall toward me, not away.”
He looked at me like I was precious once. I’m the one who taught him I wasn’t. “I know, and I’m sorry—”
He holds up a hand. “I don’t want your apology.”
“Then what do you want?”
“I want to stop seeing his marks on your neck every time I close my eyes.” He’s not trying to hurt me. That’s what makes it unbearable. “I want to look at you and not feel sick, but I can’t have any of that. So I’ll settle for nothing. I want nothing from you.”
He pulls his arm free of my grip and walks away.
I stand there in the corridor watching him go. That wasn’t Jace, the boy who held my hand and made me laugh and told me he loved me while together in his bed.
Over ten years of friendship cannot be over because of one horrible decision I made in a time of despair. Can it?
The rest of my classes are a blur, and I let out a sigh of relief when I finally make it back to my room.
Nella’s journal is still under my pillow. I pull it out and flip through the pages, looking for something to make me feel less alone.
I find an entry I haven’t read yet.
Draven asked about Maelis today. Tried to be casual about it, like he didn’t care. But his eyes gave him away. He wanted to know if she’d said anything about her father. I told him no. He looked relieved and disappointed at the same time. What does her father have to do with anything?
He’s asked me not to tell Maelis that he visits, saying he’ll get in trouble since I’m not his patient. I don’t know if that’s the real reason. There’s something there he won’t say, but I’ll keep his secret. It’s not my business.
His wolf was here again last night. Draven left hours ago, but the wolf stayed, curled up by the door like he was guarding me. I wasn’t scared. I should have been, probably. I think the wolf knows I’m dying. I think he’s keeping me company until I do.
My chest aches.