Chapter 4 #3
Ryhain stepped back, reluctance written in every line of her body. Her hand lingered on Ardin's shoulder—a mother's touch, protective and tender—before she finally let go.
The blanket peeled away easily. The bandages beneath were another story—clean, recently changed, wrapped with obvious care. But as I unwound the final layer, a sharp, familiar scent hit me.
Onion.
A poultice of mashed onion covered the incision, translucent layers pressed against angry, inflamed skin.
"You used onion." I glanced up at Ryhain, unable to hide my surprise. "That's... actually brilliant. Onions have natural antiseptic properties. Whoever did this knew exactly what they were doing."
Something shifted in Ryhain's expression—the hostility retreating just a fraction, replaced by something softer. "Morg. Our healer. She has tended our people for many years."
"She made the right call." I carefully lifted the poultice away, setting it aside with respect for the knowledge it represented. "But I need to see what we're working with."
The incision revealed itself inch by inch, and my stomach dropped.
The wound was a battlefield, and it was losing.
Angry crimson flesh radiated outward from the suture line like a warning flare.
The edges were swollen, puffy, straining against the neat stitches I'd placed with such care.
But it was the center that made my breath catch—a dusky purple discoloration that spoke of something festering beneath, something my careful work had failed to catch.
I pressed gently along the perimeter, watching Ardin's unconscious face. Even lost in fever dreams, his body knew pain. A whimper escaped his lips, small and heartbreaking.
"The onion helped," I murmured, half to myself. "But it's fighting a losing battle. This isn't surface-level."
I leaned in closer, my trained eye tracking the pattern of inflammation. It radiated from a specific point—about two inches from the lower end of the incision—like poison spreading through water. The tissue there was darker, angrier, as if something buried deep was corrupting everything it touched.
My mind rewound to that chaotic night in the ER. I'd been thorough. I knew I had. Irrigation, bullet removal, fragment check...
Had I been thorough enough?
"Damn it." A fragment. Had to be. A piece of shrapnel I'd missed in the desperate rush to save his life. Not silver though, silver would have already killed him.
Footsteps approached from behind, and I didn't need to turn to know who it was. Ruka's presence filled the space like a gathering storm—impossible to ignore.
"Jordan?" His voice was carefully neutral, but tension thrummed beneath the surface like a plucked string.
I looked up. Whatever he read in my expression made his jaw turn to stone. His eyes tracked from me to Ardin and back again, and I watched understanding dawn.
"How bad?" Two words, simple and direct.
I drew a slow breath, weighing each word before I spoke. "The infection has roots. Deep ones. The onion poultice drew out the surface poison, but there's something still buried inside—a bullet fragment, maybe debris from the wound. His body's waging war against it, but it's losing ground."
Ruka's expression turned to granite. "Meaning?"
"Meaning I have to go back in." I held his gaze, refusing to soften the truth.
"Open the wound, hunt down whatever's festering in there, cut away the infected tissue, and seal him up right this time.
" My eyes flicked to Ardin's fever-bright cheeks, the rapid flutter of his chest. "If I don't, the infection spreads. Goes septic. And then..."
I didn't finish. I didn't have to.
The silence stretched between us like a taut wire.
Ruka stared at his nephew, something raw and unguarded flickering across his face. When he finally spoke, his voice came out like gravel. "What do you need?"
Relief flooded through me. "The healer. Is she still here?
I can't do this alone—I need hands that know what they're doing.
Someone who understands the body's language.
" I gestured to my medical bag. "I've got local anesthetic, but I'll need more than that.
I need someone who can work with me, not just watch. "
A single, decisive nod. "I'll bring her."
He pivoted and strode from the room, his footfalls like thunder in the hallway. His voice rang out in sharp orcish, the urgency transcending the barrier of language.
I turned back to Ardin and pressed my palm to his burning forehead. Too hot. Still too hot. "Stay with me," I murmured. "Just a little longer. I've got you."
The minutes crawled by like wounded things.
I used them to prepare—not just my instruments, but my mind.
The procedure played out behind my eyes in vivid detail.
Reopen the incision, explore the wound cavity systematically, locate the fragment, debride the dead tissue, irrigate until the water runs clear, then close in careful layers.
Delicate work under the best circumstances.
Without proper surgical lighting or a sterile field? A nightmare.
But I'd trained for nightmares.
Medical school felt like another lifetime ago, but one memory surfaced with crystalline clarity—the elective I'd taken on a whim.
Tactical Casualty Care. Dr. Hernandez had been an Army surgeon before academia claimed her, and she'd run that course like we were deploying to a war zone.
We'd worked in tents. In shadows. With whatever supplies we could scrounge.
She'd been relentless, drilling into us that medicine was rarely convenient.
"You think you'll always have everything you need?" Her voice echoed in my memory, sharp as a scalpel. "You won't. But your patient will still be dying, and they'll still need you to figure it out."
I'd never thought I'd use that training. My future had looked so clean—a well-lit ER, state-of-the-art equipment, a full surgical team at my back.
Not this. Not an Orc settlement deep in uncharted territory, with a boy's life balanced on the edge of a blade.
But here I was. And Ardin needed every lesson, every improvisation, every desperate trick Dr. Hernandez had beaten into us.
I drew a slow breath, finding my center in the chaos. I could do this. Failure wasn't an option.
Footsteps approached—two sets this time.
Ruka filled the doorway, and beside him stood an older Orc woman.
She was shorter than him but carried herself with the kind of quiet authority I'd seen in veteran ER nurses—the ones who'd forgotten more about saving lives than most doctors would ever learn.
Silver threaded through her dark hair, pulled back in a thick braid, and her eyes were sharp as they swept the room, cataloging everything in seconds.
She spoke to Ruka in rapid orcish, her tone all business.
"This is Morg," Ruka said, his hand resting briefly on her shoulder. "She's been the healer for our clan for fifty years."
I met Morg's ochre eyes directly. "Thank you for coming. I need your help."
Morg studied me with an intensity that felt like being weighed and measured.
Then she nodded once—a gesture that somehow conveyed both acceptance and warning—and moved to Ardin's side.
Her weathered hands were surprisingly gentle as she examined him.
Checking his pulse at the throat, lifting his eyelids, pressing her palm to his forehead.
When she peeled back the bandage to expose the wound, her expression went dark as storm clouds.
She spoke rapidly to Ruka, gesturing at the angry red flesh.
"She says the infection is deep," Ruka translated, his voice tight. "That it's spreading fast."
"I know," I said. "I need to reopen the wound and find what's causing it. There's something still in there—something I missed during the first surgery." The words tasted like ash, but there was no room for pride now. Only action. "I'll need boiling water. As much as you can get."
Ruka turned to Ryhain, who'd been standing silently near the door like a sentinel. She met his gaze, something unspoken passing between them, then nodded sharply and vanished.
The thunder of footsteps announced his arrival before he burst through the doorway—a male Orc, chest heaving like a bellows, my medical bag clutched against his torso like precious cargo. Sweat carved rivulets down his gray-green skin, catching the dim light.
He'd sprinted the entire distance.
"Thank you," I breathed, accepting the bag with both hands.
Its familiar weight settled something anxious in my chest. I placed it on the small table beside Ardin's bed and pulled the zipper, the metallic rasp cutting through the tense silence.
My fingers found their targets by muscle memory alone—sutures, gauze, antiseptic, local anesthetic.
And there, nestled in its own compartment, my surgical kit.
I extracted the scalpel and forceps, their sterile packaging crinkling softly.
Ruka materialized at my shoulder, so close his body heat washed over me in waves.
I extended the instruments toward him. "These need to go in boiling water. Sterilization."
His massive hand enveloped the delicate tools with surprising care, making them look like children's toys. "Duration?"
"Five minutes minimum at a full boil. More is better."
A curt nod, but I caught the telltale signs—the rigid set of his shoulders, the rhythmic clenching of his free hand. His nephew lay dying, and all Ruka could offer was obedience to a stranger's commands and faith that I wouldn't fail again.
I pivoted back to Morg, who observed me with the penetrating gaze of a raptor.
"I need to reopen the incision," I said, enunciating carefully.
"I have medication to numb the site, but it won't be sufficient.
Not for what I have to do. Do you have anything for pain management? Something to induce unconsciousness?"
Recognition flickered across Morg's weathered features. She addressed Ruka in rapid-fire Orcish, her tone confident.