Chapter 4 #4
"She has herbs," Ruka relayed. "A tea that brings deep sleep. He won't feel pain."
The knot in my chest loosened fractionally. "Preparation time?"
Another brief exchange.
"Ten minutes," Ruka said. "Possibly less."
"Then let's get started."
Despite working in conditions that would've sent my residency director into cardiac arrest, we moved with the synchronized efficiency of a well-oiled surgical team.
Morg vanished to brew her tea while Ruka remained stationed beside Ardin, his presence both translator and sentinel.
The boy's breathing came in shallow gasps, each exhale carrying heat like a furnace.
Ryhain materialized first, her movements precise despite the urgency crackling through the air. She bore a large tray laden with a pot of roiling water and my instruments—now gleaming like silver promises on a spotless cloth. Every instruction followed to perfection.
"Beautiful work," I said, indicating a cleared space beside Ardin's makeshift bed. "Right there."
I approached the pot, testing the water's fury with a tentative fingertip before plunging both hands in to the wrists.
The scalding heat bit deep, painting my skin an angry pink, but I scrubbed with religious fervor—between fingers, beneath nails, up forearms. In a proper OR, I'd have sterile brushes and chlorhexidine.
Here, I had boiling water and sheer willpower.
When the pain became unbearable, I yanked my hands free and held them aloft, letting them air dry. From my bag, I fished out latex gloves, snapping them on with a satisfying pop. The familiar sensation anchored me, a fragment of my world bleeding into this impossible one.
A shadow shifted in my peripheral vision.
Morg had returned bearing a wooden cup, tendrils of steam curling from whatever brew she'd concocted.
But before approaching Ardin, she submerged her own hands in the scalding water.
Her technique was methodical, thorough—scrubbing up those thick forearms with the same devotion I'd demonstrated.
Respect bloomed in my chest. This woman might lack my formal training, but she grasped the essentials. Cleanliness. Preparation. The invisible assassins that murdered as efficiently as any weapon.
Our gazes locked across the room, and something electric passed between us. Recognition. Understanding that needed no translation.
Morg dried her hands and glided to Ardin's side, murmuring in orcish as she cradled his head with unexpected tenderness. Ruka supported his nephew while Morg guided the cup to those cracked lips. The boy stirred faintly, some primal instinct compelling him to swallow even through the fever's grip.
"Perfect," I breathed, watching them coax the entire dose down his throat. "That's perfect."
We waited. I used the precious minutes to arrange my instruments—scalpel, forceps, scissors, irrigation syringe, and sutures all positioned in surgical order.
My hands held steady despite the adrenaline singing through my veins.
This was my calling, even if the stage bore no resemblance to anything I'd imagined.
Ruka circled the room with quiet purpose, coaxing flame to life.
The first candles he settled into iron sconces jutting from the stone walls, each wick catching with a soft whoosh until amber light devoured the shadows piece by piece.
Then he seized a long taper, his towering frame stretching upward with an ease that made the impossible look effortless, reaching toward the massive iron chandelier suspended above the bed.
One by one, the candles in the chandelier came to life.
Light cascaded downward in golden waves, bathing Ardin's fever-flushed skin in a glow that transformed our crude operating theater into something almost sacred.
Not the sterile glare of hospital fluorescents—this was warmer, alive, dancing with each flicker—but it chased away every treacherous shadow that might conceal what I needed to see.
"Better?" Ruka's voice rumbled through the transformed space, his eyes catching mine as he snuffed the taper between moistened fingers.
"Much better," I said, and meant it. The gratitude in my voice surprised even me. Every detail stood revealed now—the subtle discoloration of tissue, the sheen of perspiration, the truth the darkness would have hidden. "Thank you."
A single nod, economical and sure, then he melted back to his station near Ardin's head. Ready. Waiting.
Minutes crawled past before Morg leaned over her patient, fingers checking the flutter of pulse at his throat, the glaze of his eyes, the cadence of breath moving through his chest. She pressed against his shoulder—gentle at first, then with increasing force.
Nothing. Not even a twitch. She spoke to Ruka, her words carrying the weight of certainty.
"He's sleeping," Ruka translated, though Ardin's face had already told me the story. The anguish had melted from his features, replaced by the slack peace of deep unconsciousness, his breathing rolling in steady, hypnotic waves. "He won't wake."
I nodded, snapping on a second pair of gloves over the first—armor against the invisible enemy. "Then let's begin."
The scalpel settled into my palm like an old friend, its weight a familiar comfort in the uncertain terrain ahead.
"Morg, I need you to hold the bowl here.
" I gestured to the space beside Ardin's wound, miming the motion when words failed me.
Her dark eyes flashed with understanding, and she positioned herself with the wooden bowl at the ready, steady as stone.
The sutures surrendered without resistance—too easily, in fact.
They hadn't had time to marry themselves to flesh, the tissue around them already turning traitor.
As I coaxed the incision open, the smell ambushed me.
Not the full assault of advanced rot, but unmistakable all the same—that sickly-sweet perfume of infection establishing its kingdom.
"Damn," I breathed.
The superficial layers whispered promises of hope, but deeper down, the truth revealed itself in angry red lightning strikes radiating through muscle that had darkened to the color of old bruises. Small pockets of fluid were gathering like conspirators in shadowed corners.
"This is why he's not getting better." The words escaped before I could catch them, confession and diagnosis tangled together. "The infection's deeper than I thought."
My fingers found the irrigation syringe—absurdly primitive, almost laughable compared to the pressurized systems I'd trained with. But here, in this candlelit room that smelled of herbs and hope, it would have to be enough.
"Hot water," I said to Ruka, whose attention hadn't wavered from my hands. "Not boiling any longer, but hot. Clean."
He moved with surprising grace for someone his size, returning with a pitcher that sent tendrils of steam curling into the air.
I drew the water up and began the delicate work of irrigation, each squeeze of the bulb sending a controlled stream through the wound cavity.
The water emerged pink, then darker, carrying away the evidence of infection like a river washing clean.
Morg held the bowl with unwavering hands, her face betraying nothing even as the contaminated fluid splashed against wood.
Again. Draw, squeeze, flush. The tissue began to reveal its true colors, the worst of the purulent material surrendering to the current. Just a few more passes, I promised myself. Just a few more to be certain.
I squeezed the bulb once more, watching water pool and drain in hypnotic rhythm—
Plink.
The sound was barely there, a whisper of solid meeting wood beneath the liquid symphony, but it might as well have been a gunshot.
My hands went still. "Wait."
I set the syringe down with exaggerated care and caught Morg's eye, pointing to the wound, then to a clean cloth. "Hold this here. Pressure." I demonstrated, my gloved fingers pressing the fabric against the incision.
Understanding flickered across her face. She took the cloth and held it firm against the wound, blood beginning its slow bloom through the weave, but her grip never faltered.
I lifted the bowl from her hands like it contained something precious and fragile—which, in a way, it did. My heart hammered against my ribs as I carried it to the window, where dusk was painting the world in shades of purple and dying gold.
I tilted the bowl, letting the bloody water slosh to one side, and there—caught against the curved wood like a secret finally told—was a fragment of something. Tiny. No bigger than a pinhead, maybe smaller. Dark and irregular, with one edge that caught the fading light just so.
Not metal. Stone.
The pieces fell into place with devastating clarity.
Ruka had found Ardin bleeding in the grass.
When he'd fallen, or when they'd moved him, this tiny invader must have slipped into the wound.
So small I'd missed it during the initial surgery, buried deep in traumatized tissue where it had been sitting like a splinter in the body's eye—too small to expel, too foreign to ignore.
The perfect foundation for bacteria to build their empire.
"Oh my God," I whispered. "That's it. That's why the infection wouldn't clear."
Relief crashed over me like a wave, followed immediately by guilt's undertow. Relief that I'd found it. Guilt that it had been there all along, hiding in plain sight while Ardin suffered.
I carried the bowl back to the bed, angling it so Ruka could see the tiny fragment. "This was still inside him. It was causing the infection."
His eyes widened, comprehension dawning like sunrise, and he spoke rapidly to Morg in their rolling tongue. She lifted the cloth to look at me, and something shifted in her expression—respect, perhaps, or the beginning of trust.
I set the bowl aside with trembling hands and returned to Ardin, snapping on a fresh pair of gloves. The latex stretched tight across my knuckles. "Now we finish this properly."