Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
DARBY
Cold fingers gripped Darby’s hand like a life line as she stood at the side of a young soldier who looked barely old enough to be out of school, let alone in the army.
Her own fingers began to grow numb as she carefully channeled her magic into the wound, soothing his pain as much as she could while they waited.
Cries and groans of agony echoed off the pristine white walls of the hospital, adding to the swirl of chaos.
The operating room, normally a clinical, controlled environment, had been opened up and every available inch of the pale yellow floor space was occupied by a cot.
Nurses yelled back and forth to one another as they triaged the patients as they came in, sending those with non-life threatening injuries to the recovery and examination rooms and ushering the rest inside.
Every available member of the medical staff was on hand, and Darby spied several of her classmates across the room, some of them looking just as white and ill as the soldiers they were attempting to treat.
But at least they’re allowed to do something. Meanwhile, I’m just standing about as useless as one of Raven’s—
“Shelton!” Dr. Fransten’s sharp call startled her out of her self-pity. She straightened, looking over to her mentor. “Yes, sir?”
The salt-and-pepper haired doctor lifted his attention for a brief moment from the man in front of him. His thin face, usually calm and impassive, was tight and drawn. He jutted his pointed chin in her direction. “You know what needs to be done?”
Darby looked down at the boy. His eyes were clenched shut in his pale, sweaty face as he grit his teeth in pain.
One shoulder had been impaled by a branch the width of her wrist, the ends sharp and uneven as if they had been ripped violently from the tree.
It was a jarring sight, but the wood was likely the only thing at the moment that kept him from bleeding out.
She would have to move quickly once it was out to stop the flow of blood.
“Yes,” she answered confidently.
“Get on with it, then.” Fransten’s voice was clipped as he immediately returned to his own task. Darby’s eyes widened at the implication, and despite the sobering, macabre scene around her, a tiny flutter of excitement ran through her chest.
Finally!
“I need you to let go, now,” she murmured quietly to the young man. “I’m going to need both my hands for this. But don’t worry; you’re going to be okay.”
He said nothing in response, but his breathing quickened as he dropped her hand and grabbed the sides of the cot instead.
She worked efficiently, channeling all the hours of practice and study she had acquired during her years at the Academy.
Once the branch was removed and the debris cleared, she sewed up the wound with tiny, even stitches that could have rivaled the embroidery of the young, noble ladies that her mother had so desperately wanted her to be.
Once the danger was past, Darby took the soldier’s hand again, letting her magic flow through the link and into his arm, encouraging the tissue to numb.
The death grip he used was uncomfortable and made focusing all the harder, but Darby took solace in the fact that a patient still strong enough to make her fingers numb was much more likely to survive.
The same could not be said of all the men who had come in their doors that morning.
White sheets draped over the men they had been unable to save, haunting the periphery of her vision as she focused on her task.
Dealing with death was a part of practicing medicine, but listening to grown men cry out for their mothers or wives or sweethearts as their lives slowly drained prematurely away was something she would never grow used to.
The pressure on her hand slowly lessened as the soldier relaxed, his agony soothed for at least the moment.
Darby closed her eyes and focused on the stream of her magic as she carefully set it in place, holding it in the back of her mind so she could address her patient’s less urgent needs.
When she opened them again, she found the young man blinking up at her out of wide, brown eyes.
With the lines of pain gone, he looked even younger—likely no older than sixteen.
He had several lacerations across his arms and face that needed to be cleaned and dressed, though she suspected that under the grime none were deep enough to require more stitches.
His brows pulled together. “You’re not an angel.”
“Nope. And you’re not a tree anymore.” Darby gave him a cheeky wink as she brushed back a russet lock from his forehead, investigating a wide cut along his hairline.
His resulting blush caused some pink to return to his cheeks. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—it’s just—your voice was so—and then it was…” His voice trailed off for a moment before he cleared his throat. “Did you use magic?”
“I did.” Amusement pulled at the corner of Darby’s mouth. Far from being offended at his blunt assessment of her appearance, she was delighted by his efforts to carry on a lucid conversation, despite the trauma he had just experienced.
That ability to roll with the punches is going to serve him well when it comes to recovery. And besides, not being an angel is far from the worst thing anyone has ever said about me. At least he didn’t call me a man.
She continued with her examination. “My name is Darby.”
“I’m Merlin Wyss, but my friends all call me Merry. Are you a mage? Did you go to the Academy?”
“I am, and I did.” Satisfied that the rest of Merry’s injuries could be taken care of by one of the nurses, Darby stepped back and reached for a damp cloth that sat nearby.
She wiped his blood off her hands as she spoke.
“I’m going to help you sit up, Merry, and then you’re going to be promoted to a room with a much nicer view. ”
“I don’t need help.”
Before she could stop him, Merry pushed himself to a seated position, hissing sharply through his teeth as he did so. Darby pushed a little more magic through the link she had established, and she could tell the moment he felt it. His eyes widened. “How did you—”
A sudden commotion at the front doors arrested their attention.
“Dr. Fransten!” A wide-eyed nurse held the door open as four burly soldiers carried a long, makeshift stretcher into the room.
Based on size alone, Darby might have thought the prone figure to belong to a bear, if not for the distinctive Mavorian blue uniform and the gold stripes on one sleeve that denoted a high-ranking officer.
Beside her, Merry let out a low curse and slid awkwardly off the table. She grabbed his good arm, holding him back. “What are you doing?”
His face was pale again, his eyes as frightened as if he had seen a ghost. He pointed weakly. “It’s Captain Monstrego.”
Dr. Fransten had left his patient in the care of another nurse and was directing the stretcher bearers to transfer the captain’s massive frame to one of the few remaining empty cots in the room.
Bile rose to the back of Darby’s throat as the soldiers stepped back, allowing her a clearer view of the man they just brought in.
Or, at least, what was left of him.
His left leg ended in a burned, bloody stump just above his knee.
The smell of cauterized flesh hit Darby’s nose at almost the same moment that she made the observation, and her hand flew to her mouth in both an act of horrified shock and in an effort to keep the contents of her stomach inside.
The captain’s torso was a mass of tangled, bloody fabric, but based on the fact that his left arm looked like it had been ripped away at the socket, Darby did not hold out much hope that it had escaped unscathed.
“It was a powder ball,” Merry whispered hoarsely near her shoulder, his voice weak and detached. “The Lavenzian soldier threw it at us. We didn’t have time. He…he jumped on it. Covered it with his own body and told us to run.”
Darby could do little but nod to acknowledge his words as Dr. Fransten gestured for her to join him.
Her heart ached the closer she came to the broken, mutilated captain, but she forced her eyes to scan him clinically, noting that the explosive origin of his injuries had actually left him with less serious bleeding than would have resulted from a blade or gunshot.
His condition was critical, but the fact that he was still breathing gave her some measure of hope.
“The greatest danger to his system is shock at this point,” she began rattling off as she took her place at Dr. Fransten’s side. “But if we can stabilize him and keep him warm, then once we get a chance to look at—”
“Shelton.” Fransten’s low voice cut her off. “There’s nothing to be done.”
Darby shook her head, refusing to believe him.
Her gaze roved over the captain, cataloguing every step that would need to be taken in his treatment.
“I know it looks gruesome, but it actually appears that the fire from the explosion has cauterized the major arteries. Of course, there’s a high probability that he’s sustained some internal damage, but I can help with that.
There will be treatment for the burns as well—”
“Shelton.”
Her mentor’s tone was sharp this time, and Darby finally tore her eyes away.
Dr. Fransten’s face was tight and drawn.
His hair, which normally was combed back and held in place with hair wax, had lost a thin strand that fell over his forehead.
Regret, exhaustion, and sympathy filled his gaze.
“There’s nothing to be done,” he repeated.
“But…” Darby’s voice trailed off as she looked from him back to the mangled heap of man on the cot. “But he’s a hero. We can’t just let him lay there and die in agony.”
Fransten sighed. He dropped a heavy hand on her shoulder and gave it a small squeeze before stepping away in the direction of another patient. “Then keep him comfortable.”