Author Notes:
This fic contains descriptions of wounds and wound care! Nothing too graphic, but then again I'm not a particularly squeamish person, so please proceed at your own discretion!
LUCKY
The sudden pressure at his elbow launches him half out of his seat.
He jumps, lurching away from the touch, and his flailing attempt to catch himself sets his inkwell spinning. He watches it leisurely whirl and twirl, a music box dancer winding down at the edge of the desk. But it has no fingers to clench, no nails to grip, no knee to hook round its seat.
It tips.
He slams his eyes shut. Dreading the crash, the bounce. Dreading the spray, and the splatter, and the scrubbing.
Not anticipating silence.
Slowly, stiffly, Ryu hauls himself back to sitting. Blinks at the mess before him—at the jagged scrawl of ink where he'd startled, gouging parchment and adding yet another pock to the colony peppering his desk. At the pen, nib bent and holder somehow cracked by even his feeble grip. At the inkwell—intact, unspilt; cradled by a deft hand.
Finally, he blinks up at the intruder.
A soldier, clad in training garb and practice armor, sword belted to hip.
The left-handed Knight. One of the younger Prince's people.
And the Knight says...something, face drawn tight in concern, one hand outstretched as though to catch him, and only then does Ryu notice his rumpled sleeve, recall the tug at his arm that slowed his topple just enough.
The Knight places the ink back on his desk, still talking.
It takes a moment, jarred so from his work—to register the apologies and the assurances that no, he isn't required in the training yard. To parse the question that is asked, to remember which tasks the Chief borrowed the apprentices for, to formulate and relay that in his response.
The Knight again offers apologies and quietly takes leave, sliding the door shut, leaving the office in peace once more.
Ryu stares at his miraculously rescued inkwell.
If only he could react so quick, move so swift. Or at least startle less so.
Lucky.
But his notes, his references, his reports are not so fortunate—scattered across the desk and floor by thrashing limbs.
He slips to his feet, a controlled fall this time; careful not to crush anything underfoot, and sets about collecting his research. Smooths page after rumpled page, shuffles his papers back into place, stacks books and plates of pressed herbs into a series of towers ready for transport. Only a handful bear cracks, invisible as spider silk.
Lucky again.
Some of these are rare—he's borrowing them from the pharmacy's permanent collection.
Mess transformed into the proper amount of chaos, Ryu roots round the nest of blankets beneath his desk. Somewhere he's stashed a—ah, there it is. He upends the battered mug, taps out the charcoal dust, a few colorful seeds. Crawls to his feet, mindful of his head.
Stand up. Stretch. Move around, echoes the voice of his absent apprentice, as he crosses the room to light the burner and refill the kettle. As he doubles over and strains for his toes, studying decades of scuffs and scrapes in the floorboards. As he leans back and reaches toward drying herbs, dangling in tidy bunches from the rafters. They'll be ready for storage soon…
The kettle shrieks. Break's over.
Ryu settles himself back at his desk, sipping at the mug of fresh tea before placing it next to one long gone cold. Plucks a new pen from a third, cracked rim to base and resigned to storage duty.
Casualties of his fixation.
But before he touches nib to ink, a voice booms down the hall. Two voices, actually.
One, he recognizes. The other, he does not.
Ryu caps the inkwell, looking up just as the door bursts open and a man stumbles into the office, another soldier close behind, and—
"Come now, Sir. I'm fine. The very picture of health," says the stranger, shoulders hunched and already backing toward the hall.
But the soldier knocks the door closed, sealing the three of them into the tiny space. "You are clearly not fine. Stop skulking."
—and his poisonous reputation precedes him still.
They bicker back and forth, the soldier and this gangly newcomer, but Ryu quickly hones in on what must be the reason for the visit. A smear of red peers out from beneath the stranger's sleeve, stark contrast to the earthy tones he wears.
Inflammation.
Ryu shoves his research toward the wall and ducks beneath the desk once more, emerging with his medical kit. Then he retrieves his apprentice's empty chair before upending the kettle into a hastily fetched basin and scrubbing his hands in the still – steaming water.
Still, the men argue.
"I'm telling you, this is nothing," rumbles the stranger, clutching at his left arm as he edges along the wall. Still eying the closed door.
"It's obviously something, the way you yelped," says the soldier, attempting to herd his charge toward the open seat.
Ryu rummages in his desk for a scrap of parchment, reaches for a charcoal stick.
"Name."
"Ah. This is—" the soldier stammers, hands fluttering with embarrassment, "—this is off the books. So to speak."
And that, that is rare enough to give Ryu pause, to take a closer look at these new interlopers caked in dust and sweat from the training yard. Not a soldier, but a sword-bearing Knight—another of the younger Prince's people. And another man, with close-cropped dark hair and a scar above one eye.
Half a palm lower, and he would have lost it.
Ryu drops the makeshift chart. "When were you hurt?"
Silence.
Which is to be expected, really.
He's no stranger to cagey patients, not in this place, this capital of intrigues. Nor is he stranger to the rumors about his research, pitched just loud enough for him to hear. Even so. It costs precious time, always convincing others of his knowledge, his skill, his ability to diagnose and treat their ailments.
Which is why the Chief always leaves someone else in the pharmacy with him.
It's just bad luck, that they've caught him alone.
The Knight finally sighs, scrubbing a hand over his face, ending the standoff. "It was a week ago, at least,"
Ryu blinks.
A week ago, his apprentice returned after treating the soldiers at Fort – "Laxdo?"
The Knight just settles back against the door. Plucks a book from the adjacent shelf and flips it open, one eye always on the stranger.
Even so.
Even with his kit unpacked, with jarred salves and bottled tinctures, with gauze and bandages and medical implements at the ready, Ryu has made no progress.
For the stranger—cut off from escape—has tucked himself into the far corner of the office, where he shrugs off each attempt to coax or goad him out for a proper examination. Occasionally, he aims a pithy jab at the Knight, but he shows no inclination toward movement.
And even at this distance, Ryu spies the fresh sheen of sweat on his brow.
"Cooperate and you'd be done already ," growls the Knight, no longer pretending to leaf through the dog-eared tome on botany.
The stranger disentangles himself from a sagging bundle of peppermint before slouching back against the wall. "Really, Sir," he huffs, "what's the worst that could happen?"
The Knight opens his mouth to retort. But Ryu, for once, is faster.
"Phagedaenic ulcer."
Silence again. From both of them, this time.
"What's that?" says the stranger. Slowly. Suspiciously. But finally turning his attention away from the Knight, away from the door.
Even so.
"The body rots from the inside." Ryu slides to his feet, turning to open the window, to let some of this stifling atmosphere out of the office.
"If you're lucky, you just loose the limb."
The Knight nearly drops his book. "It can't be that bad, can it?"
"I won't know until you let me see it." Ryu keeps his gaze steady on the stranger as he steps across the room. Pausing an arm's length away, he holds out his hand. "Can I look?"
The stranger stares down at him with bright, unblinking eyes, before the corner of his mouth quirks.
"Shouldn't have rubbed dirt on it, huh?" He tugs his sleeve up past the elbow to reveal the full extent of the wound.
The injury itself has already closed, an embossed mess of a scab all that remains of once-broken skin. It stretches from just beneath his elbow all the way down to the middle of his forearm, not unlike the sort he's seen on recruits who've taken a hard fall in the training grounds.
But there's a smaller area—near the elbow, more than half-hidden by the scab—that burns red, swollen to the size of a cherry.
Boil? No, too big. An abscess; a carbuncle, even. Ryu prods softly at the furthest edges of swelling.
The man bristles like a cat with a trod-upon tail.
"Tell me when this starts feeling cold."
Ryu smears the salve across the stranger's injured arm, all along the edges of the scab and the swelling.
The stranger slowly raises his arm, twisting it this way and that for a closer look. "Smells like mint," he observes.
"Many plants used in food also have medicinal properties," Ryu replies, wiping the excess paste from his hands before resealing the jar.
"Does it hurt? When you move your arm like that?"
The stranger just shrugs, settling his arm back on his knee, propping his other elbow on the corner of the desk and resting his chin on his knuckles.
He's still restless, still agitated, judging by the tension in his shoulders and incessant bounce of his heel. But, if not entirely calm, he's at least seated and cooperating now. The Knight too, has returned to his browsing.
"You're not going to cut through the top?" the stranger yawns.
"I'm going to lance it." Ryu reaches for a bottle of brown liquid, tugs the cork free. "I want to leave the scab, if possible. To fall off on its own."
"What's that?" The stranger leans forward, sniffs at the air above the open container. "Alcohol?"
Ryu wads gauze against the open neck, briefly upending the bottle. "Iodine. It's a tincture."
"So it's for cleaning?" He peers at the other jars that make up the medical kit.
"Yes. We use it on wounds, to treat and prevent infection." Ryu rubs the damp gauze on his hands, dyeing his fingers amber before preparing another piece for the stranger.
"How does your arm feel?"
"Like I stuffed it in a snowbank."
Ryu hums, reaching for his lancet.
The stranger's hand tenses under his own, and Ryu lifts his head to see the man intently tracking the silver blade with honey colored eyes.
"You don't have to watch."
"Eh?" The stranger blinks.
"Some people faint if they look, even when they can't feel it," adds the Knight, glancing up and over.
"Oh? Speaking from experience, Sir?" The stranger looks over his shoulder, seemingly unable to resist the opportunity to needle.
"No." The Knight returns to his book.
"Are you sure?"
"Positive."
"Pah." The stranger clucks his tongue. "You're no fun."
"What part of lancing a boil is fun?" grumbles the Knight, half under his breath.
"Squeezing out all of the pus?"
"That's disgusting."
Ryu takes advantage of this well-timed distraction and flicks his wrist, drawing a thin line across the swelling.
The stranger snaps back to attention as Ryu places the lancet back on his desk and prepares to express the wound.
"Ooohhh!" gushes the stranger, "here it comes! You've got to see this, Sir!" quickly following up with a perplexed "Ew, is it supposed to look like that? Where's all the blood?"
The Knight snaps the book shut, straightening to his full height. "You know what? I'll be in the hall." He steps out, but not before casting an annoyed glare at the stranger. "Don't run off."
"No fun at all..." The stranger sighs, tipping his head back to stare at the garden on the ceiling.
"It feels like there's something inside," says Ryu, reaching for his row of tools.
"Ah." Ryu hums. "Got it."
With a quick twist, he plucks the offending object free from the abscess.
"Is that…" The stranger squints at the tiny thing, pinched tight between the forceps' twin prongs.
"...is that a rock?"
"Mm. A piece of gravel." Ryu swaps the forceps for a clean square of gauze to dab at the wound. "You're lucky it didn't cause a larger infection."
Then he stops cold. "Did you really rub dirt in it?"
"Aha ha ha." he stranger laughs weakly, resting his weight on the table.
"Ah, I wonder..."
"There."
Ryu tucks the loose end of the wrapping into the bandage proper and hops down from his seat. Crossing to his apprentice's desk once more, he scrubs his hands, relights the burner, and sets the kettle to boil.
Then he stands on tiptoe to retrieve a small parcel from one of the lowest rows of drawers above the desk.
The stranger smooths his sleeve back into place, carefully concealing the bandages. He looks up as Ryu approaches. "What's that?"
"Medicinal tea," says Ryu, opening the package so he can see and smell the row of tiny envelopes inside. "White willow bark. For pain. One per kettle, with meals and before bed." He sets it on his chair.
"You can use this warm compress, and here's the iodine tincture." Ryu transfers some of the dark liquid into a small vial, adding it to the pile.
"Change the gauze and bandages daily. Get plenty of rest. Come back if you need more, or if your arm starts to hurt, or swell, or smell bad." Ryu bundles everything into a soft leather pouch, and turns to hand it off.
"Any questions?"
The stranger blinks, cradling his left arm close to his chest.
"Should I write it down?"
"Ah. No, I got it," he extends his good arm to accept the parcel.
"You're done, then."
Ryu turns toward the door, taking a mere handful of steps before a crash from behind startles a jump out of him. He spins, just in time to watch the chair bounce as the stranger tosses open the shutters and vaults out the open window.
And then the office door slams open and he whirls again.
"What the—Where do you think you're going!?" shouts the Knight, leaping over the toppled chair.
"To take a nap!"
"What!?"
"Doctor's orders!" the stranger sings, waving his medicine in salute. "Thanks, half-pint!"
The Knight lunges for the window, clambers over the sill and into the yard, but the man has already vanished. "You—!"
"I told you, Sir! That's not my name!" The taunt dances down from somewhere on high.
"Stay where I can see you!" Shielding his eyes from the noon sun, the Knight scans the rooftops before setting off at a jog toward the barracks.
Ryu shakes his head to clear some of the noise, the dizziness before leaving the window and righting his chair.
The younger Prince keeps such strange company.
fin.
Author Notes:
This is probably anachronistic in multiple spots with regards to medical technology! I am going to run with the assumption that Clarines is a decade or two ahead of their neighboring countries with research and implementation.
'Phagedaenic ulcer' is an old name for necrotizing fasciitis, commonly referred to as flesh-eating disease in the media. It looks like the more medically accurate term is 'necrotizing soft tissue infection' (NSTI) because more than the fascia can be affected.