AN: This is for First-Aid, write about being a Healer. 982 words.
Being a Healer was exhausting. Ky enjoyed, no, relished the hard work. He only thought about biology and Herbology for a moment, and didn't have to answer the other thoughts that plagued his mind.
Honestly, though, those very thoughts were the reason he decided to be a Healer in the first place. The Ravenclaw had a lot of regrets and doubts to deal with, and had them ever since the Second Wizarding War.
He had been on the wrong side. Ky had done things he wasn't proud of to muggle-borns, and honestly, some of them still recognized him after all those years, the proud, foolish young man in the black cloak who'd turned up his nose at them all.
The blood of many innocents was on his hands. He dreamed their faces many nights, alone in his flat. So many regrets, so many instances when he wished that he hadn't gone with what authority, that he'd stood up for what he knew, even then, deep in his heart, was right.
That's why you weren't in Gryffindor, he reminded himself as he began on the paperwork in the office of his ward at the end of his shift. You were a gutless wonder, even at the age of eleven.
Okay, that did sting a little, coming from himself. After all, he did have some courage, didn't he? Like today. . .
An Auror stakeout with the Chosen One had gone badly, to say the least. The hit-wizards were pulling in stretcher after stretcher of young and reckless Aurors who were badly injured and in need of quick, confident intervention to last more than another ten minutes.
Ky had thrown on his Healing Gloves, and had jumped right into it. Some of the Healer initiates, like his own apprentice, Gianna-Grace Marie, were horrified by the sight of all that blood. He didn't mind, after all, his nightmares were swimming with it, so it had stopped bothering him a long time ago.
Besides, there was no time to be squeamish about blood. There were lives to save, and you had to be force of calm in their fighting, panicked moments where the patients were struggling to remain alive, struggling to evade Death for a short time coming at least.
Fay Dunbar in particular was a mess. She was in need of an abdominal surgery, with several internal organs ripped to shreds. Ky looked up at the initiates in their pastel, sterile work robes, who were standing against the wall, watching the Head Healer of the Emergency Department do his work.
"What are you standing around for?" He demanded. "There are lives to save. Marie! Fawley! Evans! Help me with this one. The rest of the Aurors can be dealt with quickly! Use your best judgement! Come on, we've got to go repair several internal organs!"
The said initiates rushed over, as the others started running around, trying to talk to their patients and do their work. Well, except for Sunshine Flynn, who had been working the entire time on Harry Potter, gathering Blood-Replenishing potions and such.
Merlin bless Flynn, Ky thought gratefully, and he started pushing the stretcher with Dunbar on it to a private room where they could all begin working on her. They were having to do work that others would find disgusting and gross and icky, but they couldn't think about it.
Yet you could see how calm Dunbar was when he made her drink the Dreamless Sleep Draught. She trusted them with her life.
That still rang with him, even hours after the group had come in. Fay Dunbar at least trusted the Healers, trusted him with her life, with her own mortality, such a precious, fragile thing.
He remembered how Jack Evans started panicking when he found out how the gallbladder had pretty much exploded.
"Pull yourself together or get out!" Ky had barked. "Fay is depending on you to get her through, to make her pain stop! But you aren't going to do anything if you keep panicking like a Crup after their second tail is removed! So are you in or out?"
Evans nodded shakily, and calmed down noticeably. "I'm in," he said decisively.
"Good." Ky began working on getting a new gallbladder installed.
He sighed, as he filled out the details of who he'd treated over the day, and those thoughts plagued his mind more and more. It was strange, seeing that sort of trust in his hands, especially after the war. Then again, there was a patient every once in a whole that had heard his reputation, what he'd done, and would refuse treatment from him. He couldn't blame them.
Ky looked up at the number he had written on a memo taped to the wall in front of his desk. 97. He had, over the course of the entire war, killed 97 people. Some people couldn't believe it, but he could. After all, he did see ninety-seven faces whenever he fell asleep, even though most of them were faceless muggles that had been the result of terrorist attacks given by the Death Eaters.
He then looked at the numbers he tacked up in red ink, the number of lives he had saved. He added another tic to the lost. 437 lives saved. He kept counting even after he'd doubled, and probably tripled the number of lives he'd ended.
It reminded him that he was at least courageous enough to dive right in and work hard when no one else would. Maybe because he still had something to prove to himself.
"Healer Emrys?" Ky turned to see one of the comfort-providing Healers, ones who did tasks that most would consider menial in a hospital.
She stepped forwards. "Fay Dunbar's awake, and she'd like to come so she can thank you personally for the surgery that saved her life."
Ky nodded. "I'll be there in a moment."