(AN: If you are of weak constitution, you might want to skip to the end. This gets a bit intense.)
Chapter Ten
Toph watched as Dei Zi took a cloth and dipped it into a smelly antiseptic solution, then drenched Zuko's leg with the cold mixture, rubbing it into the skin so vigorously that Zuko gasped in pain.
"Be careful!" Toph cried as she watched Zuko's eyes roll back into unconsciousness.
"You gotta get this stuff worked in right or it won't do no good," the old healer explained. "Besides, now that he's out cold, he won't mind the pain so much."
"This is awful," Jet said with a shudder. "Isn't there somebody else around who's trained to help you?"
"Nope," Dei Zi stated firmly as she proceeded to wash down her knives and Jet's sword blade with the antiseptic. Then she fixed Jet with her watery blue eyes. "You'll have to do."
Jet steeled his nerves as the woman applied a tourniquet around Zuko's upper thigh. "Let me get some wads of cloth. This'll get right messy," she added brusquely.
Toph turned a frightening shade of pale. Jet was afraid she might actually throw up or faint or something, but instead she tilted her head slightly as if listening to something.
"Well, I guess we ought to--" Dei Zi began grimly, when suddenly Toph pushed her aside and frantically began to loosen the tourniquet again. "What are you doin', girl?"
"They're here," Toph sobbed in relief, pointing to the doorway. "I'd know Appa's grunt anywhere."
Jet dashed out of the hut to see the huge sky bison landing in the grassy area between the huts. "Katara! Hurry!" he cried.
Katara's bright blue eyes flashed as she slid recklessly off Appa's back and ran toward Jet. Within seconds, she knelt at Zuko's bedside, a globe of crystal blue water in her hands.
"It was some kind of venomous fish," Toph explained, tears streaming down her face in her deep relief to see the waterbending healer.
Aang and Mai moved into the hut to stand near them, Mai quickly moving back at the awful sight of Zuko's swollen leg. Jet took the opportunity to move back as well—he didn't want to be in the way, he said to himself. Hu took one look inside the door, shuddered a little, then quickly made himself scarce.
"This is pretty bad," Katara said worriedly. "The venom has really done a job on the muscle and nerve tissue."
"I tried pulling it out," Dei Zi explained, "but by the time I got to him, the poison had already moved too deep."
"Are you a bending healer?" Katara asked, looking up from her examination to take a better look at the old woman.
"No, girl," Dei Zi said, holding up her hands, "there's none of them around here anymore. The art's been lost, I'm afeared."
"It was where I grew up too," Katara said with a sigh. "Are you a bender though?"
"Some," Dei Zi said with interest. "Do you know how to heal?"
"Some," Katara answered, then faced the old healer directly. "Just what are we dealing with?"
"Cottonmouth gar—pretty big one by the bite marks," Dei Zi began, gesturing at the parallel rows of jagged puncture wounds just above Zuko's knee. "If you get to it fast, the right poultice will draw the poison out. It'll hurt real bad, but won't start the rot. This 'un," she gestured down to Zuko, "just kept on movin' and that caused the poison to start travelin' inside him."
Toph bit back a response that Zuko hadn't exactly had a choice.
"So what does this poison do exactly?" Katara asked.
"It tears up the flesh and makes you bleed real bad. If it gets aholt of you deep like this, all you can do is take off the limb. Otherwise it'll slowly rot you to death," Dei Zi said seriously.
"What if you cut away the affected tissue? What then?" Katara began to carefully probe the wounded area.
"Well, if you get rid of what's gone bad, the rest generally does all right," the old woman said with a shrug. "But the bad flesh is running too deep and too far up inside his leg to cut away. And even if you stop the rot, he's still got to deal with the after pain. Sometime soon it'll start working on him and there ain't no stopping it. You just got to live through it."
Katara thought for a moment, then began to pass the water globe across the wound again. "Let's start by seeing if we can pull out more of this venom with a few bending techniques. Do you have a large bowl or container?"
As Dei Zi moved to pick up a bucket from the other side of the hut, Katara turned to Toph and Aang. "I'm going to try to bend the venom back out. If he wakes up, try to keep him still."
Aang moved to one side and Toph took the other. "Jet, you stand ready in case we need you," Aang instructed. Aang took a quick look at Jet and Mai, who had edged even closer toward the door. Both of them looked a bit pale.
Beside him Katara took a deep, meditative breath and began to work her healing. The clear globe of water flowed over and around the swollen limb, turning red and cloudy as blood began to flow out of the small jagged wounds above Zuko's knee. A sudden noise at the door prompted Aang to turn. Mai and Jet were no longer in the hut.
"Jet?" Aang called firmly.
"I'm just right outside the door," Jet's voice came back without hesitation.
"So am I," Mai explained, "if you need me." Mai had put a little extra emphasis on the word 'need', Aang thought to himself.
As he watched Katara continue to pull dark, bloody fluid away from the bite area, Aang reconsidered and decided that Jet and Mai had the right idea. Thank goodness Toph couldn't see it, he thought.
But to her surprise, Toph could see all too well how Zuko's blood flowed in the healing water. After every pass, Katara would hover the water over the bucket and release the blood, rendering the water clean and invisible to her again. Then Toph would watch the globe refill itself as Katara worked.
After several minutes, Katara replaced the clean water into her waterskin and stretched her shoulders. "I don't think I'll be able to get any more this way," she sighed. "The venom has traveled deep into the tissues."
"Like I said," Dei Zi began, "once it's worked its way down deep, it starts to run up the muscle, eating it away as it goes."
"What else can you do?" Toph asked quietly, as she gently wiped Zuko's forehead with a cool, damp cloth. He lay still and quiet. His heart was strong, but his breathing had become more shallow as Katara had worked.
"I say we cut the leg off," Dei Zi said matter-of-factly. "Unless you know of a way to pull out the bad parts from the inside."
"You could make an incision," Jet's voice said from the doorway. "That would get down into the damaged parts."
"An incision would also create enough opening to send the water down into the tissue instead of just working from the outside," Katara added thoughtfully.
"Well, the knives are clean," Dei Zi said, gesturing to a well-scrubbed wooden tray holding her surgical instruments.
Katara picked up one of the knives, then put it down again nervously. "I've never done anything like this before," she said. "Healers in the Water Tribe don't intentionally cause wounds." She looked up at Dei Zi.
The old woman shrugged. "I don't generally cut stuff that I don't mean to cut off."
They both looked at Aang, who threw up his hands. "I'm a vegetarian. I don't even cut up dinner."
Jet came into the room and held out his hands. "Clean me up, Katara," he said. "As many Fire Nation arrows as I've removed from people, surely I can do this without messing up too badly."
Katara ran the globe of water over Jet's hands, noticing that they shook just the tiniest bit. "Are you sure you want to do this?" she asked.
"Just watch for bleeding and stop it if you can," he said firmly.
Aang moved back a little to give Jet room to work and noticed that Mai had stepped back into the hut, though she stood as close to the door as possible.
Jet took one of Dei Zi's offered knives and carefully cut through the top layers of skin, exposing the unhealthy looking muscle beneath. "That enough?" he asked shakily.
"Not really," Katara replied, clearing up the bleeding and erasing the pain with her globe of water. "See how much further you can go."
"You guys keep an eye on him, okay?" Jet replied nervously, then made another incision, going deeper this time.
Zuko groaned and stirred a little, prompting Aang and Dei Zi to reach out to hold him still.
"One more time," Katara said as the healing water moved across the wound.
Jet gritted his teeth and carefully followed the line of muscle down nearly to the bone, carefully avoiding what he knew to be tendons. He didn't want to accidentally cut something really important. Funny how battlefield experience sometimes came in handy, he thought.
"That should do it," Katara said to his relief. "Now help them hang onto him. Mai, you come help Toph. This is going to be a lot worse."
She set herself into a deep meditative state so she could follow the water with her senses. As she forced the water into the tissue, she could immediately feel a difference between the healthy muscle tissue and the strands that had begun to break down. She was glad to see there was enough healthy tissue remaining to recover function—possibly even fully recover knowing how hard Zuko liked to train.
But she could also sense traces of sticky yellow venom making its way up the leg tissue. She tried to remove a little and found that it was stubborn, but yielded to her water's pressure. However, as she followed the trail of venom, she realized that time was of the essence. It seemed to crawl up the muscle and bone, secreting toxins as it went. Very soon, it would arrive at the main artery that ran into the leg.
If she didn't stop it quickly, she realized that at best, the venom would damage the artery to the point that amputation would be necessary after all, but at worst, it would enter the bloodstream and be impossible for her to stop. Who knew what damage would be done before Zuko's body could metabolize it—if it could be metabolized at all.
At any other time, she would pour as much energy into pain relief as she did healing—she hated to hurt people. But now she didn't have the luxury of offering pain relief. Speed was far too important.
"Toph, I need to warn you," she began softly, "this won't be easy to watch. Do you want to leave the room?"
Toph looked at her, those big green eyes open wide in frightened understanding. "No," she whispered hoarsely. "I won't leave him."
Katara nodded in acceptance. She wouldn't leave Aang either, but she had to ask. Taking another deep breath, she filled her mind with her element and went to work in desperate earnest.
She carefully, but thoroughly began to systematically pull the tissues apart, severing the damaged areas and stripping them away from the healthy. She wondered how long Zuko would stay unconscious. She hoped it would be a while.
Unfortunately, within moments, Zuko woke to absolute torture. If the pain had been bad before, now it was multiplied by ten at least. Each time Katara sent her waters into the damaged muscle and tissues, it felt like needles of fire were running up into his body. When the waters pulled back the dead tissue and blood clots, it felt like his leg was being ripped apart fiber by fiber.
Then she began to work along the bone.
Once, when he was a very little boy, he'd fallen onto a stone step, breaking one of his baby teeth. The deep, piercing ache when the cold air hit that bare nerve had been one of the most sickening pains he'd ever felt.
Now that same sickening feeling penetrated the long bone of his thigh straight to the marrow. His mouth tasted like metal and his stomach heaved in nausea. Suddenly the smells of antiseptic, blood, and infection overwhelmed him and he was violently ill.
Finally, she was done. Everyone kept their eyes away from the bucket of half dissolved tissue and blood. Everyone but Dei Zi, who peered down into it curiously.
"Any way you can get the venom back out of there?" she asked Katara. At Katara's look of shocked disbelief, she explained, "Gar venom's good for healing too--if you handle it right."
The group just stared at her blankly; then Jet suddenly laughed out loud in relief. Hu peeped in the door of the hut. "Is it over?" he asked worriedly.
"I think so," Aang replied with a questioning look at Katara as she wrung her hands clean and dry over the bucket. She nodded.
Suddenly Toph called out to her in an anxious voice, "Katara, something's wrong!"
As the pain in Zuko's leg had subsided, his mind had begun to clear. He remembered where he was and what had happened to him. He'd opened his eyes to look for Toph. His eyes met hers, but just as he tried to speak to her, his nerves seemed to burst into flame. She reached out to stroke his forehead, but the touch of her hand sent spikes of pain across his skin and he began to hurt all over.
"Katara, what's happening to him?" Toph asked, breathless with worry.
"He's gone into some kind of shock," Katara surmised, coming back to the cot. "I don't know what it is, though. I know I got all the damaged tissue and remaining venom out." She sounded extremely tired and disheartened.
"Gar venom takes itself into you hard," Dei Zi answered as she stepped closer. "Even after you get the rot stopped, you got to live through the pain. Makes your whole body hurt something awful. You lose your mind a little too."
Dei Zi paused to look into Zuko's unfocused eyes. He didn't seem to see her at all. "He ought to get through it okay in a few hours. But sometimes it takes a few days. At least you stopped it from eating away his leg," she said cheerfully, giving Katara a hearty clap on the shoulder. "This part'll pass too. He'll just be awful miserable till it does."
Katara looked down at Zuko's leg where she'd managed to heal up the long incision and the puncture wounds from the cottonmouth gar's teeth. It did look a good deal better. The swelling was way down and the color was getting back to normal already. He'd lost some muscle tissue and maybe some nerve function, but with time, healing, and work she hoped he would regain full function and strength.
But as she looked down at his restless body, tossing on the small cot in such obvious distress, she felt like she'd failed him as a healer. "Dei Zi, isn't there something more we can do for him?" she asked.
"Not really," Dei Zi answered sadly. "The best thing is to just leave him be. He won't be thinking too straight for a while anyway. He'll likely not even know we're gone. We'll just keep it dark and quiet in here and with nothing touching his skin. Any noise, any light, any touch will hurt real bad."
At that announcement, Toph rounded everyone up without ceremony and pushed them out the door of the hut. "In that case," she said as she blew out the lamplight then pulled the wooden door shut behind them, "everybody out."
Aang thought things over for a second, then lapsed without a word into the avatar state. Within a few moments, he was back.
"I've tried to find another answer or a cure," he began quietly. "I'm really sorry, Toph. The only thing the past avatars have said is that the less stimulation his nervous system receives, the faster he'll get over it." Toph nodded at him as he continued, "I was going to recommend we try to fly him back to Omashu, but I don't know if that's a good idea."
"Peace is what he needs," Dei Zi affirmed with a scratch to her arm. "The rest of us need to keep quiet and give him room to get over it."
Toph gave them all another nod, as if she couldn't trust herself to speak, then went back to the door. Katara stopped her with a touch to her arm. "I'll come stay with him in a little while so you can get some rest, okay?" Katara suggested gently.
"I'll be fine," Toph said firmly, then went back inside the hut, shutting the door softly, but firmly behind her.
The darkness presented no obstacles to her at all as she crossed the wooden floor, all her attention on her husband. He stood out to her earthbending sight in sharp relief to everything in the room around him.
"Zuko? Baby? Can you hear me?" she asked quietly as she knelt beside the little low cot. She longed to touch him, to let him know she was there, but Dei Zi's warning stayed her hand. He didn't answer, but tossed and groaned, mumbling to himself in a hoarse voice and pulling at the blanket that covered him.
Carefully, she removed the blanket and loosened his clothing. His breathing was irregular, punctuated by sharp intakes of air. However, his heartbeat remained strong. Dei Zi said there was nothing to do but live through it, Toph reminded herself. Zuko would live through it—she'd see to that.
Zuko had no idea what was happening to him as the next stage of the venom began to work in earnest. Inside his body, a final component of the cottonmouth gar's complex toxins was sending his entire nervous system cascading into painful failure.
Everything had turned upside down and inside out on him. He couldn't see, couldn't hear, couldn't think—he existed only in a world of searing pain that invaded every inch of him, ran along every nerve fiber from his fingertips to his feet.
He tried to back away from the insistent, merciless agony, tried to breathe through it. But there was no place inside him where he could find refuge. He didn't know where he was. The confusion grew stronger, and fear and pain began to dominate him. He tried to meditate, but his concentration just wouldn't hold.
He opened his eyes and tried to see, but the light blinded him, and his head felt like it would split open. At some level he knew he was begging, begging for mercy and he couldn't stop.
"Please," he tried to say. He called her name, but she didn't answer him. He pleaded with her, but she wasn't there. Then he didn't know who he was calling for any more. And everything became chaos and pain.
Tears flowed freely down Toph's face as her husband called for her in agony. Though she answered and spoke to him time and time again, assuring him that he was not alone, that she was right there, his pleas grew more frantic and disjointed. So she pleaded with the heavens to give him release, to let her take his place. But the heavens were silent.
Outside the hut, the rest of them looked at each other for a moment. Then Dei Zi shrugged and went off in another direction. Hu wandered by, looking distracted, then headed off to where a group of men stood at a distance.
"Any ideas?" Jet asked.
"Wait and see, I guess," Aang replied. "Maybe it will be over soon. Until then, we'll just be ready in case we're needed." Then Aang and Katara walked back over toward Appa to unpack the bedrolls and get the large sky bison settled in for the night, leaving Jet and Mai alone together.
Up until that moment, Jet had been too preoccupied by Zuko's predicament to pay much attention to the young woman who'd come in with Aang and Katara. But when he finally got a good look at her, he caught his breath.
It was her--the girl in his dreams who kept looking at him like she had something to say to him. He found himself staring at her as she watched Aang remove Appa's giant saddle with an effortless puff of air.
Finally, he regained his presence of mind enough to speak to her. "Hi, the name's Jet," he began as casually as he could.
"I know who you are," came the cool reply as she turned to look up at him, her gray eyes piercing him. "What I want to know is where is my brother?"
(AN: If you think Zuko's plight is extreme, read up a little on the Irukandji jellyfish. It'll make you never want to swim in Australia again.)