Chapter 11: Anders
The feeling gripped me like a vice: fear, anguish, premature loss. It sunk dark tendrils into my memories of him, like a weed, tainting everything with the thought that those events, those sweet moments, were the last we would share.
He was on his knees, crawling and clutching at his stomach. I could barely glimpse his form through the skirmish around me. He was chocking and lurching on the ground. I cried out to him and I might have seen him look up, but the darkspawn were everywhere. They stood between us.
Garrett was down. How could I have let this happen? I wanted desperately to believe it wasn't true, but I was defenceless to my own fears, they seeped in and wracked me to my core.
Let this be a dream. Let this only have happened in the spirit realm, a nightmare, a twisted product of Justice's resentment for the hold Garrett had over me. I wanted, needed, this to be a lie.
Maker, please don't let this be real.
Amidst the swirl of denial, grief and failure, I became vaguely aware that the darkspawn I had been fighting lay dead in a circle around me, and then that my feet had carried me in quick, shuffling steps frantically over to Garrett's side.
I crumpled down on my knees next to him. His eyes already had that glazed look about them. His skin was waxy and pale. He had fallen on his stomach, pushing the longsword deeper into his abdomen. Now his hand was fisted next to the sword, still penetrating from his wound.
How could that have made it through his armour? Not a darkspawn blade.
Garrett had fallen into blessed unconsciousness; reprieve from the pain of his body. Against my better judgement, I wrenched the blade from his armour. Its metal was bloodless and it left his body with a strange hissing noise that I overlooked in the wake of my task.
"Carver," he blinked, "I need to see the wound! Help me get his armour off." But he was frozen, staring at Garrett's broken body with wide, hopeless eyes. The colour had bled from his face and he was nearing the pallor of his brother who was still bleeding out on the ground before us. He didn't move. "Now, Carver!"
Carver jolted back to life suddenly and remarkably, and with his eyes locked onto mine, sweat pearling on his brow, he nodded and began fumbling with the clasps on Garrett's breastplate, Varric worked dutifully on the rest of the armour ties.
I pulled off Garrett's gauntlet and let it clatter roughly to the tainted stone floor. What were material objects when the one bright light in my life was fading and spluttering before me? His calloused hands were unnaturally pale next to mine; usually so tan, rough yet careful. Pressing my fingers into the base of his wrist, I groped for a pulse. I found the radial artery, but its pressure was thready; the lapping blood rushing through the vessel. Not enough. It was a weak fluttering below his diaphoretic skin.
Its presence was reassuring though. A good sign. He's still fine. Not so much blood loss. Peripheral perfusion is still adequate.
Unconsciously, I had slipped into thinking in terminology. I knew that if I for a moment began to think of Garrett as the man that I loved, that this was possibly the last moment I would have with him, I would freeze up in a useless state of desperation and suffering.
The breastplate clanged to the floor, its underside stained a coppery red. The resounding noise broke my reverie, startling me with the knowledge that now was the time to save him, now was the only chance I had.
Isabella pushed a mana draught into the palm of my hand and I took it gratefully, pulling the vial's bitter contents down my throat.
Garrett's gaping red wound glared up at me. Bleeding anew since I had wrenched the sword out, disrupting the beginnings of his body's repairal processes. Tiny molecules binding together into clots, jerked apart by the friction. Blood pooled around him and beneath him, a biting, metallic smell.
I set to work. If there was one thing I was good at, it was the healing arts. How could I bring myself to fail in this, now when it mattered more than ever? I could not. I would not. This is what I knew.
Garrett's lips were painted red with his own blood. Not enough to aspirate yet. Hopefully.
"Carver, hold his head to the side," I took his fumbling hands and rearranged them carefully around my lover's head. Just far enough to the side so he wouldn't breathe in and choke on his own blood, just straight enough to keep his airway clear.
I turned back to survey his abdomen. It was distended and inflamed. All that blood that he had lost, it pooled under the skin. His peritoneum was like a bag of viscous fluid, hard to the touch.
There was so much damage, the edges of the wound looked as though they had been burned, matching the tell-tale charcoal smell of burning tissue that hung in the air. It clung to my nares, penetrating the hollow branching pattern of my sinuses. This odd burning had served to partially cauterize much of the damage, but it also meant it would be harder to repair. There would be an ugly scar.
I had my pack open, bandages and salves spilled out onto the dirt. I rummaged around for a combine, which I pressed firmly to the wound.
Garrett's body squirmed under me but I held him in place with my thin hands. He was usually so much stronger than me, but his remonstrations now were feeble, keeping him still took so little effort. My fingers trembled.
I cursed myself for not having brought any supplementary equipment, something to restore that lost blood that was staining my knees a dark crimson as I knelt beside him. I settled for putting my palm over his head, and pushing magic into his hypothalamus, demanding what his body needed. I could almost feel the chemical reactions occurring; breaking down and building up molecules, burning food and oxygen. That little part of Garrett's brain heard me, releasing an arsenal of chemicals into his waning bloodstream; a myriad of neurotransmitters and hormones telling his heart to keep pumping, his breath to quicken, his kidneys to hold onto as much water as they could. Keep that blood pressure stable.
I moved my healing hands over his abdomen, feeling for damage. Praying to The Maker and Andraste and The Creators and The Ancestors, praying to whoever would listen: please don't let the damage be too great. Please let me fix this.
The puncture traversed through his liver and stomach, thankfully missing his kidneys and pancreas. Good. This was good, or better than it might have been, at least.
I started work on his liver; he was losing the most blood from those delicate tissues. Blood. Blood, and lymph, and bile, spurting hot and persistent from that little, lacerating hole in his liver. Such a heavy, dominant organ. These fluids were filling his body in a mixture of congealed liquids that swelled his abdomen.
Right now, Garrett was a sinking ship, with a tiny puncture leaking water in through the hull. I could keep bucketing water out to keep him afloat, but eventually he would go under. I needed to fix the leak.
I mumbled incantations under my breath, over and over, knitting his liver back together. Tugging the air above his body with absurd little tweaking gestures that were reflected on the inside, accomplishing a week's work in little under a minute. The hole was plugged and mended, the bleeding staunched.
Garrett made an ugly gurgling sound deep in his throat and his body jolted up in an unconscious spasm. His chin flopped down on his chest. Blood and spit ran in hot rivulets down the side of his face and down and onto his brother's loyal hand, still holding his head as I had instructed.
I danced my fingers over his chest and throat in a sweeping motion, reaching tendrils of magic into his oesophagus, guiding the misplaced blood up and out of his throat so he could breathe again. I pulled it through his body and then through the air in a stream, until it joined the pool around him.
Time stopped for a moment as I watched him. Waiting with my hand on his chest, my cheek next to his mouth; waiting for that fateful rise and fall that I so desperately needed. It came, belated and shallow, but present. My hand rose with him, I felt the warmth of his life flutter against my cheek.
Still breathing, good. This was good. I had to remind myself constantly. These were good signs. They were promising. He would live.
I was drained, but I pushed myself further, downing potion after potion to keep my mana stores from depletion. The lyrium left my head feeling light and my stomach queasy, but I kept on. Cleansing, clotting, repairing. He would live. He had to live. The wound in his stomach closed next, he wouldn't be able to eat properly for a while, lest it infect. But he would live.
The blood and bile were still there, stagnating in his peritoneal cavity, I took everything that was usable and forced it to diffuse back into his vessels.
I pulled at the air above his diaphragm in what would have looked like a ridiculous gesture to an onlooker. Gradually, the fluids, already sticky and thick, drifted up and out of the still open puncture wound. I kept pulling until the distension had softened and his abdomen returned to a relatively normal size, bar the inevitable swelling. I held it in the air in a blue glow between my fingers, a floating globule of semi-clotted fluids held adrift in a flow of magical energy. I let it fall to the floor with the rest.
At least he would live.
With what felt like the last of my energies, I made to close the wound, but my hands shook and it was a messy, crooked zipper-line that ran right under his ribs and down. The repair work was thin and poor, less than he deserved, but it was all I could manage right now. More lyrium and I was likely to faint. I settled for smearing a salve over the skin, from here Isabella took over, sponging a wet rag over Garrett's crimson stained skin and wrapping his body in bandages. I fell back onto my haunches with a noisy exhalation, my shoulders dropped. My work was done.
Now I was burnt out on lyrium and adrenaline. I wanted nothing more than to collapse atop him and just hold him and have him hold me back. My whole body quaked, and Varric's grasped my shoulder reassuringly. It was all I could do to keep tears from welling in my eyes. I settled instead for holding Garrett's cold hand in my own, feeling that delicate pulse wavering under the skin. Feeling it flutter… and fade.
It took me longer than it should have to grasp what that meant, what was happening. Garrett was dying. I jolted forward, groping his neck for his carotid artery. I felt nothing. Already deep in shock, his tired muscles had given up, his compensatory mechanisms had failed.
In a last ditch effort, I pushed my magic into his chest and seized the muscles of his heart, forced them to keep moving. I beat the muscle for him, struggling to keep the tempo steady and strong, pushing more and more of myself into this because it was all that I had. Constrict for ejection, relax to fill those muscled chambers. Constrict, relax, pause. Constrict, relax, pause.
A flask was pushed to my lips and I drank, feeling my head spin. I was focused so intently on this one task that I didn't notice my own body's parasympathetic cues failing. His heartbeat was mine and I strained to keep it pounding onward.
My quivering fingertips were pushed against his sternum, against his throbbing heart. I felt my skin grow colder as warmth returned to his limp form. I felt his heartbeat take my rhythm and I supported it as it marched on.
My world was turning dark around the edges, circling and pushing inward. As it closed in on me, I thought I saw Garrett's eyelids flutter. The beat strengthened; that inexhaustible strength returning. And then the blackness devoured me.*
…
I awoke several hours later, sticky with sweat, my head spinning and throbbing from the excess lyrium. The feeling was akin to a hangover.
Strikingly, Garrett's collapse rushed back at me in a powerfully vivid montage of memory. I sat upright, and blood rushed from my head, darkening my vision. I nearly slipped back out of consciousness but I held on to one thought: was he okay? This I needed to know, I clung to my body even as my head danced frantic spirals.
"Whoa, Blondie! Take it easy! Hey Rivaini, he's awake!"
I swayed, where I sat, letting my body get accustomed to being upright again. I ran shaky fingers through my hair, pushing it back from my eyes, taking a greedy gulp of air. Someone had taken off my coat and laid me on a bedroll by a softly flickering fire.
Gradually, blurred shapes swam into reality. The faces of Varric and Isabella hovered ethereally before me, but there was only one person on my mind.
"Where is he?" I choked.
"He's fine, Anders." Isabella smiled sympathetically at me and there was no trace of a lie in her eyes or on her lips. I let myself relax minutely, but I needed to know for sure. I needed to see and feel him with my own eyes and hands.
"Please. I need to."
"There's really no point, Blondie. He's still sleeping," Varric opened his mouth to continue, but any further placating words that he thought to offer died on his lips. There must have been something in the look that I gave him that said there was no use in denying me this. He knew that I was not going to let it go, "Alright then, come on."
With Varric on one side and Isabella on the other, we managed to heave me to my uneasy feet. My head span again and I leant heavily on them for support.
When the objects around me had all solidified and returned to their original quantities and colours, I struggled forward. Varric and Isabella guided me around the fire to Garrett's sleeping form, only a few paces from where I had been. Our companions had moved us both from the mess of dirt and blood, and had constructed a feeble fire that sputtered just enough warmth and light for our comfort.
Garrett was a bundle of blankets with a tuft of black, ruffled hair poking from the top. He snored noisily and healthily. Once again, I fell to his side and onto my knees. Carver sat across from me and nodded a wordless thanks, he vocalised a reassurance instead, "He's fine."
Apparently none of us were capable of anything more than these shortly worded assurances at the moment. I myself could do no more than swallow loudly and nod in return.
"Has he woken yet?"
"Only to drink some poultice. Then he fell asleep again."
"Good… that's good."
Placing my palm on his sweaty forehead, warm now, I muttered a gentle spell that pulled him deeper into what I hoped was a peaceful, dreamless ocean of sleep. He deserved it. The blue glow enveloped my hand and Garrett's snoring gained in volume and depth. In his hypothalamus, I checked his vital signs and his blood biomarkers. No signs of myocardial infarction, no tissue death. Good, perfect. He was so strong.
I felt weak, like my mana was barely a shallow pool, holding scarcely enough to fuel my spell. It was frustrating. This was the after effects of lyrium overdose. I was still dizzy from it.
Under his mountain of blankets, someone had removed the rest of Garrett's armour and had dressed him in a clean cotton shirt. It amazed me that any of us had thought to bring a spare set of clothes, let alone someone with Garrett's level of forethought. I didn't recognise the shirt though, which told me it must belong to his brother. That was more fitting, the Grey Wardens taught you to be prepared for anything and everything.
I pulled the shirt up, exposing the flat plane of his stomach, wrapped tightly with gauze and bandages. With composed fingers now, I loosened his wrappings and inspected the scar. It was thin and ugly, twisting in a deep divot across his otherwise unblemished skin. It pulled in and down in a ragged mass of taught, red, fibrous tissue. I put more magic behind my fingers and felt for infection, for taint. I found nothing. The effort set my hands to trembling again and I closed my eyes against the urge to sleep. I moved my hand back over the scar and made to help the healing quicken, but Carver closed his hand around my wrist in a firm grip and wrenched my arm away from his brother.
"You've done enough, Anders."
My stream of magic slackened and died above his stomach. Had I done enough, though? Could I ever do enough? Garrett was worth everything I could offer him and so much more. He didn't deserve this scar that I had left him with. I let my finger trail along its curve; this failing of mine. Just my finger, without the healing power of magic behind it; just my tired hands and this blemish that I couldn't fix no matter how hard I might try.
It was only then that I finally cried. I couldn't stop myself. It was a complete and utter release. My body folded down onto Garrett's softly rising chest, heavy with sleep. Then I was lost, cradled in the dark oblivion of his body, quiet and complete and free.
I heaved myself up into my shoulders and then I jerked down, down, down. A series of sobbing drops. When I finally pulled myself up and away from Garrett's body, still peaceful in soft sleep, his shirt was a wet impression of my tears. You could only just make out the mask of my face in the dark, wet pattern.
I looked up at Carver and he was looking away, giving me my privacy, my moment of weakness. I wiped at my face to gain a modicum of respectability when I saw Carver's eyes were shining too. Tiny streams of saltwater reflected down his cheeks. I pretended not to notice.
Soon after, I fell into a restless sleep by Garrett's side, arms wrapped tightly around him, keeping him warm in a cocoon of limbs and blankets. So tight that there would be no way I wouldn't feel it if he woke in the night, or if his strong heart gave out once again. Isabella watched dutifully over us that night, more mindful of Garrett's continued breath than the darkspawn that surely lurked in the depths. As I dozed with one foot in the fade and the other just clinging to the mortal realm, I sensed nothing lying in wait for us, and I was quietly confident that Garrett would be fine. It was this thought more than any that finally let me rest.
*Please presume that this is like mainstream television, and people that have heart failure are completely fine in the next scene. I just didn't have the patience for it. Plus, EMTs don't understand long term treatment.
