The sun was all the way up and the smell of burning was just beginning to take over the air when Henryk limped over the threshold of Iosefka's clinic the next morning. The wound wasn't bad, but Gascoigne's arm was bleeding badly, and the man's poor wife didn't need to see that, so Henryk had been firm in suggesting they see the doctor before they called the night over.

It was practically bustling with hunters in various conditions. Two young apprentices in the same white robes as the doctor were hard at work cleaning, stitching and bandaging wounds while the worst of them were sent upstairs. On the night and morning after the Hunt, Iosefka left her cabinets open, and many of the less battered hunters simply took her supplies and patched themselves up. With his personal supply depleted, Henryk helped himself to a blood vial and plunged it hard into his leg, gritting his teeth as the needle glanced off the bone. For a moment, there was that sickening feeling that always came after these injections, like a huge hand reaching straight into his chest and clenching his heart so tightly that it had no room to beat, and then the moment passed and he began to breathe again, the pain in his ankle already receding.

The jagged bite on Gascoigne's arm was beyond what a single vial could mend, and it had already soaked through the makeshift bandage, but there were some sitting or laying across the benches who were in much worse condition, and he was content to wait his turn, one hand clapped firmly over the wound, applying steady pressure.

"Gun wants looking at," he muttered. "Wouldn't have happened if it was shooting straight."

Henryk said nothing. Personally, he suspected the gun might have taken a knock and wasn't shooting straight, but Gascoigne was still younger than most, and a damn good hunter. A bit of humility might do him some good in the long run. Let him have that little seed of doubt. It might drive him to spend a bit more time on target practice before the next Hunt.

In time, one of the apprentices peeled back Gascoigne's sleeve and looked unflinchingly at the mess of his arm. "Wait here, please," he said briskly, and disappeared up the stairs for a few minutes. When he returned, he had a syringe with him, much smaller than a standard blood vial, and the fluid inside was a far brighter red. Slowly and with far more precision than the hunters ever used, he slid the needle into the torn flesh.

Gascoigne made a strange noise in the back of the throat and his head nodded for a moment, then jerked upright again. "That's smoother than the usual stuff," he said as the apprentice turned away to soak a clean cloth in something with a smell that made their eyes water.

"This won't be," the apprentice replied without an ounce of sympathy, and pressed the cloth firmly against the wound. Henryk suppressed a smirk as Gascoigne grunted and briefly went to jerk his arm away before getting himself back under control.

At least he would go back home with a clean bandage on, rather than dripping onto the clean carpet. "I'll leave you to it," Henryk said, turning to go, experimentally shifting his weight to test out how far the ankle had healed, but the apprentice spoke without looking up.

"Hunter Henryk? Iosefka asks you to stay. She'd like a word." A pause. "There's food in the side room."

'Food' was just a vat of porridge, but it was a good thing too, since Iosefka's word wasn't important enough for her to leave her most badly damaged patients in need, and he was waiting a long time. Gascoigne had left, and so had most of the others, so one apprentice went upstairs to help while the other stayed down and dealt with the last of the minor wounds.

A minor wound to a hunter could have been a lost limb outside of Yharnam. Henryk found himself stood before a cabinet of blood vials, now very depleted, wondering at the stuff. It was the blessing and the curse of this city. Sickness or crippling here was a matter of choice. There were precious few injuries or illness that couldn't be lessened enormously by the vials of the Healing Church, but the trade-off was what outsiders called the Yharnam Madness. In Yharnam they just called it plague, since there was no plague as the rest of the world understood the word. The vials could knit together torn flesh, muscle and bone, and drive out corruption and illness, but the side-effects it could produce were terrible. They were the reason for the Hunt.

Church robes aside, Henryk had never understood why a woman who was so often elbow-deep in blood would insist on wearing all white. She had clearly worn gloves and an apron, but nevertheless there were flecks of red drying to dark brown all over her clothes and even a smudge on her smooth, white cheek.

She got straight to business. "The young lady you brought me last night. What do you know about her?"

Henryk frowned. He hadn't forgotten the start of the night, exactly, in the same way he hadn't forgotten his undershirt. He just hadn't given it another moment's thought. It didn't seem important, compared to everything else that had demanded his attention in the intervening hours. "We just found her," he said. "Did she live?"

Iosefka didn't flinch at the bluntness of the question, but she looked surprisingly sad as she nodded. "Come with me," she commanded, and led the way back up. The two double doors to the now well-occupied ward were wide open, but she led him instead down the hallway to a smaller, private room with a glass-panelled door. The girl was inside, laid out on a high bed, most of her face and the one hand that rested on the sheet wrapped in clean bandages. She was breathing deeply and evenly, and her expression was peaceful.

"Her name's Margaret," Iosefka said, looking in through the glass. "I gave her a sedative. After the shock wore off, she got very…" She took a deep breath, and let it out in a long sigh. "You don't know how she ended up outside in that state on such a night?"

Again, he hadn't exactly failed to notice, but there had been greater concerns. "I could hazard a guess," he replied carefully, "from what she wasn't wearing."

Iosefka nodded. "Her orphanage told her they'd found her a place to live and work. She didn't know it was a brothel until she got there. She wouldn't tell me anything more, but I pulled a lot of broken glass from her face. Whatever happened there, she can't go back. She has nothing."

"I'll pay for her treatment."

Iosefka gave him an odd look. "Kind," she said shortly. "But there's more. That makeshift knife cut the tendons in her hand. The fingers will never bend properly again, and she'll almost certainly lose an eye."

Henryk waited for a question. When it didn't come, he had to look for it in the gaps around what she had told him. "Blood vials," he said eventually.

Iosefka nodded. "I could heal her with blood, but you know the risks, and she's only fifteen. Normally for a child I leave it up to their parents or wardens, but…" She gestured vaguely. Henryk's eyebrows raised.

"Why me?"

"Well, you seem to have taken some responsibility for her. You just offered to pay for her treatment, so if it's anyone's choice, it's yours."

"I'd think it's hers." The doctor did not reply. Henryk leaned towards the window for a closer look at the sleeping girl, Margaret. Fifteen, homeless and now at risk of being half-blind with a crippled hand. He'd been impressed by her spirit earlier. Now he felt only pity. Henryk's start in life hadn't been an easy one, but at least he'd been fit enough to work. He sighed. "How long 'til she wakes up?"

"This evening, perhaps. I don't want to wake her. The rest will help her heal."

"You know where I live. Send someone to get me when she's awake."