This tale will take a little longer to resolve than I thought.But it is
coming along now that I know what's going to happen...I hope you are
enjoying this and I shall keep posting
(I am a bit slow because I am working on four other tales at the
moment.including a collaboration which is coming along fabulously) So stay
tuned!
Though unsettled by his unexpected revelation to Aragorn, Dolengil continued to make medicines in between tending to the sick. And four more patients had entered the Halls from the city, complaining of headaches and nausea and a persistent cough.
Shaking his head as he saw to the newest patient, he turned to Calla, to place the empty vial in the basket she usually carried with her to collect what he had used while tending to the injured. He looked carefully at the linen maid and with a small sigh, covered the young woman lying near them and turned to Calla.
Calla blinked several times as Dolengil took her by the elbow and led her down the aisle of the injured. Coughing, she sat where he indicated, her basket dangling between her knees. Coughing again, she realized she was sitting. Surprised, she made to stand up and felt a soft pressure pushing her back to a pallet.
Dolengil came into view as he knelt before her, taking her basket and putting it aside. His eyes looked at her with concern and smiling beneath his veil, he slipped her shoes off and then swung her feet up onto the pallet. Calla started coughing again, and then found herself propped up by two pillows and covered by a thankfully warm blanket, as she was suddenly taken by a chill.
Dolengil put a cool hand on her forehead and Calla sighed in relief and was about to slide into sleep, when she realized he couldn't! Her shift wasn't done! She needed to see to Dahanna and Kepi! Sitting up so suddenly she surprised the healer, she looked at him, saying with a suddenly dry throat, "No Master, I cannot sleep now! My shift isn't over and I have to see Dahanna and Kepi, and---"
"Calla, you have caught the sickness stealing into Minas Tirith. Here," He opened a vial of medicine and she reluctantly swallowed the contents. "Rest now, I will check on Dahanna and Kepi. I need to see how her leg is doing, so it will be no trouble."
Calla sighed and her head lolled to side as Dolengil sent her to sleep.
Standing Dolengil continued through the sick and replaced Calla's supplies. Knowing Calla would have worked herself until she had literally fallen over, Dolengil made the decision for her, and put her to bed before that happened.
He turned and went back out into the Hall and surveyed the slowly filling pallets. Keeping the sick all together was not a bad idea, but combining them with the injured form the battlefield just added insult to their injuries. This had happened once before during one of the several battles during the Last Alliance of Elves and Men in the Second Age. They needed to be separated and quickly before the disease spread.
Dolengil decided a meeting with the other healers was needed immediately.
Quickly striding across the courtyard to the kitchens, he went through the warm steamy confines, redolent of soup and bread, and climbed a flight of stairs to the Head Healer's study.
Master Berem, with whom he had little contact other than when he offered his services, was writing in a journal when he knocked and entered.
"Master Berem," Doelngil bowed slightly and got straight to the point, "I think we have the makings of an epidemic on our hands."
Berem looked up at that, his eyebrows raised as he saw the tall form of the mysterious healer from the east looming over his desk. Berem, a large man slightly running to fat, leaned back in his ornate chair. His healing skills, though initially excellent, had been put aside quite some time ago for more administrative tasks.
"And what brings you to that conclusion Master...Dolengil, is it not?" Nodding he said, "I have noticed a sharp increase in the number of sick entering the Halls with the same complaints: fever, nausea and coughing. Lord Aragorn visited with me from off the battlefield briefly today and has told me the same illness is appearing in the field hospitals. It is his conclusion that these are signs of an epidemic as well."
Berem stood and walked to the open window, where little breeze was to be had and looked out into the bright hot light of the courtyard below. "Lord Aragorn, as he is new to battle on this scale, may be exaggerating. Illness is always rampant on battlefields, as it is so hard to maintain adequate supply lines as well as just having enough clean water on hand."
"Is prevention not nine-tenths of the cure Master Berem?" Dolengil realized that here was another bureaucrat, happy with his position and unable or unwilling to think beyond the confines of his study walls.
"Of course. It is one of the first lessons learned.Master Dolengil." Berem turned to eye the oddly dressed foreigner. "I believe it is just an increase in head congestion brought on by the winds and the dry conditions."
"Are these conditions not highly unusual for this time of year in Minas Tirith? Could they not be something concocted by the Dark Lord to eat away at morale?"
"You are a foreigner, so I can easily pardon your ignorance in such matters." Dolengil raised his eyebrows at the man's stubborn foolishness.
" The Dark Lord is nothing more than a clever general working on the fears of an ignorant populace." Master Berem continued jovially. "Do not be taken in by such tales."
Appalled by the man's inability to see the obvious, Dolengil said slowly, "Does that mean you will take no measures to see that this illness does not spread?"
"We will take all reasonable precautions." He returned to his desk and sat, picking up his quill. "Now, if you have nothing further to say, I must get back to my accounts."
"And what reasonable precautions would those be?" Dolengil insisted, leaning forward.
Master Berem looked up his expression purposefully bland. "As I said, they will be the "reasonable precautions" we have utilized in similar circumstances. Good day, Master Dolengil."
Dolengil's eyes blazed and went dark like a late summer thunderstorm. Another idiot in a position of power. He and Lord Dowhel were of a kind.
With a sweep of his robes, Dolengil left, hearing Master Berem adding cheerfully as he rapidly descended the stairs, "And thank you for your excellent work! The Ministry of Healing is pleased."
Dolengil had already left the building.
Deciding to stay in the Halls the rest of the day and night, Dolengil made sure to talk to as many of the healers as he could to see what their opinions of the spreading sickness was. And as he went through his patients and admitted new ones, he started to keep notes on the progress of the disease through different people. The hardest hit of course were the children, and those already dealing with affliction, or the poor.
By the end of the day, 11 more people had been admitted to the Halls, all with various symptoms of the disease.
Late that night, the quiet of the Hall was sporadically disturbed by deep wracking coughs.
Carrying a large candle as he went down the aisles, he came upon Calla, who smiled tiredly at him, her eyes glittering feverishly in the light. Placing the candle at the head of her pallet on a space provided for such things, Dolengil lifted her head carefully to give her another dose of medicine. He then softly wiped her face with a cool wet rag. "Master, I am sorry, " she stirred feebly as if to rise. Dolengil pushed her down. "No Calla, rest. You need to get your strength back. I am doing fine. Finaran has been a big help today. And during the midday meal, I went to see Dahanna and Keppi. They are both doing fine. Dahanna is getting about with a stick now and Keppi has a new tooth." He did not tell her that he left plenty of fever reducer and cough syrup with them in case the disease struck their rooming house.
Calla nodded coughing. She felt his cool hand on her forehead and once again fell asleep.
Dolengil, making sure she was covered well, went on to his next patient.
In the middle of the night, another healer, Master Sarin came in to relieve Dolengil, but he decided to stay on another shift. After Dolengil told him of his meeting with the Head Healer, Master Sairn gave him his rather forceful opinion of the Head Healer. "Oh you will get absolutely no where with Master Berem. He would not know the right end of a suture these days. His life is all accounting and pleasing bureaucrats! Indeed, I agree with you Master Dolengil, this has all the makings of an epidemic! But what can we do to stop it?"
Dolengil looked at his fellow healer and said. "We could isolate the sick from the merely wounded."
Sarin put a hand to his bearded chin and looked at the strange healer before him. "Hm. We would have to find a place as big as the Halls of Healing to isolate the sick in. Hm. Let me talk to some of the other healers Master Dolengil. It is a good idea. We had a small bout of sailor's fever in Pelargir about five years ago when I worked with the port authority there. We isolated the sailors disembarking from entering the city. They complained a lot, but the city at large was spared a sweeping wave of sickness."
"My thanks for your help in this Master Sarin." The healer nodded and went off to see his own patients.
As they night faded into another hot, dry day, Dolengil was alarmed at the number of people coming in. Before midday, they had had over 20 new patients.
Master Parnal, working the morning shift, also agreed with Dolengil about the good isolating the sick would be for everyone. But all the healers agreed getting the Head Healer to agree to such a move would be almost impossible until it was too late to halt.
Dolengil, deciding he had enough bureaucratic inefficiency and hand wringing, decided to take matters into his own hands. He would take his request to Aragorn.
That night, exhaustion nibbling at the edges of his thoughts, Dolengil borrowed a horse from Master Parnal, and given Aragorn's direction from a wounded soldier admitted after sunset, he made his way through the warm streets down to the northeast gate.
Challenged only briefly, as a healer he was allowed to go out of the city, especially when he said his direction was the battlefield hospital tents.
Even familiar with the carnage of war, Dolengil winced at the horrors laying in random piles as he and his nervous horse made their way through the battlefield. Grateful that his double wrapped face cloth helped diminish the stench of the dead, Dolengil's memories drifted, to older battles and how he and others had frantically tried to rescue the injured form the oncoming claws of death, chronically understaffed and with inadequate supplies.
He could hear the screams and moans even now.
His horse snorted and bucked a little, bringing Dolengil's thoughts swiftly to the present. Though the field was dark, his keen Elvish sight was not hindered and sadly he saw what had spooked his horse.
Another horse lay almost under their feet, and its grunting as it tried to rise on two broken legs had brought his mount to an uneasy standstill. Sliding off his gelding, Dolengil, laying a comforting hand on his nervous animal and moved to bend down to the dying horse in the torn up dirt. Taking a deep breath, he pulled out his dagger and efficiently slit the animal's throat, moving back swiftly from the gush of blood. Looking around for the animal's rider, he found a young man, his eyes staring at the field of stars above him, his spirit flown from a direct spear thrust through the chest. Covering the young man's eyes, Dolengil rose tiredly and remounted his restive horse, continuing on through the field.
His thoughts went to Aragorn again. Though it made Dolengil slightly nervous to confront his son twice in the same day, it had to be done. The conditions in Minas Tirith needed to be swiftly addressed and swiftly. And by someone whose decision would not be argued with. Aragorn was that person.
Dolengil smiled under his wrapping, making sure the cloth was secure. It would not do for Estel to see his face once more!
An hour's careful walk through nightmare conditions brought Dolengil to the edge of the main encampment. Challenged three times before he was able to dismount, Dolengil was finally led to the largest of the healing tents.
Pushing aside the flap, he found Aragorn bending over a young soldier (they were all SO young in Dolengil's eyes) whose left arm was in a sling and half of his face was swathed in linen.
"We have found your horse Safil, rest easy. He was not injured and even now awaits you in the picket line." Aragorn brought a hand to the uncovered cheek. "You will be well soon, Master Rasanath assures me. Rest now."
"Thank you my lord, for finding my horse."
Aragorn smiled and moved on.
Dolengil spoke up quietly, "My lord, a word with you when you get a moment."
He looked up to see the calm eyes of the foreign healer Dolengil.
"Master, what brings you out here?"
"Urgent business I am afraid."
"All right then, let us go to my tent."
Aragorn moved past the healer and ducked out of the tent. Dolengil followed Aragorn as he made his way easily through the camp site, greeting soldiers and making friendly comments. He paused at a row of tents, and bent to talk to a young man whose knee and upper right arm were bandaged. "I thank you for your work on the dispatches today Feman. You did good work, and it was much appreciated. I can use your help tomorrow as well. After breakfast?"
"Of course my lord! Thank you!" He tried to rise, but Aragorn put a hand on his shoulder and shook his head with a smile.
Dolengil followed his son, smiling beneath his wrap. He had the makings of a great king.
Though unsettled by his unexpected revelation to Aragorn, Dolengil continued to make medicines in between tending to the sick. And four more patients had entered the Halls from the city, complaining of headaches and nausea and a persistent cough.
Shaking his head as he saw to the newest patient, he turned to Calla, to place the empty vial in the basket she usually carried with her to collect what he had used while tending to the injured. He looked carefully at the linen maid and with a small sigh, covered the young woman lying near them and turned to Calla.
Calla blinked several times as Dolengil took her by the elbow and led her down the aisle of the injured. Coughing, she sat where he indicated, her basket dangling between her knees. Coughing again, she realized she was sitting. Surprised, she made to stand up and felt a soft pressure pushing her back to a pallet.
Dolengil came into view as he knelt before her, taking her basket and putting it aside. His eyes looked at her with concern and smiling beneath his veil, he slipped her shoes off and then swung her feet up onto the pallet. Calla started coughing again, and then found herself propped up by two pillows and covered by a thankfully warm blanket, as she was suddenly taken by a chill.
Dolengil put a cool hand on her forehead and Calla sighed in relief and was about to slide into sleep, when she realized he couldn't! Her shift wasn't done! She needed to see to Dahanna and Kepi! Sitting up so suddenly she surprised the healer, she looked at him, saying with a suddenly dry throat, "No Master, I cannot sleep now! My shift isn't over and I have to see Dahanna and Kepi, and---"
"Calla, you have caught the sickness stealing into Minas Tirith. Here," He opened a vial of medicine and she reluctantly swallowed the contents. "Rest now, I will check on Dahanna and Kepi. I need to see how her leg is doing, so it will be no trouble."
Calla sighed and her head lolled to side as Dolengil sent her to sleep.
Standing Dolengil continued through the sick and replaced Calla's supplies. Knowing Calla would have worked herself until she had literally fallen over, Dolengil made the decision for her, and put her to bed before that happened.
He turned and went back out into the Hall and surveyed the slowly filling pallets. Keeping the sick all together was not a bad idea, but combining them with the injured form the battlefield just added insult to their injuries. This had happened once before during one of the several battles during the Last Alliance of Elves and Men in the Second Age. They needed to be separated and quickly before the disease spread.
Dolengil decided a meeting with the other healers was needed immediately.
Quickly striding across the courtyard to the kitchens, he went through the warm steamy confines, redolent of soup and bread, and climbed a flight of stairs to the Head Healer's study.
Master Berem, with whom he had little contact other than when he offered his services, was writing in a journal when he knocked and entered.
"Master Berem," Doelngil bowed slightly and got straight to the point, "I think we have the makings of an epidemic on our hands."
Berem looked up at that, his eyebrows raised as he saw the tall form of the mysterious healer from the east looming over his desk. Berem, a large man slightly running to fat, leaned back in his ornate chair. His healing skills, though initially excellent, had been put aside quite some time ago for more administrative tasks.
"And what brings you to that conclusion Master...Dolengil, is it not?" Nodding he said, "I have noticed a sharp increase in the number of sick entering the Halls with the same complaints: fever, nausea and coughing. Lord Aragorn visited with me from off the battlefield briefly today and has told me the same illness is appearing in the field hospitals. It is his conclusion that these are signs of an epidemic as well."
Berem stood and walked to the open window, where little breeze was to be had and looked out into the bright hot light of the courtyard below. "Lord Aragorn, as he is new to battle on this scale, may be exaggerating. Illness is always rampant on battlefields, as it is so hard to maintain adequate supply lines as well as just having enough clean water on hand."
"Is prevention not nine-tenths of the cure Master Berem?" Dolengil realized that here was another bureaucrat, happy with his position and unable or unwilling to think beyond the confines of his study walls.
"Of course. It is one of the first lessons learned.Master Dolengil." Berem turned to eye the oddly dressed foreigner. "I believe it is just an increase in head congestion brought on by the winds and the dry conditions."
"Are these conditions not highly unusual for this time of year in Minas Tirith? Could they not be something concocted by the Dark Lord to eat away at morale?"
"You are a foreigner, so I can easily pardon your ignorance in such matters." Dolengil raised his eyebrows at the man's stubborn foolishness.
" The Dark Lord is nothing more than a clever general working on the fears of an ignorant populace." Master Berem continued jovially. "Do not be taken in by such tales."
Appalled by the man's inability to see the obvious, Dolengil said slowly, "Does that mean you will take no measures to see that this illness does not spread?"
"We will take all reasonable precautions." He returned to his desk and sat, picking up his quill. "Now, if you have nothing further to say, I must get back to my accounts."
"And what reasonable precautions would those be?" Dolengil insisted, leaning forward.
Master Berem looked up his expression purposefully bland. "As I said, they will be the "reasonable precautions" we have utilized in similar circumstances. Good day, Master Dolengil."
Dolengil's eyes blazed and went dark like a late summer thunderstorm. Another idiot in a position of power. He and Lord Dowhel were of a kind.
With a sweep of his robes, Dolengil left, hearing Master Berem adding cheerfully as he rapidly descended the stairs, "And thank you for your excellent work! The Ministry of Healing is pleased."
Dolengil had already left the building.
Deciding to stay in the Halls the rest of the day and night, Dolengil made sure to talk to as many of the healers as he could to see what their opinions of the spreading sickness was. And as he went through his patients and admitted new ones, he started to keep notes on the progress of the disease through different people. The hardest hit of course were the children, and those already dealing with affliction, or the poor.
By the end of the day, 11 more people had been admitted to the Halls, all with various symptoms of the disease.
Late that night, the quiet of the Hall was sporadically disturbed by deep wracking coughs.
Carrying a large candle as he went down the aisles, he came upon Calla, who smiled tiredly at him, her eyes glittering feverishly in the light. Placing the candle at the head of her pallet on a space provided for such things, Dolengil lifted her head carefully to give her another dose of medicine. He then softly wiped her face with a cool wet rag. "Master, I am sorry, " she stirred feebly as if to rise. Dolengil pushed her down. "No Calla, rest. You need to get your strength back. I am doing fine. Finaran has been a big help today. And during the midday meal, I went to see Dahanna and Keppi. They are both doing fine. Dahanna is getting about with a stick now and Keppi has a new tooth." He did not tell her that he left plenty of fever reducer and cough syrup with them in case the disease struck their rooming house.
Calla nodded coughing. She felt his cool hand on her forehead and once again fell asleep.
Dolengil, making sure she was covered well, went on to his next patient.
In the middle of the night, another healer, Master Sarin came in to relieve Dolengil, but he decided to stay on another shift. After Dolengil told him of his meeting with the Head Healer, Master Sairn gave him his rather forceful opinion of the Head Healer. "Oh you will get absolutely no where with Master Berem. He would not know the right end of a suture these days. His life is all accounting and pleasing bureaucrats! Indeed, I agree with you Master Dolengil, this has all the makings of an epidemic! But what can we do to stop it?"
Dolengil looked at his fellow healer and said. "We could isolate the sick from the merely wounded."
Sarin put a hand to his bearded chin and looked at the strange healer before him. "Hm. We would have to find a place as big as the Halls of Healing to isolate the sick in. Hm. Let me talk to some of the other healers Master Dolengil. It is a good idea. We had a small bout of sailor's fever in Pelargir about five years ago when I worked with the port authority there. We isolated the sailors disembarking from entering the city. They complained a lot, but the city at large was spared a sweeping wave of sickness."
"My thanks for your help in this Master Sarin." The healer nodded and went off to see his own patients.
As they night faded into another hot, dry day, Dolengil was alarmed at the number of people coming in. Before midday, they had had over 20 new patients.
Master Parnal, working the morning shift, also agreed with Dolengil about the good isolating the sick would be for everyone. But all the healers agreed getting the Head Healer to agree to such a move would be almost impossible until it was too late to halt.
Dolengil, deciding he had enough bureaucratic inefficiency and hand wringing, decided to take matters into his own hands. He would take his request to Aragorn.
That night, exhaustion nibbling at the edges of his thoughts, Dolengil borrowed a horse from Master Parnal, and given Aragorn's direction from a wounded soldier admitted after sunset, he made his way through the warm streets down to the northeast gate.
Challenged only briefly, as a healer he was allowed to go out of the city, especially when he said his direction was the battlefield hospital tents.
Even familiar with the carnage of war, Dolengil winced at the horrors laying in random piles as he and his nervous horse made their way through the battlefield. Grateful that his double wrapped face cloth helped diminish the stench of the dead, Dolengil's memories drifted, to older battles and how he and others had frantically tried to rescue the injured form the oncoming claws of death, chronically understaffed and with inadequate supplies.
He could hear the screams and moans even now.
His horse snorted and bucked a little, bringing Dolengil's thoughts swiftly to the present. Though the field was dark, his keen Elvish sight was not hindered and sadly he saw what had spooked his horse.
Another horse lay almost under their feet, and its grunting as it tried to rise on two broken legs had brought his mount to an uneasy standstill. Sliding off his gelding, Dolengil, laying a comforting hand on his nervous animal and moved to bend down to the dying horse in the torn up dirt. Taking a deep breath, he pulled out his dagger and efficiently slit the animal's throat, moving back swiftly from the gush of blood. Looking around for the animal's rider, he found a young man, his eyes staring at the field of stars above him, his spirit flown from a direct spear thrust through the chest. Covering the young man's eyes, Dolengil rose tiredly and remounted his restive horse, continuing on through the field.
His thoughts went to Aragorn again. Though it made Dolengil slightly nervous to confront his son twice in the same day, it had to be done. The conditions in Minas Tirith needed to be swiftly addressed and swiftly. And by someone whose decision would not be argued with. Aragorn was that person.
Dolengil smiled under his wrapping, making sure the cloth was secure. It would not do for Estel to see his face once more!
An hour's careful walk through nightmare conditions brought Dolengil to the edge of the main encampment. Challenged three times before he was able to dismount, Dolengil was finally led to the largest of the healing tents.
Pushing aside the flap, he found Aragorn bending over a young soldier (they were all SO young in Dolengil's eyes) whose left arm was in a sling and half of his face was swathed in linen.
"We have found your horse Safil, rest easy. He was not injured and even now awaits you in the picket line." Aragorn brought a hand to the uncovered cheek. "You will be well soon, Master Rasanath assures me. Rest now."
"Thank you my lord, for finding my horse."
Aragorn smiled and moved on.
Dolengil spoke up quietly, "My lord, a word with you when you get a moment."
He looked up to see the calm eyes of the foreign healer Dolengil.
"Master, what brings you out here?"
"Urgent business I am afraid."
"All right then, let us go to my tent."
Aragorn moved past the healer and ducked out of the tent. Dolengil followed Aragorn as he made his way easily through the camp site, greeting soldiers and making friendly comments. He paused at a row of tents, and bent to talk to a young man whose knee and upper right arm were bandaged. "I thank you for your work on the dispatches today Feman. You did good work, and it was much appreciated. I can use your help tomorrow as well. After breakfast?"
"Of course my lord! Thank you!" He tried to rise, but Aragorn put a hand on his shoulder and shook his head with a smile.
Dolengil followed his son, smiling beneath his wrap. He had the makings of a great king.