by Pirateaba
She took too long. Geneva knew that in hindsight. Two more wounded soldiers had arrived and waited for over half an hour before she decided she’d done all she could. She shouted, and the soldiers came in and out. Geneva’s hands were shaking a bit after the operation, but she didn’t even have a second to rest.
The second injured person had been hit by a mage blast. And he was a Lizardfolk. Geneva stared at the curling smoke rising from the blackened crater in his side and decided to treat him as if the actual damage had been caused by fire or electricity. Some combination of the two.
She had no real way to treat him. But the worst part was that her patient was conscious. He screamed at her, and screamed harder when she tried to clean the wound with soapy water. He cut her face, and soldiers had to rush in and hold him down.
A skin graft was all she could think of, but Geneva knew she didn’t have the time or ability to do that. She could only clean the blackened scales and apply a rudimentary dressing of bandages. The soldiers carried the Lizardman out as he screamed curses at her.
The next patient only needed stitching and bandaging of several deep cuts on his arms. Geneva washed and stitched his skin together as the man yelped and cursed. She gave him garbled instructions to keep the wounds clean and not to strain himself—he stared at her as if she was crazy and told her he was going to be called back into the fighting soon enough.
Geneva paused then to catch her breath and wipe the sweat from her brow. An orange bug tried to land on her bloody hands and more were crawling up the table. She washed them off the table with soapy water and stomped them into the mud at the bottom of her tent. Then she told the soldiers to boil her more water and get her more cloth for bandages.
And then the next patient arrived. He was already dead. Geneva stared at his chest. He wasn’t breathing. She confirmed that by testing his pulse and checking to see if he was breathing. He was not. But the cut on his stomach was still leaking blood, and the two soldiers who’d stayed by his side were staring at Geneva with hope in their eyes.
“He’s dead. I’m sorry.”
They refused to believe. One of the dead man’s friends pointed to his hands.
“He’s still alive! Look! His hands are moving!”
Geneva looked. The fingers on the dead man’s hands were twitching. She’d never seen a corpse do that, but she’d heard stories.
“Muscle spasms. I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do.”
The two stared at her. Geneva called for soldiers to take him out. A fight broke out when they tried to take the dead man’s body.
“Liar! He’s not dead! He’s not dead!”
“Deral! Get away—Deral!”
Geneva caught a fist as the soldiers fought with the other two. By the time they’d been subdued and the corpse had been taken out, Geneva’s cheek was swollen and the ground was muddy.
Then the next patient came in. He was alive and had taken a deep cut to the belly. Geneva had to call more soldiers to help. Three held him down while she had two more help him in the operation. But they were too slow, and too afraid. The man died while they hesitated.
And then the next patient came in. He was missing an eye, and he’d been cut badly. He screamed and thrashed. By this point Geneva was already exhausted and sweat kept running into her eyes. Her helper couldn’t even blot it off her head without getting in her way.
In another lifetime, in another world, Geneva’s college professor had once tried to make the analogy that surgery was like an orchestra. Each nurse and doctor in the operating room was like a player, and they all had their own part to play. If even one person slipped up, the entire melody, the entire piece fell apart.
He’d made the comparison poorly, and he’d completely flubbed the entire thing when he’d tried to compare general anesthesia to atmospheric lighting. But the analogy had stayed with Geneva.
A surgery was like an orchestra, or a band. Each person had their part to play. True, there were lead players and first violins, but even the most outstanding player could not make music alone. What was a concerto without the accompaniment? What good was a surgeon without the anesthesiologist to monitor the patient’s vitals, and her assistants to stop the bleeding and hand her tools?
What could one person do alone? Nothing. And worse, Geneva was still too inexperienced. She had no practice—no real experience with the injuries on the soldiers that were flooding into her tent. She had only studied theory, never tried to repair a collapsed lung or stitch together a burst stomach.
In an operating room, Geneva would have been the least-important member of the team. As a new intern or the youngest doctor, she would have been cutting sutures or cleaning and sterilizing the room before and after the surgery. No—as a student she would have been relegated to observational duty in some schools; just someone that had to keep out of the real doctor’s way at all costs.
But now Geneva found herself leading an orchestra of one, a lone singer on a stage dark with blood, with an audience that was growing with each hour. They screamed her name, and begged her to play music. But she was alone, untrained, unaided.
Yet they screamed her name. So Geneva sang alone. As the screams filled the jungle and the harsh buzzing of flies and larger insects filled the air she cut and bandaged and tried to catch life with her fingers.
It slipped away each time.
After the thirtieth patient, Geneva had to take a break. She staggered outside and threw up. The soldiers watched her anxiously, but Geneva didn’t care. She breathed deeply and drank water, rinsing out her mouth before she drank more, to replenish all the fluids she’d lost.
Her hands were shaking. They were still during the surgery, but now they shook uncontrollably. Geneva sat on a rock for a few seconds, trying to breathe.
They’d all died. Everyone who’d come in to her tent with a serious injury hadn’t gone back out. They’d passed away on that bloody, insect-infested table, screaming and crying and begging her to save them.
Someone else screamed. Geneva looked up and saw a man with no hand. It wasn’t a clean cut that had taken the hand either. It looked like something had bit the hand off.
“Doctor!”
His friend shouted at Geneva, white-faced. Friends were the worst. Geneva had already banned them from being anywhere near the tent.
Her mind raced. Part of her was already going over the things she’d need to do for a severed limb. It was listing all the things she didn’t have. But it was still possible, and every second she wasted was a second that man was closer to death.
“I can’t do this.”
She whispered the words as she stood up and walked back into the tent. She saved the man’s life, but the flesh around his hand already stank, and she feared infection would claim his arm. But there was nothing to do.
The next patient had taken three arrows to the legs. One had nicked an artery. He bled out before she could save him.
“More wounded! Where’s the damn [Doctor]!?”
Geneva turned, staggering, as she tried to finish her bowl of food. She’d stopped after—she had no idea, really. After a while the soldiers in her tent had turned into a blur.
Soldiers were carrying more wounded into the camp. Geneva looked at some of them and knew they would die. The living fought for space, trying to get their friends into line before the others. Nearly ten wounded this time. Geneva stood up, but then saw something strange.
Two soldiers were dumping a corpse next to the others. But it was not a corpse. Geneva could see it moving, and unlike the soldier who’d had muscle spasms, there was no way to imitate this.
“Wait! He’s not dead!”
Geneva ran forwards. The soldiers turned as she knelt at the side of the moving body. She paused when she saw the injury.
Half of his body had been blown away. A mage’s spell had struck him. Geneva was beginning to notice the signs. And what remained—Geneva blinked at the corpse.
It was a Human’s corpse, but something h
ad happened to it. All the color seemed to have drained out of the skin, and what remained looked—wrong. He almost looked albino, but his hair was a dark red.
The soldier shook his head at Geneva.
“Selphid.”
“What?”
They looked at her as if she was crazy for not knowing. Geneva stared back at them as the hand on the left side of the man’s body raised and lowered oddly, as if he was a puppet that someone was trying to move with only one string.
“They’re body-snatchers. Parasites. They live in corpses and move them about.”
Like brain slugs? Or—they lived inside of bodies? Geneva bent down and looked at the destroyed section of the body.
Something was squirming in the insides. Geneva looked closer, and saw where the left side of the corpse had been burned away, something was wriggling in the insides. Something was living in the body. Or it had been.
The corpse was clearly trying to move, but it was also clearly malfunctioning, or else the Selphid wasn’t able to control it after having half of its own body blown away. The soldier turned away in disgust, and his companion made the same expression.
“Leave it. The Selphids don’t have parts like normal folk. If it can’t get into another body it’ll die.”
“But it’s injured.”
“So? Selphids aren’t people.”
Geneva could see yellow fluid leaking from the squirming thing inside the body. She took a breath.
“I’m going to operate on it.”
“What?”
“It will die without help. And maybe I can transplant it. Put it in line with the others.”
The soldiers stared at Geneva, but they did what she said. Geneva stood up, and walked back into her tent.
The living flashed before her eyes, some becoming dead while she stood in her tent, and then sat when her legs started to give out. She could stitch people up, but the deeper wounds still eluded her. Her assistants still couldn’t move fast enough, and they kept rotating out of the tent. Some threw up as she was cutting into her victims, and even the bravest of them had to look away at times. Geneva had already gone numb to the smell of blood and feces as the injured and dead voided themselves.
And then the soldiers dumped a corpse on her table. Geneva stared at it until she remembered the Selphid. It was still twitching in the corpse, but weakly. The one eye of the dead man tried to move, but they couldn’t fix on her face.
“Can you hear me?”
Geneva spoke to the dead body. The leg kicked feebly. Geneva waited, but the mouth didn’t move.
“I am going to operate on you. I will try to save your life. But I need your permission.”
There were countless rules regarding malpractice Geneva had been taught in school. If she was in the emergency room in a hospital she would be judged by the professional standards of care and state laws. But here there was no oversight, just herself.
She had a duty to save lives. But she had no idea what Selphids were like. She could kill the creature in the person’s body just by slicing him open. So she had to ask.
“I will try to save you, but I have no idea how Selphids work. But I am a [Doctor]. I will do everything I can to keep you alive. But I need your permission.”
At last the mouth moved, but only once. The jaw fell open, and Geneva stared at the corpse. The Selphid couldn’t speak. She slowly put her hand in the corpses’. It was cold.
“If you want me to operate on you, grab my hand. If not, I will put you with the corpses.”
The hand was cold in her grasp. Geneva waited. Ten slow seconds passed, and she began to pull back her hand. Then the fingers twitched in her grasp. Geneva jerked away at the strange feeling, and then nodded.
“Okay. Try not to move. If I’m hurting you, let me know.”
It was a strange feeling as she cut into the man’s skin. She felt like she was doing an autopsy, but this time she was being extremely careful not to thrust in to any part of the body too deeply. She opened the stomach and then saw the Selphid.
It was stretching throughout the dead man’s nervous system. A green wriggling mass of tendrils moved weakly as Geneva stared at the body.
The soldiers in the room left. Geneva heard one race out of the tent and throw up as the tendrils tried to reach upwards. She stared. They were wrapped around organs—they seemed to have removed several and the Selphid had infiltrated the dead man’s stomach. It was a true parasite.
And it was alive. Geneva had to take hold of herself before her curiosity overwhelmed her. Slowly, she cut until she reached the half of the body that had been blown off.
There. Now she could see what was wrong. The Selphid might have been shielded inside the man’s body, but it had still been caught by the explosion. Where the body ended she saw it was bleeding some viscous, orange liquid.
“You’re injured. I need to stop the bleeding.”
Geneva reached for the Selphid and the needle, but the creature recoiled as she tried to grab it with a forcep. Part of it flowed away, and Geneva realized with a shock that this creature was semi-fluid. Stitches would be as useful as trying to block water with a net.
But the creature was dying, and it was—yes, it was bleeding out. Geneva thought quickly, and then raced out of her tent.
“Get me a piece of metal! A sword, a dagger—something smooth and flat! And a fire!”
When Geneva reentered the tent with a glowing brand of hot iron, the Selphid recoiled. But Geneva set the hot metal down next to the body and explained what she was going to do.
“I need to burn the injuries closed. That’s the only way I can stop the bleeding.”
The Selphid seemed to hesitate. Then it shifted, and Geneva saw several patches of bleeding among the green. She took a deep breath.
“Hold still. This will hurt.”
She had no idea if the Selphid actually had nerves, but she got her answer as she pressed the hot metal down on the extended part of the Selphid, holding it still with a forcep in the other hand. She heard a shriek—a high-pitched sound that made her ear wax vibrate, and the Selphid went wild in her grip. But Geneva held on, and when she pulled the burning metal back the green of the Selphid had been discolored and the creature was shaking, but the bleeding had stopped.
The cauterization process was slow and agonizing for the Selphid, but when she was done, the creature lay in the body. It was moving very slowly now, and Geneva wondered if it was allergic to the air, or if it was still dying. The trauma alone might be killing it.
“I need another body.”
Geneva strode out of the tent and walked over to a group of soldiers amassing the dead in a pile to be burnt. The insects were thick, but she found a corpse—a woman who’d died of blood loss from having an artery cut. She told the soldiers to bring it to the tent and then carefully sliced the woman’s stomach open.
“I’m going to pick you up.”
She had to use her hands for that. The forceps weren’t strong enough. The body was warm to the touch as Geneva delved into the organs. The Selphid itself was warm. It weakly wrapped around her hands and she lifted it up.
It came out slowly. Pieces of the Selphid were still attached to organs, and Geneva had to pull with more force than she wanted. The creature screamed, but she eventually pried it loose. Slowly, she placed it in the opening she’d created in the dead woman’s stomach and waited.
The Selphid began to move. The bunched up segment of it slowly began to slither deeper into the body, slowly, very slowly. Geneva waited until it was all inside and then she sewed up the opening. And waited.
The body didn’t move. After a minute, Geneva realized the Selphid could be dead and she would never know. She waited a while longer, but then she had to turn away.
“Take the body and put it at the back of the line.”
She told the soldiers to take away the remains of the first corpse and watched as they brought in another wounded Dullahan. Geneva got back to work.
By the t
ime the corpse came back, it was dark, Geneva was swaying, and the wounded had finally stopped coming in. Everyone who was injured had been treated, or their wounds weren’t life threatening, or they’d bled out while waiting.
The corpse was mildly warm to the touch, but it was only from the night air. Geneva hopefully checked the eyes, opening them and flashing lantern light into the empty gaze, but the body did not move. The Selphid was dead.
Exhausted, Geneva set the lantern down and walked away. She was too tired, too drained to even weep. She used the rest of the boiled water to wash herself—although her clothes were ruined—and walked into the camp where the surviving soldiers were eating.
To her surprise, Geneva heard laughter, and even cheering. She collected her food and found that Lim, Clara, and Fortum were all alive. And what was more, they all seemed to be in extremely good cheer.
“Geneva!”
Clara waved her over and edged over on the ground to give her a seat. Geneva sat and listened to the others laughing. She felt like she was in some strange other reality. Why was everyone so happy?
Fortum clapped Lim over the shoulder as he addressed Geneva.
“The kid was a hero! He killed at least eight soldiers in the battle today, and he got through it all with barely a scratch!”
“You’ll level tonight, boy!”
Lim blushed as he looked at Geneva. She stared back, her face empty. She’d held a man’s intestines in her hand. She’d stared at a hand and knew it was gone. It’d had to be amputated.
“A damn archer was aiming at me, and I’d caught my foot on a body so I couldn’t dodge. He raises his bow and then Lim runs him through from behind! Right through the leather armor! Just like that!”
A gaping hole so wide she could see the table underneath. She was out of time and the man was bleeding. Even if she could stop the bleeding all she could do was sew skin together. His organs were all severed. She watched him choking up blood.