by Pirateaba
“Geneva? What happened to you?”
Everyone was staring at her. Geneva looked up. They were looking at her face with concern.
“Geneva?”
Slowly, Geneva stared down at her food. She looked at the soldiers, some still covered with blood. The enemy’s blood. The blood of people they’d killed. People they’d injured, like the ones she’d tried to save.
Geneva stood up. Without a word, she walked away. She ate the food quickly by herself and then walked to her sleeping place. She paused to throw up everything she’d eaten, and vomited again and again until she was throwing up nothing but bile. Then she wept, long and hard. Geneva fell into her bedding and only woke when morning came.
[Doctor Level 11!]
[Skill – Injury Sense obtained!]
[Skill – Sterile Equipment obtained!]
—-
Geneva had heard once that a surgeon improved by the number of patients that died under their blade. But this was far too literal. When she woke up and remembered the Skills she’d learned, she didn’t know if she wanted to cry or laugh hysterically.
She had more Skills. And they were valuable. The [Sterile Equipment] Skill would prevent infections, and the other one would allow her to pinpoint bleeding in theory. But at what cost?
They’d all died, all of her serious patients. Maybe she’d saved one or two? But regardless, that was a survival rate of less than 1%. She wasn’t a [Doctor]. She was a glorified coroner who helped kill the living.
Geneva ate in silence with the others this morning. She didn’t speak, and the conversation was far more subdued than yesterday. Lim and the others kept glancing at her. Geneva had just finished eating the cheese and bread dipped in soup that tasted like nothing when someone rushed at her.
“Murderer! You let them die!”
A fist struck Geneva on the cheek and then she was lying on the ground. She felt a boot kick her in the chest before someone shouted and the attacker disappeared. Geneva sat up and saw Lim had tackled the soldier who’d hit her. Now the other man’s buddies were drawing their weapons, and the people around Geneva were getting to their feet with theirs.
“Put down your weapons!”
Thriss thundered into the fray before anyone could move, face red. He roared at everyone present and threw Lim off the other soldier while he raised his mace. More officers and soldiers joined Thriss, keeping the angry soldiers apart.
“I’ll smash the head of anyone that draws blood, my oath on it! We’re a battalion—we fight together!”
“Not her!”
Geneva looked around as Clara helped her up. The man who’d struck her was shouting, barely restrained by his fellows. She recognized him. He was the friend of the dead man, the one who he’d insisted was alive. She’d already forgotten the dead man’s name.
“She let them die! She’s no [Doctor]! She’s not even a [Healer]! She just kills anyone she touches! She slices them up and lets them bleed to death!”
The other soldiers stared at Geneva. She couldn’t look anyone in the eye. Thriss’ face turned even more red, and he roared to cut the other man off.
“Enough! You! You’re going in with the first wave. And you—”
Thriss pointed at Geneva. His tone was much softer.
“Get to your tent. The fightin’ is going to heat up soon, and we’ll need your skills.”
He guided her away as the soldiers broke up and another officer took over the shouting. Geneva staggered away as Clara gave her a brief pat on the back. Thriss marched towards her tent—they’d pitched it in another location because the bugs had infested the previous area too badly. Geneva looked up at the [Sergeant]. Her hands were shaking again.
“What he said—”
“He lost his friends. Don’t pay any attention to him.”
Geneva shook her head.
“He was right. I can’t do this. Not alone.”
“There’s no one with a [Healer] class in the battalion. You’ll have to.”
“I can’t!”
Geneva stopped in her tracks and shouted at Thriss, ignoring the people who stared.
“I can’t do this alone! I don’t just need another [Doctor]—I need assistants, proper ones! I need people who know how to perform surgeries and don’t throw up on my patients. I need surgical tools, or some healing potion for deep injures. I can’t close them on my own.”
Thriss chewed at his lip. Then he shook his head again, reluctantly.
“We have none to spare. We used up a lot of what we had yesterday—and the fighting will only get worse from here. I’ll assign soldiers to you, but I can’t promise they’ll be any better.”
“Then everyone dies, just like that soldier said.”
“I—”
Thriss broke off. He looked at someone behind Geneva, and then she heard a low voice.
“[Doctor].”
Geneva turned. Her heart nearly burst out of her chest.
Someone was standing in front of her. Someone—someone dead. She was one of the soldiers Geneva had tried to save yesterday, the one who’d bled out. But she was dead. She was—
She was the one who Geneva had put the Selphid into.
The woman looked different than she had yesterday. Her skin was totally white now, and she stood awkwardly. The right half of her body sagged, and she moved awkwardly, as if she’d had a stroke. But her left side seemed perfectly able, and she smiled crookedly at Geneva.
Thriss had noted her skin color as well. He put his hand on his sword warily.
“We have no Selphids among this Batallion. Identify yourself.”
The Selphid saluted with one hand. She was armed with a sword, and the dead woman’s armor, the chainmail still covered in dried blood.
“Yes, sir. My name is Okasha I am a [Rogue], Level 23. I am part of the Burning March 6th Division. My squad was destroyed by a mage spell. I would rejoin my unit, but my right side is useless. I cannot fight, but I will help the [Doctor].”
“What?”
Geneva stared at the Selphid in the woman’s body. She couldn’t understand.
“You were dead. I saw you. I put you in the other body, but you didn’t move even after I checked again.”
The Selphid smiled.
“I was unconscious. And it takes time for us to assume control of a new form.”
She hadn’t even guessed that might happen. Geneva’s stomach twisted.
“I’m sorry.”
Okasha raised one hand and smiled again.
“I should be the one thanking you. You saved me. I would have died in that body if you hadn’t closed my injuries and put me in a new one.”
Thriss grunted irritably.
“So you can doctor Selphids? Looks like you’ve got a good use, to me. Try to save more of our folk instead of them, though. And here’s your assistant, if you’ll have one of them.”
Geneva looked at Okasha. She bit her lip. The Selphid was clearly disabled or wounded—perhaps permanently if she couldn’t regrow whatever she was missing. But Geneva needed all the help she could get.
“I need an assistant. But I’ll be cutting up bodies and performing surgery. Can you handle that?”
This time even Thriss bared his teeth in a reluctant grin. Okasha laughed.
“I am a Selphid. Bleeding and organs do not scare me.”
Oh. Of course. Thriss left the two as Geneva tried to give Okasha a crash course on the thousands of things she needed to know to be a capable assistant. Okasha listened carefully, nodding. She had a patient personality, and what was even better, she understood when Geneva talked about arteries and veins and bloodflow.
“I know of these things. I have seen them and felt how they move.”
“Really?”
The Selphid nodded. She took a breath—if she didn’t speak she took breaths very rarely, which was unsettling. She also blinked much less than normal people. She was a creature living in a dead body, but Geneva was fine with that. At least there was life in
this corpse.
“I have lived in Dullahan and Lizardfolk bodies as well. I can show you how they live and breathe as well.”
Geneva suddenly realized that she was standing in front of the only person who might know more about the human body than she did. The relief made her almost lightheaded, but then she heard shouting. The soldiers were already heading into battle.
Her face and ribs hurt where she’d been kicked. She was still exhausted, and the dead and the accusations of the soldier still haunted her. But this time she was not alone.
—-
“Apply pressure! I’ll stitch!”
Geneva shouted at Okasha over the man’s screams. The Selphid nodded and hung on to the man’s arm. She was strong—far stronger than normal and while the other soldiers held him down she minimized his blood loss with an iron grip.
The man writhed and screamed, but when Geneva had cut the thread, he was alive and even healthy enough to walk back to camp. That didn’t stop him from trying to take a swing at Geneva, though.
Okasha blocked the strike and sent the man staggering back with a knife-hand to the throat that made him choke. Geneva checked, but his throat was intact. The soldier roughly dragged her former patient out as she stared at Okasha.
“Don’t hurt patients.”
“Why not? He was striking at you.”
“If that’s the case, try not to hurt him. I am a doctor. I have sworn an oath not to inflict needless harm or kill.”
“But you are on a battlefield.”
“Yes. I am.”
Geneva rested her face in her hands. Blood smeared her face before she realized what she was doing. She looked up.
It was no better today. Despite Okasha’s help, she could not save those badly hurt. She was incapable. She couldn’t do blood transfusions and she wasn’t quick enough to finish operations before her patients bled out.
But she would save them. Each time one came in, Geneva felt herself go insane. She would save them. She would. She wasn’t walking with death anymore. She was wrestling with it.
But she was still losing.
“I can’t do this.”
They were the same words as yesterday. But the Geneva who uttered them was different. She wasn’t desperate and tired any longer; now Okasha was here, she was remembering. It was all so clear now. She had been a fool, trying to adapt modern practices with barbaric tools. She had to go back to another time. Think. She knew some accounts of doctors from World War II. What could she—
The soldiers carrying in the next groaning soldiers were surprised when Geneva thrust her way out of the tent with Okasha behind her. The [Doctor]’s face was grim, but determined. She shook her head at the soldiers.
“Put him down. I’m going to triage first.”
She should have done it at the very start. But she’d started on that first patient without even thinking. She was a fool.
Now, though—
“Get me some charcoal and cloth.”
She snapped at a soldier as she began to walk the lines of the wounded. There were even more than yesterday. They looked up as she passed, but Geneva didn’t meet their eyes. If she did, she would lose heart. Instead, she looked at their injuries.
“White armbands are for priority patients. Use the charcoal and add a marking if they’re lower priority.”
That was what she informed Okasha as she began to sort the soldiers. She prioritized injuries she could treat that were time-sensitive. Severed arteries, excessive bleeding—
But those with injuries she couldn’t mend she left alone. And those who had superficial cuts she added a black line on the cloth she tied to their arms or legs. They didn’t understand at first, the soldiers. They stared at her with suspicion, but they began to understand as she brought in the patients she’d marked as priority.
“They are beginning to try to alter their armbands, those who are awake.”
Okasha remarked lightly as she handed Geneva the one of the sharpened daggers. Geneva grunted and Okasha deftly caught the sweat before it could sting her eyes. The Selphid was competent and deft despite only having one arm, but she had a distinct lack of sympathy for the man who was groaning on the table as Geneva tried to cut a chunk of metal out of his thigh.
“They are trying to erase the black markings. But we shall see if their bands are wet or smudged.”
“Suture.”
The needle was in her hands a second after Geneva said it. The [Doctor] began to stitch rapidly. She could still hear the screams, and what was worse, now she could hear people shouting in anger.
They came for her when she was taking a five minute break. Oksaha insisted on it, and Geneva gulped down water and tore into some bread feverishly.
“You!”
A Lizardwoman shout at Geneva as she advanced on her angrily. The soldiers Thriss had posted with Geneva moved to block her, but the Lizardwoman wasn’t alone. Clara was with her. The other soldier had a dark look on her face.
“Clara? What’s wrong?”
Geneva looked at the woman. Clara pointed.
“Why aren’t you treating Lim!?”
She hadn’t even seen the boy. But he was lying on the ground next to her tent, face pale, gasping. He had a deep cut down his sword hand; deep, but shallow. Geneva looked back at Clara and shook her head.
“I can’t. He’s not in danger. I have to treat—”
Clara grabbed for Geneva. Oksha blocked her, but the other soldier was screaming at Geneva now. The young woman felt spit hit her face.
“How dare you! Lim is your friend! He saved you! He was first in line!”
“He isn’t badly hurt. He will wait.”
Geneva’s voice was steel. Her heart was a cold ball. She’d put it away to perform surgery; it was the only way she could stay sane. But now it was melting, growing hotter in her chest.
“You’re a monster!”
The Lizardwoman lunged at Geneva and was held back by the soldiers. She struggled in their grip; she was stronger than the other two.
“You’re letting Namass die! I saw you—you didn’t even put a band on his arm!”
Geneva remembered the Lizardman. He had been stabbed straight through the gut, but someone had carved upwards and sliced through his organs. There wasn’t anything she could do—nothing that wouldn’t take too long.
She met the Lizardwoman’s eyes.
“I am triaging. I have to prioritize people I can save.”
“That’s evil!”
Clara shouted it at Geneva as Okasha fought to keep her back. Geneva felt her heart grow more painful. The female soldier shouted at Geneva.
“Don’t you care about your friends!? Why aren’t you helping Lim? He’s one of us. He was first. He—”
It was all too much. Geneva heard ringing; saw red. She was grabbing Clara before she knew it, screaming at her at the top of her lungs. The screaming soldiers, the shouting soldiers and those resting in camp—even the insects seemed to fall silent as Geneva gave vent to the fury in her.
“Good? Evil? A doctor isn’t any of those things!”
Geneva shouted the words into a pair of scared blue eyes. She shook the other woman hard, grabbing at her with hands still crusted with blood. She pointed at the rows of wounded soldiers.
“I will save everyone I can. I will save the most people I can. That is how this works! This isn’t morality! This isn’t choice! This is medicine! Now get out of the damn way or help me! I have a job to do.”
She threw Clara aside and stormed towards her tent. Okasha was right behind her. Geneva raised the needle and thread and got to work.
Stitch. Suture. Stop the blood flow here. Bandage. Okasha had learned to tie them properly. Clean the vomit away. Bugs crawling on the feces. Too many. Change locations.
Incision here. Repair this. Cauterize. Amputate. Ignore the screams.
She didn’t even remember falling asleep. She just looked around for the next patient, and there were none. Geneva didn’t remember clos
ing her eyes. She only knew that she fell back and Okasha caught her before she hit the ground.
That night Geneva leveled up again. She gained six levels and four different skills. Okasha told her it was practically unheard of, but Geneva had never heard of a modern-day doctor who’d gone through what she had.
Over a hundred and thirty soldiers had passed under her needle and blade yesterday. Of that number, she had saved over two thirds. Twice that number had died over the course of the day. Some had been from her battalion, but Geneva later learned that every group fighting was experiencing potion shortages. They’d sent their wounded to her, sometimes over the course of many miles.
Geneva had learned four skills. Two were merely useful; [Numbing Touch] made people feel less pain and [Flawless Cut] allowed Geneva to make incisions far more easily than before. They were tools to make her better at her job.
But the Skills that changed everything were the combination of [Speed Stitching] and [Enhanced Thread]. With them, Geneva could begin to truly save lives. And she did. The next day, she ate with Okasha by herself and walked towards the tent. This time she reorganized her triage system.
She could suture at a pace three times as fast as before, and with the thread, she could close up even damaged organs. They might still fail, but Geneva was quick enough to stop the blood loss so her patients had a chance. That night she gained only one skill – [Lesser Stamina]. It allowed her to keep going even when night fell.
In the days that followed Geneva gained more skills. She moved faster; began seeing exactly what treatment methods worked best. Okasha found better forceps, and somehow, a few of the soldiers assigned to Geneva learned to bind wounds as well. She rotated them across the lines of wounded, binding injuries and even stitching up wounds while she worked on the most injured.
Sometimes she forgot to eat while she was working, and only a hot meal shoved in front of her face would distract her. Geneva knew she was losing weight, but even when she was sleeping, a scream or cry for her name would rouse her. She couldn’t sleep. The faces haunted her. Maybe if there were others it would be different, but she was alone. She couldn’t let them die. Any of them.