A Doctor Without Borders [Healer | Slow-Burn | Medical Fantasy]

The cracking of cones and shifting pine needles reached my ears, and Selene interrupted our debate. "Sister, should we be leaving his arm unhealed?"

I opened my eyes to find a concerned Selene squatting next to Esper. I managed a thin smile. "I left it numb. It is just an unpleasant tingling."

Esper agreed. "I can't gauge the pain it is causing, but I sense no immediate life-threatening injuries."

Selene frowned. "I find that hard to believe. A wound like that would leave any of my men incapacitated."

I shrugged. "It's true."

Esper clicked her tongue. "I think my sister wants to know how. I have my suspicions, but I want to hear it from your mouth."

I let my head once again fall back against the tree. "You know what they say: location, location, location." They, of course, didn't. "Sorry. That made no sense. I really am not running at full steam—I might have lost more blood than I thought. I damaged the nerves there to dull the pain."

Selene shook her head. "I've heard of injuries to nerves. They cause weakness, no?" She looked to Esper, who gave her a slight nod. "But you still have mobility in your arm."

I sighed. What am I supposed to tell them? That I picked the best of poor options?

I could have chosen to induce a small stroke. Lacunar strokes in the thalamus could cause unilateral numbness without weakness—if you hit the right target. Those strokes also had a tendency to cause a persistent pain syndrome. I'd treated enough people with Dejerine–Roussy syndrome to keep far away from that option. Maybe not an issue if I could heal the CNS, but after the ordeal to fix my arm, I'd think twice before [Sterilizing] anything in the brain or spinal cord.

The spinal cord wasn't any easier to explain. I had two options: central cord syndrome and a Brown-Séquard syndrome. The former was inconsistent, giving a patchy, cape-like loss of pain and temperature in both arms unless I skewed it to the left—which increased the chance for weakness. The latter was more complete but didn't make logical sense. For some reason, evolution thought it was a great idea to have pain and temperature nerve fibers carried by the spinothalamic tract ascend or descend a few levels before crossing the midline and heading up to the brain. Other tracts didn't do that. So when you had a left hemicord lesion, you got this absolutely fascinating combination of left-sided motor weakness and a left proprioceptive deficit with a strip of complete numbness on the left at the level of the lesion. Below that, you lost pain and temperature sensation on the right. Both syndromes created an unacceptable amount of weakness. A Brown-Séquard syndrome also did nothing to numb my left torso. Going higher and switching sides meant risking the diaphragm because, as my favorite little mnemonic would always remind me, "C3, C4, C5 keep the diaphragm alive!"

Neuroanatomy was a beast. There was a reason it was hated in med school. Maybe Esper would understand lesioning the nerves, but everything else? I couldn't do it. I couldn't bring myself to unpack weeks of dedicated study—especially with half the technical terms likely lost in translation. Instead, I took the simple way out. "It's complicated. Can we fix my arm first?"

Esper put her hand on Selene's shoulder, stalling further questions. "I do need to know, though. Fixing broken limbs is typically extremely painful, more so since I haven't done it in years. It might overwhelm any skill."

I gave her a small smile. "You really know how to inspire confidence. But it's not a skill doing this, not anymore."

A power from Esper pushed against me, and I didn't resist. If she hadn't already figured it out, she would find out what I did soon. "I don't think I am going to like what you will tell."

I shrugged. "I did what I had to do." I stalled any further response by lifting the remains of my potion. "Do you want me to use this?"

"Will your part be too much?"

"I can handle it."

She nodded. "This will be a good learning experience for you. It is rare to mend fractures of this degree. I would—"

"It's rare to repair fractures? How? Given what I have seen here, they should be common."

"They are amongst the lower tiers. But once you cross a threshold, bones become quite strong. At most, you will have hairline fractures that mend easily."

"I assume this happens faster for those with more Body-focused Marks?"

"Of course. And to be specific, a person's Infusion has the greatest effect on a person's resilience. Now," she slowly rotated my arm and flexed my wrist, "does that hurt?" I shook my head. She increased the range of motion. "How about now?"

"Not really." I could handle the increase in tingling. The further we progressed from my magical ablation, the more numbness set in. At this point, the most uncomfortable part was the increased headache from overusing my skill.

"Good, because we will do this in stages because of the severity of the fracture."

That was putting things lightly. As an open fracture with multiple segmental fractures and vascular and nerve damage, my fracture would fit in the highest grade: Gustilo-Anderson grade IIIC. Honestly, on Earth, I doubt many orthopedic surgeons would call it salvageable. Sure, I had limited some of the ischemia by repairing the vessels, but that still left neural damage, sizable gaps from bone pulverized by the direwolf's bite, and the substantial risk of infection. All this would have been compounded by the time it took to get to the OR. Yet, the thought of amputation never seemed to cross Esper's mind.

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She studied my arm. "First, we will start with resetting the bone's alignment. I will then work on the bone fragments. I will reposition as many as I can, but I may need to regrow many sections."

I nodded. "Tell me what you need. I can suppress the festering if you think it will help."

"Save your Energy. I would rather you put your focus on sensing what I am doing. This is, after all, a learning experience."

I couldn't argue with that.

She shifted her body to my side and externally rotated my arm so that she could cradle it in hers. "Also, try not to resist my skills."

Her eyes lost focus as she began. What happened next was quite informative.

She definitely could create invisible spears of focused force. While my sensation had diminished to detecting pressure in the areas she worked, her invisible needles left their marks. Tiny red drops of blood bubbled up on my skin above the areas with fractures. Unlike her other skills, these carried no benevolent intent. They made the primal parts of my brain scream danger. I had to suppress the urge to try and disrupt the cohesion of those needles. In my state, she would overwhelm my resistance, but it'd increase her strain further.

It, however, was easy to ignore that base reflex. Her methods were fascinating. With my perception turned inward, I could follow the bones' movements as she pushed them back in place. Yes, pushed. It got even worse. Some fragments needed more than a nudge. They needed a path cleared, which she accomplished through invisible wedges displacing tissue. Her action did not differ from a trauma surgeon using mechanical retraction, but she did this all under the equivalent of local anesthesia.

With each bone fragment that she realigned with brutal precision, I gave thanks that the damage to the ganglia remained. Though dampened, I hadn't negated all sensation and the effects from the surgical procedure. With the repositioning of the larger of the shattered fragments, my heart thundered in my chest, and my perception became fuzzy. I opened my eyes, finding the edges had turned gray. I let my head roll back against the tree, releasing a long breath.

What is going on? I had blocked the pain. I had seen worse. Why am I—oh, right. Ablating the ganglia did not affect the autonomic system. I was going to vasovagal.

To pass out, or not to pass out?

Only one answer, really. I would not give up this experience. The firsthand knowledge this provided was too valuable. While I would now admit a more expansive view on some of the Ættarsk teaching methods, this degree of injury went too far. Still, best to warn her.

"If I pass out, it is probably an automatic response. Just lay me down until my blood pressure recovers."

She just clicked her tongue in response, but she then took the decision out of my hands. "You don't need to worry. We are done with the most painful part. Take a second to collect yourself."

I leaned my head as far down between my knees as my awkward position allowed. My vision and internal perception came back into focus in less than a minute.

"I think I am good." I took a quick look at what she had done to my arm. "What are you going to do with the rest of the bone fragments?"

"You will see. This may burn. And again, don't resist."

Her Marks flared blue, and I could pick up Energy flowing into her hands. At the same time, her aura flared, though it reached outward with surgical precision instead of the global field as with the direwolves. They affected me simultaneously, though at different spots.

White fragments spotted with violet-red broke through the surface of my skin as she forced them out through precision healing. Those without an exit, she dissolved with the focal application of her aura. Both methods raised my internal hackles, but I ignored the cry of danger, focusing on each intricate action she made. After she had repositioned or removed all of the shattered bone, she fused the pieces into one solid piece. It wasn't complete, but she had done enough to provide a structure for the rest of the healing.

She moved to my nerves and channels. As soon as her power touched the channels, it triggered a visceral response.

Her brow furrowed. "Hold it back so that I can work."

"Sorry. Trying." The intensity of the response had dwarfed the other, and I struggled to push down the interference. I just couldn't shake the feeling of vulnerability.

She dropped the power of the skills she employed. "Try now."

I let out a deep breath. "Thanks. Try again. I wasn't prepared."

She nodded, and she ramped her healing slowly. Unlike my prior fumbling, she regenerated nerves and channels in tandem with inhuman precision. I didn't experience a single zing.

She put my arm down in my lap and wiped a thin line of sweat that had formed on her brow. "You can take a potion now and repair the rest of the arm. Then you will tell me about why you feel no pain."

"Got it."

I drank the potion instead of pouring it over my arm; the injuries were mostly internal. With limited guidance, the tissues and partially fused bones fully knitted. The skin followed. Soon, it was as good as new, save one issue: the ganglia remained stubbornly resistant to the potion's healing.

I nodded to my arm. "It is all done, save the numbness. Have you, uh, figured out what I did?"

Her face grew stern. "I have. I don't know how you did it. I can barely understand why, especially after what we discussed with your knife."

"I needed to focus. I couldn't keep Energy flowing into my knife." She cocked an eyebrow. "The pain was too much. Don't say it. You were right to some degree, but intent matters."

"That wasn't what I meant, but I am glad you are seeing reason. What I don't understand is how you could use a skill but not channel Energy through a knife."

I shrugged. "I don't know. Something was helping with it."

Her eyes drifted toward my white coat. "We have much to discuss later."

Selene, who had been quietly watching us, had hit a limit. "There is a lot of roundabout speaking going on. Care to clue a girl in?"

Esper shook her head. "My junior thought it wise to try to eliminate the Spark in part of his body."

Selene sucked in air between her teeth. "How bad?"

"Not total. There are voids, but they are small and incomplete."

Incomplete voids. That was a good way to describe them. [Sense Injury] didn't pick them up the way it should, and turning my perception internally, I tended to skip over the area unless actively looking for what was missing.

I gave Esper a hopeful look. "We can fix it, right?"

"Then you do realize how hard it is to fix?"

My head dropped. "I do now."

"Good. Because when you act recklessly, it is best to know what you risk. Now, I'll help you, but it is best if you try to do it on your own. It will leave me less drained, but more importantly, you need to know just how difficult it is to fix." She gestured to my potion. "Drink all that's left. Better to have too much."

"But it doesn't work."

"You have to make the injury visible and then guide. The Spark is gone. You must act in its stead."

"How? I can barely tell it is there."

"But you can tell, can't you?" I nodded. "Then something remains to work with—at least for now. Work from the edges inward."

I wiggled my left fingers. They moved, but unless I was looking at them, I couldn't tell that.

I have to fix this.