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

"What are you doing?"

I ignored the shout from behind, and Rægnor came to my rescue. "His job. Leave him be."

There was a shout and possibly a thud, though I didn't dare look. No one jerked my arm away. I extended his neck to expose his throat. I palpated the cartilage rings until I found the slight depression just 2 cm below the prominence made by the thyroid cartilage.

I brought the blade to the skin. My fingers against the Wounded Airway's skin tingled, but my hand didn't shake for once. At another time, I would have given thanks for such a miracle, but now I just wished I had an ultrasound. Still, I could almost see the anatomy in my mind. Via [Eidetic Memory], the next steps came to me.

Just a quick cut…

Before I lost my nerve, I made a horizontal incision across his neck, pushing past skin, the subcutaneous tissue, and the cricothyroid membrane. The blood welled up, but I already had the wood dowel in the hole before the blood could obscure the opening. The dowel wasn't a wire, but it would work. I slid the tube down the thin dowel until it rested in the opening. I took a dab of healing potion and used it to close the wound enough to hold the tube in place.

I leaned back, waiting.

Come on. Breathe.

I couldn't help letting out the breath that I had been holding when his chest rose and a soft whistle came from the thin tube. Now, it just needed to hold.

"Hey, Daniel, how long do I keep this up?"

I shifted to the next disaster. I hadn't forgotten about Dorian. He didn't appear tired from the compressions, but it could catch up with you fast. "As long as you can, but let me know if you are tiring. What number are you on?"

"Fifty."

"Pause at sixty."

I studied my work once more. It sure wasn't pretty. The jagged end sticking up was a hazard. The placement was precarious, even after using a drop of potion to close the wound. However, the gurgling had diminished. It just wasn't enough. The whistles from the tube came short and irregular with each rise of his chest. He could pull air through the small tube, but only with heavy use of his accessory muscles. He would tire fast breathing like this. Soon, he would stop ventilating, and the CO2 would build, acidifying his blood. This was just a stopgap, but I could extend it. Since I didn't have a bag…

I put my mouth onto the tube while holding it tightly. I took a deep breath and slowly released it into the tube. His mouth gurgled until I covered his mouth and nose. His chest inflated once, then twice.

I quickly shifted to the Ættar getting CPR. I ignored Dorian, who stared at me with wide eyes, and pinched the nose of the Ættar and gave him two rescue breaths. I checked his pulse. Nothing yet.

"Get back to compression. Tell me when you hit 45 again."

I waited long enough to ensure Dorian's compressions generated a pulse in the wrist before moving back to give another two breaths to Wounded Airway. I would have to take care of his other wounds later. Based on the increased tracheal deviation and venous distension, Mystery Illness needed my attention now.

I knelt next to him and pulled up his tunic to reveal the cause of his pneumothorax. The wound wasn't large. In fact, it was partially healed, likely when he used the potion. The incomplete healing probably led to this situation. Unless I closed it, every breath he took would suck in more air and increase the size of the pneumothorax. I didn't have an occlusive bandage, but I had something better.

A quick dab and a burst of power accomplished what I needed. The wound closed, but predictably, the potion left air trapped inside the chest cavity. Old habits died hard. I confirmed my diagnosis by percussing the chest. I laid a finger along the intercostal space between the ribs and thumped in with my fingers, eliciting the expected high-pitched, hollow sound.

My hand hovered over the knife. Did I need it?

Normally, you only needed a needle. I grabbed the broken tube. I hadn't risked it when creating an airway, but this was more temporary. I held the sharp, splintered end before my eyes. I pushed Energy into it and…hit a wall. The material blocked the flow. I cursed. I almost tried again but stopped. This tube was part of an Aether testing kit. It made sense that I would be non-reactive. I grabbed the knife. Crimson coated the blade's edge as I infused it with Energy. I found the middle of his right clavicle and ran my fingers down his midclavicular line.

One. Two. Three.

I moved back up one until my fingers rested in the divot between his second and third rib.

"Forty-five."

"Stop at sixty. I should be done here by then."

I made a small cut just deep enough to allow the next step. I took a deep breath and then pushed the tube through the second intercostal space. It slid through the first part easily, but as it got deeper, the resistance increased. I said a small prayer that it wouldn't snap. With a small twist and a bit more force, the resistance fell away, and a whoosh came from the end.

The Ættar inhaled deeply, and his eyes flashed open.

"I'll be right back. Don't move."

He held still, not even wiggling. I needed to close that entry point now that the tension had been released via needle decompression, but first, my two other patients needed rescue breaths.

I gave them both a round of ventilation, but I stopped Dorian from restarting. I couldn't help but smile. "He has a pulse." The healing potion had worked.

"A what?"

Before I could clarify, the earth beneath me shook. It was a subtle rumble, but it didn't stop. "Dorian, is that…?"

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I couldn't finish, not with the shadow stalkers still alive. The despair hadn't disappeared. It lingered, only held back by a tenuous wall that wouldn't take much to collapse. Another threat might just do it.

"It is. I came here because I wasn't much help with the shade stalkers, but burrowers are different. Even if it's smaller than the last one, I need to go." He looked down at the Ættar. "Will you be okay?"

"Go. He will be fine now." The Ættar was now breathing unassisted and stirring. "Send the injured my way, and I can try to help with enhancing the potions."

"Don't overdo it."

Overdo it? Bit late for that. I did emergency surgery on two different people. I would be damned if I'd lose anyone because I was tired. Of course, I couldn't give him any more reason to worry. He had his own battles to fight. "I won't. Now go."

He ran off, and I gave my cric'd Ættar another two breaths before moving back to the Ættar with the needle in his chest. He didn't speak when I shuffled over to him.

"I am going to remove this and patch it up with a potion. I…I can't believe I am saying this, but you can probably get back to the fight. Just take care. You aren't fully back to normal. You have micro-fractures in your ribs that I couldn't repair and…other things." I didn't bother to try to explain that he might still have some air in there. It would no longer be a tension pneumothorax, but his lung capacity might be diminished. That shouldn't stop him from guarding us against any terrorvoles that slipped through.

His hand was in the air, and one of his teammates pulled him to his feet. Before he rushed off to battle, he paused. "Thank you, Human."

I didn't get to respond. When a large crack resounded through the cavern, I spared a glance at the battlefield. The burrower was smaller than the last one, but a swipe of its tail still had cleared a swath of the line. Dorian was facing it down with a few other high-level Ættir, though support was lacking. The Verndari couldn't leave the shade stalker, and Eiræk and his other hærliðar had their own to manage.

I turned my attention to the last of the wounded Ættir, Wounded Airway. I needed to hurry. There would soon be more people needing my help.

I gave another set of breaths before I focused on the abdominal wound. I had been skimping on his ventilation rate, but that could change now that he was my only patient. I pulled in every bit of information I could manage. It taxed me, but I used [Quicken Thoughts] to handle it. His abdomen was a mess, but I had taken care of worse.

I put my ungloved hand onto his stomach, right above his wound. I needed to be close to the injuries to make this work. I let out a breath before I slid my hand into the wound with a sickening squelch. Dark blood, thick with clots, pushed outward along my arm as my hand moved deeper into his abdomen.

I poured half of what remained of the potion into the open wound, infusing it with Energy. I enhanced its efficacy and suppressed the growth of bacteria and low-priority targets.

I went slowly, having learned my lesson earlier. I couldn't afford to lose myself to healing. It was the only reason that I noticed another two wounded Ættir by my side. Whoever got them here had left in a hurry.

I paused long enough to assess them. They each had a deep penetrating wound, one in the thigh and the other through the shoulder. The shoulder injury was by far the worst. His left arm hung awkwardly.

Rægnor, noticing that I had stopped my work on Wounded Airway, explained, "Assassin spider."

That had been my assumption based on the depth and caliber of the wound. A burrower and more spiders…I was going to be busy.

I reached out my hand to the least injured. "I will need your potion."

"I don't have any left."

I grimaced and looked at the other Ættar. "You?"

With his good arm, he pulled out a quarter-full healing potion. "It won't be enough for me, but he can use it."

"It will be enough for both of you to get back to the fight."

I ignored their surprise. I worked on the thigh using the same technique of pouring potion over my fingers. I took a break to help Wounded Airway breathe before working on the shoulder wound. The work was tiring. The newcomer with the shoulder injury had injured his channels. Repairing them took mental focus, and I had burned much of my cognitive reserve keeping the other three Ættir alive. The frequent breaks needed to keep giving breaths to my more urgent patient further fractured my attention. However, I got it done.

I returned to working on the abdominal wound when [Sense Injury] flared. I looked up from my work to find the burrower plowing through what remained of our company's lines. Dorian and some of the Ættir tried to regain control of the fight, but the monster had time to turn its head and roar.

The earth rippled, then exploded, blowing back the other side of the line. Worse, it caught those fighting the shade stalker. They staggered to the side, leaving the shadow monsters a few seconds of respite. One used them to fade away into another shadow. However, it didn't flee. The shade stalker reappeared behind the Verndari, ramming two dark blades through his back. The Verndari grunted in agony as the dark blades pushed through until they extended a full foot from his stomach.

His Marks flared, and a burst of Energy surged from him in a brilliant ring of red. The deadly nova cut the one in front of it in half, but the one behind Verndari dodged, throwing itself backward, its body bent at an unnatural angle.

The ring sheared through a portion of the monster's head, but the shadow just flickered, a mass of flesh appearing in the place of the humanoid shadow. It flickered, the shadowing reasserting itself.

The Verndari staggered forward, free of the blades that had impaled him. One step. Two steps. The shadow stalker recovered. The Verdnari then lunged forward in a fall that turned into a roll, narrowly avoiding the black whip cutting through the air in an attempt to sever his head from his body. He came to his feet with a potion in hand, but the damage had been done.

The shade stalker didn't advance, but it attacked all the same. The darkness returned with a vengeance. The Verndari's hand shook as he struggled to pull the potion to his mouth. Even this far away, my muscles grew lethargic. Gravity threatened to pull me to the ground, and I almost let it. I fought, but I had so little reserve left.

I wasn't the only one.

All around me, Ættir staggered from the return of the crushing weight of despair. Whatever skill the Verndari had used to bolster the company collapsed under the renewed assault. Only Eiræk and the hærlið that had taken the full dose of Dorian's potion managed to resist, but even they did not move at their normal speed. Even if they could disengage, they wouldn't be able to clear the distance in time to rescue the Verndari.

Somehow, shade stalker's attack hadn't affected the burrower. Seeing its opportunity, it reared, bringing its stone tail around to crush whatever remained of the Ættarsk line. The two hærliðar released shouts, but without the Verndari to bolster them, their effect was only enough to remove the worst of the affected. No one was going to be able to move fast enough to avoid the impending strike.

I braced for the horror of what was to come.

"Fools," a deep, commanding voice shouted from behind me.

Two red discs, crackling with so much energy they hurt to look at, flew over my head. Both slammed into monsters. Despite the monster's mass, the disc drove the burrower backwards into the wall, splintering the hard stone. The shade stalker managed to raise its guard, but it did little to stop the momentum. The red discs lost neither coherence nor momentum with their impact, and they ground the monsters into stone, splintering the wall around them. Then, in a flash of red, it ended.

The discs detonated. A clap of thunder filled the cavern. I braced, but no shockwave came. The cloud of dust rapidly fell to the ground under the effect of Dorian's skill, leaving…nothing.

No trace of the monsters existed.

I stared, trying to fathom the utter ease with which the person dismantled the two monsters that had threatened an entire company. Before I could turn my head to look at the source of such destruction, another voice cut through the air. "Human, what have you done?"

The anger was palpable, but it took everything I had not to collapse in relief. I hadn't been so out of my depth since my intern year when I called my first code. But now, my backup was here, and my most concerning patient still lived.

"Kept him alive long enough for you to get here."

I had done my job. It was time for the Vísir to do hers.