Silver-Lined Quarantine

[Deleted]

Rithaleya was surprised to find herself at the Innorsford Proving Grounds so soon. It wasn't so much because she was bored of staying within the city and needed to wander a little, though that was part of it. Mostly, it was because she hadn't run out of excuses to stay indoors, and wasn't excited about joining the Alliance.

Still, what had brought her here was also the main reason she'd stayed away: The weather conditions were vicious, and there was a high casualty rate among the trainees who were learning to endure the conditions. By not joining them, she'd left open the option to find work caring for those who were failing their training; or just unlucky enough to come under attack while fetching water, or wandering about.

The first case she was left with was simple enough. The recruit had slipped and cracked his head on a rock while stumbling through a riverbed. Although heatstroke had likely been a factor, he was lucky in another way that the season was Dry. If he'd fallen in at any other time of year, he'd have drowned, but today the water around him hadn't been deep enough to cover his face.

There was no ice to give him for the swelling, not at this time of year, but they'd left a cool cloth on him. That was good in some ways, but it had already dried out while they carried him back, and the blood, mud, and ooze had made it stick to his head. Rithaleya sat on the floor in the medical tent, draped him over his legs, held steady with one hand so she could watch his breathing and keep it stable, and decided to pour some water over the cloth fused to his scalp for a few minutes to soak it through, so she could peel it off without taking his hair and skin with it.

She poured the same water each time, almost a dozen times, collecting it in a pan before passing it back into a pitcher, which might not have been the best idea. Still, while the instructor looked disapproving, she didn't step in to correct this, which Rithaleya took as grudging approval. It saved her some time, since no one was going to go fetch for her. The soaking paid off when she was able to remove the cloth without tearing the unconscious man's head any more open than it already was. His hair, mercifully, was close-shaven, less than half an inch long. The gash through his scalp underneath was about the width of five fingers.

The swollen 'goose egg' on his skull underneath wasn't pleasant to look at, but Rithaleya managed to keep her lunch down after about ten seconds of doing nothing to help her patient. This pause seemed to be short enough to avoid drawing her instructor's ire. At last, she swallowed hard, thanked the gods that the man she was tending to was still unconscious, and sorted out some clean cloths before dumping out the pan to add soap and a fresh pitcher of water.

Cleaning the wound by gently dabbing it with cloth, soap, and water repeatedly took a long time, longer than removing the old, stuck-on cloth which could charitably have been called a field bandage (although its application in this manner seemed accidental). The swelling still had to be treated, and the instructor didn't seem to have any advice for how to do that. Rithaleya took her time, and was very careful as she flattened out the torn, oozing skin. Her patient was starting to rouse and complain incoherently, but he still seemed unconscious, and certainly not alert. That wasn't her problem.

It was only when she was done cleaning, and had just begun to apply the bandages, finally, when her instructor first sought to give her something resembling an instruction: She walked over, held out a bundle of unbleached cloth which she'd doused with some sort of gooey yellow substance, and jerked her hand in an impatient gesture of offering, turning her eyes toward the patient's skull and then back to Rithaleya again. When her student did not understand instantly, she explained, "A compress. Use it."

Though she stared blankly another moment, Rithaleya finally raised her eyebrow, gingerly picked up the compress, and laid it across her patient's injury, holding it there while she unwound the bandages with her free hand. Her instructor, apparently satisfied, turned and walked away before Rithaleya had even begin rewinding the bandages around her patient's head. It seemed there were other learners who were more worth the time and attention.

It had been nearly half an hour from start to finish when Rithaleya left the tent and her patient. He'd regained consciousness very briefly only to scream in pain and be given something to make him sleep almost immediately, none of which required her in attendance. Clearly, hitting her head on rocks was something she'd need to avoid doing... As evening approached, she sensed the night could only get worse.

[Deleted]

Rithaleya's first tourniquet practice came with a sizable bonus lesson: When raiding the lairs of burrowing creatures, it was wisest to use a long stick or some other tool, not to stick one's bare arm in up to the shoulder to feel around. It was too late for her patient, though; his hand had been lashed open by a scorpion's tail. On the plus side, he was losing blood faster than it could return to his heart with the poison. On the downside, well... that was also the downside.

With her instructor watching, but doing nothing to help--something that was becoming a pattern, Rithaleya noticed--she ran over to take the first step toward treating her patient. In lieu of instructions, she reasoned this was to get him to stop dancing around like he was trying to fight off an army of swordsmen with his injured hand, while waving, yelling, staring, and panicking at it. She didn't know what was tactful in this situation, so she grabbed him by the hair, slapped him across the face, and yelled at him to "Siddown!", following it up with a two-handed shove. It seemed to have the desired effect, although she noted he was still looking around for the scorpion in a panic.

Rithaleya's instructor seemed interested enough in how this was progressing to close to about five yards distance. Her staff seemed ready to strike if the perpetrator showed its tail again, so Rith didn't have second thoughts about crouching down, grabbing her patient's arm solidly, and pulling the cord she'd been dispensed with for this purpose off of her belt to tie it around his arm near the wrist, add a stick from the ground nearby, and bind it solidly. It was tempting to hold it elevated while waiting for the bleeding to subside, but even just glancing toward her instructor, it was easy to see the woman would not approve of it.

After half a minute, during which the patient finally managed to calm down, start crying, and accuse his unseen assailant of many crimes, she finally stepped in and shoved a clear glass vial at him, with a terse suggestion to "Drink," before she grabbed his arm and began to apply healing magic--to neutralize the poison, Rithaleya assumed at first, as it took some time for the wound to visibly begin to close.

Just when Rithaleya was wondering if she should be somewhere else--and if she was now on guard duty, by default--her instructor had two more words to say to her, surprisingly. "Good work." She could only assume this referred to her tourniquet. They were followed by two more. "You're relieved." Rithaleya gathered this meant she was done training for the day, though she wasn't certain what followed from that. No one complained when she wandered off to get food and water and claim a place to sleep, though, so she assumed this was what they intended, and did so. Screams woke her up more than once, but they were distant, and no orders came for her to get to work, so she stayed in bed.

[Deleted]

Early in the morning, Rithaleya was dragged away from her bedroll. As it happened, it seemed all the tiredness which had failed to arrive and keep her soundly asleep through the darkest hours of night finally started to close in on her. She could hardly bother to pay attention to why she was being called out, or where she was going until she was already in the healer's tent, staring at a woman with a mangled leg.

Her ankle had been caught in a snare, that much was obvious, though Rithaleya had never seen such an injury suffered by a human (or elf) before. More pertinent, from her perspective, was that the wound had already been treated with bandages, which left her at a loss as to why the instructor was looking at her expectantly. Not wanting to disappoint, she walked up to the side of the bed, where the wounded woman lay sleeping, and looked around for an axe.

No, there was no axe, here. So, this wasn't for amputation practice, even assuming they still used axes for that, here. After all, that it seemed like more of a distinctly Cahalian thing. She couldn't see a way around it, though... she had to ask what this was about. "So," Rithaleya began, adding a dramatic pause. "What do you want me to do, here?"

Her instructor seemed even more reluctant to speak her mind, exhaling through her nostrils at length, like a dragon that had been disturbed in her lair. In lieu of answering, she eventually asked a question of her own. "You don't see anything amiss, here?"

That certainly wasn't the case. "More than a little," Rithaleya agreed. "But I'm not a surgeon, and neither are you." Perhaps this was a bit too much truth. She cringed inwardly. "No offense. But, unless you're going to teach me a spell, now, I don't think I can fix this."

The woman grimaced, though to Rithaleya's relief, she seemed more disgusted by the backtalk than angry with it. "If it was your leg on the line, you'd put more thought into it. Look again."

Though quite sure she wasn't seeing whatever she was supposed to be seeing, Rithaleya took a closer look, leaning down all the way to the level of the table, and over to peer at the leg from the other side. Her patient's shin bone appeared to be shattered, the last eight inches of her leg twisted at an impossible angle. Even if she ignored that, all Rith could see was a well-done job of bandaging and suturing, though the foot still had an unpleasant pallor to it. She shrugged. "I don't see it."

Her instructor was so inflamed, Rithaleya was worried the woman's hair would catch fire. She stomped forward, thumped her staff on the ground--with the added effect of causing the sleeping patient to wake up suddenly and look at the healers in the tent in bewilderment--and pointed her finger at the patient's ankle. "Her leg is twisted! You must set it right!"

Rithaleya must have been looking particularly slack-jawed and dull that morning. In her place, her aggravated instructor swept in and laid her hands on the patient, leaving her student to catch her staff, before pausing for a moment to order the patient to "Lie still." Rithaleya, thinking this seemed rather futile, quickly left the staff to lean, and ran around to the other side of the table to hold the patient down. She was almost in time to stop the patient from thrashing in agony as her leg was laid out straight, pulled, pushed, and tweaked by the healer's fingers.

"Oh, yes, this is a lost cause, it must be in six pieces," the healer belatedly admitted. It didn't seem to be in quite the sense Rithaleya assumed, however, as the healer simply cast another spell which caused the patient leg to go rigid, all of a sudden, almost as if it was carved from stone. "There! Now, get to work!"

Rithaleya only struggled a second or two, looking back and forth across the table for what materials had been laid out, before she managed to guess at what exactly was being asked of her. She tied together a bundle of splints--six did seem like a nice number--and used three leather cords to bind them, about the woman's leg, evenly spaced, though from the look on her face, it seemed she'd decided she wanted to murder Rithaleya, which seemed unfair under the circumstances.

A few minutes later, the woman had mercifully passed out from the pain again, and whatever the magic was seemed to be wearing off. With a dubious expession, the instructor checked Rithaleya's handiwork. "This seems excessive... but it should work for now. You have been trained before, but not by an expert, I think. Go away. I'll deal with you after today's lessons."

Despite all the things that she had to say, Rithaleya nodded, held her tongue, and shrank back into the shadows, from where she watched the healers in the tent for almost an hour before rushing out while their backs were turned. Her feelings about her training were mixed; on the one hand, such disrespect as had been afforded to her was infuriating, while on the other hand, her instructor had shown more respect to her than to any of the other students or patients Rithaleya had seen in her care. That almost seemed to count for something.

Either way, it seemed she should be grateful to escape without further tongue-lashing, and to witness what she might have to fear in the next week of training at the Innorsford proving grounds. Evidently, it would be best to avoid the misfortune of finding out how to help the other students practice applying first aid, if at all possible, especially in the course of demonstrating her hard-earned but extra-regional wilderness survival skills. And, as nice as it was to be given the day to herself with no strings attached, she didn't miss the chance to eavesdrop and spy on lectures for most of it, when she wasn't just trying to cool off.

[Azuloth]

Quest Complete
Rewards

First Aid II
+3 Stat points.