114 Ashan, 724
.
Continued from here.
Kotton had been out in the Sweetwine Forest to practice using a double edged dagger. It was the best place he had come up with: excluded from society where no one would be at risk of getting hurt, but also where no one could see him fail and fail again in his venture to become proficient in handling a short weapon. Even if the clouds were sad and the weather was a bit brisk in temperature, he was determined to use his free time off work to progress in something he wanted to learn more about. So here he was, standing in front of a tree marked with his most recent attacks, dagger in hand. But his mind had become askew from its direct path towards clear-headness. He had become bored performing the same technique time and time again. Whilst he knew the value of practising repeatedly, that didn't stop him from feeling restless. He wanted to experiment with other techniques, even if hadn't quite mastered the basics.
In the interim, safety concerns were pushed to the wayside as haste replaced caution. He unknowingly gripped the hilt of the blade in an improper way before lifting it above his head. He was planning to strike down from above like he had earlier. However it wasn't just his hold on the weapon that was wrong, it was his stance, too. Kotton had been so excited by the way he had been progressing that the little details had flitted away a ghost meandering to another haunting ground.
He went forth with the plan he had imagined and that was to slice the tree with an overhead attack. As he enacted his plan, his weapon slipped in his grasp. Not only did it connect with the trunk of the tree he was attacking and take a significant piece of bark with it, the dagger had also managed to tear an impressive amount of flesh from out his outer hand.
His recoil was faster than the time it took lightning to touch the ground. If there was a record for how quickly someone could react to an injury, he surely could have one first prize. He pressed his hand to his chest after dropping the dagger to the ground like it was made of molten lava. He used so much of his strength to hold back some rather inappropriate and vulgar language as he struggled to make sense of what deep breathing was.
The young man's face contorted- it was boiling with pure rage and mixed with indescribable pain. He clenched his jaw with brute force and nearly bit through his tongue, but fortunately he had moved it to the side just in the nick of time. He didn't need any more blood or injury to have to deal with.
“Why?” he cried with greater volume than he had anticipated. His first reaction was to look to the sky. Maybe to keep any initial tears from falling? Maybe to address the immortals he had somehow associated as beings who inhabited the heavenly portions of the world? He tentatively released his hold on his hand so that he could observe the damage he had caused.
The scene was gory, that much could be said. But being a medic, it wasn't nearly as bad as some of the situations he had been forced to encounter. His vivid imagination, as wild as it may be, coupled with his unruly sense of healthy anxiety, had already had the chance to manifest some gruesome pictures. In fact, he just finished brainstorming a vision of his hand completely obliterated and in need of amputation for all its hideousness. The sight was something that would have made Kotton lose consciousness (hence the whole health anxiety anxiety thing). The gash was deep, spanning the length of the second joint of his pinky up towards the middle of his forearm. It was bloody, and yes, there were bits of severed flesh hanging from the edges of his palm. He could see not only adipose tissue but bone if he really wanted to stare at it, but he didn't, so he decided to create the illusion that it probably looked as if he had just finished his fight with a bear.
The young man didn’t care to retrieve his weapon; he would have to collect the bloody tool another day. The first thing he needed to do was find someone who could help him fix his arm. But he wouldn't move to do so until he had reestablished his hold of his wound against his chest. Pressure, he had learnt as his time as a medic was extremely important. It kept superficial injuries from bleeding anymore than they already had. And, whilst this wasn't applicative to him, the theory that if a wound does not stop bleeding after fifteen minutes or so, was a sign in itself that stitches or sutures were essential.
Kotton utilized the idea of pain to create additional pains against other parts of his body so as to take away the agony he felt from his laceration. He pinched his fingertips (a rather sensitive area on the body) and bit his tongue (also sensitive) until he was sure he tasted blood. It was all so he could make it back into the city without succumbing to any immediate signs of shock.
It was hilarious (in hindsight) that he had even debated whether or not he should go to the clinic to have his injury examined. He wasn’t exactly rolling in wealth, so why waste it and the associated time when he could stitch it up himself? Well, that was where the whole concept of 'shock' came into play. He was no fool to what the term meant nor its definition. Shock was a very serious thing. Shock, as far as he had learnt from veteran nurses and residency doctors, was a potentially life-threatening condition where a patient experienced a drop in blood pressure which means blood does not pressure enough to keep the brain and other parts of the body working as it should. That was because the blood was too busy doing it's 'pressure thing' at the point where a serious injury had occurred.
The young man had just reached the front steps of his house when Twig came bounding from inside. “Are you okay?” he asked. His eyes were about as bugged out at Kotton's had been when he had first glanced at his major injury.
The aggrieved man closed his eyes for a split second. He was becoming fatigued, his thoughts trailing and wandering to other, less important things. What was he doing again? His eyes started to grow heavy. Was it entirely due to blood loss or embarrassment? Disappointment? Were these feelings swarming over him in thick waves of darkness akin to the grey skyline? How could he have been so stupid? That was the main question that had emboldened itself in his running mental monologue. I mean, for fuck’s sake.
“I don’t know,” he replied truthfully and he decided in the moment to seek outside help. His medical utensils were no match for this wound of his, he was certain of that now.
Twig nodded his head in acknowledgment and swiftly found Kotton’s side. He offered his arm to help with the lesser balanced side of his guardian and made quick moves toward the clinic.
Kotton immediately felt regret by his decision of what he had wanted to do today. He should have just stayed in bed, observed the bubbled patterns of his popcorn ceiling, maybe waited for Imogen to pounce onto his bed and give him comforting licks of appreciation. But no, he had decided to go out and explore the Sweetwine Woods and practice his ability with a fucking dagger until it nearly cost him half a pint of blood or more.
Still, his philosophical side emerged, coupled with the psychological realism that was always there. Coincidence was a thing. Things happened for a reason. Regardless of what he chose to do, he would have ultimately found himself in the forest, in front of a tree, in the rain, bearing a weapon.
“Found it,” Twig declared as he guided Kotton up the rickety, slick steps of the clinic.
“You might not want to watch this,” Kotton said, his face still contorted into a mask of torment and utter disquiet. Twig was self-aware enough to read the room as much as the young man’s mood.
“Okay,” Twig announced with understanding as he directed Kotton to a seat next to his in the waiting room.
Fortunately, the injured man didn’t have to wait very long before being seen. A nurse called his name in due time and led him back. She spent no time examining his wounds. She looked down at the noticeably destroyed tissues, blood and excess detritus from a tree aside, and puffed a disgruntled sigh.
"I'm glad you came to us as soon as you could. You could have bled out from such a serious injury, what with the depth and all." Kotton had thought about that during his scramble toward town. He hadn't exactly thought so much as to the depth of the wound, but as to the sheer volume of blood he had lost during his journey to medical help.
The young man finally found it within him to look at what his nurse was looking at and started to gag. He vomited a little bit in his mouth as he gazed upon the morbidity that was his arm. Even still, he tried to keep his fear in check he was finally visited by the doctor, needle and thread in hand.
“Sounds like you did a number on yourself,” the doctor proclaimed, waltzing over to him like it wasn't a big deal. Kotton didn't know whether to feel disrespected or relieved by his urgency. Maybe he wasn't in as bad of shape as he had originally thought. Yet, this sudden calm wasted not but a second before evaporating entirely, for the doctor thrust his curved needle into the ragged edges of his skin and drew them together with a hearty piece of silk. The young man didn't think he could have been in anymore pain, but he was surely proven wrong. He had to bite his tongue to refrain from screaming and it was already tender from when he had bit it to try to reduce the searing pain of his cut.
In order to take his mind off the sting, he fought the thoughts in his head and became invested and equally enthralled in the process of the doctor who was so meticulously stitching up his arm. It was dissimilar to how he had stitched up Twig’s wounds. Had he been doing things wrong this whole time? Was performing sutures on patients solely a doctoral thing to do? As he thought about it, he couldn't recall any nurses being privileged enough to perform such a procedure. Perhaps he could use this observational experience to better his chances at becoming not only a nurse, but something more.
Once the doctor had finished, Kotton was left with no other wishes or desires other than to be utterly numb. Wasn’t numbing ointment a thing of this day and age? If it wasn’t, he, as a medic, was surely going to spend all the freedom he had forthcoming trying to research this possibility.
“Are you doing alright?” The doctor asked before snipping the thread and plummeting his equipment in the proper sharps bin behind him.
The young man stuttered at first, shock and agony still ever prevalent senses. Eventually he managed to emit a whisper that expressed an unconditional yes, he was indeed alright even if still struggling to contain abject amounts of misery.
“Of course I am,” he edited in breath. Soft tendrils of tawny hair fell through his fingers as he raked a shaky, uninjured hand through his fringe. The sensation he received from doing so was soft, an easy and grateful tactile appreciation dissimilar to the sting that had encumbered his pain receptors.
The doctor couldn't help but notice his patient's rigid body language and terse response. “I instructed the nurse to appoint you black cohosh. It’s an herb that helps alleviate pain.”
Kotton, still wincing from the pain, nodded his head and forced a smile. “Thank you,” he muttered before standing on wobbly legs and exiting the room.
All this and he was most likely charged a bajillion coins.
He trekked home with Twig in stead still wondering whether he could have stitched himself up for half the cost.
Kotton had been out in the Sweetwine Forest to practice using a double edged dagger. It was the best place he had come up with: excluded from society where no one would be at risk of getting hurt, but also where no one could see him fail and fail again in his venture to become proficient in handling a short weapon. Even if the clouds were sad and the weather was a bit brisk in temperature, he was determined to use his free time off work to progress in something he wanted to learn more about. So here he was, standing in front of a tree marked with his most recent attacks, dagger in hand. But his mind had become askew from its direct path towards clear-headness. He had become bored performing the same technique time and time again. Whilst he knew the value of practising repeatedly, that didn't stop him from feeling restless. He wanted to experiment with other techniques, even if hadn't quite mastered the basics.
In the interim, safety concerns were pushed to the wayside as haste replaced caution. He unknowingly gripped the hilt of the blade in an improper way before lifting it above his head. He was planning to strike down from above like he had earlier. However it wasn't just his hold on the weapon that was wrong, it was his stance, too. Kotton had been so excited by the way he had been progressing that the little details had flitted away a ghost meandering to another haunting ground.
He went forth with the plan he had imagined and that was to slice the tree with an overhead attack. As he enacted his plan, his weapon slipped in his grasp. Not only did it connect with the trunk of the tree he was attacking and take a significant piece of bark with it, the dagger had also managed to tear an impressive amount of flesh from out his outer hand.
His recoil was faster than the time it took lightning to touch the ground. If there was a record for how quickly someone could react to an injury, he surely could have one first prize. He pressed his hand to his chest after dropping the dagger to the ground like it was made of molten lava. He used so much of his strength to hold back some rather inappropriate and vulgar language as he struggled to make sense of what deep breathing was.
The young man's face contorted- it was boiling with pure rage and mixed with indescribable pain. He clenched his jaw with brute force and nearly bit through his tongue, but fortunately he had moved it to the side just in the nick of time. He didn't need any more blood or injury to have to deal with.
“Why?” he cried with greater volume than he had anticipated. His first reaction was to look to the sky. Maybe to keep any initial tears from falling? Maybe to address the immortals he had somehow associated as beings who inhabited the heavenly portions of the world? He tentatively released his hold on his hand so that he could observe the damage he had caused.
The scene was gory, that much could be said. But being a medic, it wasn't nearly as bad as some of the situations he had been forced to encounter. His vivid imagination, as wild as it may be, coupled with his unruly sense of healthy anxiety, had already had the chance to manifest some gruesome pictures. In fact, he just finished brainstorming a vision of his hand completely obliterated and in need of amputation for all its hideousness. The sight was something that would have made Kotton lose consciousness (hence the whole health anxiety anxiety thing). The gash was deep, spanning the length of the second joint of his pinky up towards the middle of his forearm. It was bloody, and yes, there were bits of severed flesh hanging from the edges of his palm. He could see not only adipose tissue but bone if he really wanted to stare at it, but he didn't, so he decided to create the illusion that it probably looked as if he had just finished his fight with a bear.
The young man didn’t care to retrieve his weapon; he would have to collect the bloody tool another day. The first thing he needed to do was find someone who could help him fix his arm. But he wouldn't move to do so until he had reestablished his hold of his wound against his chest. Pressure, he had learnt as his time as a medic was extremely important. It kept superficial injuries from bleeding anymore than they already had. And, whilst this wasn't applicative to him, the theory that if a wound does not stop bleeding after fifteen minutes or so, was a sign in itself that stitches or sutures were essential.
Kotton utilized the idea of pain to create additional pains against other parts of his body so as to take away the agony he felt from his laceration. He pinched his fingertips (a rather sensitive area on the body) and bit his tongue (also sensitive) until he was sure he tasted blood. It was all so he could make it back into the city without succumbing to any immediate signs of shock.
It was hilarious (in hindsight) that he had even debated whether or not he should go to the clinic to have his injury examined. He wasn’t exactly rolling in wealth, so why waste it and the associated time when he could stitch it up himself? Well, that was where the whole concept of 'shock' came into play. He was no fool to what the term meant nor its definition. Shock was a very serious thing. Shock, as far as he had learnt from veteran nurses and residency doctors, was a potentially life-threatening condition where a patient experienced a drop in blood pressure which means blood does not pressure enough to keep the brain and other parts of the body working as it should. That was because the blood was too busy doing it's 'pressure thing' at the point where a serious injury had occurred.
The young man had just reached the front steps of his house when Twig came bounding from inside. “Are you okay?” he asked. His eyes were about as bugged out at Kotton's had been when he had first glanced at his major injury.
The aggrieved man closed his eyes for a split second. He was becoming fatigued, his thoughts trailing and wandering to other, less important things. What was he doing again? His eyes started to grow heavy. Was it entirely due to blood loss or embarrassment? Disappointment? Were these feelings swarming over him in thick waves of darkness akin to the grey skyline? How could he have been so stupid? That was the main question that had emboldened itself in his running mental monologue. I mean, for fuck’s sake.
“I don’t know,” he replied truthfully and he decided in the moment to seek outside help. His medical utensils were no match for this wound of his, he was certain of that now.
Twig nodded his head in acknowledgment and swiftly found Kotton’s side. He offered his arm to help with the lesser balanced side of his guardian and made quick moves toward the clinic.
Kotton immediately felt regret by his decision of what he had wanted to do today. He should have just stayed in bed, observed the bubbled patterns of his popcorn ceiling, maybe waited for Imogen to pounce onto his bed and give him comforting licks of appreciation. But no, he had decided to go out and explore the Sweetwine Woods and practice his ability with a fucking dagger until it nearly cost him half a pint of blood or more.
Still, his philosophical side emerged, coupled with the psychological realism that was always there. Coincidence was a thing. Things happened for a reason. Regardless of what he chose to do, he would have ultimately found himself in the forest, in front of a tree, in the rain, bearing a weapon.
“Found it,” Twig declared as he guided Kotton up the rickety, slick steps of the clinic.
“You might not want to watch this,” Kotton said, his face still contorted into a mask of torment and utter disquiet. Twig was self-aware enough to read the room as much as the young man’s mood.
“Okay,” Twig announced with understanding as he directed Kotton to a seat next to his in the waiting room.
Fortunately, the injured man didn’t have to wait very long before being seen. A nurse called his name in due time and led him back. She spent no time examining his wounds. She looked down at the noticeably destroyed tissues, blood and excess detritus from a tree aside, and puffed a disgruntled sigh.
"I'm glad you came to us as soon as you could. You could have bled out from such a serious injury, what with the depth and all." Kotton had thought about that during his scramble toward town. He hadn't exactly thought so much as to the depth of the wound, but as to the sheer volume of blood he had lost during his journey to medical help.
The young man finally found it within him to look at what his nurse was looking at and started to gag. He vomited a little bit in his mouth as he gazed upon the morbidity that was his arm. Even still, he tried to keep his fear in check he was finally visited by the doctor, needle and thread in hand.
“Sounds like you did a number on yourself,” the doctor proclaimed, waltzing over to him like it wasn't a big deal. Kotton didn't know whether to feel disrespected or relieved by his urgency. Maybe he wasn't in as bad of shape as he had originally thought. Yet, this sudden calm wasted not but a second before evaporating entirely, for the doctor thrust his curved needle into the ragged edges of his skin and drew them together with a hearty piece of silk. The young man didn't think he could have been in anymore pain, but he was surely proven wrong. He had to bite his tongue to refrain from screaming and it was already tender from when he had bit it to try to reduce the searing pain of his cut.
In order to take his mind off the sting, he fought the thoughts in his head and became invested and equally enthralled in the process of the doctor who was so meticulously stitching up his arm. It was dissimilar to how he had stitched up Twig’s wounds. Had he been doing things wrong this whole time? Was performing sutures on patients solely a doctoral thing to do? As he thought about it, he couldn't recall any nurses being privileged enough to perform such a procedure. Perhaps he could use this observational experience to better his chances at becoming not only a nurse, but something more.
Once the doctor had finished, Kotton was left with no other wishes or desires other than to be utterly numb. Wasn’t numbing ointment a thing of this day and age? If it wasn’t, he, as a medic, was surely going to spend all the freedom he had forthcoming trying to research this possibility.
“Are you doing alright?” The doctor asked before snipping the thread and plummeting his equipment in the proper sharps bin behind him.
The young man stuttered at first, shock and agony still ever prevalent senses. Eventually he managed to emit a whisper that expressed an unconditional yes, he was indeed alright even if still struggling to contain abject amounts of misery.
“Of course I am,” he edited in breath. Soft tendrils of tawny hair fell through his fingers as he raked a shaky, uninjured hand through his fringe. The sensation he received from doing so was soft, an easy and grateful tactile appreciation dissimilar to the sting that had encumbered his pain receptors.
The doctor couldn't help but notice his patient's rigid body language and terse response. “I instructed the nurse to appoint you black cohosh. It’s an herb that helps alleviate pain.”
Kotton, still wincing from the pain, nodded his head and forced a smile. “Thank you,” he muttered before standing on wobbly legs and exiting the room.
All this and he was most likely charged a bajillion coins.
He trekked home with Twig in stead still wondering whether he could have stitched himself up for half the cost.