Page 21 of Tending the Ache

Indrie

Indrie has been inundated with patients.

He does not know how word spreads so quickly in a city he has just moved to. But it does, carried on the same invisible current that carries gossip and rumor and the smell of bread from the bakery three streets over. By the third morning after his doors open, there is a line.

Not a long line. Not the queues he has heard about in the larger kingdoms to the south, where physicians are so scarce that the sick wait days for treatment. This is a modest gathering, six, then eight, then ten people standing in the street outside his clinic, shifting their weight and murmuring to each other and peering through the tall windows with expressions that range from hopeful to skeptical to the studied indifference of people who do not want to admit they need help.

Indrie sees them all.

The warriors come first. Training mishaps, mostly, the inevitable consequence of large men hitting each other with heavy objects on a daily basis. A sprained wrist from a shield drill gone wrong. A pulled muscle in the lower back that the soldier insists happened during a maneuver and not, as his companion suggests with barely concealed glee, during an ill-advised attempt to impress a woman by lifting a barrel over his head. A spectacular black eye that its owner claims resulted from a shield bash during sparring, though the pattern of the bruising and the sheepish quality of his explanation suggest a more domestic origin.

"It was a shield," the soldier says firmly, sitting on the examination table with his arms crossed while Indrie inspects the swelling.

Indrie presses gently at the orbital bone, checking for fractures. The soldier winces but does not flinch away. The bone is intact. The tissue is badly bruised but the eye itself is undamaged.

"A shield," Indrie agrees mildly, applying a cold compress. "You should keep this pressed against it for as long as you can. The swelling will go down in a few days."

"It was a big shield."

"I'm sure it was."

The blacksmith comes next. Torben is a barrel-chested man with heavy arms and hands the size of dinner plates, and he enters the clinic with the reluctance of somebody who has been avoiding this visit for as long as physically possible. He holds his left forearm against his chest, cradled in his right hand, and does not show it to Indrie until Indrie asks him directly.

The burn is bad. It covers the inside of his forearm from wrist to elbow, a deep, angry wound that has been festering for the better part of a week, the edges red and swollen, the center weeping with the yellowish fluid that tells Indrie infection has already set in. The skin around it is hot to the touch and the smell, faint but unmistakable, makes Indrie's jaw tighten.

"How long?" Indrie asks.

Torben shrugs with elaborate unconcern. "A few days."

"How many days?"

A pause. "Seven. Maybe eight."

Indrie closes his eyes briefly. Opens them.

"This has to be opened and drained. Today. Now." His Rengaran is blunt and unlovely and he does not care, because the words that matter are all short. "Another week and you lose the arm."

Torben goes slightly grey. He sits on the examination table, which creaks under his considerable weight, and looks away toward the window. Indrie heats his lancet in the hearth flame, washes the wound with antiseptic, and cuts.

Torben does not scream. He whistles. A tuneless, warbling whistle that wavers in pitch and volume and bears no relationship to any melody Indrie has ever heard. He sustains it for the entire duration of the procedure while sweat soaks through his shirt and his free hand grips the edge of the table hard enough to leave dents in the wood. Indrie works quickly and precisely, draining the pocket of infection, irrigating the wound, packing it with a poultice of honey and yarrow and clean linen, and by the time he finishes, Torben's whistling has devolved into a thin, reedy sound that is more breath than music.

"You'll need to come back in two days so I can check it," Indrie tells him, winding a fresh bandage around the arm with careful, even pressure. "Keep it clean and dry. No forge work until I clear you."

Torben looks at him as though Indrie has told him to stop breathing. "No forge work? For how long?"

"Until I clear you," Indrie repeats firmly.

"But I have commissions—"

"Your commissions will wait. Your arm will not." Indrie ties off the bandage and meets the blacksmith's eyes with a steady, unflinching gaze that belongs to a man twice his size and three times his years. "If the infection comes back because you were too stubborn to rest, I will not be lancing it a second time. I will be amputating."

Torben stares at him. Opens his mouth. Closes it. Nods, once, thoroughly outmaneuvered by someone half his weight. He leaves the clinic cradling his bandaged arm and muttering under his breath about healers who are too young to be giving orders.

A mother brings twin boys with matching ear infections. They are perhaps four years old and identical in every respect, including the volume of their screaming, which reaches a pitch that makes the glass jars on the shelves vibrate. Indrie treats them both with warmed oil and gentle hands, and by the time he is finished they have stopped screaming and are instead watching him with wide, fascinated eyes.

He shows them how to press an ear to a chest and listen. They take turns. The first twin puts his head against his brother's ribs, goes very still, and then sits up with his eyes enormous.

"It's knocking," he says, appalled.