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We arrived at a closed classroom door; clearly, we were late. The Princess opened the door for me and followed close behind. The classroom was intimate, with tiered seating, and as we entered, I was acutely aware that I was the centre of attention. The Princess’s hand on my lower back guided me forward, and I looked up from my feet to a familiar face.
“Dr. Phears?” I spoke, recognising the vampire stood in front of the class.
“You’re familiar with Dr. Phears, pet?” The Princess asked, her hand still firmly at my back.
“Yes, from Understanding the Nature of Your Mistress class last term,” I answered awkwardly, noticing that I had unconsciously stepped closer into the Princess’s space in my unease.
“Good morning, my Royal Highness. I understand Percy will be taking my class this term,” Dr. Phears greeted. The Princess’s hand left my back, her arm moving to around my shoulders.
“Yes. I expect my pet to be treated with the respect deserving of her position as my valued property,” she replied, and her arm pulled me slightly closer.
“Certainly,” Dr. Phears replied and turned her attention to me. “Percy, please take a seat in the front row, beside Sophia.” She reached behind to her desk and handed me a heavy textbook. “Here, this is the course text. Sophia, please welcome our newest student.”
A girl with straight brown hair and a soft feminine face held her hand up with a glare aimed at me. Great.
The Princess turned me towards her, my back to the rest of the room. “The car will be waiting to collect you after class. Be good,” she commanded and brushed her knuckles against my cheek.
“Yes, Ma’am,” I replied and watched her leave the class, closing the door behind her.
“Percy, take your seat,” Dr. Phears instructed, and I turned back towards the class, keeping my eyes trained on the ground as I made my way to the empty chair beside Sophia. I sat my new heavy textbook down on the table and turned to greet the girl.
“Hi,” I offered and tried to smile confidently.
“Don’t speak to me,” she told me with a sneer, and I sighed, turning my attention back to the front of the class where Dr. Phears set up her slides.
“Today, we will cover the basics of treating common injury in the first instance before or while waiting for more appropriate help. We will cover heavy bleeding, broken bones, burns, choking, seizure, and severe allergic reactions. The first two chapters in your textbooks cover these topics in more detail than we will during class. It is imperative that you do the assigned reading if you hope to pass this class. It may be an introductory course, however, there is a lot of material to cover and not enough class time to do so.”
I was pleasantly surprised that I was familiar with the topics Dr. Phears listed. Everyone back home learned such healing. Not in a formal way. We played games as children, bandaging each other up and treating imaginary wounds. We didn’t class it as healing. But it was the retired healer that gave us the equipment to play with and demonstrated what to do. It was easy to get hurt when you were working. A healer wasn’t always close by. You needed to know what to do while you waited for the healer to arrive or before you went to get the healer, or even worse, if you were alone.
“We will begin with heavy bleeding.” Dr. Phears began her lecture with the gruesome image of a young man with a metal pole sticking out of his abdomen. “Here is an example of an individual with severe bleeding. How would you treat this, Stephan?” Dr. Phears asked a young man somewhere behind me.
“Well, firstly, I would pull out the object, then apply pressure,” he answered.
“And you would kill the patient,” Dr. Phears said. “Percy, what was Stephan’s mistake?”
“I, uh,” I stuttered, not expecting to be called on. I heard sniggers around the room.
“Take your time,” Dr. Phears encouraged, and I took a calming breath.
“Removing the pole is a mistake. It is likely acting as a plug to slow the bleeding. Pressure should be applied to the sides of the intrusion but not directly on the pole. Never remove an object from a wound unless there is absolutely no choice,” I answered.
“That is correct. In what situation may there be no choice?” she asked.
“If the object was attached to something else that was uncontrollable and would cause certain death if it could not be unattached or removed. I know of a fisherman impaled through the jaw by a billfish. The fish could not be held still and would have caused deadly injury if not immediately killed or removed. In the moment, a crewmate removed the fish,” I explained.
“Interesting. I assume that such injury is not common for fishers?”
“No, mostly broken bones, fishhooks, head injuries from impact, and the odd severed finger,” I told her.
“Fishing is a dangerous profession,” Dr. Phears stated. “If you turn to page eighty-six in your textbooks, you will see a detailed diagram of all major arteries. Severe bleeds are usually the result of injury to an artery. In Percy’s fisherman example, the artery most in danger was the carotid. I expect you all to be familiar with the major arteries by your next lesson. We will now quickly move on to broken bones. Signs and symptoms of broken bones include….”
I was paying close attention to Dr. Phears' lecture. Politics wasn’t a subject in which I shone, but healing? I felt that I could be good at. The Princess wanted me here, and I wanted to do well for her.
“Pssst.”
I whipped my head around at the odd sensation of someone whispering in my ear, but Sophia was looking ahead and making notes directly in her textbook.
“Good, you can hear me.”
