Little by little, I used a pair of scissors to cut away the rotten, blackened dead flesh around his wounds. Sticky decay. Yellow-green pus. That nauseating sweet-stench of rot and blood…
I nearly vomited on the spot more than once, but I clenched my teeth and forced myself to keep going. I didn't know if what I was doing was right. I just had an instinct that leaving rotten things inside a body could never be good.
The worker, Harvey, didn't make a sound the entire time. I couldn't tell whether he was enduring it through sheer willpower, or whether the areas that had rotted were already numb. His wife watched everything without blinking, biting down hard on her sleeve to avoid making a sound, but tears streamed down her face like beads on a snapped string.
After that, I flushed the wounds again and again with boiled water until we'd used up all that precious "clean" water. Then I pulled a wad of white cotton gauze from the bundle some workers had brought earlier, soaked it in the harshest bottle of "medical alcohol" I'd stolen from Granny Marta's cabinet (Emperor knows what it had been mixed from), and painstakingly wiped every wound.
Finally, I wrapped him up with boiled, clean cloth strips, layer by layer, tight and secure.
My technique was amateurish and crude, enough to make any surgeon put on a mask of agony.
But the patient and his wife—and even the child on her back—stared at my hands with wide eyes and naked hope. Maybe Granny Marta was right: down here, the most important thing in healing isn't medicine.
It's letting them see light.
When I finished, I was so exhausted I felt like a dead dog. I slumped into a chair, utterly spent. I had no idea whether any of this mattered.
I only knew that as a "person," I had to do something.
Even if it was only to let myself sleep at night.
"Thank you… thank you, young man…" The gaunt wife crouched in front of me, her voice so choked she couldn't form a complete sentence.
Watching them leave—bowing and thanking, supporting each other as they went—I felt strangely numb, my mind circling only two thoughts.
First: I hoped I could control secondary infection.
Second: how I was going to explain to Granny Marta that I'd wasted her medical supplies.
In the end, Granny Marta said nothing.
As if she hadn't known about it at all.
…
And now, the couple was back again, shaking with excitement. Clearly, even they hadn't expected this kind of turn.
"It's not that this old witch is useless. It's that everyone has tried every method over the past hundred-odd years…" Granny Marta wore a look of profound confusion as she carefully began removing the clumsy bandaging I'd done yesterday.
Layer by layer, the wrappings came off, and everyone held their breath.
There was no expected stench. No pus.
Those horrifying wounds on Harvey—wounds that had looked like pure rotten meat—had stopped oozing. At the edges, a ring of fresh pink flesh had already begun to grow in.
It was still grotesque, but the dead, decaying aura was gone without a trace. In its place was stubborn vitality—life that was actively trying to heal.
Granny Marta put on a magnifier cobbled together from a bullet casing and shards of broken glass, leaned in close, and examined the wound on Harvey's arm—yesterday it had been a ruin of ulceration, and now it was visibly scabbing over.
"…Some people poured mercury into patients' eyes. Some used a powered saw to cut out the entire spine. Some prayed day and night in churches. Some bathed in healthy people's blood…"
She sniffed, as if remembering something vile.
"…In the end, they all became walking sacks in the morgue. The upper-level types fought with this disease for years, too. It ended with them burning an entire mid-level medical shrine to the ground."
Little Spark squatted off to the side, eyes narrowed as she watched Granny Marta work, looking exactly like a big orange cat.
"Big guy, do you know what the folks up top say?" she suddenly boomed, mimicking a preacher's deep voice. "'This is divine punishment upon heretics and the impious!' Last week they used that excuse to burn three washerwomen with the disease in Hold Two, saying it was 'granting them release.'"
"They've always been like that. Rustbone Disease has little to do with it." Granny Marta spat. "They'll convict a young man, chop off both his hands, rip out his tongue with pliers, then burn him alive, just because he didn't kneel in the mud and pay respects to a line of filthy priests passing five or six dozen yards in front of him."
Little Spark smacked her lips.
"People up in the districts aren't any different, either. Even the ones living at the very top." She spoke as if she were sharing a juicy secret. "I heard some viscount caught this disease and donated half his estate to the Ecclesiarchy to buy sacred unguents and keep himself alive."
She stood, strolled to my side, and then suddenly sprang onto my back, making me stumble. Her head poked over my shoulder as she stared at the patient. Strands of her orange hair tickled my ear until it itched.
"But I'll bet you anything," her playful voice chirped right beside my ear, "his condition isn't as good as the one we're looking at right now."
Granny Marta stopped moving. Slowly, stiffly, she raised her head and stared at me.
"…He's really recovering. No rot. No ulceration. The wounds are closing, the tissue is swelling with life, even the bones are starting to brighten…" Her aged, wrinkled lips fluttered as if wind were blowing through them. In her cloudy amber eyes, a light appeared—like embers in a stove suddenly fed by new air.
"I've lived this long, and I've never heard of anything like this!" Her voice turned hoarse and urgent. "How did you do it? What did you do before this?!"
I was just as lost as she was. I was about to shake Little Spark off my back when there was a sudden thud beside me.
I turned and saw the woman with the child had dropped to her knees. Her eyes brimmed with tears, but her face was all smiles as she bowed deeply toward me. The child on her back seemed to find it entertaining—he tilted his head up and giggled at me.
Her husband also struggled to prop himself halfway up on the iron bed. Weak, smiling, he forced himself into a deep bow.
For a moment, I didn't know where to put myself.
But somehow… it felt pretty good.
"See? I told you Big Guy isn't normal!" Little Spark's shrill voice kept repeating it. She hopped down from my back, planted her hands on her hips, and strutted back and forth like a peacock.
Chin lifted high, she announced to the brooding Granny Marta in a tone that was both gleefully smug and fiercely proud:
"Granny, you can be wrong too. Hahahaha!"
Granny Marta choked on the words, but surprisingly, she didn't explode. She only stared at me, hard. The light in her murky eyes grew brighter and brighter—bright enough to make my skin crawl.
"Kid…" she said slowly. Her voice was hoarse, heavy with seriousness. "Would you… be willing… to try again?"
(End of Chapter)
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