WHO: Colin + you WHAT: Open catch-all WHEN: Month of Wintermarch WHERE: Kirkwall NOTES: If you would like a starter, ask me for one, or feel free to write your own!
It’s easy to recognise the sound - she’d never given birth herself, but she had been there for a handful that needed a surgeon’s touch many years ago. There’s a very faint wince on her face.
The sound goes a bit distant as Colin speaks to the patient.
"No pushing, Eabha. Blow out those candles for me now, that's right!"
The moaning quiets, though doesn't entirely make its way out of the woman's desperate pants until the contraction passes and the rest of her breath sighs out.
"That's perfect, Eabha. I must speak to Healer Rutyer once again. I won't leave your side." He picks up the crystal again and speaks into it. "If you could come to the Darktown clinic, please. Quick as you can. Eabha has had a rough go of it and we're finding her hips are a bit narrower than baby, and your help is exactly what she needs."
The poor woman. Sidony's own personal distaste for the idea of giving birth aside - it seems so woefully painful for such a little prize - she understands the suffering the lady must be going through. It's the sort of pain a man can only dare to imagine and never hope to experience themselves.
She's already moving around, gathering her surgical tools. It doesn't take too long.
"Of course. I have my things and I shall be there as quickly as my feet can carry me."
By the time Sidony arrives, Colin has already done all of the preparation he possibly can. Eabha, a young and extremely thin woman, looks apprehensively at the surgeon. Colin looks up and smiles.
"Eabha," he says to the patient, "this is the surgeon I told you about. She is wonderful and will take care of everything while you're asleep. It will be over before you know it."
He would love to give her time to ask questions, but he needs this baby out. He lifts her gown over her belly and wipes the site clean with spirits.
Eabha reaches out to Sidony, face pale. "Don't let me die," she whispers. "Don't let my baby die neither."
Eabha. Sidony knows it is best to try and refer to a patient by name - it calms them, soothes them. She had not been able to do much of that in Nevarra, at the other battles she has been in; she didn't know all the nameless Riftwatch soldiers, all the people desperate for medical attention. She knew herself and her skills and at the time that had been enough.
She's learned a little since then and this is hardly a battlefield. Just another kind of fight for another kind of soldier.
Settling down, Sidony moves herself closer to the pregnant woman, taking her hand and giving it a gentle squeeze.
"I will do everything within my power for you and your child, Eabha, and it is quite a considerable amount of power." Her smile is soft as she reaches, pushing the woman's hair from her forehead. "Have you given her what she needs yet?"
Colin nods and moves to the head of the bed, gently cradling Eabha's head in his hands.
"Eabha, I'm going to cast my little spell now. Just relax. Breathe deeply and begin to recite your favorite verse."
Eabha appears to muster, but as she opens her mouth to speak, she is already beginning to fall asleep. She is out like a light within seconds. With her asleep, Colin can be more frank.
"As far as I can tell, the baby's still alive and in the proper position for delivery," he says. "I can renew this spell as many times as we need. What do you need me to do first?"
He has never observed one of these, though he has heard about them. It's one area where all his magic cannot fix the problem, and he is reminded that he is here to make himself of use, not to be a miracle-worker or bypass the laws of nature.
Sidony had been expecting herbs, or some kind of potion, but she imagines that if you have the magic you may as well use it. It's not quite as bitter as it might once have been (Anders had calmed her a little on that front) but she still sounds somewhat less than pleased, even in her own mind.
Perhaps one day she will feel less surly about the whole thing.
"Then we need to make sure we can remove the child without risking the mother's life. Doing something like this is usually fatal for the mother, but that is without the aid and guidance of myself and some magical input. Her chances are much better."
Setting out her tools, Sidony draws a chair closer and lifts her hand, beginning to feel along the mother's abdomen.
"There will be a great deal of blood, and we'll need hot water, towels and somewhere safe for the baby."
Colin is fortunate enough to run into Kostos in the hallway and cuts across to intercept him.
"Afternoon," he says. "Um. How much would you know about enchantments that neutralize magic? I know there's glyphs, I can draw them, but I mean the permanent ones. The sort that might be on a phylactery chamber."
Startled out of his thoughts, he looks immediately cross—more cross than usual—but more in the way of someone who's just been woken up unexpectedly and is trying to get their bearings. It will pass. Probably.
Maybe there’s an interesting debate there. Should they assist in fortifying any place against their own abilities, when there’s still a chance those places will be used to hold them, and so on and so forth.
But he just grunts.
“You would need a dwarf.” Or a Tranquil, but he isn’t actually going to give people any suggestions he’d then be angry about them taking. “It might be less expensive to go pull the existing stonework out of the other Circles.”
"Maybe. If the runes are turned outward. If they aren't, you could—"
He holds up a hand, bent back and flat, as if to hold a flame (or ice, or lightning, or whatever else) that doesn't actually appear, because he doesn't do that. The implication—fairly obvious, he hopes, because it's just easier than explaining it out loud—is that walking around that way might result in the flame being snuffed out in proximity of the correct enchantments.
There's a light rap at the doorframe of the infirmary. Colin has been a rather shy, reclusive presence across the hall since the sister arrived, genial and helpful if she needed anything from the apothecary but evidently content to live in his little herbal world with his daily routine, especially given the average number of patients on any given day, which is zero. His life outside of Riftwatch has picked up with the cold weather, though, so.
"Beg pardon," he says gently, "but could I get a consult on something?"
The truth of the matter is is that while a bit of space has been made for Sawbones' within the infirmary (what with the arrival of an additional Chantry Sister and the necessity of not living strictly out of the Chapel), she doesn't spend a great deal of time there. Getting herself involved with the midwives and barbers of Low Town keeps her out most days and her contact with Colin has been mostly brusque orders.
So it's a little bit of surprise when he comes and finds her. She looks up from checking a large earthenware jar that houses her supply of leeches, quirking a brow at him, "Well, you don't seem to be bleeding or in labor. But by all means."
This is the first winter since Anders left Riftwatch, and though Colin can handle most day-to-day functions there, being a healer has proved a great deal more complex than being a merchant or a purser and a year and a half hasn't been enough to master it. He's not sure if any time will be enough.
"I, um. I run a clinic in Darktown and there's been a couple outbreaks recently. Obviously. It's winter, and it's Darktown." Where the air is literally poison. Go for the free housing, stay for the chokedamp! "Access to clean water is...nonexistent, so I'm not sure what to tell people about prevention. It's not just the grippe and lung fever, there's a very persistent strain of scrumpox the children keep passing to each other."
Well now. That gets her straightening up, looking him over with a scrutinizing glance. Then she rummages in her habit and extracts on of her trusty field journals, flipping it open to a page with so many notes, it's more ink than paper.
"Right, first thing's first, you'll need to get in touch with the rum runners, see what you can get for trade. Boiled water with beer or rum will do for lungs plagued by an abundance of phlegm and keep the rest from the worst of it without getting too far drunk. I haven't a clue how readily available a decent cave system is, so we'll have to improvise a bit."
She looks up from her notes, "Do you have a connection with the Carta?"
"I've been giving them embrium and steam," he says, hoping she can give him feedback on that as well. With her Carta question, he goes suddenly very silent, eyes widening helplessly for a second.
"No," he says, "Why?"
He was their prisoner for a few hours, but that was a while ago and that misunderstanding has long since been handled.
She nods approvingly, "Embrium is excellent for chest and lung ailments. Steam should help loosen everything up, only concern I got there is folks huddling too close to a fire."
Her Dust Town drawl sprawls out a little as she settles into the familiar grit of Duster doctoring, the clipped clear tones that have threaded their way into her voice since coming to the surface fading.
"Pity about that, it'd make things easier." The wide eyed look is noted. In someone else, it might give her pause, but if Colin is running a clinic in Dark Town, he'd find out soon enough. "We can use mine. Gonna need some of the lyrium runners to get us rocks when they hit the mines again. The ones from the old lava beds are best, but there's a couple of the stalagmites we can use too. They'll know which ones to get, it's the same shit we use in Dust Town. They got any territories in Dark Town?"
Dry amusement has the corner of her mouth curling up a little.
"They don't grow elfroot in the Deep Roads. The rocks will filter impurities out of the water and add better things to it. Water straight off a white stalagmite is better, but we can improvise. Boiling's still good, we're going to need to do that anyway for the scrumpox. And soap. Reckon we'll need a lot of that."
"Trouble is, this isn't a Riftwatch project. This is just me and sometimes Sidony on our own time. There's no money to buy everyone lots of soap or hire builders to make what you're talking about. Even my lyrium runners will want extra pay for digging up rocks."
She snaps the journal closed decisively, tucking it back in her habit pockets. Her hands settle on her hips as she frowns up at him.
"Sidony's the best surgeon I've ever seen, but she's properly trained and nobility on top of it. You're dealing with me now and we're gonna do this by Dust Town rules. We ain't payin' the Carta shit." Her expression quirks a little, "Grant you, soap's gonna be a bit harder. Most of the Low Town midwives'll spare us some of their stash and I got a little leftover from Nevarra, but we're gonna need to do some aggressive requisitioning."
A few blinks. After a moment, both hands rise in surrender.
"I mean, I'm...not arguing anything, I did ask your advice. But I'm going to need you to go a tiny bit slower. How 'aggressive' is your requisitioning, and from whom?"
That earns him a sigh and a despairing shake of the head.
"I'm not saying we rob anybody." Mostly because one ought not say that outloud to begin with. Particularly if robbery wasn't off the table. "We'll play it straight with the midwives and that Seneschal Duster they got on clerical duties here, they're good sorts. Then we hit High Town. I already got a couple of the Sisters in the private chapels on the hook, so I reckon we can get a bit out of them."
It was worth checking, considering the makeup of this organization. Colin nods a bit. People in Hightown would rather kill off the Darktowners as quickly as possible, but Chantry guilt can get a lot done, and this lady seems like she'd wield it well.
"To start, get in touch with your runners. Rum first, that'll hold us for now. Then the lyrium Dusters. If they give you trouble, tell 'em Sawbones is calling in a favor. They know where to find me. We'll worry about building once we get the rocks." The journal is back out and she's paging through it again, "Next get your hands on as much embrium and rosmary as you can. A couple good, fat nugs will do us good if we can get 'em, too."
"Well, that too. We'll need the bone marrow and blood more. Liver's best, of course, but you'll want to reserve that for any expectant mothers." She wrinkles her nose a little, thinking, "How fussy do they get about blood magic in Dark Town?"
The most put upon sigh. "Surfacers. Okay, don't tell 'em what it is. Or have me give it to 'em. The deep mushroom takes most of the metallic taste out so you can't tell anyhow."
"It's Darktown," he says with a shrug. "They eat everything. Sometimes without cleaning it properly. They put animal blood in their food all the time. It would still be best if you did it, though, I really don't have time to attend my own trial, if they bothered with one. What's it for?"
Darktown was like Dust Town then. Expectations adjusted accordingly, Sawbones flips to a different page in the journal and starts making notes.
"Nourishment, primarily. Stew the deep mushrooms in a mixture of blood and marrow til it's all cooked down, then mash to a paste. It keeps all right if you encase it in clay and bury it with salt rock, but I don't reckon we'll have enough left over to worry about that."
Food! She wants him to make food. He brightens a bit at the prospect.
"Some lime and chilies would make it go down well," he says, "and they could use it as a stock for their soups at home." A glint of confusion. "Though I...I hate to ask a stupid question."
His excitement softens her expression a little. She nods at his suggestions, "If you can find it, I'll leave it to you." She gestures for him to continue, "Go on and ask anyway. I'd rather a stupid question than a stupid mistake."
"The ones with scrumpox, the children, should they be...eating blood? I mean, the ones with lung fever and grippe, the problem's the phlegm. But if you take someone already with a blood imbalance and have them...eat blood...? I told you it's a stupid question."
"It ain't," she tells him, "I didn't learn the humors when I was learning my trade. It's all well and good for you lot living on the surface, but from my understanding, Darktown is about as deep in the Stone as Surfacers get. That means they're closer to the Taint than your average and if you don't mind me saying so, you lot don't wash near enough to start with."
Not that she gave the remotest of impression that she cared if he did mind. "Now the blood ain't as much for them as it is for their mothers and older sisters. For them, we'll need the clean water, soap and some good dirt. We can't get what I like best, but it's winter so I reckon we'll have a good shot at the memorial garden. The Gallows got a bit too much magic in it for my liking."
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Sidony
"My lady?"
In the background comes a woman's moan. Once you've heard this sort of thing for long, it's unmistakably the sound of labor.
no subject
It’s easy to recognise the sound - she’d never given birth herself, but she had been there for a handful that needed a surgeon’s touch many years ago. There’s a very faint wince on her face.
“How might I be of service?”
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"No pushing, Eabha. Blow out those candles for me now, that's right!"
The moaning quiets, though doesn't entirely make its way out of the woman's desperate pants until the contraction passes and the rest of her breath sighs out.
"That's perfect, Eabha. I must speak to Healer Rutyer once again. I won't leave your side." He picks up the crystal again and speaks into it. "If you could come to the Darktown clinic, please. Quick as you can. Eabha has had a rough go of it and we're finding her hips are a bit narrower than baby, and your help is exactly what she needs."
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The poor woman. Sidony's own personal distaste for the idea of giving birth aside - it seems so woefully painful for such a little prize - she understands the suffering the lady must be going through. It's the sort of pain a man can only dare to imagine and never hope to experience themselves.
She's already moving around, gathering her surgical tools. It doesn't take too long.
"Of course. I have my things and I shall be there as quickly as my feet can carry me."
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By the time Sidony arrives, Colin has already done all of the preparation he possibly can. Eabha, a young and extremely thin woman, looks apprehensively at the surgeon. Colin looks up and smiles.
"Eabha," he says to the patient, "this is the surgeon I told you about. She is wonderful and will take care of everything while you're asleep. It will be over before you know it."
He would love to give her time to ask questions, but he needs this baby out. He lifts her gown over her belly and wipes the site clean with spirits.
Eabha reaches out to Sidony, face pale. "Don't let me die," she whispers. "Don't let my baby die neither."
no subject
She's learned a little since then and this is hardly a battlefield. Just another kind of fight for another kind of soldier.
Settling down, Sidony moves herself closer to the pregnant woman, taking her hand and giving it a gentle squeeze.
"I will do everything within my power for you and your child, Eabha, and it is quite a considerable amount of power." Her smile is soft as she reaches, pushing the woman's hair from her forehead. "Have you given her what she needs yet?"
no subject
"Eabha, I'm going to cast my little spell now. Just relax. Breathe deeply and begin to recite your favorite verse."
Eabha appears to muster, but as she opens her mouth to speak, she is already beginning to fall asleep. She is out like a light within seconds. With her asleep, Colin can be more frank.
"As far as I can tell, the baby's still alive and in the proper position for delivery," he says. "I can renew this spell as many times as we need. What do you need me to do first?"
He has never observed one of these, though he has heard about them. It's one area where all his magic cannot fix the problem, and he is reminded that he is here to make himself of use, not to be a miracle-worker or bypass the laws of nature.
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Perhaps one day she will feel less surly about the whole thing.
"Then we need to make sure we can remove the child without risking the mother's life. Doing something like this is usually fatal for the mother, but that is without the aid and guidance of myself and some magical input. Her chances are much better."
Setting out her tools, Sidony draws a chair closer and lifts her hand, beginning to feel along the mother's abdomen.
"There will be a great deal of blood, and we'll need hot water, towels and somewhere safe for the baby."
Kostos
"Afternoon," he says. "Um. How much would you know about enchantments that neutralize magic? I know there's glyphs, I can draw them, but I mean the permanent ones. The sort that might be on a phylactery chamber."
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"Why?"
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But he just grunts.
“You would need a dwarf.” Or a Tranquil, but he isn’t actually going to give people any suggestions he’d then be angry about them taking. “It might be less expensive to go pull the existing stonework out of the other Circles.”
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He holds up a hand, bent back and flat, as if to hold a flame (or ice, or lightning, or whatever else) that doesn't actually appear, because he doesn't do that. The implication—fairly obvious, he hopes, because it's just easier than explaining it out loud—is that walking around that way might result in the flame being snuffed out in proximity of the correct enchantments.
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Sawbones
"Beg pardon," he says gently, "but could I get a consult on something?"
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So it's a little bit of surprise when he comes and finds her. She looks up from checking a large earthenware jar that houses her supply of leeches, quirking a brow at him, "Well, you don't seem to be bleeding or in labor. But by all means."
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"I, um. I run a clinic in Darktown and there's been a couple outbreaks recently. Obviously. It's winter, and it's Darktown." Where the air is literally poison. Go for the free housing, stay for the chokedamp! "Access to clean water is...nonexistent, so I'm not sure what to tell people about prevention. It's not just the grippe and lung fever, there's a very persistent strain of scrumpox the children keep passing to each other."
no subject
"Right, first thing's first, you'll need to get in touch with the rum runners, see what you can get for trade. Boiled water with beer or rum will do for lungs plagued by an abundance of phlegm and keep the rest from the worst of it without getting too far drunk. I haven't a clue how readily available a decent cave system is, so we'll have to improvise a bit."
She looks up from her notes, "Do you have a connection with the Carta?"
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"No," he says, "Why?"
He was their prisoner for a few hours, but that was a while ago and that misunderstanding has long since been handled.
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Her Dust Town drawl sprawls out a little as she settles into the familiar grit of Duster doctoring, the clipped clear tones that have threaded their way into her voice since coming to the surface fading.
"Pity about that, it'd make things easier." The wide eyed look is noted. In someone else, it might give her pause, but if Colin is running a clinic in Dark Town, he'd find out soon enough. "We can use mine. Gonna need some of the lyrium runners to get us rocks when they hit the mines again. The ones from the old lava beds are best, but there's a couple of the stalagmites we can use too. They'll know which ones to get, it's the same shit we use in Dust Town. They got any territories in Dark Town?"
no subject
"I have lyrium runners," he says. "Rocks, though?"
no subject
"They don't grow elfroot in the Deep Roads. The rocks will filter impurities out of the water and add better things to it. Water straight off a white stalagmite is better, but we can improvise. Boiling's still good, we're going to need to do that anyway for the scrumpox. And soap. Reckon we'll need a lot of that."
no subject
"Trouble is, this isn't a Riftwatch project. This is just me and sometimes Sidony on our own time. There's no money to buy everyone lots of soap or hire builders to make what you're talking about. Even my lyrium runners will want extra pay for digging up rocks."
no subject
"Sidony's the best surgeon I've ever seen, but she's properly trained and nobility on top of it. You're dealing with me now and we're gonna do this by Dust Town rules. We ain't payin' the Carta shit." Her expression quirks a little, "Grant you, soap's gonna be a bit harder. Most of the Low Town midwives'll spare us some of their stash and I got a little leftover from Nevarra, but we're gonna need to do some aggressive requisitioning."
no subject
"I mean, I'm...not arguing anything, I did ask your advice. But I'm going to need you to go a tiny bit slower. How 'aggressive' is your requisitioning, and from whom?"
no subject
"I'm not saying we rob anybody." Mostly because one ought not say that outloud to begin with. Particularly if robbery wasn't off the table. "We'll play it straight with the midwives and that Seneschal Duster they got on clerical duties here, they're good sorts. Then we hit High Town. I already got a couple of the Sisters in the private chapels on the hook, so I reckon we can get a bit out of them."
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"What do you need me to do?"
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"What do we need nugs for? Making the soap?"
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1/2
2/2
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"It's Darktown," he says with a shrug. "They eat everything. Sometimes without cleaning it properly. They put animal blood in their food all the time. It would still be best if you did it, though, I really don't have time to attend my own trial, if they bothered with one. What's it for?"
no subject
"Nourishment, primarily. Stew the deep mushrooms in a mixture of blood and marrow til it's all cooked down, then mash to a paste. It keeps all right if you encase it in clay and bury it with salt rock, but I don't reckon we'll have enough left over to worry about that."
no subject
"Some lime and chilies would make it go down well," he says, "and they could use it as a stock for their soups at home." A glint of confusion. "Though I...I hate to ask a stupid question."
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"The ones with scrumpox, the children, should they be...eating blood? I mean, the ones with lung fever and grippe, the problem's the phlegm. But if you take someone already with a blood imbalance and have them...eat blood...? I told you it's a stupid question."
no subject
Not that she gave the remotest of impression that she cared if he did mind. "Now the blood ain't as much for them as it is for their mothers and older sisters. For them, we'll need the clean water, soap and some good dirt. We can't get what I like best, but it's winter so I reckon we'll have a good shot at the memorial garden. The Gallows got a bit too much magic in it for my liking."