WHO: Petrana de Cedoux + open. WHAT: This month, after more than a year of dithering and planning, Madame de Cedoux had her anchor-shard amputated. WHEN: Across this month. WHERE: The Gallows infirmary, primarily. NOTES: Starters in the comments.
To the best of her ability, she prepares; ensures that her office may run smoothly for a time without her, that such information as someone might need to take it over is readily available, that her projects are left in good standing or set aside for a time. She takes great care with instructions, aware that the absence may not be as temporary as she has in mind— that the best laid plans can come to naught. That there is risk associated with the decision she’s made.
Nevertheless, she has made it.
In the moments before her surgery, where there is nothing left for her to do and nothing left that she can control and she is only waiting, she looks for Julius — it is not so much that she allows herself to be frightened as that for a short time, there is simply nothing else left for her to be. Nothing left to divert herself from her own feelings,
unconsciousness is a great relief. She swims back from it reluctantly, altered, and in the days that follow—
Julius is at her side as much as he's permitted to be. The fact that he listens when Strange says he needs to step out likely ensures he's allowed to stay as much as is practical, or so he assumes. Petrana isn't the only one who has done some delegating in advance, and while he won't be on bed rest after, he's made space to be at her side without worrying about what isn't getting done. (Much.)
They have a quiet moment, just before, when the preparations don't involve Petrana directly. And when she looks for Julius ... there he is, moving from the edge of the room to her bedside at her glance. Neither of them is great with moments where they have no task in front of them.
It's a moment before he says, "It's strange to think that the day is here. Is it for you, too?" Something that she'd been thinking about so long.
As he comes to her side she reaches for him with both hands, gripping tightly with the hand that is, in all likelihood, holding his for the last time. Warm and whole and unmarred but for the anchor-shard she has long since grown accustomed to the presence of; not for the first time, she thinks, how mad to part with a perfectly good limb, how well it has served her. How mad it would be not to, with all that they know and all that they might learn.
“To think that we must write him of it,” she says, quietly. When she had first begun this conversation, she had — the rare times that she allowed herself to do so at all — imagined it arriving differently.
Courage is not, she reminds herself, the absence of fear. It is the action.
"I know." He's had the thought, perhaps a bit selfish, that if Marcus were here, he wouldn't have to sit outside through the surgery alone, just waiting to learn if anything goes wrong. He'd thought through who else to ask, and those he has a few people he suspects would have said yes, the person who comes close to Julius wanting them there is Strange (who will be otherwise occupied).
He lifts her hands to press a kiss to the one that will soon be gone. "I'll start the letter to him, after, if you like. You can add your pages when you feel up to writing. Or I can take dictation, if you'd rather." They'll get word to him one way or another. Both of them.
She knows him well enough to know his quiet confidence that nothing will go wrong is at least in part a choice. For her, and perhaps a bit for himself as well. Even so, his hand is steady where she grips it.
“Oh, it must be dictation,” she says, a wry murmur. “He’ll find that very amusing, I’m sure.”
After all the fuss that she had made when it was Marcus so obliged—
and isn’t it rather similar, she supposes. She flexes the hand soon to be parted with in Julius’s grip; it isn’t as if she has no alternatives before her. Both paths hold risk ahead of them, and she is choosing which danger she prefers. It has become clear, in all the months of her worrying on it, that this is the course she prefers— even still.
It makes him laugh, quietly. "He will, too. And maybe that will get it on its way a bit faster." She might feel up to dictating her thoughts sooner than to writing herself, after.
Julius studies her face, intently, as if to evaluate how she really is behind the quiet resolve. It's not an expression without affection, but she also knows how observant he can be when he puts his mind to it. (A more morbid frame of mind might suggest he's memorizing her in case anything goes wrong.)
"I would he were here with us," Julius adds, quietly, which can't be a surprise. He doesn't expect she feels any differently.
De Cedoux has the benefit of her physician now having some more experience under his belt with this particular operation, beyond dredging up faded memories from his trainee rotation in vascular surgery. In all the time leading up to it, imaginary statistics had run through Doctor Strange’s mind, fretful and worried, a little understandably rattled from the last time he undertook this. What’s the success rate on major upper limb amputations in 9:51 Dragon, he wonders? Surely not very high.
But in the end, it goes well: no infection, no sepsis, no need to call in the big guns of a magical healer. It’s still a tense experience, although he’s all unruffled professional calm throughout the procedure: Strange hovering beside his assistants and giving direction, their strong and steady hands to tie off an artery where he can’t any longer, careful stitches, boiled water to clean the wound, and cold compresses later to bring down the swelling. He’d feel better and more in control if his own pre-car-crash hands were on the tiller, but he has to settle for instructing instead. No delicate scalpel for this operation: it’s a large sterilised blade sawing through flesh, parting muscle until there’s the distressing thunk of dead flesh hitting the table, suddenly an inanimate separate object rather than a piece of her; and fascinatingly there’s a glimpse of green deep within the meat, like a vein of emerald.
At least the draught keeps the woman unconscious, and the magical cuff on arm keeps her from feeling anything of the surgery itself: a blessing that the infirmary’s equipped with it. If she’d felt the agony and woken up and started involuntarily thrashing, this would’ve gone much worse.
Afterwards, she swims in and out of consciousness and the doctor hovers and monitors. He delivers reports to Julius as needed, and lets the other man visit as much as is practical.
And when the day comes that Petrana de Cedoux is finally awake and alert enough to carry on an official conversation, the stump freshly-bandaged and the wound still raw beneath it, Strange pulls up a chair.
To find herself confined to her bed by recovery — it is not so unfamiliar. Pain management, the interminable requirements of rest, the lingering discomforts; often enough in her womanhood she’s found herself whiling away hours, gazing at walls and out windows, wishing for the cooperation of her body with her mind.
It doesn’t, for all that, become much easier. She dislikes the smell of the infirmary, the warmth of only blankets where she has become accustomed to bodies as well, and she cannot quite bear to look down at what she’s done to herself. She had hoped—
Well.
“As well as can be expected,” she says, bearing up with characteristic stoicism. It was her decision. It was the correct decision. She is well, she thinks; as well as one might wish to be. It would have been foolish to expect to be at once at peace with herself, as if she’s ever been. “My head is clearer, yet.”
The stoicism is as expected as it’s appreciated. Strange is bemused to realise that he keeps being surrounded by women like this; they make a firm decision, and they stick to it.
“We’re tapering you off the sedative, although you’re still on regular painkillers. They’re not as powerful as what I’m used to administering, but it gets the job done,” he says, launching into contextualisation for her. This is the world you’ve woken up to. This is what you’ll be dealing with. This is what’s happening to your body.
“The cuff’s already gone. It was important to not overdo that particular crutch; we can’t have you slamming your arm into objects because you can’t feel it, and if you start running an infection and it starts feeling hot to the touch, again, we want you to be aware. In case anything feels wrong, or too-tender.”
We, the doctor keeps saying, as if he still has an army of fellow surgeons and physician assistants and nurses. It’s just his few assistants in-house. Few and literally vanishing still.
(In the back of his mind: a little reminder to self, to-do list item, recruit again for more assistants. The to-do list never stops spinning along despite the fact that he’s actively in conversation right now.)
“If the pain starts creeping in, though, just shout and we can up your elfroot dosage.”
To recover well enough that she might become bored is a thing to be grateful for.
Petrana reminds herself of this. With her book stand beside her bed, she grows accustomed to reaching with only one hand, paying half attention to the book that seems less urgent to read now. She practises navigating her meals with one hand, practises reaching for her water-cup, practises looking down and trying to tell herself that she will, in time, find all this ordinary.
She feels at once changed and not at all; solid and the same.
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before and after.
To the best of her ability, she prepares; ensures that her office may run smoothly for a time without her, that such information as someone might need to take it over is readily available, that her projects are left in good standing or set aside for a time. She takes great care with instructions, aware that the absence may not be as temporary as she has in mind— that the best laid plans can come to naught. That there is risk associated with the decision she’s made.
Nevertheless, she has made it.
In the moments before her surgery, where there is nothing left for her to do and nothing left that she can control and she is only waiting, she looks for Julius — it is not so much that she allows herself to be frightened as that for a short time, there is simply nothing else left for her to be. Nothing left to divert herself from her own feelings,
unconsciousness is a great relief. She swims back from it reluctantly, altered, and in the days that follow—
mostly sleeps.
before
They have a quiet moment, just before, when the preparations don't involve Petrana directly. And when she looks for Julius ... there he is, moving from the edge of the room to her bedside at her glance. Neither of them is great with moments where they have no task in front of them.
It's a moment before he says, "It's strange to think that the day is here. Is it for you, too?" Something that she'd been thinking about so long.
no subject
“To think that we must write him of it,” she says, quietly. When she had first begun this conversation, she had — the rare times that she allowed herself to do so at all — imagined it arriving differently.
Courage is not, she reminds herself, the absence of fear. It is the action.
no subject
He lifts her hands to press a kiss to the one that will soon be gone. "I'll start the letter to him, after, if you like. You can add your pages when you feel up to writing. Or I can take dictation, if you'd rather." They'll get word to him one way or another. Both of them.
She knows him well enough to know his quiet confidence that nothing will go wrong is at least in part a choice. For her, and perhaps a bit for himself as well. Even so, his hand is steady where she grips it.
no subject
After all the fuss that she had made when it was Marcus so obliged—
and isn’t it rather similar, she supposes. She flexes the hand soon to be parted with in Julius’s grip; it isn’t as if she has no alternatives before her. Both paths hold risk ahead of them, and she is choosing which danger she prefers. It has become clear, in all the months of her worrying on it, that this is the course she prefers— even still.
Even still.
no subject
Julius studies her face, intently, as if to evaluate how she really is behind the quiet resolve. It's not an expression without affection, but she also knows how observant he can be when he puts his mind to it. (A more morbid frame of mind might suggest he's memorizing her in case anything goes wrong.)
"I would he were here with us," Julius adds, quietly, which can't be a surprise. He doesn't expect she feels any differently.
after. cw some medical gore throughout
De Cedoux has the benefit of her physician now having some more experience under his belt with this particular operation, beyond dredging up faded memories from his trainee rotation in vascular surgery. In all the time leading up to it, imaginary statistics had run through Doctor Strange’s mind, fretful and worried, a little understandably rattled from the last time he undertook this. What’s the success rate on major upper limb amputations in 9:51 Dragon, he wonders? Surely not very high.
But in the end, it goes well: no infection, no sepsis, no need to call in the big guns of a magical healer. It’s still a tense experience, although he’s all unruffled professional calm throughout the procedure: Strange hovering beside his assistants and giving direction, their strong and steady hands to tie off an artery where he can’t any longer, careful stitches, boiled water to clean the wound, and cold compresses later to bring down the swelling. He’d feel better and more in control if his own pre-car-crash hands were on the tiller, but he has to settle for instructing instead. No delicate scalpel for this operation: it’s a large sterilised blade sawing through flesh, parting muscle until there’s the distressing thunk of dead flesh hitting the table, suddenly an inanimate separate object rather than a piece of her; and fascinatingly there’s a glimpse of green deep within the meat, like a vein of emerald.
At least the draught keeps the woman unconscious, and the magical cuff on arm keeps her from feeling anything of the surgery itself: a blessing that the infirmary’s equipped with it. If she’d felt the agony and woken up and started involuntarily thrashing, this would’ve gone much worse.
Afterwards, she swims in and out of consciousness and the doctor hovers and monitors. He delivers reports to Julius as needed, and lets the other man visit as much as is practical.
And when the day comes that Petrana de Cedoux is finally awake and alert enough to carry on an official conversation, the stump freshly-bandaged and the wound still raw beneath it, Strange pulls up a chair.
“How are you feeling?”
no subject
It doesn’t, for all that, become much easier. She dislikes the smell of the infirmary, the warmth of only blankets where she has become accustomed to bodies as well, and she cannot quite bear to look down at what she’s done to herself. She had hoped—
Well.
“As well as can be expected,” she says, bearing up with characteristic stoicism. It was her decision. It was the correct decision. She is well, she thinks; as well as one might wish to be. It would have been foolish to expect to be at once at peace with herself, as if she’s ever been. “My head is clearer, yet.”
no subject
“We’re tapering you off the sedative, although you’re still on regular painkillers. They’re not as powerful as what I’m used to administering, but it gets the job done,” he says, launching into contextualisation for her. This is the world you’ve woken up to. This is what you’ll be dealing with. This is what’s happening to your body.
“The cuff’s already gone. It was important to not overdo that particular crutch; we can’t have you slamming your arm into objects because you can’t feel it, and if you start running an infection and it starts feeling hot to the touch, again, we want you to be aware. In case anything feels wrong, or too-tender.”
We, the doctor keeps saying, as if he still has an army of fellow surgeons and physician assistants and nurses. It’s just his few assistants in-house. Few and literally vanishing still.
(In the back of his mind: a little reminder to self, to-do list item, recruit again for more assistants. The to-do list never stops spinning along despite the fact that he’s actively in conversation right now.)
“If the pain starts creeping in, though, just shout and we can up your elfroot dosage.”
after, redux.
Petrana reminds herself of this. With her book stand beside her bed, she grows accustomed to reaching with only one hand, paying half attention to the book that seems less urgent to read now. She practises navigating her meals with one hand, practises reaching for her water-cup, practises looking down and trying to tell herself that she will, in time, find all this ordinary.
She feels at once changed and not at all; solid and the same.
The hours pass slow as ever.
(frozen comment) orzammar travel prep.