[P] it's a beautiful crime

[Ruth]

☼  RUTH OF HOUSE IESHAN  ☼
רות

"WHAT ARE EMOTIONS / ANYWAY? Flowers die / not knowing. And yet our feelings lead us down that one / path we only ever take, / deceptively edged with bloom after bloom after bloom."

When I find the man – who is nearly as much of a corpse as he is a living being, at that point -, I am supposed to be off work. My shift ended perhaps an hour before I arrived at the Oasis, intending to gather some of the plants that grow on the bank. Ishak, I’m sure, is somewhere nearby, though out of sight; close enough, I’m sure, to hear me if I scream.

(I am probably in less danger in the open desert than I am in the city, or, perhaps, even in my own home; but that is beside the point.)

I see the vultures first, and I expect some dead animal. It is not abnormal to find a corpse near the oasis, struck down by some predator waiting for them to drink at the banks; but there is no dead jackal lying on the shoreline as I approach it, nor a corpse at all. Instead, the vultures have encircled some unconscious man. I can barely make out the heave of his sides from where I am standing, my lips rapidly pressing into a mostly-uncharacteristic grimace.

This will be trouble. Frankly, it will probably be more trouble than it is worth. Regardless – I did take an oath, so it is my job, whether I like it or not (whether I am meant to be working or not) to see to the man, if I can. He is lucky, I think, that I rarely go out into the desert without my tools. If I didn’t have them with me, there would be very little I could do for him, save perhaps for asking Ishak to help me bring him back to the hospital.

(I suspect that I will find myself doing that regardless – but that is beside the point. I can probably improve his condition somewhat while I am here, make sure that he is stable enough to survive the trek back to the court. If the vultures have already come for him, he is most likely quite weak already.)

I don’t approach him out of a sense of charity, or sympathy, or duty. It is nothing quite so honorable, because I do not care at all if he lives or dies. What guides my steps, as I draw towards him across the sand, is primarily some sense of obligation, a vague sense that this is what I’m supposed to be doing. It is what a good person would do, I’m sure, and a good doctor, and, although I know well that I am not good, I like to pretend to be.

(If I could be good – I would choose to be good.)

My lips curl up around the white edges of my teeth as I eye the vultures that have landed alongside his body, a few daring to peck at his still-heaving sides; I stride up towards them, undeterred in spite of my slight stature, and, with an irritated hiss of “Leave” and a few snaps of my teeth, I manage to chase off the birds. They perch in the branches of one of the one of the palms bordering the oasis, observing like some silent jury. I ignore them, and I begin to examine the half-dead man in front of me.

There is nothing I can do about the malnutrition made evident in his jutting, bony sides. (That is something that will have to be dealt with later.) His coat is dull and caked in grime. (I think, with some exasperation, that he could have made it into the water before collapsing; it would have been far more convenient, unless he’d drowned.) More importantly, his wounds look old, and, if they are healed at all, they are healed badly – at least some of them are infected. I lean down to examine the ones that ooze pus and smell dangerously like rot, and my nose, unconsciously, wrinkles with something like disdain. It is difficult to know where to start with such a troublesome case; most of my emergencies are at least emergencies because they have a singular, severe wound. That is not this man’s problem. If anything, he seems to be suffering from a lack of care, but I tell myself that most strangers lost in the Mors haven’t a clue how to patch themselves up with the scarce resources left available.

(Else, I can’t imagine why he would cross the desert in this state.)

I’ll have to cut out some of the infection; it might necrotize, if I don’t. (It might already be necrotizing. Some of the deeper wounds seem to be draining, and he is unconscious, though there could be plenty of reasons for that.) I have some of my tools with me, at least, but before I’d dare to begin removing the dead skin, I need to clean him off. I bite back a sigh, opening my bag, and I pull out a washrag and soap.

I dip the washrag in the oasis, then wring it out and rub it against the soap. It’s old, and somewhat tattered at the edges, but it will have to do – it’s all I have with me, at the moment.

I lean over his body, jaw gritted in concentration, and I begin to scrub the grime off his coat, beginning with the regions closest to his wounds. I don’t touch the infection itself, however; I don’t want to spread it over the rest of him. (I will deal with it last, once I’ve begun to cut.)

And if he happens to wake while I am cleaning him – I am too preoccupied with my work to notice.

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@Mernatius || <3 || brenda shaughnessy, "red tulips, then asphodel"