Emeral In Shadow

Love and Scars [#14]

After the encounter between Madelief and Gustaaf, both were rushed to the infirmary by a throng of Marcellus' Congressmen.
The infirmary was a sterile marble place, medics bustling around quietly under the palest green-white scrubs. Their faces were all clean shaven, and pale from toiling away from the sun tending to every ailment of the royals and, occasionally, the servants.
Hands pushed and pulled the two towards the operating rooms. Two separate ones.
He noticed sweat rolling down Madelief's face, and a ghostly paleness to her complexion.
The thought occurred to Gustaaf that though he knew Marcellus wanted him alive, he didn't know about the medics' allegiances, or perhaps even the lower congressman.
Gustaaf shoved through a thin wall of people to reach Madelief, and reached out his hand towards her.
She took Gustaaf's hand, holding on tightly for support, and he noticed how cool and clammy her skin felt.
"Same room. Try anything and I'll have Marcellus on your backs, and if he tries to do anything to Maddy, remind him that he knows what I'll do." He told them sharply, glaring daggers at the people around them.
The gaggle of escorts gave shallow nods. Madelief began breathing erratically and rapidly, medics having to steady her as she became unsteady on her feet. Gustaaf followed, eyes glazed over with worry as they laid her in a pristine white bed.
The room they had been brought to had three beds in it, each adorned in clean white linen draped over stiff though still soft and velvety to the touch mattress on dark veneered oak frames with wide backboards.
One medic, graying hair on pale skin over a strong jawline and cheekbones and eyes like rubies, began shouting at the congressmen wildly, "Out, out! We can't operate with all you meat bags standing around!" The man said,
"Marcellus requested that-" One tried to say, but the Medic got in his face, spit flying onto the greasy congressman's face as he yelled obscenities at him.
The congressman moving his hand down to his waist where a sword waited, a blade just nasty as Marcellus' but smaller. "Marcellus' word is law, those who go against it-"
Gustaaf was tiring of their banter, Madelief in dire need of care. He stepped forward, putting himself between the medic and congressman,
"Last I checked, the King's word was law. And King Gustaaf here issues a royal decree for you to haul your sorry afts out of here!" He said with as much faux authority as he could muster, squaring his shoulders and glaring the man in the eye.
Luckily, after what seemed a quick glaring contest between the two, the congressman turned around and stomped off, the other following like sheep.
The medic sighed exasperated, shaking his head. He turned to Gustaaf, "You, may stay. Try to stay as calm as possible, lower your heart rate so we don't have two people going into shock." He said with a warm, though somewhat gruff tone.
Madelief's hair was entirely soaked through with sweat, and though she tried hard to not show how horrid she felt, the violent panting and dazed look to her eyes did not help.
A medic rushed a vial of deep violet liquid over to the ruby-eyed, most likely the head, medic, and he took out a dropper and gently squirt two doses of the stuff into her mouth. Her breathing slowed and her head lolled to the left. Gustaaf got scared for a moment, irrationally thinking it was poison, before he noticed the light heave of her chest. They had just put her under, to ease the pain.
But he could not calm down. Not as his friend, the only person fueling his hopes and dreams, his lover, wavered between life and death. He paced the floor, blood flowing slowly though steadily from his chest wound, as over a dozen medics cleaned and closed up each of her many cuts and gashes.
Their hands were like whirlwinds as they stitched line after jagged line together, moving with expertise only found by the Royal medics. Some shallow wounds they filled with a sort of sappy glue or ointment.
Soon the amount of medics shrunk to three, the ruby-eyed man and two others, all gathered around her foot, pierced with the arrow.
At some point they had changed her out of her cloak, something Gustaaf was happy to see, one less mark his mentor had made upon her. She wore now a sort of medical gown, pastel green with thin shoulder straps.
Gustaaf stepped beside them, figuring his presence wouldn't impede them at this point, and looked at the wound himself.
He winced at it. Which said a lot, considering the volume of grotesque and gruesome ways he'd used to kill his targets.
The flesh was puffy and inflamed around the chunk of the arrow shaft, wet and glistening with blood. The head medic looked unfazed, though the lessers' faces beside him looked pale green.
The medic turned to each of his underlings, whispering to them, before they rushed off to fetch something.
The ruby-eyed man turned to Gustaaf.
"I-I apologize but... We must remove her foot." The stubborn and strong man's eyes were filled with pity, and laden with guilt. It wasn't his fault that he couldn't save the foot, but clearly he felt that it was so.
Gustaaf first felt hopeless, hollow once more. Would she ever be able to run through the flowers with him? Could they stroll through the woods, pointing out every little bug and plant they saw and laughing as they tripped over rocks?
The hollow needed to be filled with something, so anger took the place of the emptiness. He clenched his teeth together, holding his fists white-knuckled to his sides. He bit his tongue for as long as he could, before launching out towards the medic.
"I'm sure you can do something, damnit!" He grabbed ahold of the man's collar, who's face was weighed down with a mix of surprise and even more guilt. He didn't fight back, though he could easily out-muscle Gustaaf's lithe body.
The man looked down, the bright lights of the infirmary casting shadows on his face.
"It would take a miracle to heal what will be a gaping hole when that arrow is removed. I am no divine being, only human." He croaked out.
Gustaaf tightened his grip around the medic's shirt, twisting it around his fist. His nails dug into his palms.
He realized tears ran down his face, and he hated it.
Only human. That's what they all were. Flesh and bone toiling away, trying their best to do what they felt was right to do with their limited time, until they die as all the rest before them. Back to dust, to be forgotten by the next generation.
With how many times Gustaaf had taken the lives of others, it felt easy to distance himself from everyone else. Something inhuman, whether of myth or nightmare, deity or demon, he didn't know.
But in the end, he was just another human. Just like the rest. And it infuriated him, being unable to stop this tragedy.
How many families had he brought this same feeling to? Fathers, mothers, daughters, sons, how many hollow husks of men and women had he left shambling around, life ripped of all meaning because of tragedy. Tragedies caused by his hands.
He drove his fist into the medic's cheek, a solid sturdy hit that drove him hard into the floor, before going to sit on the bed to the left of Madelief's.
He sat up against the backboard of the bed, chewing on the inside of his lip furiously. The medic stood up, rubbing his cheek as a dark blue splotch of bruising already began to show.
"I suppose that means we may proceed...?" He asked Gustaaf with a raised eyebrow, who only glared and nodded shallowly in response.
After a little longer, the two medics returned with different implements and bags full of equipment and vials of medicine and the like. The lead medic took a fresh dropper and a vial of dark crimson liquid, and dripped it into Madelief's sleeping mouth.
Gustaaf didn't watch the rest. He heard sound of the saw through flesh, vibrating through bone, and back out. The clear and commanding voice of the medic as he performed the surgery on her foot.
After many long minutes, signalled by a trio of exhausted sighs, the surgery was over. Gustaaf sat with his back turned to the whole operation, knees to his chest, arms wrapped around them, as he glared angrily from beneath his crown at the wall.
The lead medic walked over to Gustaaf now, kneeling before the beside, setting a white handbag down beside him. "It is finished. I'll tend to your stab wound now." He stood up, holding the bag open and picking out some bandage and something to pack the wound, as well as a needle for stitching.