Elvirund | ✔️

Chapter Eleven

I quickly tipped the coffee down my throat, anxious to get busy. Yesterday's realization still weighed heavily on my mind, as much as I repressed the thought. I needed to distract myself. Cas joined me minutes later, tea in hand and a grin at the ready.

"Good, you're on time."

"I'm excited. Can you blame me?"

True. Most of the new practitioners I trained were eager to learn and ready to begin as soon as they could; those who didn't have drive to master the art of medicine were the ones I didn't bother with.

"Your first lesson consists of CPR and flesh wound training. Are you ready?"

"As ever."

I gave him a short nod and led him into the training room. A life size dummy was sprawled on the floor, as close to a possible situation as we could get it.

"Of course, no amount of dummy practice will measure up to the real thing, but this is the best we can do."

Kneeling by the dummy, I waved Cas over.

"Have you ever done CPR?"

"No."

"Seen it?"

"Couple times."

"Watch closely."

I showed him the correct way to execute thirty compressions, followed by two breaths.

"The trick is to push fast and deep enough but not too far. Now, don't leave more than ten seconds between each set of compressions."

He frowned a bit before beginning awkwardly under my strict eye. Slowly, as he grew more comfortable with the task and my careful stare, his movements became more fluid, his form more relaxed.

"That's it. Good."

I let him complete a few rounds before I stopped him.

"Now, one thing you have to remember is there won't always be a need for CPR. The ability to tell when you do comes with time. The most basic way to remember if you should use CPR is as follows: head, heart, hands."

Cas raised an eyebrow and processed this.

"If they're breathing, if their heartbeat is present, if the hands are a healthy color." He breathed, his eyes widening a fraction.

"Exactly."

I gave him a wild grin before I continued with the lesson. He blew through the introduction I gave him on the classification of open wounds and I quietly wondered what kinds of things he had seen to be able to recognize lacerations so easily. Not many knew what a bullet wound looked like right off the bat like that. 

"I think that will be all for today. You've covered nearly every topic you need to. Tomorrow I'll have Gretel give you the lesson on burns."

"Don't you know how to treat burns?"

"I trust Gretel more than I trust myself. I have a strong aversion to looking at burn wounds."

My stomach flipped a couple times and Cas must have seen my fears in my expression because he shrugged. What I had told him wasn't exactly true but that wasn't important.

"Never mind that. It'll be fine."

I despised my angelic nature at times. It wasn't the heat that would kill me. No, it was the flame itself, which would tear into my flesh as if my body was made of paper. The heat wouldn't bother me but the pain from the burning of my body would kill me. In fact, as much as I tried to prevent myself from thinking about it, cooking scared me just the slightest bit. Just not enough for me to stop.