Harold's pulse thundered louder than the patient's ragged breaths.
The crude cut he'd opened in their thigh gaped wetly, and the last trickle of blood seeped through his makeshift stitch.
He sat back for a single second, trembling, realizing his hands had worked faster than his mind.
It had been automatic.
Like something else had taken the wheel, leaving him to watch from behind his own eyes.
And he couldn't stop now.
"Two more bleeds inside…" he muttered, voice shaking. "One in the abdomen. One in the chest. If I leave them…"
He didn't let himself finish the thought.
Instead, he pressed the dagger's flat against his thigh, steadying the tremor in his wrist.
"Okay. Next."
The abdomen wound was worse, the blue coloration spreading all across their waist, and even beginning to bulge up like a bubble in some places.
As soon as he pressed the blade and parted skin, the cavity bubbled red, spilling warmth over his hands.
Harold gagged on the metallic tang filling the air.
His instincts screamed to stop, to pull back, to not look at what no human should look at.
But his hands didn't obey.
They pushed the suction bulb in, clearing the pooling blood, scraping desperately for clarity.
The system guided him—no glowing arrows, no floating messages, just that subtle intuition that whispered there.
He found the torn vessel pulsing erratically.
Harold bit down on his tongue, braced his shaking hands, and threaded needle through slick flesh.
The suture clamped shut in an ugly knot, slowing the leak to a faint ooze.
"Good enough," he hissed, closing the cavity with hurried, uneven stitches.
When the last knot tied itself off, his arms nearly gave out.
Sweat dripped into his eyes, stinging, but he forced himself onward.
"One more."
The chest wound terrified him most.
If he opened too far, if he slipped, if the lung punctured worse…
But doing nothing was death guaranteed.
He pressed the knife in shallow, careful.
Each millimeter opened another flood of dark blood.
His hands slipped, but he forced the suction bulb back down, pumping and drawing out the liquid as quickly as it filled.
Then he saw it: a torn vessel near the lung, every pulse squeezing out another spurt.
"Got you."
Needle in.
Thread through.
Yank taut.
Knot.
Knot.
The vessel pinched closed.
The flood slowed to a seep.
He let out a bark of laughter, half hysteria, half relief.
"Still alive. Still alive."
He stitched the incision closed with jerky haste, every prick of the needle echoing in his skull like hammer blows.
By the time Harold finished the internal work, the stone floor beneath him looked like a battlefield.
Smears of blood streaked the rock, tacky under his boots, his shirt soaked through.
But the patient's chest rose and fell.
Weak.
Uneven.
But alive.
He sagged back against the wall, hands trembling violently now that the adrenaline dip hit him.
Then his gaze flicked to the rest of the wounds.
Dozens of them.
Still untreated.
"Not done yet." His voice cracked, but his body lurched forward anyway. "Not until you're stable."
The next hour blurred.
Over an hour of dealing with the contusions—angry purple bruises swelling across ribs and limbs.
Harold summoned bandages, soaked some in water from the waterskin left to him by Jini, then wrapped them snugly around joints and muscles.
A crude cold compress, but better than nothing.
Every roll of banadges that appeared only to be used like a cloth to clean away the mess of blood vanished upon reaching the floor when he cast them aside.
Throughout the whole ordeal he never heard the system chime a single time, not that it mattered he had a job to do, not a game to play.
None of it mattered.
Only the patient mattered.
Finally, the fractures, and breaks.
He summoned rods, rolls of plastered bandages, tape.
His Casting skill hummed in his veins, guiding his hands like an unseen tutor.
He wound the torso and shoulders first, binding ribs and collarbone into immobility.
The plaster stiffened hard within minutes, sealing the body inside a shell.
Then the arm.
Then the legs.
Every limb swaddled, braced, immobilized.
By the end, the stranger looked less like a warrior and more like a mummy—stitched, casted, wrapped in layer after layer.
But alive.
Alive.
Harold collapsed beside the bed, breathing in ragged gasps.
His arms dangled uselessly, the dagger clattering from his numb fingers.
His knees throbbed from kneeling so long.
The chamber smelled of iron and damp plaster.
He let his head fall back against the cold wall, eyes shutting.
Getting his first real break all day since waking he rested, but still with presence of mind called up the system before him.
System messages floated in front of him, blurred through exhaustion:
Stitching [Level 2 → 3]
Dressing [Level 2 → 3]
Suction [Level 0 → 1 → 2]
Debridement [Level 0 → 1 → 2]
He huffed a laugh.
"Figures. I nearly kill myself working like a proper surgeon, at least the system recognizes the effort ive just put in."
But even through the exhaustion, pride coiled in his chest.
He hadn't let this one die.
Not yet.
Harold forced his heavy eyes open, glancing at the patient.
Their chest rose, shallow but steady.
The worst of the bleeding was stopped.
The bones were braced.
The swelling was contained.
All because he refused to stop.
A stranger—an alien, a warrior, someone who might very well kill him if they woke—but none of that mattered.
Not to Harold.
Because he was a healer.
And healers didn't get to choose.
They just saved whoever fell into their hands.
His body finally gave up, sliding sideways onto the floor.
His cheek pressed against the cool stone, the floor clean now, all blood that had spilled down over the bed and pooling onto the floor was gone just like the bandages and discarded tools from his system.
The room itself it seemed as indeed an extension of the system and ran with the same rules, always sterilized always clean the next time it was needed or summoned forth.
Before darkness claimed him, Harold whispered:
Looked on at his patient, who before casting looked a bit like frankenstein with all the stiches running across their green skinned body.
Exhaustion took over and he passed out.