I was completely stunned.
"Rustbone Disease? What Rustbone Disease?" Spark's worshipful little face had me utterly confused, and I repeated the unfamiliar term on reflex.
"Rustbone Disease, obviously! You're an upper-level type and you don't even know Rustbone Disease?" Spark looked at me like I was a caveman who'd just stumbled out of a cave. She grabbed my arm and dragged me to the iron bed, pointing at the worker who was staring at me with a face full of excitement, shouting so hard she was practically spraying spit. "Him! 'Drill' Harvey! When they carried him in yesterday, he was basically already rotting into a puddle of sludge! Granny said there was no saving him, only waiting to die, and then you…"
Halfway through, she suddenly choked on her own words. She looked me up and down again with the expression of someone watching a monster, lowered her voice, and leaned close to my ear like she was sharing a secret.
"Big guy, tell me the truth. Did you sneak out from some big upper-hab family? Or… are you a secret cleric sent down by the Ecclesiarchy?"
I couldn't be bothered entertaining her nonsense. I looked toward the worker on the bed—he did look familiar. I remembered now. Yesterday morning he'd come to the clinic supported by his gaunt wife, bringing a child along…
In a place like Spirepeak City—glossy on the outside, rotten within—the lower levels basically had no proper large-scale medical institutions. And in a slum like Hold Seven, Granny Marta's clinic was already the only place that could provide even limited medical service. With conditions this crude and supplies this scarce, not every patient who came here could be treated properly. Plenty ended up being carried back out, just to die elsewhere.
But one thing was certain: Granny Marta always did everything she could to save every person who came to her door. She always said there was no one here who understood survival better than she did. I honestly believed it might be true—because since arriving, I hadn't seen a second person older than her. I hadn't even seen anyone her age.
But when it came to "Rustbone Disease," she would give up immediately.
Yesterday, that worker—Harvey—had been curled into a ball on the cold iron bed, shivering all over. He was skin and bone, his joints protruding, the skin around them cracked and peeling. His entire body was mottled, and in many places his skin had taken on an ominous dark green, like corroded copper gone to rust. Several areas of flesh had already ulcerated, split open, oozing yellow-green pus. He looked like a fruit left to rot and shrivel.
"Rot starting from the seventh rib…" Granny Marta had traced a bony finger across his chest, her fingertips scraping loose flakes of skin that drifted down like dust. With that single sentence she delivered her verdict. "Late-stage Rustbone Disease, no doubt. He's held on for quite a while… looking like this, at most seven more days before his heart rots into a puddle of sludge."
The patient's wife threw herself over the iron bed. The crude ring on her finger glinted with a bleak, cold light against her husband's withered palm.
"He was carrying freight at the Vertical Station yesterday!" Her tears fell into the ulcerated hollow of his collarbone and vanished at once, swallowed up without a trace. "Please, try holy water one more time! We still have three children to raise…"
Granny Marta shook her head.
"A few months ago, the Steel Spider Gang's boss caught it too." She pointed across the street at a church propaganda poster on the wall and let out a snort of contempt. "Didn't that dog swear he had close ties to the Ecclesiarchy? He pumped over thirty liters of church holy water into his veins, and what did it change? His gilded ash urn is still sitting in the Gallery Hall now—though I'll give him this: that bastard did live longer than most patients."
"This disease is older than the cog necklace I wear." Granny Marta tapped the metal hearing aid behind her left ear. The clink of parts mixed with the bubbling of the medicine pot. "It started spreading in Spirepeak City about a century ago… I remember sixty years back, the Ash District had a Rustbone surge too. Corpse crews' iron hooks were hung full of dried-out bodies—like smoked rat jerky hanging in a butcher's stall…"
Then, facing my baffled expression, she continued in that hoarse voice.
"No one knows where it comes from. No one knows how it spreads. But for the past hundred-odd years, people have fallen ill every day… sometimes more, sometimes less. Overall, the poor wretches down here get it more than those upper-level types and nobles. And the most important thing is…"
She turned to the wailing woman. Still she made no move to treat the patient, only added calmly:
"…you know this disease can't be cured. Make sure you cremate him. Not long ago 'Heartless' Perry caught it too. His family didn't bother with him. A few days later, I heard his rotten corpse climbed out of bed in the middle of the night and strangled his wife and kids."
After that, Granny Marta fell silent for a long time. In the end, she softened. She handed the woman a black, murky injector and told her to use it when her husband's suffering became unbearable.
"Let him go peacefully," Granny Marta sighed.
Then she turned away and went back to handling other matters.
I stood there at a loss, while the woman's hoarse crying and the patient's ragged, rasping breaths stabbed at my chest like needles. The child on the woman's back stared with glossy black eyes at his father. The man tried to lift his withered hand to pat the child's head—then, seeing the ulcerated, pus-slick skin on his own fingers, he flinched and pulled it back as if ashamed…
And in that moment, something in me moved without permission.
Like I was possessed, I reached toward Granny Marta's medicine cabinet.
I grew up in a hospital staff compound. I'm not a doctor. I'm not part of the healing profession. But certain things still carved themselves deep into my bones.
"When you see those afflicted with sores and dysentery, foul and unbearable to behold, the heart should only give rise to shame, compassion, and worry. Not even for an instant should disgust take root."
I'm not a saint. I'm certainly not a physician. But I'm someone who grew up in a peaceful era, under a functioning social safety net. I'm used to the idea that if you're sick, you get treated. If you're hurt, you get help.
I understood Granny Marta's approach. Running a clinic in a place this harsh and resource-starved means rationing precious supplies to those who can still be saved, rather than wasting them on those doomed to die—like a hard-nosed battlefield medic.
But watching a living person get abandoned by everyone because of some damned disease, sentenced to death, left to rot in despair and pain…
That, I couldn't accept.
Using the pitiful scraps of modern hygiene knowledge I still had, I began the first "treatment" of my life.
I had his wife boil a pot of water—the very water we used for drinking. I used the rolling boil to sterilize the tools, strips of cloth, and a pair of rubber gloves that were still in decent shape. Then I put the gloves on, drew a deep breath, and began debriding the wounds.
(End of Chapter)
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