章 224: First field surgery
The arrow shaft has snapped under the applied pressure. The wooden shaft broke right where it left the skin leaving a few splintery bits looking out of the wound. That idiot is now looking at the broken shaft in his hand with eyes as big as saucers.
Not even a moment later blood begins to gush out wildly from his wound making him scream in fear. He repeatedly tells the healer to do something but the man in question fairly denies his requests.
"Pierre! I can't heal you! If I heal you now the arrowhead will be sealed inside you!"
"So what? Doesn't bother me to have an arrowhead in my side for a few hours!"
"Every time you move it will cut your flesh from the inside! You'll bleed out internally. I can't keep healing you!"
"Then do something else!"
As the adventurers become a bit panicky I wonder how easy they've had it till now to react so poorly. I push aside two adventurers to get closer and take a look at the wound.
"What are you doing here, lousy carrier!"
"What I'm doing here? I'm potentially saving your life if you let me that is."
"And what are you going to do? Dismantle me, remove the arrowhead, and have the healer put me back together? Shit don't work that way!"
"My field surgery skill is at level six. I'll make a quick incision that will allow me to remove the arrowhead. Then the healer will patch you back up."
The wounded adventurer remains silent in clear defiance. He probably thinks the healer will somehow get him through this anyway. The healer in question is clearly hesitant. Allowing me to help out would be admitting his incompetence to deal with the situation. Something he evidently doesn't want to admit.
"Do it then. Pierre, hold still for him. Robin, assist with healing once he's done."
I hadn't noticed mister Galad return from his little charge at the cave hunter. He is now standing at the back, looking at me expectantly. With his permission, I kneel next to Pierre and my hand moves to the sheath of my dismantling knife.
"You're going to use a dismantling knife! There's monster blood on that! I'm going to die of infection!"
I grin and pull out the dismantling knife and show it to him. It is spotless and even if I used it the chances of an infection caused by residue would be nonexistent.
"We carriers make sure to keep our dismantling knives clean at all times. It is the core of our livelihood. But not to worry, I won't be using it."
I return the dismantling knife to its sheath and watch him breathe out a sigh of relief. Then, I open a small clasp at the side of the sheath and draw a smaller and more delicate blade. It's not quite a scalpel yet but goes in that direction. Terribly sharp, and with a narrow blade the instrument is well suited for field surgery.
I carefully set the blade against the skin above the wound and apply slight pressure. The incredibly sharp blade sinks into the skin like a hot knife would into butter. Pierreʼs nerves are severed so quickly and cleanly that he feels little to no pain at all.
I carefully guide the incision to reach the arrowhead. Blood is still flowing everywhere so I have to heavily rely on my combat medic assessment skill and my sense of touch through the blade to know what is going on inside the wound.
I make a secondary incision at a thirty-degree angle to relieve the tension holding the arrowhead in place. With the arrowhead now loose, I quickly grab it with my other hand and pull it out before it can do any more damage to the flesh around it.
With my objective achieved I step back and sit down while the healer, Robin, closes the wound. Mister Galad comes over to where I'm sitting and stretches out his hand. I know what he wants and place the still bloody arrowhead in his open palm.
He fishes a handkerchief out of his pockets and carefully cleans the blood off the dangerous piece of what I presume to be metal. He has to move slowly, so as to not cut himself but eventually leaves the metallic arrowhead spotless.
He throws the already bloody handkerchief towards me. I catch it and get most of the blood off my hands before returning it. He pockets the now completely bloody cloth while inspecting the arrowhead.
"Nasty things. Walter, how do you feel?"
Walter, the bloke who took an arrow to the knee, looks slightly pale but that's probably due to him seeing me cut open his friendʼs body to get out the arrowhead.
"Does mine need to be removed as well?"
While only asks if it, the arrow, needs to be removed, the unspoken addition clearly includes the words by me. Mister Galad looks over to me in question and I give a light chuckle.
"Unless you want to be carried out of here you might want to have that arrow removed. However, cutting into the knee isn't exactly a great idea. Since you can already see the tip of the arrowhead exiting from the back of your knee I suggest pushing it through until the head fully exits. Thereafter, you can cut the head from the shaft and remove the shaft the way it came."
"So no cutting?"
"Not from me anyway. You might want to ask your healer to do it though since doing it yourself gets messy."
The healer takes this chance to take charge and easily handles the procedure as I described it. The arrow is removed without too much pain and the wound is quickly healed.
Walter carefully stands up and places some weight on his previously injured leg. There doesn't seem to be any real problem. He takes a few steps and frowns.
"My knee feels a bit stiff."
週次パワーステータス
-- 推薦
ランキング 
-- 推薦
チケット