Stories in Blood

That's how I hear most of them, anyway.  My name's Ivory.  I'm the closest this place has to a doctor on staff.


I've never been on the run from anything, before you wonder.  I've never even seen any of them.  I don't have to.  I can see it in these people's eyes.  In their wounds.  In their blood.


The other day, I saved a runner--a boy really, not even twenty.  Something had gotten into his body, and it started to eat him away, kill him slowly, from his fingers to his shoulder.  He said it taunted him in his head as it consumed him. Laughed at the pain he caused.  The boy cut his own arm off with a table saw, or so he says, and then cauterized it with his kitchen oven.  He almost died from shock and blood loss and infection, but he lived long enough to run, long enough for me to save his life.  It was a miracle.  That most of these people are still alive is a miracle.  I've seen some wounds that look like they came from some of the worst battlefields in history.  I guess they did--that's how some of the runners talk about it.  Talk about Them.


Even though I haven't seen these things, I've heard the stories about them.  I see them in the blood, in the scars, in the wounds. I have a difficult job--a much harder job than I could be having, had things gone differently.  I could be in my residency now.  My parents think I'm doing volunteer work.  Resume fodder, they would call it.  But I'm not, at least, not doing anything I could put on a resume.  I'm here helping people, fixing them practically for food and board.  I could be on my path to an actual medical practice.  But I'm not, and I wouldn't give this up for the world.


My name's Ivory.  I'm here to heal those who need it, and to tell the stories I read in their blood.