Preparing

I just finished stitching up some rather grievous injuries, and we're on lockdown?

I have no idea if I have enough supplies here.  We've been somewhat taxed lately.  I hope I have enough.

I wish I could call Jackie.  I just...I know, things have gone well, so far.  I know nothing has catastrophically failed.  But, I have a very real feeling that my skills are soon going to be taxed to their limit, and I don't really know what to do.

I just feel stress creeping into me.  I'm afraid I'll crack again, like I did after...after my first major failure.

...I can't dwell on that.  I have to stay firm.  Hopefully, these people won't need me, but if they do, I'll be ready.

Nerves

I have a major operation to perform soon.

I must replace all of the blood in a person.  Sheryl.  It's my task to replace as much of her blood as I can with untainted blood.  If this works...we may have a way to save others like her.  However...there's no way to tell if it will or not.

I'm not sure how I feel about performing this operation.

I've been doing better, but...  I had a rather tense conversation with Alyssa the other day.  The outcome was very confusing and very troubling, and to be honest I'm not sure if it made me feel better or worse.  There was some catharsis in it, though.  I suppose that will have to do.

The transfusions start tomorrow.  I should get some rest.  I haven't been sleeping the best lately, I want to be in my best possible form.

I hope this works.

The Worst Doctor

I have just advised an alcoholic patient to continue destroying herself rather than stop altogether.

Yes, it may be healthier for her to wean herself off slowly, especially given the circumstances, but I can't help but to second guess every decision I make lately.  I've not been sleeping well.  Fortunately, I've gone from spending all my time studying to simply sobbing.

Sal has tried to speak with me.  I've brushed him off.  I brushed everyone off that hasn't come to me for help.  I know, yes, I'm not the first doctor in history that has ever lost a patient.  I know Blair won't...probably won't be the last.

But what if I told Sheryl the wrong thing?  What if this is a huge mistake?  What if my advice...what if it kills her too?

I've spoken with...a friend, about this.  She says I'm being too hard on myself, and maybe I am, but aren't doctors supposed to be on a higher standard than others?  We take peoples' lives into our hands.  Aren't we supposed to work hard to be worthy of that task?  Am I still worthy of it?

I don't know.  I don't know what to think anymore.  If I can lose so much confidence in myself over losing just one patient...how can I persist in a job like this?

Mourning

Why does death hurt us so much? Why does it tear us up and leave us ragged?

I didn't even know their name until Ivory told me. Blair. I saw the sadness in her face as she told Blair's friends what had happened and the next minute one of the women - Alyssa, Ivory said her name was - just jumped on her. I pulled her off, but I know that feeling. The feeling of wanting, needing to hit something, anything at all, to transfer your pain to someone else.

The man - Ivory said his name was Curtis - he's just standing there, not speaking, not moving. I know that feeling, too. Not wanting to move at all, not even breathe. Not wanting to feel a thing. Comfortably numb, as the song goes.

It's not death that hurts us, I think. It's not the concept of dying, since everyone and everything does it. It's the emptiness that accompanies it. A lacuna, a void, where some song has been silenced and there's nothing left to fill the hole in our hearts.

I watched Alyssa until I knew she wasn't going to attack anyone else, then I slipped away and out the door and into the night.

I hadn't said the Kaddish in years, but there I started to say it. And then I stopped, because I saw something. Against the darkness, it was barely visible, but I could still see it's red eyes. I could hear its panting, so much like a real dog.

It silently gazed at me and then turned away and it was gone.

I said my prayer in silence.

Nothing

I

I'm sorry.

I'm so sorry.

I should have been able to do something.

The patient, Blair, was brought to me in ragged condition.  Xe was...on death's door, and had been for a very long time.  That xe was still alive was...was a miracle in and of itself.

I should have

There must have been something I could have done.

Xe had been mutilated.  Xir body was...flayed, almost to the bone in places.  Foreign objects had been...inserted, plants allowed to grow within the body.  Rooting into the flesh.

I tried.  I worked as hard as I could.  But, in the end, I failed.  Xe couldn't hold out, not against that kind of injury.  Xe was strong, but...sometimes that isn't enough.

I wasn't skilled enough. If I'd known more, if I could have done something more...if I had a team, or better equipment, or better knowledge or more experience.

But I don't.  I didn't.

I failed Blair.

Xe's dead.  Xe died on my operating table.  Not enough blood.  Too much shock to xir body.  Any number of things that already should have killed hir long before I began the surgery.  They were too much.  Too much for xir.  Too much for me.

Xir friends...haven't taken it very well.

The young man, Curtis is...doing nothing.  He's just...numb.  Empty.

The young woman, Alyssa attacked me.

She knocked me to the ground.  She hit me over and over.  And I let her.  Because she's right, it's my fault, it's all my fault for not being better at this.  For not finding a way to save xir.

Sal pulled her off of me.  She reacted negatively to being touched, but...she stopped attacking me.  Came to her senses.

Part of me wishes she hadn't.  A black eye and a bruised lip don't seem like a fair trade compared to what they've lost.

I can't deal with this.  I just

I'm going back.  To my textbooks.  To my old lecture notes.  To anything.

I need to be better.

I have to make myself better.

I have to not fail the next Blair.

Return

A part of me wonders why I've come back.

It's a small part, but it's there.  A nagging sensation, telling me to give this up for good.  Telling me to pack my bags and flee back to med school while I can, to a proper internship like my parents believe I'm working at.  Somewhere I'll never be held at knifepoint.  Somewhere monsters will never come to murder my patients.

But only a small part.  There was never any doubt.  Jackie's told me that much was obvious.  She says I live to help.  That I was born to sacrifice myself for others.  And maybe she's right.

Whether we are protected or not, these people need my help.  I will give it.  I knew this could be a death sentence coming into the job.  I won't falter now that it's actually going to get difficult.  There are always more lives to save.

There are always more stories to tell.

Talks

Well, I guess Albert's talking to me now. We had a chat and, well, he's staying. For now, at least.

The unconscious guy's name is Matthias, by the way. He woke up earlier today and we talked a bit. He had a similar 'haunted' look, like others I've seen, though his looked less haunted and more...I don't know. Uncomfortable.

Ivory talked to me some more, though still about medical stuff. She's off buying some cream to give to Matthias -- he's got a nasty rash on his side. I wanted to ask him how he got it, but held off - a lot of runners really value their privacy and I didn't want to scare him into leaving.

Anyway, I guess things have somewhat settled down since the revelation. I still got some cold shoulders from our remaining guests, but that's too be expected.

The Stranger

Why do things always seem to get better and then get worse?

I met Ivory outside. She was finally able to look me in the eye. And she was about to talk to me, too. I could tell.

And then she looked over my shoulder and her eyes went wide. I turned and looked and saw it: there was a man sitting on the ground outside the hostel. Then I realized he wasn't sitting -- he was slumped, his eyes closed. Unconscious.

Ivory rushed over to check on him. He looked to be in his late twenties, dark brown hair. He looked shabby, like he hadn't shaved or changed his clothes in days, maybe weeks. Definitely a runner, by the looks of it. His arm and shoulder were also in a cast and sling.

Ivory had me help pick him up and bring him inside. We got him on one of the beds and Ivory checked him over -- plenty of scars, even a nasty one on his back, but they were all healed over. She said he had probably collapsed from sheer exhaustion.

So good news: she's talking to me again. Bad news: it was all medically related.

Well, you take the good with the bad, I guess.

Fallout

Ivory isn't talking to me. I walked into her work space today and...nothing. Not even a word. She was counting all the bandages she had left. I told her I would go out and buy more. She didn't even acknowledge I existed.

Okay, I kept a secret. A big secret. I probably would have been targeted by the Black Dog if, well, you know. If I didn't have what was in the box.

John was a bit nicer. I think it's because he knows he's only safe because of what's in the box. I haven't seen Albert yet today and I don't know if he's read the last post, so I'm not sure how he'll react.

Some our guests were chillier to me today, too. Guess some of them read the blog.

I wish I could have just kept the box, never taken it out, left it the safe to gather dust. I wish it was still my secret. But Ivory...after the incident with Ruby, she told me to post it or else she would. She told me, "No more secrets." And she hasn't said anything else to me since.

Fine, Ivory. No more secrets.

I have a fragment of the Dying Man in my office. It's what keeps us safe. It's pretty much the only thing that keeps us safe. See, back when I was running, I realized that nothing stopped them. Not bricks and mortar, not steel, not the tallest building or the lowest basement. The only thing that stopped one of them was the presence of another.

I was looking for something. I don't know what. Something to help me stop running. So I went to the Acropolis in Athens. Someplace old, someplace perhaps eldritch. I went there and I found it. A broken piece, smaller than my fist. But there this...miasma. I felt sick as I looked at it, but I knew. It would keep my safe.

I used tongs to hold it. Then I put it in a box and put that in another box. I used gloves within gloves. And then I brought it back here.

It's kind of paradoxical that something called the Dying Man is what's keeping us alive. But it is. It's a shield to protect us from Them.

I guess I'm just sorry I kept it a secret from you.

Return and Reveal

It was almost a month. Almost a month of quiet. Things were good. There were no more incidents of those weird cutters, no more appearances by Ruby, no disturbances. We had runners come and go and everything pretty much went smoothly. John kept the records, Albert mended some broken pipes, Ivory patched up some runners, and I ran the front desk.

And then yesterday I was locking up and Ivory stepped inside. I thought she had gone home, but sometimes she stays late, so I wasn't too concerned. Then I saw the look on her face and the glint of metal at her throat.

"I said I would come back later," Ruby said. She was behind Ivory holding a scalpel to her throat. She had a wicked grin, what I believe they call a 'slasher smile.' I did not doubt she would slit Ivory's throat in a second.

"What do you want?" I asked.

"I've been observing you and your people," she said. "All those runners you harbor. Even if only for days, they should have been attacked here. It's strange. This place shouldn't exist - the Fears should have invaded this place so many times that you should be dead or struck with disease or mindless husks by now. You can't operate this kind of establishment and not draw their attention."

"What. Do. You. Want?" I repeated.

"I want to know why," Ruby said. "I can feel the blood thumping, jumping in my veins. There's something about this place that's making my skin tingle. I want to know why. Tell me or I bleed her dry."

"Let her go and I'll show you," I said. "She isn't a part of this. She doesn't know anything."

"She works here," Ruby said. "She lives under the mantle of this...place. Show me and she lives."

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, then opened them and said, "Wait here." I went into my office and opened a false wall. No stupid picture frames with a safe hidden behind it - I had this specially installed. I entered a code, then unlocked the safe with the key around my neck. Then I spoke into the safe four words into the safe - yes, I am paranoid, but as you can see, I have good reason - and the safe opened.

I took out a small metal box and walked back into the front room, where Ruby and Ivory were waiting.

"This is why," I said. I placed the locked metal box on the front desk. Ruby looked at it with a strange confusion on her face.

"Open it," she said.

"I can't," I said. "I threw away the key long ago. But you already know what's inside. You can feel it. Can't you?"

She looked at the box and her expression melted into panic. "Where did you find it?" she asked.

"Greece," I said. "During one of my travels there, I found a broken piece of the Parthenon. I don't know how I knew what it was, but I did. I knew enough not to touch it. To lock it away."

"It keeps them away," Ruby said.

"As far as I can tell, yes," I said. "It exudes some sort of aura. Even in the box, in the safe. It must be a very large fragment."

"It is," Ruby said. She lowered the scalpel and Ivory rushed over to the other side of the room. "Put it away. Put it away and never take it out again."

"I thought..." I paused. Did I want to continue this? "I thought you wanted to take it."

"No," Ruby said. "All I wanted to know is why. And now I do. So put it away before it attracts any attention." I did, making sure to put the protections all back into place, then slipped the key around my neck again.

When I went back to the front room, Ivory was starring daggers at Ruby. But Ruby seemed lost in contemplation. "It protects you now," she said, "but it will cause the end of you as well. Nothing else can come from it except death."

"We'll see," I said. "Right now, it's the only thing stopping them from invading, like you said."

"What you are talking about?" Ivory finally asked. "What was in that box?"

Ruby laughed and it was melodious and sweet, yet tinged with despair. She stepped out of the front door, then turned back. Then she revealed my secret.

"The Dying Man," she said. "Inside the box is the Dying Man."

Jackie and Jill

When I first started here, I thought my work would be restricted to salving burns, stitching closed cuts, treating minor infections and the latest epidemics, and perhaps mending the occasional bullet wound. Not trivial injuries, sure, but predictable ones.

I had failed to realize, I think, that some of these runners can't go to a hospital for any reason. Either they're afraid of the Serpent and Stick, or they're wanted for some crime that they've either been framed for committing, or actual had committed--in the line of escape or otherwise. I try not to ask. My place is to heal, not to judge.

I have done many things even in my short time here that had me scrambling for some of my old textbooks. I don't really consider myself trained in all of it, but I'm starting to get the hang of having such a diverse field.

This story is one such time when I was a bit perplexed by the task at hand. Honestly, if I didn't have corroboration from Sal or physical evidence, I might honestly think I was making this up, that I'd dreamed it after a night of over-exertion.

I was in my tiny clinic, taking a nap at my desk, when Sal came downstairs and asked me if I had ever separated a pair of conjoint twins.

I asked him to repeat what he had said, and he told me a pair of twins had arrived. He said that they were running from the circus, in more ways than one. He told me that they had been in a sideshow, and now that they had been on the road for a while, they had decided that the best way to run was to be separated.

I agreed to see the patients. They were an extremely pretty pair of young women only slightly younger than I, and the instant they met me they introduced themselves with bright smiles as Jacqueline and Jillian. They were very animated as the spoke, and gave grand gestures with every phrase, usually accompanied by physical contact. I was fairly certain that if my wallet had been on me, they would have lifted it. And I'm fairly certain, if they had given it back with a bright smile, I would have apologized for making such a fuss about it.

They were also joined at the mid back, the left side for Jackie and the right for Jill. According to them, they were almost separated at birth, but there were the potential for complications--namely, the twins were joined at such a location that, especially at such a young age, had the potential to seriously damage one or both of their spines.


Fortunately, they didn't share any major organs and, miraculously, despite the potential complications they had had as a child, their spines had not fused.. Unfortunately, two of each of their floating ribs had, but that was easy enough to fix. When they were informed of this, they laughed, and each listed favor after favor the other owed, and tried to bargain for which "owed" first pick of which rib to lose.

I told them as confidently as I could that I could indeed separate them, even though I had absolutely no experience on any sort of surgery of the kind before, and only the bare minimum of supplies and volunteer personnel. I think they instantly saw through the false confidence, but they were polite enough not to mention it. Or maybe they were desperate enough not to. I could see a hint of it, in their eyes, behind the nigh-impenetrable charm and charisma. I was their only chance. I think that's the first time it hit me--I'm the only chance many of these people have. Maybe the only chance they'll ever have.

Confident or not, I performed the surgery as best I could. They still send me letters (to a PO box, naturally). Sometimes from the same city, sometimes from different cities, sometimes from different parts of the country entirely. They never tell me much, about what they've been doing, or what they're running from...but they never hesitate to tell me how grateful they are, how they've been staying safe and healthy and alive, and how much they can't wait to drop by and check up on me again.

They've never actually been back, but I hope they will, some day, and I'm glad to have met them...and made a difference for two someones on the front lines, for however long it lasts.

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.