Pulse

How horrible could one man feel trying to help a woman get better?

The answer was pretty, Noah felt pretty bad trying to help Liora. Barely through the second layer of whatever it was Caina was smearing on the inside of the wound and she had passed out foaming at the mouth with her eyes rolled to the back of her skull.

Noah could only grit his teeth and panic for a moment as he placed his fingers over her neck to check if she were still breathing and hadn't had some heart attack from the pain. And true to his hopes, he could feel it a soft, but slow thu-thump, thu-thump of Liora's heart as it pumped what blood was still in her body around.

"I believe one wound is enough. You don't need to strangle her," Caina said with a icy tone as she pulled her fingers from Liora's arm. Already proceeding to pull out what looked like several leather belts from her bag.

"I'm not strangling her. I'm checking her pulse." He responded.

"Pulse?" she questioned confused at the word.

Dumbfounded, Noah blankly stared at Caina as she lifted up Liora's arm pulling a belt under it and up to just below her elbow. 'How does she not know about the pulse? Just how backwards medicine wise is this world?'

"Her heartbeat, I'm checking her heartbeat."

Caina raised a doubtful brow, "And… you are doing that by strangling her?"

"I'm not, ghaa…" Noah palmed his face, "I thought you were a doctor."

Caina tilted her head at the foreign word, saying nothing to ask about it.

"Okay," Noah lifted his head to look Caina in the eyes, "you know your heart beats, right?"

"Of course, I do. I likely know more about the human body than you do."

"I fucking doubt it at this point," he grunted getting an annoyed glare from Caina who grew a little tickmark on her forehead. Her hands working quickly as she looped the end of the belt through the buckle and promptly tightened it until it squeezed down on Liora's arm where Caina then began to press and massage the skin around the wound to move it together and seal with the belts keeping the two sides pressed together.

"Anyways, do you know about veins? The hollow tube that your blood flows through?" she nodded, likely at the description and not the word. "Right, so in your body you have lots of different veins, some big, some small, some that move blood around the body and some that bring the blood back to the heart." He explained while Caina tightened another belt just a few centimetres down from the other, continuing to massage the skin to get it properly sealed.

'I need to figure out how to suture because that's going to hurt when she wakes up,' Noah's thought process halted for a second seeing the crude tourniquet.

"In your wrist and neck there are particularly important veins that when you put your fingers against them you can feel someone's heart beating. Which should be really obvious, because as we see with Liora, you already know about the importance of these veins!" he held his left arm up and pointed to his wrist with his right index. There was no way someone would think about cutting their wrists, if they didn't know how vital the veins in it were.

"Lower your voice. She's sleeping," Caina huffed, tightening the final strap around Liora's wrist. Eyes wandering over the four others she'd put on her as well as checking their tightness to ensure they didn't go loose before returning all her supplies to her bag and shutting it.

"While your little speech about these 'veins' has been interesting and about being able to check someoneS heartbeat without cutting them open to see the heart beating was… fascinating to say the least. I'm going to need to experiment before I believe anything that comes out of your untrained mouth."

Noah's cheek twitched, Caina was swiftly finding herself as one of his most hated individuals from just how annoying she was. "Go right ahead," he scowled. Eyes wandering to Liora for a second to see her face scrunch up likely feeling a painful tightness in her arm as she slept.

He needed to calm down, Caina was just doing her job. Sucking in a deep breath, he held it for a few seconds before slowly letting it out, "haaa… okay, okay. Let's just forget I said anything," he was growing increasingly tired and it was only midday. "Is that everything? Liora's going to be fine?"

Caina snorted and rolled her eyes, "fine, is one way to say it. She's going to have lingering pain for the rest of her life, but nothi-"

"What do you mean 'lingering pain?' I thought you treated the wound?"

"I did," Caina, displeased with Noah interrupting her, hissed at him. "But Ignis balm isn't something that just goes away. It closes the wound, yes, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have side effects."

"What are they." It wasn't a question, it was an order, he wanted- he NEEDED to know, "and how do I get rid of them."

Caina's squinted at him before saying, "every time something cold or cool touches the scar she'll feel some pain, the colder it is, the more painful. Also, keep as much water on hand for the next few months, she's going to be drinking it like a fountain." Caina threw the strap of her bag over her shoulder and stood up from her knees to face him.

"Also, if the wound opens up again, just bind it and it should close within a few hours. And you don't get rid of it, not without some high end stuff, and from what I can see, you can't afford it," her head swivelled looking around the room she guessed was his as the trail of blood outside led to another room, likely where her patient was initially before being brought here due to her bed being covered in blood.

"And that brings up another issue, my payment."

Now that was a very big problem considering there was nothing here but wheat and a rotting house, even if he somehow knew where Liora stored her money, he wasn't going to just give it away, it was all she had left to pay for food in the village.

Noah's expression fell to an awkward guilt just rubbing the back of his neck trying to think up some way to pay her. "I don't have any money," he said.

"I guessed as much." She grumbled, her shoulders slumping along with her hunching forwards growing a tired look in her eyes. "Let me wash up wherever it is you wash up and just give me something, anything so I can at least say I got a trade for my services. I can't be bothered arguing this with you."

That was a terrible idea, he had to think especially considering the bath was likely still coloured a fine red from when he'd washed up Liora last night and would likely be doing once Caina was gone. And that just brought up another issue 'Shit, the bed,' of the two beds he knew were in the building, his was now soaked to the bone in blood while Liora's was in a bloody, pee smelling room. 'I can just move it to another room,' he thought.

"Hello?" Caina waved her hand in front of Noah's face to get him back to reality.

"Oh, oh, right, its on the bottom floor, just follow the…. Blood trail," he mumbled.

"Thank you," Caina nodded, swiftly circling around him to leave the room, stopping in the doorway to look back to him, "please find something by the time I get out. I'd like to get back to the tavern and not have to send an adventurer to loot this place for my pay. You're having a tough enough time as it is, Mr. no shoes." She grinned, giving Noah a wink as she turned down the hallway leaving Noah staring blankly at the doorway, hearing soft thumps of her boots hitting floorboards as she descended the staircase.

It was hard putting a finger on exactly what Caina was. She was definitely annoying to a degree with how haughty and know it all she seemed when it came to her occupation. But lump that in with her small size that barely reached Noah's chest and her kinder side, she actually seemed like a halfway decent person. 'Maybe it's just her work face then,' he reasoned. Maybe if he caught her outside of work she'd show more of her kinder side.

Breaking his view from the doorway he turned to look down at Liora, her body in a state much like it was yesterday, layered and caked in red ichor. He was going to have to bathe her again, twice in barely half a day. Were it not so thickly present on her body he would have likely just gotten a wet towel and warm water to wipe the sweat off her body. But where there was this much there was no choice.

'Yay…' he may sound like he's not excited, and he wasn't. Were it any other form of bathing someone, he would have been. But here before him was an injured woman, and that type of bathing was not high on his lists of to do's to do with her. It was just an awkward time being stuck with a woman as truly beautiful as Liora while having to hold back any male, hormonal urges that popped up in him.

Shaking the thought from his head, Noah decided to distract himself with something much more important, figuring out just what the hell he could pay Caina with. Of everything he could think of, there was only one thing that seemed to hold any form of value, Liora's daughters necklace, the crystal pillar enclosed within the small lockbox on the chelf across from the bed.

'No, I can't use that,' it was one of the few things Liora had to remind her of her daughter. Not to mention she had made it herself when her daughter was born. Just the sentimental value of it was enough to deter him from bringing that thought up again.

'Maybe a book?' he turned towards the chest where all of Liora's daughters books were held. His feet bringing him to kneel before it, throwing the lid open to see his haphazardly thrown atop 'An Encyclopaedia of monsters' that he wished to throw into a pit of fire from just how much the writer annoyed him.

Picking the book up, he lowere it onto the ground besides him, doing his utmost to avoid the rightside of the chest where the various 'instruments' were housed within their wooden cases. Reading through the various book titles one by one for anything that look so as remotely rare.

'How to Kill 101,' 'A traveller's guide to the stars,' 'Karma sutra,' 'Death of a King, the History of a Dying Kingdo-'

Noah's mind drew a blank for a second and reversed his view onto one particular title, "what the fuck is that doing here?" a good question he wasn't sure he wanted answered. 'You know what, no, let's just not think about it.' Soon he read through the rest of the titles but found nothing of particular interest.

'Gods, there really isn't anything I can give her,' that when his eyes inadvertently fell to the collection of wooden boxes. 'I could give her…' could he? Could he really? Gift a girl one of 'those?'

'I mean, whats the harm? Ha-ha-haa…' there was a lot of harm, harm that would leave him unable to look Caina in the eyes if he saw her again. But, then again, he had nothing. 'Maybe, maybe there's one not made of wood?' then he could at least act like she could sell it off for its base components.

Pinching the longest of the boxes, he wriggled it out from its tight confines and held it up before him, flipping the lid open to see the same wooden object he had seen last night. And there he remained knelt, staring at a phallic piece of wood he unironically and jokingly named morning wood in his demented mind.

'Jesus what is wrong with me,' he shut the case and groaned, slowly placing it on the ground besides him while reaching out to pull out another box and inspect its unholy contents of a slightly smaller, more stubby wooden penis.

'What the actual fuck am I doing with my life that I'm looking through a dildo collection?' whatever it was, it wasn't right.

As he picked up the third box, Noah felt a weight, whatever was inside this one was much heavier than the other ones. And if he was lucky, weight equalled value.

And so, he flipped open the lid and there before him, laid within a velvet red cloth was a single, solid metal, intricately detailed toy with veins and all engraved upon it. Of the previous two, it was the thickest but sat somewhere between the first and second one in length, leaning more towards the first one.

It would have to do.

'Fucking hell.' He shut the case, returning the other two to the chest alongside the wortheless book before shutting it. Just in time to hear soft thuds from downstairs. 'She's going to turn my face into a sculpture,' he whined internally, making his way to the doorway and down the stairs to meet up with Caina.

Pausing when he saw her, her white blouse soaked with water becoming just a bit seethrough and letting him get an interesting view of her chest just barely able to see the pink ring of her areolae. Her hair hung loose with water dripping down onto the floor around her.

"You do know there are towels in there, right?"

"Yes," she nodded, "all of them are covered in blood." For some reason she didn't sound annoyed.

"Yeah, sorry about that."

"Oh don't be," Caina shrugged, "I'm used to not having a towel, I'll dry off on the walk back to the village. That for me?" she bobbed her head towards the case in Noah's hand.

Noah lifted it up, nervously contemplating if he should actually give it to her, "Yes?" he squeaked out a question.

"Great, hand it over and I'll bug right off," Caina held her hand out to him with palm up ready to take the trade from him.

'I really shouldn't be giving this to her,' he thought, 'fuck it. I don't have anything else,' Extending her hand to her, he lowered the end of the case into her palm letting her close her fingers around it and pry it from his hands, bouncing it up and down to feel the weight for a second before opening her bag and placing it inside.

'Oh thank god she didn't open it.'

"Well, that's all I presume? Or do you need me to give you a check up?"

"No! I mean, nope, I'm, I'm all good." He crossed his arms and nodded, forcing a nervous smile to his face.

"Then I will be right on my way," Cain bowed her head to him, pinching the sides of her dress and bending her knees into a small curtsy. "I thank you for your patronage, may your roads be ever paved with fortune and health." When she was done with that spiel, Caina straightened her body and grunted, "I hate doing that…" in a voice just barely audible to Noah.

They said their final goodbyes not long later. Leaving Noah standing just outside the doorway of the house, staring off into the distance as Caina disappeared beneath the slight incline the house was built upon.

'That's one thing done…' he sighed, turning to look over the fields of hay. Just what could he do to help Liora now? He wasn't a farmer, so caring for this place was out of picture. He could try to pre-emptively harvest it and hope he gets enough to help Liora afford somewhere small in the village or somewhere else. His vision soon came to focus on the forest, if there really was something valuable in there and he could find it first, maybe that would be enough to save Liora.

"I need to focus on one thing at a time," he could go prospecting some other time, right now he needed to take care of Liora, get her cleaned up and get her into a room that didn't reek of iron or urine.

With a single step backwards, Noah shut the door behind him. Separating himself from the outside world just seconds before a small, white flower pierced through the ground of the lawn, its petals curved back with the centre of the petals covered in numerous wine-coloured speckles. In just the few seconds it appeared, the flower fluttered in the direction of the house, but soon shrunk down, the petals twisting and wrapping around one another until it began to sink back into the earth, leaving only a small separation of dirt and grass where it once had sprouted.