The Healer

The sea voyage from Oldtown to Sunspear was not supposed to take more than two weeks, but due to unfavorable winds it took almost a month for Prince Doran's entourage to get home.

They arrived at the beginning of the twelfth month of the year 254, when they disembarked they were not received by Prince Trystanne as they expected, Ser Arron Martell was not there either, only a dozen guards were waiting for them at the docks. Doran noticed their nervousness and quickly moved ahead of his group.

"What happened?! Where is father? Are mother and baby okay?!"

"W- we don't know my prince." The captain of the guard, Ser Luca, admits somewhat hesitantly.

"How come you don't know?!" Lewyn followed the nephew and frowned at the guards. "What's going on?! Answer at once!"

"Princess Obella is in labor." Ser Luca says something reluctantly.

"That is good news, a new Martell prince. Why are you acting so strangely?" Lothar looked at them with a raised eyebrow.

"She has been in labor for over a day..."

Doran feels his stomach drop.

`Such a long labor with this time`s medicine... NO!`

"Let's go to the palace now!"

***

Doran didn't even wait for his companions, after running to his cabin to pick up his backpack filled with various potions he ran past the guards and grabbed one of the horses. At seven years old he is finally tall enough to ride a horse and not a pony. But the prince couldn't enjoy the activity he is so fond of, Doran rode hard and fast yelling at pedestrians to get out of his way.

During his ride to the cliff where the headquarters of House Martell is located, the prince almost ran over more than a dozen civilians. He did not stop to apologize but still had the delicacy to throw a few coins as an apology to the almost victims.

"Halt! Who is there?"

The guards at the castle gates raised their spears ready to parry the unknown horseman.

"Your prince now get out of the way!" Doran yelled at them.

"Our prince? What a-"

"Is prince Doran you moron!" One of the guards recognized him and quickly pushed his companions out of the way.

Doran passed the doors and rode to the elevator of the Tower of the Sun. He quickly got off the horse and ran to the elevator, without even greeting the guards there he quickly closed the security door and pressed the lever.

"This elevator takes ages!" Doran growled in frustration.

Going up the stairs to the floor where the quarters of princess Obella are located would take him more than an hour, while going up the elevator only takes a few minutes, but even so, it seems to him that those minutes are endless.

Four years ago they had several elevators built in the gigantic towers the Martells call home to allow Prince Arthur (now a cripple) to move freely. The construction took almost a year but it was worth it, being able to be in his house and not having to depend on being carried to move from one floor to another did wonders for Arthur Uller's humor.

The elevators are quite fast considering the technological level of the era but the Tower of the Sun is as tall as a modern skyscraper so going up to one of the highest floors takes some time, not much but too much in the opinion of the impatient prince.

"Finally!"

Doran ran to the bedrooms of his parents, in the hallway he saw his grandfather with Mors in his arms. His little brother is sleeping while his grandpa is awake looking at the closed door with a frown.

In front of the door his father is pacing back and forth with a gloomy face muttering to himself.

"How are they?!" Doran stops and slides a few inches, after balancing himself he avoids falling to the ground.

"Doran!" They both look at him shocked by his presence, they were not expecting him to arrive this soon.

Doran repeats his question, his voice breathless as he rests his hands on his knees, panting.

"We don't know much, grandson. Maesters and midwives come and go but have little to report. Your grandmother is inside with her."

After recovering from his shock, Arthur informs his grandson of the situation.

"I'm going in." Doran straightens his back and walks toward the door to his mother's quarters.

"You can't, even I wasn't allowed in. Wulfric said no one but the midwives can be inside."

"They kicked him out after he lost his temper."

Trystanne glares at his good father.

"I am a healer." He tells them to pull his chain out from under his shirt.

Before his father and grandfather can say anything else, the prince enters the door.

***

On the other side of the door, the scene is as Doran already expected. In bed is his mother and next to her is his grandma.

There are several midwives moving around and Wulfric is looking at a book with an anxious expression.

"Doran!" His mother sees him and all attention turns to him.

Doran ignores everyone's looks and words, his attention is solely on his mother.

In the only mother he ever knew, the mother who loved and cared for him for the last seven years. The love that Doran feels for his family is not little, the Martells are everything Harry Potter ever dreamed of in a family and more. Parents, grandparents, siblings, uncles, aunts, cousins... Doran Nymeros Martell has it all, he has everything Harry James Potter ever dreamed of having.

And now he is in danger of losing two of the most precious people in his life: his beloved mother and his baby sibling.

Obella Martell is one of the most beautiful women in Westeros, with her night-dark hair and eyes and olive complexion she is the envy of every woman. But today little remains of that bewitching beauty, Obella has a ghostly pallor, large dark circles under her reddened eyes and her face twisted in an expression of agony.

"You shouldn't be here, grandson. Wait outside with the others."

Doran ignores his grandmother's order and walks to his mother's side, brushing her hair away from her face and placing a soft kiss on her forehead.

"Everything will be fine mama, I'll save you both." He promises softly, his voice holding so much confidence that the princess feels a flicker of hope for the first time in what seemed like forever.

"Even if you are a certified Healer there is little you can do, my prince." Wulfric, who noticed the chain around the prince's neck, tells him.

"A certified healer?"

"Look at all those links, that is my son." Says Obella with a weak voice but full of pride.

"You dont look like you know what to do in this situation Wulfric." Doran replies in a curt voice, pointing to the book the maester was reading. "I could recite fifty wrong facts in that book of yours. Now let's get to work!"

Doran's attitude surprised everyone in the room, they were no longer dealing with the friendly genius prince but with the war-hardened world class healer.

Doran moved around the room with purpose, pulling several potions from his backpack and placing them on a nearby table.

He washed his hands, something he order everyone to do-

"But why-"

"Because I fucking say so. I don't have time to explain the Germ Theory to you."

The Germ Theory was his final thesis to get his link in medicine. The existence of germs did not turn out to be completely new, as some maesters in the past wrote theories about it, but without ways to prove their theories, their research came to nothing and only accumulated dust on the library shelves.

Doran, using two Myrish eyes, created an archaic microscope that was good enough to demonstrate the existence of germs. Unfortunately that information will take some years to reach the whole world because the maesters wanted to do many more tests before making this discovery public. That pissed off the prince and was one of the reasons why he decided to finish his studies at the Citadel.

This is not the first time that something like this happened, every time Doran gave them part of his knowledge to advance this world's tech and science, the archmaesters put a thousand buts on him. After sulking a bit Doran understood that they did not intend to bury his scientific contributions but that Citadel's method of implementing innovations is slow and tedious. They will do a thousand tests and after five or ten years, once they are completely sure, they will present the new invention/method,...

Although Doran understood their reasons he did not agree one bit, in fact he was very upset and left the Citadel with quite a bit of rancor in his heart. He understood that the Citadel would not be the driving force behind the Renaissance as he had once thought.

The prince doesn't plan to wait decades for his inventions to become public, so he'll do it on his own.

`Shame, they could have benefited a lot. Although in the end it doesn't matter, it's better this way. Plan U will give me much more freedom.`

Doran knows that to start an Era of Progress it is not enough to introduce many innovations, a single person cannot drag an entire society, and he knows that in this world there are many brilliant people; true hidden geniuses (as is the case of Luca Uller, who has the voice of an angel and the hands of Michelangelo but will never be truly appreciated for his gifts in today's society that considers bards, painters and artists in general as rabble of third category).

Plan U consists of creating several institutions dedicated to research and teaching, basically Doran plans to create his own University.

The prince examines his mother and sees that she still has several inches to go until she is dilated enough to give birth. Luckily he had already prepared several potions in case something like that happened.

"You, yes you." Doran points to one of his midwives, a woman in her sixties with a belly bigger than his pregnant mother's. "Take that position, yes the blue one. Give mom four drops, no more. Four drops."

"What potion is that? "

"A dilating potion. It speeds up the rate at which a woman's vagina dilates in order to give birth." Doran answers Wulfric as he takes his mother's pulse.

`It's too irregular, if this takes longer her heart won't- The potion takes between four and seven minutes to take effect. I have a potion that will strengthen her heart but if she takes it while the baby is still inside her he or she will die.`

"I've never heard of it before."

"I made it."

"You can't give the princess potions without-!"

"I already tested on 40 pregnant women in Oldtown." Doran cuts off Wulfric's screams, his voice calm but steady. "If labor lasts longer, mother and the baby will die."

"Give me the potion damn it! I trust my son."

"Obella-" Dorna looks between her daughter and her grandson.

"Have faith in our little genius mama." The Princess of Dorne nods, putting her faith in her grandson.

"Obey my grandson's words as if they were mine!"

"B-" One glare from Dorna shut up Wulfric, who hunched his shoulders in defeat and passed the lead to Doran.

`It all depends on you, grandson, you have two lives in your hands.` Dorna looks worriedly at her grandson, his confidence and security in his actions reassures her a bit but her concern does not disappear.

After a few minutes, Doran's potion took effect.

"You can push princess." Says Wulfric after breathing a sigh of relief, it seems as if a great pressure had just been lifted from his shoulders.

Doran says nothing, just frowns at his mother's belly. When he felt her belly he felt something strange but he can't be sure what, he watches as the baby starts to come out and his eyes widen.

"HALT! STOP PUSHING!" Doran shoves Wulfric aside and examines his mother more closely.

"What's happening?" His grandmother's voice is full of concern.

"The umbilical cord wrapped around the baby's neck." Doran answers after finishing examining his mother.

"Oh. I am so so sorry princess" Wulfric looks at her with pity.

"Can't you do anything?" Dorna half shouts at them, Obella has a lost look. Like her mother she studied at the Citadel for a few years, Dorna did not study medicine but her daughter did.

"There is nothing we can do princess. Just pray to the gods." Wulfric responds in defeat. When the umbilical cord wraps around the baby's neck the chances of the baby's survival are almost zero, the masters have investigated what they can do in this case but no one found an answer.

Doran doesn't respond, acting instead.

"What are you doing?"

"Save my baby sibling." He answers simply.

Wulfric and the midwives watch in fascination as Doran puts his hands inside his mother.

"Push!" The boy orders.

After a few minutes the baby comes out and Wulfric sees that Doran grabbed the umbilical cord and stretched it so the baby could breathe. Once the baby came out of the mother's body, Doran folded the child and passed the cord over his little body, freeing him completely.

`I don't have the tools to cut the cord while it was still in the womb so I had to use my hands to make sure it didn't strangle my little brother. No medieval scissors would serve for such a delicate procedure, another thing I will have to invent. Luckily babies are super flexible.`

Doran sighs with relief as he holds his new baby brother closely.

"Is a boy. A living boy." He tells them with a smile.

***

A few hours later the whole family gathers in the quarters of Obella to meet the new Martell.

Olyvvar Nymeros Martell was born with his father's silver hair and paler complexion than any other Martell.