Make the marriage work

Just then the door opened and the family doctor entered. Lara froze, before hurriedly grabbing the little lizard and acting as if, she had only wanted to take it away from him, so the doctor could check him out.

The family doctor was an elderly lady, who had worked for their family for a long time already. She had been there when Lara had been born, and when Jane had been born, so they were comfortable around each other. They didn't treat each other like employer and employee but more like aunt and niece.

The doctor grinned when she saw Lara jumping up like she had been caught doing something forbidden. If not for the man lying on the floor, she would have taken the time to tease her, but now she hurriedly went to check him out.

As a doctor, she had collected skills, that not only allowed her to diagnose but also to heal. Unlike priests, which used their special skills to replenish the HP of the target, which would improve the self-healing abilities of the target, doctors went another way. They would diagnose the problem and then used specifically targeted skills to get rid of them. This made them capable of healing injuries and diseases that the body of the patient couldn't heal on their own. At the same time, these made them unsuitable for the battlefield as the time needed to heal someone was much longer.

As an experienced doctor, it didn't take her long to diagnose what was currently wrong with Ivan.

"He has lost a lot of blood. In fact, he lost so much, that a normal person would have already died.", the normal she mentioned was someone with a level less than 200 who made up the majority of the population. Level 200 was a kind of threshold since it required a training skill of at least Grade D to reach it. The ones of a worse grade just couldn't support the required energy. But only Grade E and F were freely available since they could be learned without a skill book and these of higher grade couldn't be copied either but had to be farmed from monsters.

"Besides that, his arteries and nerves are heavily damaged. They will need at least half a month to fully recover.", she then continued. "It's good that you haven't moved him yet, since every movement should bring him a lot of pain, because of his sore muscles." She didn't explain why there was damage to his muscles, but Lara could guess it because she had seen the pain had been in and if a person was in a lot of pain, often times the muscles would cramp.

She then pulled out a syringe from her inventory and gave Ivan an injection. "There, that should stop the pain, for now, so let's move him to a bed."

After having moved him to his bed, she then started casting some skills on him, that should speed up the healing rate of his nerves and arteries. Damage to both of them was always problematic, especially if it was as heavy as in this case. That was because the arteries were needed for the blood to flow through the body and if they were damaged, the transport of energy in the body would be heavily influenced and the self-healing ability of the body was heavily dependent on this energy. Studies had found, that HP was just a certain form of energy contained in the blood, which had the property of speeding up the growth of new cells, if necessary. On the other hand, the nerves were the carrier of the mental energy, as well as the energy controlling the healing effects of the body.

If the arteries were damaged, the healing would start from the heart and then slowly spread out, while when the nerves were damaged the healing would start at the brain and then spread out. It was there, where the two energies came into contact first. Of course, there was still a little amount of energy constantly available in the blood and nerves, but this couldn't do much, as most of the energy was concentrated at the heart and brain.

That was why when arteries and nerves were damaged, it became a problem. These two energies just wouldn't get into contact at the best locations, which severely slowed the healing progress. To remove this problem, was nearly impossible, but by manually healing the connection between heart and brain first, it could decrease it.

"Alright. I'll do the same thing for the next five days and then he can recuperate on his own."

"Ok, thank you."

Now that she had finished his treatment, the doctor stared at Lara and asked the question she had been holding in ever since she had been called over. "And now tell me who he is."

Lara hesitated for a bit and then told the truth. "He is Janes father."

"Whaaat????", the other woman exclaimed. She knew everything about how Jane came to be. "How come he is here? And why is he so weak?" When she had diagnosed him, she had been able to clearly feel his strength and it was way different from the one Lara had reported in the past.

Lara saw no reason to hide anything from her and told her what had happened.

"Wow, I never expected something like this to happen.", she then hesitated for a bit before saying, "But I think you should try to make this marriage work."

"Mia, what are you saying? You especially should know how I felt back then." The doctor, Mia, was the one who had helped her to overcome the trauma she had after being raped, so she couldn't believe that she out of all people would recommend her something like this.

"Calm down girl. I only want, what is best for you. It is exactly because of what happened back then, that you should try. Only this way, you will be able to completely overcome it."

"What do you mean? I have already overcome it.", Lara protested.

"Hah, don't try to fool yourself. If you had really overcome it, you wouldn't have stopped adventuring and taken over the company."

"What are you talking about? I took over the company so that I would have the time to take care of Jane."

"Really? If you had really only wanted more time to spend with your daughter, then there is no way you would have taken over. Because since then, you have even less time than before. Instead, you would have stayed at home, or done something that wouldn't require you to invest much time."

Lara was unwilling to admit that she might be right, not even to herself. "Believe what you will. This decision has nothing to do with what happened."

"Oh right? Alright, then let's say it really doesn't have anything to do with it. Then what about your unwillingness to get into contact with men."

"How am I unwilling? Don't I always spend time with dad and uncle?"

"Yes, but they are family. And they are the only ones. Hell girl, you even got rid of all the male top staff in the company."

"I did not!"

"Oh right. You only transferred them out of the headquarters. Stop being stubborn. It's not like it is bad to admit it. On the contrary, it is bad to not admit it, because then you can do nothing about it."

Lara looked torn. Ever since that fateful day, she had distanced herself from males as far as possible as well as giving up on adventuring. But she was really unwilling to admit, that he still had so much sway over her actions.

"Just think about it. There is no need to make the decision hurriedly."

Lara slowly sipped the tea the housekeep had brought them, while she thought about what Mia had told her. Meanwhile, Mia too enjoyed her tee and waited for her to come to a decision.

"Why did you decide to talk about that now?"

"Because something has changed. There is now a way for you to completely overcome your trauma. When I saw you close to someone who isn't a real family member to you, I thought there was a chance in you. I really didn't expect him to be the source of your trauma, which makes it even better that you were able to get closer to him. I think this is a great opportunity to fully overcome your trauma."

"I don't know. I think it is fine the way it is."

"Just think about it. And don't forget that you will have to stay married to him for a long time."

"Mmm, I will.", Lara finally conceded. "Oh, by the way, when do you expect that guy to wake up?"

Surprised by the sudden change of topic Mia was slow to answer. Then before she could answer the housekeeper who had gotten the job of watching over Jane and Ivan, whom they had put into the same room, called them.