• Solo • Doctor Devin, Part 2

[Devin]

Part 1

Vhalar 3, Arc 719

On the 3rd of Vhalar, Devin Thorn, thief, conman extraordinaire and priest of Delroth walked into the Medicine House, a black doctor’s case in his left hand and a bandage around his right hand – because the only way that he would be able to avoid having to perform a surgery was to fake an injury.

As he had expected (and hoped!), his hand attracted attention. Des’trill, the pretty Sev’ryn nurse with the weird name (why did so many Sev’ryn names contain an apostrophe, for Delroth’s sake?), looked at him as he entered the lobby. Her eyes widened, and then she exclaimed,

“Oh no, Doctor Hawthorne! What happened to your hand? I hope you didn’t break it!”

“Nah”, Devin replied and smiled brightly because his plan was working brilliantly so far. “I just sprained it a little. It should be as good as new in a couple of trials. I was practicing a few unarmed combat moves with my roommate and punched him a bit too hard.”

“So”, he remarked and set his doctor’s case down on Destrill’s desk. “Who’s my first patient? I can’t wait to start and show the people of Desnind the wonders of Northern Medicine!”

He peered at the papers that were lying on the desk, feigning eagerness. While he wasn’t sure about surgery, he was confident that he would be able to handle most common ailments. He’d been sick often enough after all!

“A hunter was camping in the jungle. While he was sleeping, a group of Kudi’Eltu attacked him and tried to steal his possessions. He managed to defeat them, but he retained a couple of bite wounds in the process. He only speaks Xanthea, by the way”, Des’trill informed him. “He’s waiting in a treatment room. Follow me, Doctor Hawthorne!”

Devin grabbed his doctor’s case again and walked down the hallway with her, secretly wondering why the hunter had been attacked by a group of dumb people (because that was what “Kudi’Eltu” meant in Xanthea, from what he knew).

Did the Sev’ryn exile mentally handicapped people and leave them to fend for themselves in the jungle – and why had the mentally handicapped people in question bitten their victim?

That was really weird!

[Devin]

Des’trill led Devin down a hallway with a number of doors. One door in particular caught his attention – because it was closed which meant that the room behind it was either not in use or there was something special in it. Devin stopped in front of it for a moment and furrowed his brow before he asked, “What’s in there, by the way, Des’trill?”

“Oh, that”, the nurse said and looked at the door. “That’s where we store the more potent medicines. I should probably already have explained how it works yesterday. You can take whatever you need for your patients from that room, but you need to make a note in the book on the table so that we can keep track.”

“Right”, Devin said, trying to hide his excitement. If he could just walk into the storage room and take whatever he wanted, robbing the Medicine House would be much easier than he had thought at first! Maybe he wouldn’t have to do that stupid job for long! Maybe he would even be able to fake one of other the employees’ handwriting and blame the theft on them!

“Let’s go the patient now!” he told Des’trill.

A few trills later, they had reached the end of the hallway. Des’trill opened the last door on the left before she turned to face Devin once more. “I should probably have asked you earlier, Doctor”, she admitted. “Since you’ve injured your hand, do you need any help with the patient?”

“Nah”, Devin retorted. “I’m sure that I’ll manage. Bandaging wounds is easy. I can do it with only one fully functioning hand”, he told her. “You can go back to the front desk now. I don’t want to keep you from your work any longer!” He smiled brightly at her.

In truth, he wanted her to be gone because he was worried that she’d notice if he did something wrong and tell Tey’droa who would then fire him and maybe even alert the authorities (if they had such in Desnind).

A moment later, he remembered that Tey’droa had informed him that someone would always check up on his patients for the first ten-trial in order to make sure that he had treated them correctly.

Oh no!

What had he gotten himself into?

He didn’t want to go to prison!

[Devin]

The man that sat on the examination table, waiting for the Medicine House’s supposed new specialist on “Northern Medicine” was in his thirties and had an impressive number of tattoos. In the couple of trials that he had been in Desnind, Devin had noticed that the Sev’ryn were quite fond of tattoos in general. Why, they even tattooed their babies!

Furthermore, the man wore a ton of bracelets, there were beads in his long hair, his clothes were made of hides, and he had no shoes on – but a bloody piece of cloth around his left leg and another one around his right leg.

“Onitẹsiwaju!¹” Devin greeted him in his best Xanthea which actually sucked really badly, walked up to the man, set his doctor’s case down and pointed at his legs. “Ke’u didara?² Kudi eltu cazu ke’u?³”

The man gritted his teeth, nodded and removed his makeshift bandages in order to reveal the wounds beneath. Devin bent over them with a mixture of disgust and perverse fascination, mumbled something incomprehensible (because he thought that was what a real doctor would do), nodded to himself – and furrowed his brow in confusion.

He didn’t know a lot about medicine, but in his opinion the bite marks were a bit too small to have been caused by humans – unless the hunter had been attacked by a group of rabid toddlers. Devin didn’t know much about Desnind, having only arrived a few trials earlier, but he was pretty sure that there were no bands of rabid toddlers roaming the jungle!

That either meant that he had misunderstood Des’trill – or the man was lying. Devin decided that the latter was much more likely to be the case – since he never made a mistake!


¹Hello!
²You hurt?
³Dumb people bit you?

[Devin]

“Ke’u wáu! Takip kudi eltu!”¹ he informed the man in no uncertain terms and pointed at his bite wounds. They were dirty and slightly red and there was dried blood on them.

The man shook his head fervently, abruptly reached into a pocket of his leather outfit and removed something.

It was a small, severed ear. A small, olive-green severed ear!

“Kudi’Eltu”, the man explained and pocketed the ear again as if he were worried that Devin might steal it otherwise.

He was, of course, rightfully worried.

Devin had come to the conclusion that Kudi’eltu were not mentally handicapped people after all, but dangerous, albeit vertically challenged monsters. A Kudi’Eltu trophy would probably be really valuable!

He was just wondering if there was anything that would temporarily render the man unconscious (and give him amnesia on top of it) in the storage room so that he would be able to steal from him more easily, when said man gestured towards his bite wounds.

He looked really angry and impatient, he observed.

Since he was worried that the man might sever his ears if he didn’t treat him right now, Devin pretty much raced over to the small cupboard he could see on the other side of the room, grabbed a couple of random bottles and a few bandages and set them down next to his patient, forgetting all about what was likely a priceless trophy in the process.

The bottles were all labelled in Xanthea which Devin could unfortunately barely read so he proceeded to open one after the other and sniffed. Finally, he found a bottle whose contents smelled kind of like alcohol. That, he decided, was probably a disinfectant!

It was the same, brown colour that the stuff his mother had used on his wounds when he had been a little boy as well, so it probably wouldn’t hurt the patient. At least he hoped that it wouldn’t.

He was about to put a generous amount on the man’s wounds – the more, the better – when he realized that he should probably clean the wounds first. So, he did just that. He filled a bowl with water, took a clean rag and started the wash the bite wounds carefully.


¹You lie! Not dumb people!

[Devin]

While he put what was hopefully really a disinfectant rather than a dangerous poison or an acid that would reduce his patient to a puddle of goo on the wounds, Devin wondered if he should just steal a few of the medicines that were in this room as they were even more easily accessible than the rest, and he didn’t have to make a note in a stupid book.

He ultimately decided against it as they didn’t seem to be particularly valuable.

He doubted that he’d get a lot of money on the black market for a bottle of disinfectant!

Once the wounds and the area around them were a nice, brown colour due to the disinfectant, Devin put some ointment on them and bandaged them which was much harder than he had thought it would be. His right hand wasn’t really sprained, but the thing he had wrapped around it still got in the way.

He couldn’t take it off though because people would realize that he’d been faking an injury if he did!

Since Devin didn’t know what he was supposed to do with the loose ends, he proceeded to tie them into big bows, the kind of which the girls in Rynmere sometimes wore in their hair.

“Dẹọdọ's ọsïsẹ?¹” the hunter asked and eyed the bows doubtfully.

“Ta’lengean olọravu! Kọv rynmere ïdäkẹjẹ ibon sädudä eltu ibalopọ syam!²” Devin claimed before he told him, “Iwọnotu ke’u ohunkohun!³”

The hunter looked at the bows on his legs again somewhat doubtfully, looked at Devin and finally shrugged his shoulders and bade him farewell.

Once his patient was out of the door, Devin sat down on the examination table and let out a huge sigh of relief before he abruptly raised an arm triumphantly.

Yes!

He’d treated his first patient, said patient hadn’t died, and what more, he seemed to be comparatively content with the treatment he’d received!

Maybe he’d be lucky after all!

Maybe he wouldn’t be fired or end up in prison after all. Who knew, maybe he’d actually be here long enough in order to be able to steal some of that stuff in the storage room!

He’d just need a few trials, just long enough to find out when the best time to sneak into the storage room was and make sure that nobody would be able to trace the theft back to him.

It was a shame that he’d forgotten all about that Kudi’Eltu trophy until it had been too late though …

Come to think of it, why had that hunter had a severed Kudi’Eltu ear in his pocket in the first place?

He’d thought the Sev’ryn were all nature-loving weirdoes and didn't take trophies!


¹What’s that?
²Northern Medicine! In Rynmere we make sick people look nice!
³Off you go!

[Octopie]

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Comments

Poor Devin, maybe he'll realize he's a little on the dense side. These doctor threads are pretty amusing, and you write Devin so cheerfully, it's hard not to smile at his antics. But will he get caught is the real question. The dialogue written in the native language was a nice touch as well, enjoy your rewards!

Points

10

Can be use for magic? Yes or No

Knowledge

Skill
Linguistics: Xanthea: Names often contain an apostrophe
Linguistics: Xanthea: Kudi’Eltu means “dumb people”
Linguistics: Names shouldn’t always be taken literally
Medicine: Telling human and animal bites apart
Medicine: Bite wounds need to be cleaned and disinfected
Medicine: Bandaging a wound

Non
NA

Loot

NA

Wealth

NA

Renown

+5

Injuries

NA