It Shouldn't Happen to a Beasthealer

Writers: Caladria, Jelena
Date Posted: 31st January 2012

Characters: Ramzen, Parme
Description: Ramzen goes to Parme for some first aid treatment.
Location: Sunstone Seahold
Date: month 5, day 20 of Turn 6
Notes: Mentor Approved

For a change, Parme wasn't inside her workplace, but was sitting in
the afternoon sun on a small bench in front of her cot. She was
watching over her youngest son playing with a friend a little distance
away, while mending the tear in her daughter's skirt. They could be
such troublemakers, her two youngest children, at times she wondered
if it was because they had grown up without their father. Then again,
she had always been the strict parent, so that really couldn't be it.
In fact, despite of not growing up under the care of their father,
they were a lot like him and that eased any irritations they might
cause.

A black gelding plodded into view from the track, rider on board and
apparently undisturbed by the dog that occasionally dived around its
feet. As they drew closer, it was easy to see that the rider had been
in some kind of disagreement; the bruises on his bare arm were still
visible, if turning green and yellow with age, and there was an untidy
bandage around his upper arm.

They drew up to the front of the cothold and the man slid off his
horse to face Parme, and politely tipped his hat to her. "Had a spot
of bother with a runner who didn't want to be helped," he explained.
"Give a poor lad a hand?"

"Ah, Ramzen," Parme said as she moved to his side with a concerned
frown on her face. "When will those beasties learn you only mean them
well, eh? But of course, come in. Will Bolt and Bounder be okay out
here? I'd rather clean your wound inside."

Ramzen knotted his horse's reins so the runner couldn't tangle himself
in them, then tethered him on a long rope. "Bounder," he said to the
dog. "Stay!"

Bounder whined and looked at the children playing, but sat obediently.

Ramzen looked speculatively at the dog for a second. "Reckon they'll
be fine out here, unless _your_ beasties tempt them away," he said,
flashing a teasing grin at Parme. He gave Bolt an affectionate thump
and walked towards the cothold door.

"I'm sure they will be fine, then," Parme said with a smile. After
having a quick word with her son and his friend, Parme led the way
into the small cothold, to her workplace. "Did you treat it yourself,
besides bandaging it?"

"I washed it a little," Ramzen said. "That's not much guarantee of
what it looks like now, though." Parme might scold but he dealt with
animals all day, and things rarely stayed as clean as they ought. "But
with it being a right arm I can't deal with it easy, so I thought I'd
ask the expert to take a look. It's feeling like there's a touch of
infection setting in," he added. Not that he would have bothered the
herbalist for anything less - or even that, if he could have trusted
his less dextrous left hand to bandage effectively.

Parme made a small disapproving sound. "You're only coming in because
there's an infection, aren't you?" she asked as she raised her
eyebrows. "Well, at least you came in now." She ushered the man to a
seat where the window would give her enough light. "Let's have a
look."

"I'd be a poor kind of healer - even a beasthealer - if I couldn't
deal with my own scrapes," Ramzen protested, not looking one tiny bit
chastened. Parme was nothing on what healers tended to think of his
self medication. He sat obediently, and offered his right arm to her.

"It still got infected," Parme muttered on her breath, but she decided
there wasn't much use arguing. She couldn't really blame him anyway,
she would probably be the same. Removing the bandage carefully, Parme
observed the wound.

The first glance told the story of what had gone wrong - the dressing,
inexpertly put on with only the left hand, had slipped, leaving the
top of the wound nearly clear to the air and dirt that Ramzen dealt
with on a daily basis. While the bruise on his lower arm looked very
much like the result of a kick, the vaguely circular wound on his
biceps was a bitemark, with the skin intermittently broken and the
parts nearest the top of the slipped bandage looking angry with the
red puffiness and the beginnings of a white telltale ooze confirming
Ramzen's diagnosis of infection.

"Oh, Ramzen!" Parme said with a deep sigh. "This is what you get from
self medicating. Look at all that dirt in your wound..." Shaking her
head, the older woman got up again to get herself plenty of redwort to
clean out the wound. "How long ago did this happen?"

"Three or four days ago," Ramzen replied, contorting himself to get a
better look at the injury, poking it a little with his finger then
wincing as it hurt. "I can't quite remember."

Swatting at the hand he was using to poke at the wound, Parme frowned
at him. "Don't touch that now!" she warned him as she washed her hands
in redwort to sterilize them. "And you'd better try to remember."
Parme wondered if he was being forgetful on purpose, trying to hide
anything else that might be going on and she turned to look him in the
eyes. "Any other problems? Muscle aches?"

"I'm not daft," he protested. "If I'd started with lockjaw, I'd be
with the Healers, not you. I swear, it just needs someone with two
hands at it."

"I'm not calling you daft, I'm just calling you stubborn," she said,
while raising her eyebrows. "Humour an old lady and show me?" she
asked as she reached out to touch the side of his jaws, expecting him
to show her it's movements weren't inhibited.

"Now, if I'd lockjaw, could I be speaking to you?" he chided gently.
"He was mean, but he wasn't disease filled."

Judging the movement of his jaws as he talked to her, Parme pulled
back her hands and shrugged. "Excuse me for making sure, mister," she
said before turning back to her redwort preparation. "What did you do
with the beasty?"

"I'd barely touched him when he did this," Ramzen said. "He'd a foot
abscess that needed draining, was half crippled, poor thing."

"And this is your gratitude, eh?" Parme said with a shake of her head.
"Okay, I'm going to rinse it with water first," she said as a warning,
before getting to work. No doubt Ramzen was a tough man, but she was
used to warning her 'patients' before she did anything.

"He'll be sound in a few days," Ramzen said philosophically. And if
the animal was fixed, well then - he'd done a good job. He managed not
to reflexively pull away when the water hit, but he did flinch. "So
you keep in mind that I'm a lovely patient, comparatively," he teased.

"Hmm..." Parme said, not sounding too convinced, but her smile gave
her away. When the wound was properly cleaned, she dipped a cloth in
her redwort solution. "Alright, here comes the redwort, are you
ready?" she asked gently. With a wound like this, it was likely to
sting like crazy.

Ramzen nodded. "Needs to be done. Better than a kick in the teeth," he
said wryly.

"Alright, here goes," Parme said as she deftly started to disinfect
his wound. She did it as quickly and carefully as possible, but she
knew it had to hurt like crazy.

Ramzen gritted his teeth. "How are your brood getting on?" he asked,
looking for a distraction. Never let it be said that he didn't
understand why he got bitten and kicked.

"Oh, they are doing fine," Parme said, though for a moment she looked
just a touch concerned. "Elson is getting in trouble a bit too much
for my sake, though. I'm not sure what to do with him." As she talked,
she continued her work with an expert hand and soon enough she was
done.

"He'll be working before you know it," Ramzen said. "What is he now -
ten, eleven Turns?" He hissed in air through his teeth as Parme
finished, then inspected her work.

"Ten turns. I just hope he stays out of serious trouble. He doesn't
seem interested in learning a Craft either, it has me worried." While
talking, she started to prepare the bandages for his wound. "Sometimes
I think it's because he has grown up without a dad, you know? Maybe
I'll have one of his brothers have a word with him."

"Well, he'll have to pick something soon enough if he's that age -
whether he's interested or not," Ramzen said philosophically. "Or find
work somewhere else. But if there's anything I can do, let me know?
I've contacts around in the strangest places." It wasn't that
surprising; folk were grateful for the help he could give their
animals.

"Well, if you can arrange for a search dragon to sweep him away, you
would be his hero." Parme laughed cheerfully. Not that she would like
to see her son being taken to a Weyr, but at times she wondered if
that might be better for the boy. Dragonriding seemed to be the only
thing that caught his attention these days. "Alright, ready to wrap
you up!" she said as she begun to apply the bandages.

Ramzen laughed. "But would I be yours if he ended up Weyrfolk?" He
held his arm still, trusting in Parme's sturdy bandages.

"That's right," Parme chuckled softly as she continued her work. Only
a moment later she had bandaged his wound securely and dropped her
hands to her lap. "Do you think you can be careful until it's healed?"

"You know me," Ramzen said, avoiding the question completely. He
flexed his arm a few times to check the tightness, then shook his
shirt sleeve over it. "Perfect. Not that I'd expect anything less from
you. Now, would you be preferring marks for payment or would you like
some of those healer's herbs I pick up when I trek inland next?"

"Hmm, that I do," Parme said as she raised her eyebrows at him. There
was not much use insisting, though, Ramzen would do whatever he wanted
to anyway. "And I would certainly like to replenish my herb stock, so
that would be most welcome."

"I should be over that way in the next couple of sevendays," Ramzen
replied. "Got a holder with a prize mare due to foal and he's jumpy as
a green weyrling." He stood. "Right, I'd better be checking that your
young terrors haven't made off with my canine while we've been idling
away in here," he said. "My thanks to you, as always."

"Perfect," Parme said with a smile. "Just swing by when you get the
chance. I still got a good bit of supply left to last me a while, so
there is no big rush." When he stood, Parme led him to the door. "We
will track 'em down soon enough if they have, just following the trail
of chaos they have left behind." However, when they got outside things
were - amazingly enough - exactly how they had left them and soon
Ramzen was on his way again.

Last updated on the February 4th 2012

Welcome to Triad Weyrs!

It Shouldn't Happen to a Beasthealer