Hopping between the cluttered cabinets and workbenches of his office, Dr. Askle agitated the hodgepodge of bottles and vials with hairy-knuckled hands like a troll among his treasures. He had injured his leg in a war known to Gravor only from history books, and his resultant jerky gait sent the shadows cast by his bulky frame jumping and twitching in the light of the oil lantern like sinister marionettes. Settling on a bottle of antiseptic, a second bottle filled with leaves in a dark suspension, and a small, black vial, he unrolled his instruments beside the bed where Gravor lay. "Let's see what we have here," he barked, and began to unroll the bandages.
The doctor covered his nose and mouth with his sleeve and reeled back a step on revealing the flesh beneath. Both hands were grotesque studies in indigo and cream and effused the stench of stale pus and putrefaction. Each finger had swollen to twice its size, and they all terminated in freely bleeding patches of intermingled scab and bits of cotton gauze where the now-bloated skin had been shredded away. When Dr. Askle made his first cuts to re-open and clean the wounds, Gravor slipped out of his body only to awake moments later to the astringent burning of smelling salts in his sinuses and Dr. Askle's broad face filling his vision.
"I'm sorry," he apologized, "I'd like to let you sleep through this, but the unfortunate truth is that you can't miss a moment." He ran an antiseptic swab along the depth of a particularly severe laceration. Gravor lost consciousness again as the doctor drained the fluid from his hands, and once more when Askle dipped a spatula into the black glass vial and spread a thin layer of writhing, silvery worms into the naked flesh of Gravor's fingertips. Still, he never cried out, knowing that Vera was waiting in the next room. The doctor, having brought Gravor to again, opened the jar of purplish, lanceolate leaves in bitter-smelling liquid. He spiralled them around Gravor's fingers. "The Vigoratum leaves will help fight the infection. The suturefly larvae eat the rotten and dying flesh, then form coccoons under the skin that help seal the wound. Don't try to cut or pull them out -- they'll cut themselves out on their own in a few weeks."
Seeing Gravor's face growing ashy again the doctor added, "Don't worry -- it won't hurt. They stay just beneath the surface, and the skin around the coccoons should be fully healed by then." He frowned, his eyes disappearing under bushy brows. "But if this doesn't work, I'll have to take some of those fingers." He rolled his tools into a towel and brought them to countertop, where he began tossing them into jars of disinfectant. Over the clattering, he called by means of a farewell, "Change the bandages every two days, but under no conditions lift the Vigoratum. We'll see how things are in a couple weeks."
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