Completed [Weekend Challenge] Infirmed

[Gemma Parker]

Spring 7th, 519av, 13 Bells

Ugh. Gemma was sick. She had definitely overdone it with both work and her own schedule, and now she was struggling just to move at a normal pace. It had started out as a cold but had developed into full-blown pneumonia. She basically had to stay in bed for seven days, and then she would be limited in the work she was able to do for the next thirty days. This did not work into her plans at all. What was she supposed to do while she waited? Her gnosis mark was not strong enough to heal herself, and in any case she had already decided not to self medicate anymore, at least not habitually.


So here she was, barely able to work, barely able to walk, and completely unable to have any fun. She had to wear a mask to attend patients, and even then she was limited by both her pneumonia and her shoulder, which she had been told would take at least forty days to heal, but more if she didn't rest. She hadn't been resting enough, so now it was more likely to take even longer. She looked at a calendar she had drawn in her notebook and saw that she was likely to still have shoulder problems until just the end of Spring. This was ridiculous. How was she supposed to keep improving at all the things she wanted to do? The only thing she could still do normally was to pray, and even then she had to take care of her breathing to not run out of breath.

Gemma was frustrated. She had had all these plans for the New Year. So many goals, so many ideas, so many things to work on. She had carefully designed her schedule to maximize her time both at work and in school. And now… The doctor had become the patient. And for what? It had all just been a freak accident. She couldn’t understand it. And now she was suffering for no reason. She couldn’t help but feel resentful about the whole ordeal as she coughed again. She was on a break and had to just lay down and catch her breath rather than hopping off to mix herbs or play with philtering. She felt like a cripple.

Gemma had never realized how dependent she was on her body. She had always considered herself to be more of a mind person, since she studied so much. But now she saw that all her studies were active and practical, involving some kind of physical activity to execute.

And then, it happened. There was a knock on the Catholicon room door and in walked… Izo.

Gemma tried to sit up. Her heart raced and she tried to gasp, but it only caused a deep throaty cough that shot pain through her shoulder.

“Don’t try to get up.” Izo said. “It’s fine, I’m here in an official capacity,” he said. I do still work here, you know.” He smiled, but it was a doctor’s smile, one she herself had used hundreds of time. Her heart sank. Not only was he going to see her weakened and infirmed. He was going to treat her. This was so much worse.

[Gemma Parker]

"How are you feeling?" Izo asked as he pulled a bench up to sit beside her. Gemma's face reddened and she turned away. She couldn't control the heat that was coming to her face, and for all the wrong reasons. She had hoped for her first moments alone with Izo to be something more intimate or at least conversational. This was purely professional. She was the victim. Not only that, but she was the lowest student in her class. She had been working for the last three years while all her classmates had been in school, probably sponsored by wealthier families or employers who were invested in their success. She had thought going to school would be easy, at least at first. She had wondered what would happen, of course, but the reality had been much worse than anything she could have imagined.

Gemma finally turned her face back to Izo, but couldn't look him in the eye. Instead she looked past him to the cieling. She had never been in an infirmiry bed for so long, and now she was coming to appreciate the patients who had to stay here for a long time. She would have to make it a point to brighten up the rooms or something. Maybe she could talk to Martini about painting some calming murals or something. That was a good idea, she thought. But even as she thought about that, she remembered that Izo was here and she still hadn't answered him.

"I'm..." She coughed again, unable to stop herself. She clutched her left shoulder with her right hand and winced, feeling pain all through her upper body.

"All right, let's not talk for now." Izo said. "You just got off a work shift, right?" He asked.

Gemma tried to answer, even breathing in to do so, but Izo tilted his head and raised his eyebrows in a warning not to speak. She sighed and twitched her finger up and down almost like a little head nod.

"Yes? Ok. That's enough. Just answer like that, ok? No talking." Gemma felt a tear welling in her eye. This was so embarassing. She wouldn't have minded if Izo had been injured and she had to take care of him. It would have given her a chance to talk to him and show him who she was, and that she really wasn't as dumb as she was sure she looked in class. She had a lot to offer. But right now she had nothing.

"What about your shoulder? Can you indicate your pain level on a scale of one to ten?" Gemma had asked these same questions so many times to so many patients. She had never realized how patronizing they felt when you couldn't answer properly.

She held up five fingers on her right hand, closed her hand, then opened two more. She then changed between two and three fingers to indicate a number between seven and eight. She felt that sometimes the pain was more, but she didn't want him to think she was a baby who couldn't take pain.

[Gemma Parker]

Izo smiled and shook his head, writing down her answer in his notebook. Gemma knew there weren't universal note pages shared between everyone, but some doctors and aids kept personal notes on small things if they had the money to invest in something like that. Gemma had always thought it better to just try to remember things, but that had gotten her into trouble on more than one occasion.

"Well let's get you something for the pain." He said. "Maybe I can turn this into a mini class, what do you think?" Gemma's face lit up a little at his attempt to cheer her up. Of course, he was not likely to know that she didn't really like class, but this would be a one on one session. She was sure she would enjoy this. She gave him the thumbs up and a tired smile.

"Excelent. So I'm going to give you a poppy extract for the pain." He began, but Gemma shook her finger to indicate that she didn't want that. It was true that she was in pain, but Izo was here. She didn't want to waste these moments by feeling high and not clear. She had never actually had opiates, but she had seen their effects.

"No? But your pain..." He started. She tried to use signs to help him understand. She pointed to her head and made the crazy motion, rolling her eyes into a crossed position before again shaking her finger in a no sign.

"You don't want to lose your mind?" He chuckled. "Gemma, you're not going to go crazy. It just makes it hard to think, but right now you have a break, and I won't give you so much that you can't come to class later. You still have a few hours before then anyway." Gemma noticed that his doctor's mask was slipping a little bit. He was not the same goofy professor he was in class. He was kind and caring.

Still, Gemma shook her finger no and made a supplicating face. Please.

Izo sighed. "Stubborn girl." He said, looking down. "Fine, then I'll give you a local anesthetic, but I'm not telling you what's in it since your team is trying to make something similar in class." He said.

Gemma smiled and gave him the thumbs up.

"You know if I didn't already know how stubborn you were, I'd tell you to stop working and attending class while you rest. You know you're only prolonging your recovery."

Gemma pouted ever so slightly, and Izo raised his hands in defense. "I know, I know. I won't keep you from attending class. But at least hire a cart to take you to and from here." He said. "It won't kill you to walk from this room out to the door, but walking down to the academy in the rain could aggravate your pneumonia. You need to take it easy. Seriously." He said, his face caring, but once more the doctor mask was coming up.

Gemma smiled, but she felt discouraged. He just saw her as an invalid and a child.

[Gemma Parker]

Izo told Gemma to turn her head toward the white wall of the infirmary room while he mixed up two herbal blends.

"I'll tell you what's in the pneumonia remedy, but not the shoulder one. I don't want to give your team any advantage in the competition." He said. Gemma hadn't even realized that it was really a competition. She would have tried harder already. Maybe that was the point. Izo didn't seem to have noticed the slip, though, if that was what it was. Maybe he had announced it to the class while she had been zoned out. It was very possible. She missed a lot in class, apparently.

Izo talked to her while he mixed something up for her shoulder. Gemma was sad to look down and remember that she was no longer in one of her fashionable but simple dressed. She was in a Catholicon gown. She reddened again, but Izo wasn't looking at her at the moment. She sank into the bed a little more, wanting to die. She would have to get changed before she went to class, too. That would take more time and effort, and she didn't have all her clothes here, just the same dress she'd worn to class yesterday and her herbalist's outfit which was now dry but still a little dirty. It was dumb that she was thinking about how she looked when she was so sick, but she couldn't help the vanity when Izo was here. She wanted to look good for him.

"Just so you know, there are things that an herbalist can do without too much physical effort." Gemma perked up at that. Did that mean she could keep training?

"You can just have an apprentice do the physical parts while you do everything else. You could even hire someone if you want to keep producing. In your case, just have your classmates do all the talking and mixing. You can still contribute by giving input." Gemma's heart sank. That might have been helpful if she was not the lowest in her class. Everyone else was already so good at herbalism. She thought she might have been better off in a tier two class, but she knew that that would have defeated the purpose of her taking classes. She had wanted to challenge herself, but now that she was here, she thought the challenge might have been too much for her.

[Gemma Parker]

Gemma listened as Izo tried to cheer her up by telling her all the ways she could continue to practice herbalism even with a bad arm, but none of it seemed reasonable for her. It was all just her telling other people what to do. That wouldn’t give her the feel for it that she needed. She thought about solutions herself, and thought maybe if she could find a way to hold the mortar down, she could use the pestle with one hand. That was the really hard part. She would also need help moving boiling pots from one place to another, since they were heavy and there was no way she could do that on her own. Maybe she could just hire a laborer for a few Kina a day to help her with just that part.

She shelved that idea for now, trying to think of other ideas. But then, the remedy for her shoulder was ready, and Izo brought it over to her, now back in doctor mode after briefly lapsing into prof mode. Gemma smiled, but she wanted to frown. She didn’t want prof or doc mode. She wanted to know Izo for who he was behind those masks. But as long as she was in the context of his classes or this infirmary room, there was no chance for that.

“This will need to be reapplied once a day.” He said, showing her the cream he’d been working on. Gemma should not have been surprised, but she was. He had made a cream in that short time? She hadn’t been watching, but she thought it had all been over so quickly. It took her hours to make a cream by following all the steps. Had he already had the ingredients decocted, infused, and ready? But he hadn’t left the room. Either he had used what was already in the herb closet, or he had had the ingredients on hand in his bag. That was more likely, since he had probably known what she needed before he visited.

“Do you mind if I move your gown to expose your shoulder?” He asked. Gemma reddened.

“If you’d prefer, I can turn around while you apply the cream yourself. I trust that you know how to apply a cream. It just might be hard to get it where it needs to be, especially on your upper back.” She knew he was trying to be a gentleman, but his comment just brought a deeper shade of red to her face.

“I can just have an aid do it.” He stammered. Was he always like this with his patients, or was this because she was his student, too? Or maybe… No, those were the only two logical reasons. He saw her blush and wanted to protect her from embarrassment. It was sweet.

“No, it’s ok.” She wheezed, drawing a stern glare from Izo. She laid her right palm across her left collar bone and slowly slipped the gown over her shoulder, exposing only the area he needed to work on.

Izo nodded and applied the cream in swift, professional movements. There was nothing sensual about the situation, but Gemma still felt a mix of relief, anxiety, and disappointment.