Page 542: Do We Take The Chance?
Do We Take the Chance?
Summary: The healers at the Flint camp opt for a kill or cure tactic.
Date: 16/Jan/2013
Related Logs: Drink This
Players:
Arabella Dania Ciaran Einar 
Flint Camp
Large clearing with lots of tents. A big pvaillion and multiple smaller ones, also a cook fire and the foundations of a small manor.
Wed Jan 16, 290

The rain from the previous day has cleansed the area and everything is glistening in the new day, the sun glittering in the small puddles. It is hard to believe this is a camp in the last stages of decline, since it seems to be a blooming outcamp alive with possibilities. Bella has stepped out of her tent and is surveying it with a slightly more jaded expression than she used to have. People died and there sometimes was nothing a healer could do to help. That admission had cost her, deeply. Immediately her gaze settles on the nobleman’s tent and without thinking about it, she opens the flap and peers in, "Lord Einar?.. How are you feeling this day?" Her voice is soft, tentative, not really wanting to disturb him if he is actually getting a restful sleep. Sleep meant the pain was not the frontal thing in a mind, right?

Dania is tired she is always tired. She tucks the hem of her skirt up before she steps out of the pavilion. Her hair is still primly bound up and she is wearing a clean apron, sleeve guards and a cloth mask. Tucked underneath her arm she carries an ornately carved wooden box. She is thoughtful as she makes her way towards the noble's tent. When she seen the noble lady enter, she hesitates and stands there in between the pavilion and the tent.

Sitting outside and seeming rather unphased by the death is Ciaran. Many different reasons could be behind it. Perhaps most likely being to keep strong. Since he has a job to do. Dressed for duty already and seeming to have been waiting for Dania, so when the mistress comes out he does offer a nod and rises to join her. Going for his things as well and then heading with her. Seeing her stop and he raises a brow. "What is it?"

"I have been thinking about what you said about the wasting potions." She told him. "I was thinking we could try it on the lord. He is at the stage where he is weakening fast. I spent the night treating his fever with the others. I also have been thinking." With her free hand she rubs her lower back. "The only thing is that using the potion on him will leave him weaker that he is. The question is do we take the chance?"

Ciaran listens and nods, "Either we do it now or not at all. If we wait longer it will probably increase the chance that it fails." He suggests. Since that is common sense in this case perhaps, the weaker he get the less likely are they to succeed. "Perhaps it should be his choice if he can speak. If he can not… We'll have to decide. Or the lady." He tells her and studies Dania for a moment.

"He is weak already and will weaken further." Dania says. "We can ask him last night he could recall what it was when I had asked him. It will be his choice and if they say he died from the wasting potion and not the sickness itself I will take the blame for it." She takes a deep breath and slowly lets it out. "But you are right, last night I did not want to do it because I wanted to let the fever remedies have a chance to take hold and I wanted to get the fluids into him." She moves towards the tent and motions for Ciaran to follow her.

Ciaran nods, "Or I could take the blame if they need to blame someone." Since he knows that no one could get a hold on him. OR so he believes at least. Continuing after her into the tent.

"No, I would not do that to you. You have a wife and child and I just have me." Dania laughs at that softly as if she finds amusement in her own words. "Nobles are a fickle lot. Some are decent some are not, then again the same can be said of us. But, they hold the power of life and death over us at times." She smiles a little as she says that in a soft and quiet tone that is only for Ciaran's ears only. She shrugs her shoulders.

Ciaran shrugs, "Nobles have little power over me." He says in that same low tone as she used. Studying her with his intense stare before focusing on the tent and towards the lord. "I am sure that it will all be fine though." He nods to her a bit and will follow Dania.

"That is where you are wrong in some regard." Dania stops a few feet from the tent. "I have my own views on life and death. No matter what class you are you bleed; you can get sick and death comes for everyone. It is all part of living. Death and pestilence cares not for what titles you may hold. The nobles may not own our minds or our thoughts but they can make our lives difficult, tear the land apart with war as they bicker between themselves. They are also swift with their justice. Sometimes that justice is not deserved." Her voice is very soft when she speaks with him. "There was boy who was just on the verge manhood; he had one of eyes gouged out. He was stable boy and he had a lazy eye. One day a noble thought he was being insolent because of the way the boy was looking at him. He is lucky he lived."

Ciaran shrugs a bit at her words. "Nobles have never cared for me, though neither have they been able to do me much, even if they try." Cocky indeed, though he just raises his brows, "Though as I said. Even if they do, I am sure things will sort themselves." Trying to keep his emotions in check, but being one to be controlled by them, it is hard to do.

"Just be careful good master who you say that too, that is all I say on the subject." Dania then slips into the tent. She grows quiet as she places the items she has with her down on a small makeshift table. She rubs her lower back for a moment and stretches before she moves towards noble who resides in here.

Ciaran nods, "I should be fine." He says with a wink as he follows her along. Going into the tent and towards the noble as well. Falling silent and into his role of assistant.

Dania studies the noble again as she rubs her lower back and stretches again. Her blue eyes take in his appearance. "I always worry." She says to Ciaran. "It comes naturally to me." She looks over her shoulder at him and offers him an impish smile.

Ciaran grins in return to Dania, even if it is hidden. Eyes shift to the noble then. "He seems a bit better than usual." Not that it means a lot, nor is it much better. Letting Dania try and talk to the lord.

Once more stretch and rubbing of her lower back and then Dania approaches the cot, she is wearing gloves, her mask, apron and her sleeve guards. She leans forward. She takes a closer look at the pallor of the lord's skin checking to see if it is clammy. She then leans back. "He is looking much better than yesterday, this is promising. Still not as well as I had hoped. Milord, we spoke about the wasting potion, we are thinking that we will try it on you. But we seek permission first as it can weaken you further."

While Einar did manage to get some sleep through the night, it had been fitful and broken as is oft the way when a fever is involved, let alone the pain. He looks tired, like he could sleep forever and a day, but for now at least rest is evading him, although so is concentration, although that might be a blessing in disguise really. He had been doing the closed eyes equivalent of staring into the distance, broken only by the attacks of cramps and other afflictions, but as he hears voices he rolls his head towards them before cracking his eyes open a little and squinting to try and locate the source of the noise.

Dania leans forward and into his line of sight. "You are looking just a tad better than you were last night Milord." She says to him. "It is Mistress Dorsey." She is wearing a mask and her eyes are equally tired. But there is gentleness to them. "I am going to work on purging this from your system. I know that many have tried and sometimes it does work and other times it does not as it is the nature of this illness. But I would like to try. Part of me is wary to be doing this as we have seen improvement in you today." She tells him.

Maybe it's something to do with the concoctions to numb the pain, or maybe he had actually be briefly asleep, but Einar gets at best half of that through the fog that's clouding his brain. He latches onto what he thinks is a key word though and repeats it back with the slightest of nods, "Purge." His voice is quiet and dry, not much more than a whisper really, although the groggyness is probably quite a small price to pay for the lessening of the pain it counterbalances.

Dania opens the ornate box she set on the table and from it she pulls out a premade mixture. She measures it out and carefully mixes it into a cup, it smells of lemons and peppers and other herbs. Once the draught has been made she looks over at him. "I am going to help you sit up and I will control the cup, I am sorry but I do not want this to spill on you."

Einar still isn't tracking everything Dania says and it's fair to say that she ends up doing most of the work to get him into a position where he can safely drink the potion in the cup. There's no fight given to her comment that she'll hold the cup, partially because the mere effort involved in moving seems to have worn him out, and so he just lets her get on with it. The first sip however gets a definite reaction as he swallows. Seemingly something in it irritates part of his system and he breaks into a small fit of hacking coughs, starting instinctively to roll onto his side and curl up.

"You need to drink the rest of this milord, I know it is vile." She says to him gently as she reaches out to help him sit up again if he will let her. She is strong. "After this I will give you barley water, but we need to get this down and this into your system. We will only do it once." She tells him. "Trust me Milord, I need you to trust us completely."

It's not so much a matter of trust at this point, if something is stuck in front of Einar's lips and he's told to drink it then that's what he'll do, there really aren't the spare neutrons to ponder what or why. Once the coughs finish he takes a few moments to rest and breathe before he notices that Dania is wanting him to move again and does his best to help her. The rest of the potion goes down with a only a couple more interruptions and then he just closes his eyes once more. Spent for now.

(Later that day)

Throughout the day they have worked cleaning, comforting and treating, hoping against hope. The sun in the sky reached its apex and then started descended ever so slowly. Then once it reached the far horizon in the west it start to glow and the paint the sky in brilliant shades of purple, vermillion, yellow and pinks. With another cup of barley water mixed with honey and mineral salts Dania enters into the tent. She is quiet and her movements slow.

Its fair to say that if Einar had felt wretched before the wasting potion had been administered, he feels it doubly so now and the relief of unconsciousness is always just that finger-length too far away to reach. He is, to put it bluntly, utterly exhausted and isn't doing any kind of movement on his own at all, bar breathing. His lying as he was put, on his side with his head at the edge of the cot so that he doesn't accidentally choke on anything and right now, he's shivering. Not violently, or dramatically, but enough to see when close enough. It could be the fatigue, the fever, an after effect of the potion, any number of things really, but one thing that is isn't is conducive to rest.

Dania is still dressed in an apron sleeve guards and a cloth mask, the mug she was carrying is set on the small table near the cot. She moves over to where he is to help him sit up. "Einar, we now need to restore the balance of your body or humors." With strong arms she moves him into a sitting position she deft at this though her muscles do strain. "There you go." She says once he is in the sitting position. She brushes back his hair and from his brow and moves to get the lukewarm cup. "I need you to drink this."

A faint and incoherent mutter is the only real indication that Einar is aware that anything has changed with Dania's arrival, and that's only when she first starts to move him. His eyes remain closed and he offers neither assistance, nor resistance to the effort to get him more upright. The only movement not instigated by Dania in fact is when his head rolls slightly to rest in a slightly different position, one that doesn't rely on neck muscles to maintain. It does however, roll towards rather than away, and then theres a snatch more mumblings, nothing more than the faintest of whispers and certainly not coherent, but mumblings all the same. He is however, still shivering.

Holding his head Dania gently starts to help get the fluid in him. Every movement is patient and deft. "I need you to swallow, let me do the rest." She tells him. She is careful and her voice quiet in the tent.

Bella arrives from the pavilion, as has become her routine, she stops just outside the Flint nobleman's tent, takes a deep breath, trying to hide her unbearably sad expression before she steps inside. Noting Dania with him, and him finally being awake, she moves to the end of the cot and has a seat, reaching for his hand, should he allow. "Lord Einar. It is so good to see you awake." As usual she ignores the 'parting gifts' he has arranged as well in favor of giving him a look of concern. "It was a beautiful sunny day today. The birds were singing, the sound of the water at the coastline was beautiful after all of the rain from yesterday. The grass is a vivid green.." trying to give him lovely things to think about instead of the pain. "There were only one or two snowy white fluffy clouds in the sky.."

Einar seems to be able to manage to swallow, slowly at least, with head head resting in Dania's hand. Arabella's arrival, and subsequent words earn her no reaction at all, although there is possibly just the faintest flinch as she takes his hand. Unfortunately though, there still seems to be something of the wasting potion active in his gut and after about half of the cup has gone there starts to become issues in keeping it down. He has nothing else inside to throw up though, so it's not as bad as before, but it's still significantly less than ideal. It also means of course, that those painkillers he'd been given to drink weren't staying down either, so he feels o
every cough and splutter in his throat and stomach. Back arching and head trying to burrow into the pillows he starts to ball his fists again, meaning Bella's fingers might be in for a bit of a squeeze. Although, in truth, he doesn't have the strength for much of one.

The cup with the rest of the fluid in it is moved away before he vomits into it. Wiping his mouth off Dania cleans him up once he is done. "You have to try again, this time we will put just a little at a time in your stomach." She looks at Bella. "I gave him the wasting potion, I take responsibility for it. We need to work on rebalancing his humors now. I did the wasting potions in hopes that it would help him." She moves to wipe his brow again. She looks at the lord and she moves him back into the position she needs him in. After he is cleaned up. "Bella can you feed him the barley water while I hold him up and get the bucket ready?" She is tired and is beyond using titles, but there is no disrespect in her voice. "Four hands are better than two."

Bella had not expected a reaction from Einar, her words had also been her way of dealing with the pain and misery that had become so commonplace. A way for her to see beauty where there is none. His reaction pains her, his pain hurts her. Never again would she hear him speaking to her over the campfire, nor would she hear him speaking with such kind consideration about his people. Hope. He had demanded it of her on the day of her arrival, and she had done the best she can. How could she continue to do so? All the while he is sick, she occupies her thoughts of all this, unbothered by the squeeze of his hand. As if he just had not been sick, the Fenster lady nods to Dania in acceptance, then carries on as if never interrupted. "There were puddles of water that glistened in the sun underneath the bright blue sky. The world just.. smelled clean again, the dirt, the trees, like a new beginning." As she speaks. Bella does begin administering the barley water patiently in tiny, small doses..

"There we go." Dania says. She grows quiet for a moment as she watches Arabella. "Lady Fenster forgive me I di did not mean to use your first name and a nickname to boot." She says to her. She then goes to get the cloths ready with her free hand as the bucket is just within reach now. "It was beautiful this morning Lady Fenster is correct and this evening the sky was brilliant as the sun set and night began unfurling her splendor. We should be hearing the frogs and the crickets soon. Lady Fenster you are hope." She smiles tiredly as she says this. Though her smile cannot be seen it does reach her eyes.

Bella was so intent on getting small portions at a time of the barley water into him the lack of title had not even been noticed. Taking a moment, she lifts her head and offers a gentle smile to Dania, "I wish you would call me Bella. I feel we are friends." Falling silent though as Dania begins describing the day to Einar. Gently she cradles his head, ever so patiently offering tiny sips as she just listens, recreating the beauty in her mind.

"I would not mind that at all. I would like that call me Dani, it is what my brothers and father call that me." She tells her. "Promise to only use the privilege in private. Tell us both a story he needs to hear it as do we. Any story will do all I ask is that it has some light in it." She says so gently. "Bella you are doing good."

"Dani," Bella states softly, "I like it." Though the mention of a story catches her by surprise and after a moments thought she begins speaking, hesitantly at first. "Once upon a time.." Her voices does not carry in the small tent as she tells the story, speaking of laughing eyes, bouncing curls, infectious smiles and feminine wiles.. she finishes with, "For the world, when seen through a little girls eyes, greatly resembles paradise.." Looking down she notices the barley water was gone. Still, she gently cradles the Flint nobleman's head, rocking ever so softly, soothingly sifting her fingers through his hair.

"Every half hour to an hour make sure he gets more of that water in him." Dania tells her as she holds the bucket ready for the vomit that may or may not come. "That was a very good story. I can see the little girl in my mind." She watches her with the Flint. "It is going to be a rough night for him." She takes a deep breath and she slowly lets it out and sets down the bucket. She rises from her crouched hovering position and rubs her lower back and stretches before she moves to pick up the bucket again. She lowers her voice as she watches him. "When did you first want to learn the skill?"

"I will.. I will not leave his side this night." Bella softly whispers, praying silently to any and every God she had ever heard of, old and new. "I knew when I was young, much like the girl in the story. My parents thought it frivolous when there were healers already and Maesters for that. I did not get to begin learning until I was gone from Tavin's Rest and a ward of the Charltons of Hollyholt. I was displaced from my home when they split from the Freys and I found myself.. lost. I understand the dilemma of lord Einar, his people, this is all he has." Suddenly she ceases her talking and begins humming as she continues rocking him.

"Why do you say this is all he has?" Dania asks her. She then studies her with her blue eyes. "You do him credit, you know that. You also do yourself credit and you have shown your measure to his people and to him by coming back." She says as she rises and stretches again. "Have they found your soon to be husband? Or is your father still looking for you? I know this is not the time or the place to speak of such things, but sometimes hearing and having a conversation such as this helps." She rolls her neck.

"Because there were so many dreams built here, in the very foundations. So many hopes." That word again, Hope. Looking over at her, Bella blushes. "They have not arranged anything for me. i am from a small house. There are likely no advantages to marrying me."

"Small house big heart." Dania says as she kneads her lower back. "I am sorry you had to meet this much death." She says to her in a gentle manner. "Never lose your hope and never let that heart of yours freeze and turn to stone. I know I am speaking out of turn. Forgive me. I speak too much when I am tired and forget my place." She adds. "The house that wins you will truly have a prize."

Bella blushes at the unexpected praise, ducking her head as she gently soothes her thumb over Einar's forehead, testing his temperature. "Your words are encouraging, Dani. I will treasure them." Taking more barley water now, she begins administering it just as slowly as before. "How are you feeling?"

"Him? He has seen better days, me I am exhausted, but I came here this tired. Then again I think I was born from my mother's womb this tired. It is not that important to be honest. The question is how are you doing and feeling? You have been in this quagmire a lot longer than I have. Are you taking time to make sure you get sleep and something to eat. If something happened to you and your brother knew I was here I do not think he would forgive me." Dania points out as she gets back into that crouched position.

"You also need to keep healthy. I am feeling perfectly fine. I wish I knew what made me so immune to it, I would share it with everyone. Especially him.. and you. My brother knew the risk and he also knew I had to take it. You came back as well.. for the same reasons I did?" Bella continues administering the water with barley, just holding him, trying to warm his shivers. "Why are you so tired?"

"Who knows, it is too soon to tell. Probably because it is rare I get a full night's sleep, though it does happen on occasion. The last good night sleep I had was number of weeks ago." Her eyes get a distant look in then as memories flood her mind. She blushes. "I slept very well. I am just tired." She shrugs and nods. "It is one thing that makes one wonder. It also makes one wonder if there is a way to pass the immunity on, like you said. But it is funny, one time a person will not get it and the next time they will. I think you are right we came back for the same reason."

Bella continues caring for Einar as if he were her own brother, her focus on him while she listens to Dania. Only once does she look up and meet the healer's eyes with polite curiosity. The blush. Giving her a warm look she nods in understanding before looking back at Einar. "If I could pass it on, I would." Bella muses. "I would risk everything to save him."

"I know you would but there comes a time when one must let go. It is not his time yet and I am speaking in general." Dania pauses." Then she nods her head. "I would do anything for my brothers but I also know that when it is time I can let them go. But It is not Einar's time yet. He is just weak from the purging and the sickness. We will keep putting the water down him and once he is able to keep it down we will start the treatments again. This time hopefully they will work." She nods her head again as she says this.

Hope. Rediscovering it was a necessary part of the healing process, even when all seemed hopeless. Or especially then. "It is not his time yet. He has dreams to realize. I wish him to see them through."

"It is not his time yet." Dania repeats herself with a warm smile. "You are good do not forget that and do not lose hope. I know I keep saying that but I will keep saying that until the day I pass on." She offers Bella a bow of her head.