Chapter 727: A Healer’s Reluctant Patient (Part Two)
"I know, Father, I know," Loman said patiently, masking his concern with practiced ease even as his heart began to race within his chest at his father’s extreme reaction to what had only been a firm press at the center of the old wound.
Slowly, his fingers moved on from the scar that ran several inches along his father’s side where the spear of a Horned Demon had nearly impaled him. The jagged scar still bore the marks of hasty battlefield stitching all these years later and if not for having a priest almost constantly at his side during that war, the wound would likely have been fatal.
Loman hadn’t even been born yet when his father received the wound, but there had been a time when Bors would proudly lift his tunic, revealing his battle scars to his sons and telling them that they had to become strong men one day to earn battle scars of their own. Of course, the idea of it had horrified Loman’s mother, who insisted that, even if Owain was bound for the battlefield one day, Loman didn’t have to ride to war unless he chose to.
Now, as Loman examined the old wound, he tried to compare it to what it had looked like in his memories, attempting to determine if it had changed in shape due to some underlying condition of the body and illness or if it was simply a matter of age. For years, his father had sworn that it had only been an ordinary wound and not one caused by one of the demon’s infernal darksteel weapons, but seeing the fierceness of his father’s reaction, Loman began to wonder if that was really true.
"I know the old wound is tender, but is it more tender than usual?" Loman asked as he gave his father the same patient look that he’d given to countless proud men who were in dire enough straits to seek a healer’s aid but too proud to admit the full extent of their suffering.
Too many men treated the priests of the Holy Lord of Light as miracle workers, believing they could wipe away all sickness with a single prayer and that all of the time spent poking, prodding and questioning was simply an act. Such men weren’t entirely wrong. There were, after all, Exemplars and Saints within the Church who were capable of such miracles.
But for most of the Church’s priests, a clear diagnosis was a vital part of any healing effort. A healer could kill themselves trying to heal a patient’s entire body, and many foolish priests had shortened their careers by years, if not decades, by underestimating the cost of healing a grievous wound or severe injury.
Only by fully understanding the disease could a healer minimize the energy required to cure sickness, and that understanding required careful examination of the patient. Whether it was viewing the patient’s urine in a clear glass for signs of cloudiness or bleeding, feeling their pulse for unsteady beats, listening to their breath or ’poking and prodding’ at their bodies, each piece of a healer’s ritual was vital to understanding the underlying sickness.