Chapter 10 - Mending
It had been a long day. The constant pain didn't help matters. After the wave finished, around one in the afternoon, the healers were in a state of constant activity. All four of them had experience in the medical field and when their mana ran out, they turned to more mundane treatments for injuries. They sewed up wounds, set broken bones, applied tourniquets where required, and elevated limbs to reduce swelling. The collective experience of all of them was not small.
Most had easy enough injuries that a cast or two of healing fixed them right up, just like in the previous waves. It was the handful of more serious injuries that were the problem. Scott, my father's youngest brother, had a deer stomp down on his foot which crushed some of the bones. He couldn't walk on it and it looked red and angry when his boot was cut off. Jonathan had a deer roll up onto his leg after it had died and it bent his leg in a direction it was not designed to go. After Sam's Body Scan, it was revealed that he dislocated his knee cap along with tearing just about every ligament in the knee. His ACL and MCL were obliterated.
After his kneecap was put back into place, he could technically walk, but with nothing to support his knee, it would just pop back out again. Also, putting weight on it was extremely painful. I wasn't the only one who broke an arm, as there was another who held that honor. Mitchie, or Mitchell, as he hated that childhood nickname, had a deer collide with his side. He didn't have a shield to blunt the impact and wielded twin daggers from his rogue class, so his arm took the brunt of the force before snapping.
There were other more serious injuries but nothing as severe as those. The healers worked to stop the bleeding of the numerous puncture wounds first, then after that was taken care of they moved on to other minor injuries. They had tried to use their skill to try and repair the bone before they noticed it wasn't as effective as normal. Two casts of the skill healed up most wounds fine, but that was when the only healing that was needed was to close the wound and repair the damaged muscle underneath. Some of the energy went towards clotting the blood and sealing the wound, but it was used more to speed up the body's natural process than to take over and do it for the body.
That left the repairing of bones; a strenuous and resource-intensive undertaking that took time. When all but the four of us were healed, half of the healers received their 4th level, unlocking another skill option. The discussion about which skill they should take resurfaced. People were getting heated, and some of the comments stuck out from the rest by how loud they were.
"What would have happened if they ran out of mana and someone bled out? They should take Meditation so that doesn't happen. The other options don't matter if they don't have the mana to heal, then they're worthless!"
"Who are we to dictate what they can or can't take as a skill? How would you feel if we forced you to take a specific skill!"
"If it was for the greater good I would do it, no questions asked!"
"Yes but who decides which skills are for the greater good? Should we listen to you with your two divorces and a kid who doesn't speak to you?"
Ohh, that was a low blow. That was a sore spot for Uncle Brayden. He went through a rough patch in life after those events unfolded. After his second divorce, there was a lengthy and brutal legal battle about custody of the child they shared. He ended up losing his house, lost the custody battle, and had to pay child support and alimony for years. His ex-wife remarried a few years later and his daughter turned eighteen not long after so he didn't have to pay for long, but the damage was done.
With only visitation and the occasional weekend, he saw his daughter a lot less. He picked up a second job and started working a lot more, and those weekend visits turned into holidays. After that, it wasn't very long until she asked him to stop coming. To this day Brayden claims his ex-wife turned her against him and poisoned her mind with lies.
He was in a dark place for a while after that. He worked through it with a combination of therapy and drinking until pulling himself out of it. He then went on to marry his current wife, Rachel, and have his two sons Hal and Kyle. Having not been born yet, I don't remember a time when he was like that. His first divorce was better and happened when he was really young. He married his high school sweetheart before they both went off to college. Suffice it to say they grew apart and never really got better. That one was an amicable separation with no bad blood between the two.