Chương 92: 92-Obstinate

Tanya needs to stop being surprised by the durability of life in this universe.

"Ok, there's the rock. See it?" Amelia states calmly, pointing to the foreign body.

"I see it." She confirms, the object flaring purple in before she looks over at the heavily medicated Ursaring.

"Ready?" Painkillers or no, the 'mon grits her teeth and closes her eyes with a nod.

"Rrrea– Hng!" She growls, muscles in her ruined shoulder writhing as the rock that her body had partially healed around is removed as gently and quickly as possible, a stream of infected wound exudate and blood spilling out behind before Amelia's hands return, spraying disinfecting water to sanitize and drain the wound before moving on with bandages. A temporary substitute for directly healing the injuries.

Because while Tanya could heal this smaller wound, too much healing in a short period of time can strain the body. The infection in the tissue also poses complications, which would only be compounded by still having dirt and rocks beneath the skin. Healing will almost never make an infection worse for a patient, but at the same time healing doesn't do much for most kinds of viral or bacterial illnesses.

Especially considering the fact that they've needed to remove quite a few embedded rocks, all of which were infected, and the body creates wounds around foreign intrusions for good reasons. Completely healing the 'mon is impossible right now, so the objective switches to stabilization, getting Ursaring to a state where she can be safely transported without making anything worse.

Which means removing anything actively harming the 'mon, healing just enough to ensure already damaged areas don't get worse, and doing their work while causing the absolute minimum amount of strain possible. Amelia finishes cleaning and dressing the infected cavity, a minor tremor in her hands causing her to stop, take a deep breath, then continue. It's those little things that remind Tanya that this is the first time her partner has been charged with the care of a patient this heavily injured.

The fact a small tremor is the only exterior sign is testament to her professionalism. For a few more seconds Amelia's gloved fingers nimbly tap across the, admittedly better, but still messy ruin of flesh before she comes upon something. Hands slowly narrowing into a seemingly random spot of fur, she taps it a few times from a few different angles, then grabs the scissors again to cut away more matting at the edge of the work area she'd cleaned.

"Possible foreign body further caudal to prepped zone of injury." She mutters cutting away more fur to reveal a bulge covered by anomalously undamaged skin.

"Healover? No signs of infection." Tanya leans closer, carefully studies the injury still mostly hidden beneath fur, then indicates the slope of the rip and the conspicuous divot it has just before the bulge.

"Rib malunion?" Amelia squints, runs her fingers further up the length of the rib to the divot, then hesitantly nods.

"Log malunion in rib 10L." She confirms, to which a floating pen and paper quickly jots it down, the latest in a pages-long writeup assessing Ursaring's health. The documentation they're creating of the injuries they can see and the treatments they've provided will be handed over with the patent once a professional comes to pick the 'mon up.

In any other world Ursaring would be dead several times over, a quarter of her chest cavity by volume is collapsed, the 'mon is breathing on one lung, walking with shattered vertebrae, and moving blood with a heart that should not be beating. Tanya exhales slowly, keeping any external expression of her thoughts buried.

Again, she'd made subconscious assumptions about this world, she'd taken the mental shortcut with the thought that this 'mon was some kind of bear from her first life, possessing of human level or near-human level intelligence admittedly, but the body and durability of a bear nonetheless.

However, as Ursaring had explained in short bursts before the painkillers had made her even less talkative than before, she'd gotten these injuries in the landslide by shoulder checking a boulder when she and her cub were unable to run away. The fact that the 'mon is laying before her with fist sized chunks of rock embedded all over her right side means she won that interaction, and most boulders Tanya's seen are about the size of a large van.

It's lucky they got here, without help this 'mon would have certainly died. Tanya's not going to embarrass herself by making a guess on a 'mon some part of her still think should be dead, but it would not have been much longer.

"All major foreign bodies removed, Chansey can you confirm?" Amelia asks, to which Tanya gives Ursaring a thorough once over then nods. The step is procedural, mostly pointless considering Amelia's hands are far better at detecting that kind of thing beneath fur, but deciding what procedures are useful is for people skilled enough to write them, not someone learning it.

"Confirm."

"Ok…" Amelia's professional tamber wavers before she takes a slow breath, the exhale shuddering the smallest amount as she removes her brown, red, and yellow stained gloves.

"Ok. Chansey we need a sustained minor heal, as light as you can make it." The Joy pulls out a stethoscope with these orders, but the tone of her voice and the uncertain glances she's giving Tanya make them sound more like she's searching for approval than an instruction. The instruction is correct, so Tanya nods and places an arm against Ursaring's sternum. For a heavily injured patient who cannot be healed by the standard heal pulse, it's better to avoid shocking the system with excessive foreign energies.

The complications of excessive foreign energy are usually resolved by the heal pulse. But in situations where a heal pulse wont fix the problem, that guarantee becomes a question mark with no benefit to the risk. The patient is laying on her side with the ruined shoulder facing up, Amelia crouched behind the 'mon such that Ursaring cannot take a swipe at her, leaving Tanya working in front.

"Ursaring?" She calls to get the 'mon's attention, continuing when she opens a bloodshot eye.

"I'm going to perform a minor heal now with the goal of resolving your cardiac arrhythmia, stabilizing your collapsed lung, and healing other soft tissue damages." Ursaring lets out a low growl, the collapsed lung giving it a wheezing undercurrent." Speak… how I can understand… or let me have… Quiet." She rasps between breaths, her eye then darting up to look at something behind Tanya and narrows.

"... Boy." Teddiursa yelps, his voice far closer than it should be after he'd been a nuisance and an obstacle for the first half hour of their work and his mother finally ordered him to lay down 'over there' and not to move or speak until they were done. Tanya uses the time Teddiursa takes scampering back to his spot to figure out how to simplify her explanation.

"... I am going to heal you lightly, enough to fix a problem with your heart, spine, and stop other things from getting worse. This will probably also make the painkillers wear off –stop working– more quickly." It takes a few seconds for Ursaring to visibly process the simplified explanation, the painkillers and clear exhaustion slowing her thinking, but eventually she opens both eyes and there's an undercurrent of some kind of strong emotion as she responds." That is… all… your healing will do?" Tanya nods again.

"It's all we're equipped to do. Repairing the structurally discohesive trau– …Healing your shoulder and other heavy injuries will take longer, needing tools and skills we don't have here."

'Tools and skills' meaning an entire suite of reconstructive surgeries and months of physical therapy in a dedicated facility, not an hour with a heavy duty first aid kit in the mouth of a cave. After a moment Ursaring closes her eyes again and lays her head back down with a wheezing sigh." Wretched pain… Fine… do your work."

With the confirmation from the patient and seeing Amelia with a stethoscope in her ears and the probe placed in the proper spot Tanya closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, and slowly reaches into herself. Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

It's the product of months of constant training that allows her to pull the absolute smallest amount of power and guide it from within, running the raw energy through a series of checkpoints that each restrain and thin the power further as it snakes along a spiraling constriction all around her body and ends at the tip of her arm.

Carefully, slowly, she pushes that power across the final distance and– A geyser of power erupts from her core the instant she makes contact with Ursaring's ruined body, thundering against her control in every direction more like an exploding star than an ocean. It shoots down the channel she created with such force it nearly destroys the construction outright, trying to ignore her will and flood into the injured 'mon with no filter.

But with titanic will Tanya holds on, maintains the channel, and with every one of the dozens of checkpoints it passes it grows smaller and smaller, more and more constrained, until it finally reaches the end and… Tanya opens her eyes, satisfied to see faint green sparkles softly emanating from Ursaring, precisely of the quantity and opacity the photos in her medical training books show as a 'light' heal to be used continuously. Truly, it should not be this hard to control herself.

The idle thought is discarded as her power explodes against her control again, howling in her grip as Tanya clamps down on her control such that the flow does not waver for even a moment as she waits for Amelia's signal to stop. For seven minutes she holds firm, watching her partner listen intently with her stethoscope, eventually standing up and walking around to the ventral side and continuing from there. Until finally she removes the stethoscope probe.

"Ok. That got it. Thank you Chansey." She says, pulling the tool from her ears and smiling at Ursaring as she points to the 'mon's legs.

"You feeling any better? If your legs still have that shooting pain I need to know." Ursaring opens her eyes with a wince and takes a slightly deeper breath, shifting her three functional limbs a bit before pushing herself off the ground.

"The 'painkiller' numbness is… reduced." She says over Amelia's flurry of requests to lie back down, still eternally short of breath but far less raspy.

"But I am… better… than before." Seeing that she's ignoring Amelia, Tanya clears her throat.

"It's advisable that you remain lying down. We've only been able to stabilize you. Stop things from getting worse." She clarifies after Ursaring turns an irritated eye at her. But as she opens her mouth to say something else, a high pitched cry of confused rage rises from behind.

"Is that it!?" Screams Teddiursa, the 'mon scratching a claw against the floor as Tanya turns to look.

"You said you would help! You promised!"

"Boy!" Ursaring growls back, the end of the word ending with half a cough. The interjection draws Teddiursa's attention to his mother, and he shouts back. Tanya watches, slightly confused as the two begin arguing, and after a few seconds she feels Amelia gently tapping her side. Glancing down, she sees her partner looking between the two with a confused expression.

"What's going on?" The human asks quietly.

"Are they… arguing?" Tanya looks back at the pair, then gives an uncertain head wobble.

"Teddiursa is upset we can't reconstruct Ursaring's shoulder. Ursaring…" She mutters back, pausing to get a read on the conversation.

"Is berating him for being rude while also… insulting him for thinking her shoulder could be healed?" Amelia blinks, tilting her head as she looks at the still arguing pair.

"Well I mean… it can be healed…" She says first, then glances over at her partner with a raised eyebrow." Insulting him?" Tanya takes a moment to think, watching the argument continue, then nods.

"I would describe it as such." Amelia squints at the interaction for a few more seconds, wincing with every one of Ursaring's abrupt movements despite sporting a wound so severe a chunk of her is concave, then sighs and reaches for the emergency beacon on her belt.

"Well. We've stabilized everything as best we can, I'm gonna send out an alert so a ranger can pick her up." She says as she pulls the beacon from her hip and fiddles with it a bit. After a moment she presses the button on top, to which an orange light appears on the side indicating that it's sending out an 'alert' signal as opposed to a red 'distress' signal, the former saying that there is a problem that needs assistance but there is no immediate danger.

By the time Tanya realizes what her partner is doing it's too late, and though it's not a catastrophic problem, the 'mon winces nonetheless.

"Ah." She exhales, glancing between her partner and the beacon in her hand.

"With how… irritable Ursaring is I thought we might explain what's going to happen next before doing that." Amelia winces as well.

"Oh… shoot. Well, since we're off the trail in a hazard area, if the forestry service is on its game we've got like ten minutes to explain it." Ten minutes. …Tanya sighs, gesturing toward the clearing in front of the cave.

"You should probably stand where you're easiest to spot. I'll explain it to her." Amelia gives an apologetic smile as she turns and walks a few steps away. After a second to order her thoughts Tanya closes the slightly awkward distance between her and Ursaring. The argument between mother and son had died down, leaving Teddiursa looking up with a frustrated frown and Ursaring stonefaced as she turns toward Tanya's approach.

"What is it?" She asks, to which Tanya gestures toward where her partner's standing in the clearing.

"Me and my partner have stabilized you, but we cannot fix the damage to your bones or heal you enough to not be at a serious health risk." She says, inadvertently cutting off an upset Teddiursa as she continues.

"To heal you completely my partner has called for a Ranger to take you to–""She called a–" Ursaring interrupts, a flash of raw emotion appearing in the 'mon's eyes only to instantly fade into a level calm.

"You mean the humans in... red who try to capture with… glowing webs?" Momentarily surprised, Tanya takes a moment to nod.

"Ye–""How?" Ursaring interrupts, her voice and posture still calm as she speaks through shallow breaths.

"I assume it has… something to do with the thing in her hand… that she squeezed just before you came here. Is it some kind of sound?" The 'mon glances at Amelia, and something about the look in Ursaring's eyes draws Tanya's undivided attention.

"Not exactly but it's a similar principle." She confirms after a moment, the picture of professional courtesy.

"Right now the beacon is giving off a signal that a ranger can 'hear' with a matching device. Which they then use to hone in on–" In an instant Ursaring's false placidity falls away to an enraged snarl as she tenses her body to charge Amelia. But before she can take a step Tanya places herself between her partner and the 'mon, face locked to a professionally placid expression as her bulk vibrates in a low rumble.

"Is there something wrong?" She asks calmly, a thudding hum beneath every word. Ursaring draws herself up, growling as she seems to realize for the first time she has to look up to meet Tanya's gaze.

"Get out of my way." She snarls, snapping her jaws in an obvious threat. Tanya narrows her eyes and the rumble grows louder as Ursairing tenses as if planning to force her way past and planning for a fight. But with her severely injured state such a fight would be– … Would be catastrophic for the patients' health. Tanya blinks as she realizes what's about to happen, and exactly how disastrous and antithetical to her stated career it would be. This is a patient.

The patient is not acting in her own best interest, but that does not invalidate her status as one. A nurse is taught skills to resolve problems like this, she is expected to use them. The rumble slowly starts to quiet as Tanya takes a slow breath, then nods. She is a nurse. She will resolve issues caused by an unruly patient as a nurse would.

"I can see you're upset, and I sympathise, however even if you destroy the beacon it will not stop the ranger from coming." She responds, bulk vibrating in a constant low thrum at the edge of hearing. Ursaring shakes her head.

"I will not be taken." The 'mon insists with wheezing breaths.

"I will not." Tanya narrows her eyes at the almost desperation in the 'mon's tone, glancing at Teddiursa behind her as she makes a guess as to why the 'mon is so upset.

"I would not characterize this situation as you 'being taken,' you're injured and need more help than can be brought to you. Unless you get more help you cannot get better." She counters.

"Once you're healed you'll be returned to where you are now, and Teddiursa would come with–""I know how long it takes for a bone to heal." Ursaring snaps back, collapsed lung forcing her to pause for breath.

"I have been taken before. My child would come… with me and he would evolve in a human place, with the bright lights and white rock… or in the fake places that pretend to be a den. I will not let that happen to him–" Her growling voice devolves into a rasp, then breaks down into strange half coughs as her damaged body cannot cough properly. The thing that seems to have triggered this coughing fit is the sight of some kind of flying 'mon with a human perched atop coming into view over the treetops.

Seeing this, Tanya cannot help but feel the slightest bit sorry for the 'mon. Enough to understand there's some kind of cultural importance she's not picking up on, but not enough to ignore how ridiculous getting so worked up about this seems to her.

"I understand how important it is to protect your child, but if you do not get help you will almost certainly die of your injuries before winter, you will die during it. So I will have to insist." For some reason, something she'd said had Ursaring hesitate, anger deflating as her entire body goes still for several long seconds, gaze blank as if looking at something beyond reality. Then her eyes lock back into focus on Tanya's own, staring intently as if searching for… something.

"You… you do understand don't you? You know… my burden." She asks slowly, breaking eye contact to look at Tanya's bulk as if she's looking through it, then deliberately slows her breathing.

"Fine, I will go to the ranger." Tanya exhales lightly in relief.

"Good–""But I will not be taken… without a fight."