Wind Blossom completed her inspection, noting once again that the muscles around her face, which had slackened thirty years before, pulled the corners of her lips downward.
Opening her dresser, she saw the yellow tunic at the bottom of her drawer and sighed imperceptibly as she had done at the sight of it every day for the past twenty years. Once, an accident at the laundry had left one of her white tunics with a distinctly yellowish tinge. No one had remarked on it. When the day was over, Wind Blossom had carefully put the yellow tunic away in her drawers. She had worn it again, years later-and no one had noticed. Now, as always, she carefully pulled out one of her scrupulously white tunics. From the lower drawer she pulled out a fresh pair of black pants.
Dressed, Wind Blossom turned her attention back to the noises that had awoken her. From the sounds outside, she suspected-
“My lady, my lady!” a girl’s voice called. Wind Blossom didn’t recognize the voice. It was probably one of the new medical trainees. “Please come quickly, there’s been an accident!”
Although there was no one in the room to see, Wind Blossom did not let her face show her amusement at being called “my lady.”
“What is it?” she asked, rising and moving toward the door.
“Weyrleader M’hall from Benden has brought in a boy,” the trainee answered, opening the door as she heard Wind Blossom reach for the latch. “He was attacked.”
Wind Blossom’s heart sank. Her face remained calm, but inwardly she quailed. The look on the girl’s face was all she needed to identify the attacker. The youngster continued resolutely, “It was a watch-wher.”
Wind Blossom passed through the door and marched past the apprentice who, though much younger, towered over her. “Bring my bag.”
The trainee paused, torn between guiding the frail old woman down the steps and obeying her orders.
“My bones are not so worn that I cannot walk unaided,” Wind Blossom told her. “Get my bag.”
There was only one clean room in the infirmary. It was too primitive to be considered anything like a proper operating room but it was well scrubbed.
Wind Blossom registered how the people outside it were grouped: Her daughter and a musician were in one group, M’hall and a man she thought she should know were in another group, and two interns were in a third.
The interns looked up when she arrived, but M’hall spoke first. “My lady Wind Blossom, my mother told me that you are the most skilled in sutures.”
When had everyone started with the “my lady” ’s? Wind Blossom thought acidly.
“How is the patient?” she asked Latrel, the nearest intern.
“The patient has severe lacerations on the face, neck, and abdomen,” he answered quickly. Wind Blossom noted but did not comment on his ashen appearance and the way he licked his lips. Latrel had attended a number of major injuries-clearly this was worse. “He is a ten-year-old boy. He’s been dosed with numbweed and fellis juice, and was suitably wrapped against between during the journey from Benden Hold. His pulse is thready and weak; he shows signs of shock and blood loss. Janir is attempting to stabilize-”
Wind Blossom interrupted him with an upheld hand and walked over to the large basin outside the clean room. She pulled back her sleeves. “Gown me, then scrub.”
Latrel nodded, pulling sanitized gowns out of a special closet. Once she was robed, Wind Blossom started carefully scrubbing her arms and hands to clean off as many germs as she could. She motioned for Latrel to continue his report.
“We cannot type his blood-”
“It’s O positive,” the man beside M’hall interjected.
Wind Blossom turned to face him, her expression showing interest.
“I’ve been keeping track of our bloodlines; it can only be O positive,” he repeated.
Wind Blossom matched his face to her memory of a young boy she had spoken with long ago. “Peter Tubberman.”
The man winced at the name. “I am called Purman now,” he corrected. “The boy is my son.”
A crease formed on Wind Blossom’s brows. Ted Tubberman had been considered a dangerous renegade in the early days of the Pern colony at Landing. He had “stolen” equipment to conduct biology experiments, one of which had killed him and orphaned young Peter at an early age. Wind Blossom could understand why Peter Tubberman would want to remove himself from memories of his father.
“Purman. Benden wines,” she said to herself. “Modified vines, no?” She waited only long enough for his body language to answer her before she said to the other intern, “Purman scrubs with us.”
She turned her attention back to Latrel. “The old needles, you kept them, right?” When the intern nodded, she said, “Have them sterilized and bring them in. What about sutures?”
The young trainee-Carelly, Wind Blossom finally put a name to her-arrived, breathless with Wind Blossom’s medical bag. “My lady,” she gasped, and gathered in another breath to say, “there are no more in Stores.”
Wind Blossom grunted acknowledgment. She looked at the Benden Weyrleader. “M’hall?”
M’hall approached the diminutive geneticist. He bent over her when she beckoned him closer.
“I have one set of sutures left. If I use them on this boy, others will die later. Probably dragonriders,” she said in a voice that carried only to his ears.
M’hall nodded his understanding.
“I saw this day coming,” she added. “We are losing our tech base. These sorts of wounds are rare enough that soon no one will even know how to treat them.”
“Then let us use these sutures now,” M’hall said, “while there is still someone with your skills.”
Wind Blossom nodded. She turned to Carelly. “Go back to my room, girl, and bring down the orange bag.”
As the girl ran off, Wind Blossom turned to Purman. “The last of the sutures and antibiotics are in my orange bag. Your son will be the last one treated with such medicines on Pern.”
“For how long?” Purman wondered, as if to himself.
“A long time, I fear,” Wind Blossom answered. “There are so few of us who have the skill and the knowledge. And now, without supplies, the skills will become useless.”
In the clean room, Wind Blossom found that the boy’s injuries were every bit as awful as she’d feared. His right forehead, nose, and left cheek had been opened by the three-clawed paw of the watch-wher. The claw-marks continued down the top left side of the boy’s chest, near the shoulder, and into the biceps of the upper left arm.
Wind Blossom leaned closer to the boy’s face. Before the incident, he had been as handsome as his father at the same age. Now… she shook herself and checked his pulse.
“He is in shock,” she announced. Janir nodded, saying, “I’ve been keeping him warm, but he has lost a lot of blood-and going between… “
The doors to the ready room swung open as Latrel, Carelly, and Purman entered.
“He will need blood,” Wind Blossom announced. She looked at Latrel. “Get the other bed set up close by.” She turned to Purman. “He will need at least three units. You can only donate one.” She patted the bed that Latrel brought up. “Get on it-you’ll be first.
“Carelly, find Emorra and tell her we have need of her,” Wind Blossom ordered. “And have someone make me some peppermint tea with a dash of arnica.”
The young apprentice waved an arm over her shoulder in acknowledgment as she sped off on her mission.
Purman’s face was clouded with fear. Wind Blossom explained, “We need to stabilize him, and irrigate the wounds to prevent infection.”
She looked closely at the boy’s nose.