The Economics of Healers: Farmers, part 2

[sythyry]

Mirrored from Sythyry.

On the ride into Vheshrame, Ellie herself was putting as brave a face on it as a 12-year-old could be expected to. (And yes, they did ride. It would have been a ridiculous walk for an injured child, and zir parents didn’t think zie could stay on a horse. The mayor, Gorsen, did lend them her own carriage, and no questions asked. Remember that, at least, when you judge Gorsen.)

“We’ll get a healer to make it better,” promised Periwinkle.

“It’s all right, sather. It doesn’t hurt so very much,” said Ellie, and burst into tears.

And, again:

“You mustn’t blame Cayenne,” said a very ashamed Tansy. “He’s far too young to know better. I am the responsible one — I let him slip away from me, and of course I grabbed badly when you fell.”

“I don’t blame you, either, caunt Tansy,” said Ellie. “You were trying to save me. But I do wish you had let go. I don’t want to go around all lopsided and missing an antenna.” She knew what the quintet’s finances were like.

“Oh, poor child,” said Tansy, and burst into tears. This of course set Ellie off again, and that got Cayenne crying as well.

In all ways, it was probably the Worst Carriage Ride Ever, or at least the worst one in which nothing actually went wrong, as well as the Worst Birthday Party Ever.

In the Guild Hall

Estertherio oa Estropomp, the Summoner of the Healer’s Guild and herself a master-healer of the lowest rank, finally deigned to see Ellie as a patient. By “finally” we must admit that Ellie had been waiting for five hours, since mid-afternoon, and that a dozen patients had been seen before her. In Estertherio’s favor we must admit that Estertherio had chosen to see to the eight people injured in a flour explosion, most of whom were actively bleeding — if not actively showing off their private parts. In a way that titillated nobody, since those private parts were intestines, spleens, stomachs, and the like. We must also admit that Estertherio chose to dine before seeing Ellie rather than after, which may seem callous. And arguably she could tell at a glance that Ellie was in no immediate danger. Or arguably it was an act of selfishness, as Ellie and another half-dozen much-belated patients complained.

Estertherio granted Ellie a mere nine minutes of her time. “Well. You got a nasty knock on the head, but someone dumped enough crude healing spells on you so that you don’t really need any further magic for that. Then there’s that missing antenna. Do you have the severed antenna with you?”

“I do,” said Allam.

Estertherio picked it up out of Allam’s basket, and looked at it. “You would have been well-advised to preserve it. A simple meat preservation spell would have sufficed.”

“We’re village Herethroy, doctor,” said Allam. Meaning, of course, that they cannot and do not eat meat, and so unlikely to have meat preservation spells.

“Well. Should this ever happen again, be sure to look up a Cani, or an Orren, or even a Rassimel or Gormoror or Sleeth. If you had put a preservation spell on it even two hours after it was severed, it would be a great bit easier to reattach. As it is, it is a spell of complexity thirty to reattach it, and a second and stronger one to actually get it to work,” said the doctor.

“Can you do it?” asked Allam.

“What, I? Even if I had any cley left after that explosion, I don’t have the spell. It’s not that common. Can you pay for it? You must expect a hundred lozens to reattach it, and, if you are lucky, a thousand or two to restore function.”

“That’s a great deal of money for me,” said Allam. “Are there charities who might help us?”

“There are charities, to be sure, and there are healers who may be sympathetic and undercharge you. In all honesty, I doubt that they will help you,” said Estertherio. “This is little more than a cosmetic injury. Your cosi, having one antenna left, has lost some sensory acuity, and some attractiveness, and some expressiveness, but zie has not lost all. Zir life is hardly in danger, nor is zir ability to take care of herself. Charities and sympathies are largely reserved for more serious cases.”

“My poor cosi! … I suppose we must ask those healers who are capable, and see if any of them will help us,” said Allam.

“I wish you would not. They are our strongest healers, and, in full truth, they have better things to do than cosmetic surgery,” said Estertherio. She did not need to finish the phrase: on a poor and low-class farmer’s cosi. “Still: the healers who can do this are Moika Hastralan, who is on duty in this very hall; Dr. Tarnamme, and Dr. Vesputine, whose whereabouts I do not know but they might still be in their offices around town, and, on the odd chance that zie is around and you are transaffectionate, Dr. Sythyry.”

“We’ll go see Dr. Hastralan, then. Thank you for your time and your candor,” said Allam, rather devastated.

“Well, you certainly have my sympathies,” said Estertherio. “Be grateful that the situation is not too dreadful, and unlikely to get any worse.”

Comments

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

Awww poor cosi! I was wondering if they were even going to try to get her antenna reattached after what happened and with them not knowing how to preserve the antenna and all poor little kid.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

They certainly tried. Oh, and I didn't mention it, but Estertherio did all the recommended non-magical things to take care of Ellie (which are, say, the difference between a headache for a few days, and not) while she was talking.

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

So she wasn't completely useless and hard-hearted just mostly?

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't call someone who had spent her day taking care of the dying and the terribly-injured either "useless" or "hard-hearted".

[brynndragon.livejournal.com]

Huh, I'd've said she was being completely honest rather than giving them false hope, which is useful at the very least. (even monsters debate over whether it's more compassionate to be efficiently honest or to allow someone hope, given that no matter how much expertise a healer has anything is possible in medicine)

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

You kinda write her like she was I mean FINE she can't help but telling the parents they oughtn't even ASK anyone else to help that's MEAN.

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

Cley is a limited resource. If it all gets spent on minor injuries (and as much as I feel bad for Tansy it is a minor injury), what happens when someone who is dying needs treatment? "Oh sorry, we no longer have the cley to treat you, so I guess you better say goodbye to your loved ones. But we did manage to make a herethroy look more pretty, so I'm sure you'll die happy."

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

I certainly try to write her (and nearly everyone) accurately.

The Summoner's job is triage. The most important thing is to get treatment for the people who sorely need it -- there's not a great deal of debate about this, not within the guild at least. If their time or cley is exhausted by lesser cases, especially cases that will obviously wind up going nowhere because they're not that important and nobody will pay for them, it makes the most important thing so much harder.

The end of the day is a tricky time medically. Healers either have a lot of cley left if it's been a good day, or not much if it's been a typical one. The early part of the day is more straightforward. If they'd come early they would have simply been told to go away. But at the end of a typical-to-bad day, the Summoner thought that surely nobody would have any spare cley. Maybe someone would (hence the Summoner not completely sending them off), but on the whole it's better for everyone to let exhausted healers have a bit of a break at night (hence the discouraging).

Certainly she could have been nicer about it. But Summoner is an exhausting job, worse than general healer, and few Summoners are such elementals as to be any sweeter than necessary by sunout.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Exactly. If I were a better person, I would make a full set of devices to heal everything without limit... um ... actually I'd need to make a full set for each city, wouldn't I? Even one set is a daunting chore, and a near-infinite number is worse.

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

Particularly after having dealt with people like the flour explosion victims, I imagine your sympathy level for a complaint that seems rather trivial by comparison would be rather low.

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

I imagine cley refreshing at sundown would be a big plus for a healer. You'd know when it's safe to blow all your unused Cley without having to keep a ridiculous schedule to be available at the right time.

[rowyn]

I suspect that *Tansy* has enough cley to give her healer sufficient for the healing.

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

I bet Trust would've been nicer even if he didn't know the spell it's too bad he doesn't work there.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

That is not done save in emergencies!

[Recall that transferring cley is an intimate act. A healer might be willing to engage in it, but relatively few healers are willing to engage in it on a regular basis. It ruins the reputation. -bb]

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

I suppose that, ideally, we'd have healers who refresh their cley at all times of the day and night.

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

Yes, but culture being what it is, it hardly seems fair to expect healers to routinely degrade themselves that way. Now I'm sure you're thinking, "but society shouldn't consider it degrading to share cley for the purpose of helping someone", but society does. We could be just as critical of Tansy's village, which shouldn't devalue hir as a person on account of a cosmetic injury.

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

Not necessarily. If you, say, refresh at midnight, that only helps if you're still treating non-emergency patients at that time and then know you can afford to blow it all at them. I doubt many healers are going to want to be treating non-emergencies cases late into the night on a daily basis.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

If he's a guild healer, I'm sure he'll take his turn as Summoner. I don't think it's anyone's favorite job.

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

Ewwwww look I'm not saying healers should be taking cley from their patients or visiting cley-sellers (ewwww) I'm just saying it wouldn't've cost her to be nice about saying she wouldn't help.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

It would not have done. I do not think she was cruel, simply brusque and honest.

Or, if you prefer, exhausted and emotionally stretched thin. There's a good reason I arranged not to have a turn as Summoner!

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

I don't even think the village will as a whole. Prospective boyfriends and
girlfriends, say, may find zir less attractive than other co-lovers. Who can
blame them? Add in zir reputation as the one whose birthday party burnt down
a barn, and zir family's poverty, and zir marital prospects are not the
highest. Through no fault of zir own.

[ionotter.livejournal.com]

Talk about bad timing!

I've been under the care of our version of Summoners more than I'd have liked, and I was usually fortunate that they weren't quite so busy as Estertherio.

There was that one time, though. The Summoners were quite busy, and I was merely in pain, but not screaming or writhing. It was a quiet, dull sort of stabbing pain that made you desire nothing so much as to remain quite still and very quiet. And so I was. I'd wheeled my chair to a quiet spot in the waiting area, and was watching one of our vacuous entertainment devices. I wondered if I was going to be attended that evening, and considered what I might do to speed things up a bit.

"Well, I suppose I could fake 'posturing'?" I thought.

Posturing is the body's response to grievous, horrifying damage that signals impending death. One simply starts curling up into the fetal position, pulling one's limbs in close and hunching over. Which, upon considering it, I'd been doing for over an hour.

"Oh crap. I am posturing."

Not a minute later, and none too soon, I was noticed and whisked in for evaluation. By morning, I was one appendix lighter, sporting several tubes carrying healing fluids going into my veins, one coming out of my privates to carry away the bloody urine, and one going into my nose carrying oxygen.

It seemed that my recalcitrant and ultimately suicidal appendix had gone out in a blaze of fecal glory, and my insides were in grave danger of following it's lead. After a month of fevers, examinations by tropical disease specialists, discovering I was allergic to the medicine that was supposed to be saving my life, and several examinations by way of devices that can see through several inches of lead, I was once again, whole.

More or less.

Yet despite my adventures, the thing I recall most, was laying on the bed and waiting to be examined. I could hear much of what was going on in the triage area, and a few beds down, I could hear the steady beeping of some other unfortunate soul's monitoring device. Each beep signaled another beat of their heart, and therefore, another moment of precious life. A few minutes later, I heard those individual, hopeful beeps change into an ominous, single, *EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE*.

The triage area became a flurry of activity. I could hear the harsh thumps of emergency devices being used to alter the ominous tones of limbo and inevitable doom, to the more hopeful individual beeps. A nurse came into my room in a rush, and said, "Don't worry, we haven't forgotten you, we'll be right with you!"

To which I replied, "Don't worry. They're dying now, I'll die later."

I waited patiently for death, but they were a no-show.

I cannot say I was disappointed.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

I am glad death stood you up that time! May it continue to do so, until such time, if ever, as you truly require its attentions.

But yes, our guild has the analogous days. There is never quite enough to take care of the current emergencies, and always the imperative that we save a bit for the next one as well.

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

He's still a guild member but he's a ship's healer now do all healers take turns at the Healer's Guild even when that's not where they work?

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

No -- I generally didn't when I lived in Vheshrame -- but many, perhaps even most, do.