Page 95 of Alchemised
A hand closed around her elbow and drew her to her feet.
“I’m not leaning over you on the floor,” Ferron said in an irritated voice. Rather than pull her to the bed, he led her out of the room and down the hallway to another room.
The air was stale, the bed stripped and bare. Ferron wrenched a dustcloth off a sofa, and Helena lay down flat on it.
He leaned over her, vial in hand. His face went in and out of focus every time she blinked. Dark. Light. Dark. Light.
“How many drops?”
“Two, twice a day, for two days. Then euphrasia compresses for a week.”
Ferron leaned closer, dripping two drops of the belladonna atropine into her eye. She closed her eyes to keep from blinking it away.
His fingers brushed against her cheek, and she felt the cut there vanish. “The servants will have this room made up.”
She counted his receding footsteps, covering her left eye so she could see.
He stumbled as he left the room, catching himself against the doorframe and righting himself slowly, as if unsteady on his feet.
She closed her eyes again, listening to the heavy silence of the house.
Don’t cry. Don’t cry, she told herself.
She listened as the servants arrived and the bed’s mattress was flipped and made up with fresh sheets and bedding. The radiators were turned on, hissing as the room warmed. Helena’s few possessions were brought in and put into a new wardrobe. The curtains were left drawn, permitting only a splinter of light.
When they were gone, Helena made her way over to the bed and tried to sleep.
Ferron returned a few hours later, followed by an older man with a case filled with innumerable contraptions.
“I warn you, sclera punctures are quite a nasty business,” he said with a wheezing voice as he glanced over Helena. “Not much that can be done. We’ll be lucky if she can keep the eye. I brought some patches, or if you’re willing to spend the money I have some glass ones which will do nicely.”
He sat down heavily in a chair that the butler had brought over.
“She instructed you in the vivimancy to try to repair it?” he asked Ferron, who was leaning against the wall, watching from hooded eyes.
Ferron gave a wordless nod.
The optician leaned closer, prying Helena’s eye open and holding various mechanical contraptions up, peeling the lid back as he studied the injury.
He was quiet for a long time.
“This is—quite exceptional work,” he finally said in a voice full of surprise. “Vivimancy, you say? Well.”
He sat back heavily and stared at Helena, rubbing his chin. “Where’d you learn this trick?”
“I was a healer,” Helena said.
The doctor made an incredulous wheezing sound. “But you’re—” He gestured towards her wordlessly. “How would you know about medical procedures like that?”
“My father was a surgeon, trained in Khem, before he moved to Etras.”
“Khem? Really. They have doctors there?”
Helena gave a tight nod.
“Fancy that. I’ve never known anyone from Khem. And he crossed all the way from the lower continent? I can’t imagine. The sea is—” He shuddered. “Tides like mountains? No thank you. Even during the summer Abeyance, they say it’s a treacherous passage. I can’t imagine living in the coastal regions. You must be grateful to be inland now, away from all that.”
Helena stared at him.
