District 42-Chapter 102: Priorities
Casper left the main room of the infirmary after a while. His head was a bit achy, but he knew that soon it would vanish.
He searched for more ammunition in the Ridire’s corpses before he went to the room where the nurses were.
He let the rifle on his back again, tightening the bandolier and attaching it on his back. He also took back the pistol he threw.
Hastily the soldier went towards the corridor leading to the individual rooms. He glanced at the entrance door while walking away. There was nothing but silence out there, and he could not prevent himself to feel a bit anxious.
He crossed all the corridor in a matter of seconds, arriving at the final room of that place. He slammed the door with his fist. 𝕗𝐫𝚎𝗲𝘄𝐞𝕓𝐧𝕠𝘃𝕖𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝚖
"Hey, it’s me, let me in!" He tried to shout, calling for them since there was no reaction inside there for his knocks.
However, they still weren’t responding. Casper started to feel worried, and not just that, he thought if he did miscount someone when they invaded the main room. It could be a possibility, although very unlikely. He had the certainty of having noticed every single Ridire entering there.
"But... The devices... Do they have a device for camouflage? Something like this? Or... is it portals, just like the ones that Canute uses?" His heart began to race and he knocked stronger onto the door.
"Hey, are you in there? Hey, Amelia!?"
Suddenly he heard noises inside. They were very low and tiny noises, but we’re surely coming from the room.
Casper picked up his pistol in one of his hands and prepared himself.
"H-how will we know that it’s you, indeed?" Someone asked in a hesitant, low voice. Hearing that dumb question, a vein popped in his forehead.
"If you don’t open this door now I will open a hole in the wall and enter. You choose!" His threatening tone triggered a chain of shrieks through the room. Casper felt that it would be twice as good to be still stuck in the main room with those Ridires.
"I know you are afraid, but open it already! I need to see how Alfar and Olaf are doing..." After some more moments of coiling and dumb questions, they finally agreed to let him enter there.
The nurses moved the cabinet that was in front of the door and then unlocked it.
Casper opened it slowly, then stepped in. He wasn’t in a good mood after being delayed for so long.
He gave a meaningful look to all the nurses there, and they seemed to be staring back at him with mischievous looks.
"That’s not a good time to be playing, girls... You nearly killed me out there." They giggled at him.
Amelia was in the middle of the room, where two beds were settled. One of those beds was put inside the room in a hurry as it seemed, since it wasn’t lined up properly, and was occupying too much unnecessary space.
The head nurse was between the two beds and checking from time to time the condition of Alfar and Olaf. Those two were already breathing normally, although still sweating a lot, with their faces reddish. The convulsion, fortunately, had stopped completely. Everything indicated that both were with a high fever, but no more symptoms of the collateral effects of the drug were lasting.
Amelia was trying to decrease their temperature with wet sheets. The room had a cabinet with some medicine, and she was doing her best to find the ones that could be used in that case, since inside them weren’t the medications she really needed at that point.
The other nurses were sitting on the ground, leaning their backs on the wall and seeming more relaxed them before. Casper wondered if they were high due to some medication, and he was completely right.
"What happened to them?" He asked, frowning hard looking to their peaceful and distant eyes, some were still giggling at his face.
"They are just relaxed and aloof. I ordered them to take a medicine here that has tranquilizer properties. It’s a sleeping aid as well, but it depends on the dose. Probably they will be sleeping soon. Do you want some for you as well?" She was talking too casually for someone who was in a pinch just some minutes ago, which had Casper supposing that she had that medicine as well.
"Don’t worry. I can’t just go and drug myself in the middle of an important act like this. I still need to fight a lot after getting out of here with these two..." He sat on the edge of one of the beds, sighing hard and trying to relax his muscles. When tired, the most important thing to do was to keep the breath steady and relax the body, but he was passing through so much pressure that he couldn’t follow the protocols correctly.
Amelia gazed at Casper at the moment he spelled the word "fight". She had an idea that the White warrior would engage in other battles, but she was expecting that it would be just when extremely necessary. The head nurse supposed that, whatever Casper was planning to get out of there, it would be something that wouldn’t draw much attention.
Nonetheless, she noticed how naive her guess was. Casper was already drawing attention. All Halden must have to know what was going on there. His plan never was to escape stealthily.
"I will not ask you for details about your plan. But I am pretty sure you are trying to escape. I also don’t know exactly how this plan can relate to my goal to change this prison. However, even so, I will trust in you." She assured.
Casper was already expecting this much of her, he had played with her mind enough for the head nurse to think like that.
"Because of it, I will help you as well." She concluded. "It’s clear that you harmed yourself unnecessarily." She pointed towards his broken ankle, giving a severe look at it.
"You have been doing idiot things, huh? Even looking from this far away, and with your ankle covered by clothes, I can notice that it is very swollen. And you can’t lift it properly without feeling pain, right?" Casper nodded slowly, finding it quite amazing that she was diagnosing him so easily like that.
After Amelia finished what she needed to do with Alfar and Olaf, she crouched in front of Casper and gave a better diagnose of his condition.
"As a lot of different nurses must have talked with you before, your ankle is cracked, totally swollen, and if you keep pushing it, dangerous consequences will happen. We are talking about don’t be able to use your feet properly, ok? You need to take it more seriously!"
Casper gave a sad giggle, looking at her.
"I am taking it seriously, really. But when a priority appears in front of me, what can I do instead of bushing it aside and focusing on what I need to do?" He rambled.
The head nurse got quiet for a moment, trying to find words to refute what he said, but couldn’t. The truth was that the answer to the question was: you can do nothing, instead of focusing on it.
She knew it very well.
If an Aesir that killed millions appeared dying, along with a Ridire that killed hundreds, and a criminal that stole from dozens; she would need to take the priority, and nobody needs to be much intelligent to know the two that would be left to die.
Nevertheless, she never agreed or disagreed with what he said, keeping her thoughts for herself, including her times at the medical tent in the war.
"I can help you with this, since we can’t use odin in someone’s body more than one time per month and can’t heal it faster enough to prevent you to ruin your ankle." She first treated the wound as she could, doing her best to let it well cared before bandage it.
It was a basic and quick treatment, but the ointments she passed in the wound, and the pills she gave to him, had a good effect on it. Some of them were almost immediately.
She left the room quickly and disappeared for some time. Ten minutes passed, and at this point, Casper was nearly running to try to find her. He didn’t hear the sound of someone entering in there, but he could not be sure either.
He walked slowly towards the door of the room but got stopped when he heard movements behind him.
As Amelia had predicted, the nurses fell asleep. Not just some of them, though, but all of them. It was fair, they never needed to pass through such stressful moments, so they must have lost a lot of energy there.
Casper thought that it might be one of them, but when he turned to take a look, he spotted Alfar and Olaf waking up nearly at the same time.
