Trish was less than enthused by my plan to flee the continent. Part of that might have been because I woke her up at 2AM before dragging her to her clinic. Dr. Trish looked frazzled, and kept blinking and rubbing her eyes like an owl. But the real problem was her ethics as a doctor.
“I’m not leaving until my patients are settled,” she said, putting her hands on her hips as she stared at me. “People in this town rely on me to keep their loved ones safe. I can’t leave without a word one night. Some of the families of these patients won’t even know that danger is approaching them. If your suspicions are correct, everyone in this town might die. It's not much, but... I want to find a solution for my patients and their families, at least. We should give them a chance. I'm not saying that I'll sit around and die with them, if they don't have an escape route. But I feel obligated to let them know what's going on, and make sure the patients can survive a few days without my help."
I winced. That was… actually a fair point.
Dr. Trish ran a well-known and respected medical institute. Plenty of people came to deposit their injured loved ones and seek medical treatment.
Normally, if Dr. Trish left, it wouldn’t be too hard to notify people in advance and handle the aftermath. People could send their loved ones to other medical facilities in town for a few days, and Trish would stop accepting new patients. That was exactly what she had done during her wedding.
But we only had a day before we needed to be off of this continent. The sooner we left, the better. But trying to contact everyone in the middle of the night was unlikely to end well.
“How long is it going to be until you and the others leave?” asked Dr. Trish, frowning. “I need to track down the families of the patients. I also need to wait for Markus. I'm definitely not leaving without him.”
I hesitated. Did I want to track down my mother? After she had chosen to fall back into her drug dependency, I had left her to her own devices. Hearing about her, and how her life was going, had become painful. Unless she started literally dying, I wanted as little contact with her as possible. Part of me had hoped that if I cut her out of my life, she would finally make better decisions. But... that had never happened. Now, I wasn't sure what to do. How final was my separation from her? Should I drag her along, even if she might never change her ways? Or leave her to die on this continent?
I didn’t know which course of action was correct. Thinking about it... hurt. I pushed it out of my thoughts, and decided to think about it later.
“We’re leaving tomorrow at noon,” I said, as I turned back to Trish. “I estimate that the catastrophe will reach here in about a day, give or take a few hours. As long as we leave tomorrow at noon, we should be well out of the way before the crisis hits. That also gives us enough time to grab some emergency supplies and sentimental items.”
“Got it." Trish started tapping a finger against her chin as she fell into thought. "If that’s the case, here’s what I think we should do. We can go to sleep for about four hours. You look like you haven't slept all night, and you seem exhausted. It's better if you don't need to rely on your healing ability to stay awake, so you should get some sleep. When we wake up again, the rest of town should also be up. After that, we have four hours to track down the families of the patients. From there, we can let them know that we’re leaving, as well as the danger of staying. I can also administer a bit of last-minute medical assistance. Are you willing to help with that?"
I didn't hesitate. "Of course. I don't know how useful it'll be, but if it makes your conscience hurt less, I will heal everyone back into shape."
Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.
"Good. It’s not that I don’t believe you when you speak of the danger... but it's also possible the government has a plan for this situation. Of course, the country might have no idea how to fix this, in which case, fleeing the continent is the right choice. But as a doctor, I still need to make sure my patients are taken care of if I'm wrong. That means making sure that they’re in good enough condition to go to a different facility while I’m away. After we explain the situation, it's up to the patients and their families. What happens after that isn’t my responsibility anymore.”
“Of course,” I said. “Let’s see what last-minute healing we need to do.” Then, I paused as an idea struck me. It wasn't something I felt I was obligated to do... but it felt right. It might even give me a bit more Achievement.
“We can bring the patients, and their families with us if needed,” I said. “We can bring up to thirty more people along.”
“Thirty, huh…” Dr. Trish glanced at the occupied parts of the clinic. “We have eleven patients that are staying overnight in the clinic. We’ll see how many people want to come along from their families. I doubt we'll fill up all thirty seats, at least.”
I nodded. With that, I made my way into the clinic, and administered some magic healing to everyone in need of it. In eight cases, I was able to outright cure the patients on the spot - which would have freed Dr. Trish from her self-imposed obligations. The ninth patient was Old Mo. I spent a few minutes looking at him, but... I still couldn't do anything for him. He was healthy, at least in body - but his soul wasn’t looking any more attached to his body than it had been before. He was still in a coma, and I had no idea if or when he would ever wake up.
I sighed as I saw the man who had treated me like family lay in bed, dead to the world, and then shook my head. “Hope you wake up soon,” I said, as I brushed his hair back from his old, wrinkled face.
After that, I tended to the last two patients. One of them was a heavily pregnant woman, who was liable to give birth at any moment. She wasn't 'injured,' so there was nothing for me to heal. We would just have to take her along, if she was willing to come. The final patient had a head injury, and their soul was lightly detached from their body. It was nowhere near as bad as Old Mo's condition, but it was still enough that they were in a coma. I did my best, but couldn't actually heal his condition.
After that, I curled up in Dr. Trish’s clinic on an unused patient bed, and went to sleep.
* * *
The next morning, after getting about four hours of sleep, I stepped out of Dr. Trish’s clinic. Rather than the usual sounds of the town waking up, the town had an uneasy air to it. It didn’t take long to figure out why.
In the skies to the Northwest, there was now a visible smudge in the sky. It looked kind of like a stormfront rolling in… but not quite. It looked more like two planes of reality were mashed together in an inglorious, incoherent blob. Bits of sky were in places they shouldn't be, and bits of ground were in places the sky should be. I wasn't even quite sure what to make of the phenomenon anymore. If I were strong enough, I would have been very interested in studying the catastrophe further. It would definitely improve my understanding of space and dimensions by leaps and bounds. But now wasn't the time for that. I wasn't strong enough to survive studying the catastrophe right now.
I scanned the skies for a few minutes, before I relaxed. At the very least, it didn’t look like the dimensional collapse was moving any faster than I had expected. We still had around 20 hours before the catastrophe reached us.
“Are those the cracks in reality you were telling me about?” asked Dr. Trish.
“Yes,” I said. "They look worse than I thought. I wonder if anyone else from the forts managed to escape." I felt a certain heaviness in my words as I said that. I wanted to believe that some of the other soldiers I had chatted with had made it out, but... I doubted it.
Dr. Trish grimaced. “Markus didn’t come last night while we were asleep. He better show up quickly, or else I’ll…” She trailed off, sounding unsure of what she would do.
“If need be, we’ll go collect him later,” I said. “I won’t leave him behind to die. He deserves better than that.”
Dr. Trish didn’t look completely reassured by my statement, but she at least looked better than before. I glanced at the clocktower in the center of town, before I schooled my face into a determined expression.
We had four hours. I intended to make them count.