Lucius

Lucius opened a medical record, copied down the address, then closed it.

"This one can't be followed up either. We'll wait for him to come in for another checkup on his own."

He was sitting in Liston's clinic. The owner was sorting the instruments he had just boiled, while Lucius took care of the routine paperwork.

After Lucius had handed Kraft the medical records that had made the follow-up investigation a mess, they received a whole new set of instructions the very next day.

They added a reporting schedule of once every five days, and the Clear Clarity Potion was now distributed every five days as well. The new plan specifically said to "emphasize to patients the potential dangers and use it only when absolutely necessary," in an attempt to increase the likelihood that patients would return for follow-ups.

There were also some additional guidelines about addresses and possible symptoms, along with a table Kraft had put together. All they had to do was copy it exactly and use it—a foolproof process.

"I don't think that's very realistic." Liston used tongs to fish a small saw out of the boiling water. Steam billowed into his face, making him squint. "How did Kraft put it? In one ear and out the other. They don't care about any of this. If they wake up feeling fine, they won't give it another thought."

A clean piece of linen beside him already held an assortment of strange instruments: scalpels, drills, retractors, scissors of various sizes, and even a cautery iron that looked intimidating just sitting there.

Lucius had been here long enough that none of it surprised him anymore. Compared with Kraft's gentle approach, much of the work at the clinic was physically demanding.

Amputations inevitably involved sawing through bone and stopping the bleeding across a large cross-section. If Liston hadn't come from a family that wasn't as martial as Kraft's, he would probably have tried using an axe.

Over the past while, Lucius had learned how to stay composed amid cries of pain and groans, focusing on reading whatever was in front of him.

Kraft's foolproof instruction sheet had given him an idea. "I think we could try a different approach: list the things patients can notice for themselves, without needing a special examination."

"And then?" Liston dried the saw and set it beside the scissors, asking casually.

"Then we could have patients take the form home and record how they're doing after a while. When they have time to come back, they can bring it in with them." Lucius thought he was a genius. He'd come up with an answer that neither Kraft nor Liston had thought of, just like a lecturer.

"Mm, well said." Liston showed little reaction and continued with his work, arranging the dried instruments on a tray.

He still had doubts about Kraft's "microorganism theory," but following it had lowered the rate of patients' wounds becoming inflamed and festering. A pragmatist wouldn't turn down a new method that worked.

He needed to prepare several sets of instruments, boil them, place them on trays, and wrap them in layers of linen so they could be unwrapped and used as soon as patients arrived. He was busy, and his attention wasn't on Lucius.

"Then should we make a few forms now? Even sailors could take one of our forms and fill it out on board, then hand it in the next time they came to Wenden Port." The more Lucius spoke, the more excited he became, and the more reasonable the idea seemed. "That would mean we'd get feedback much later, and it might be incomplete, but at least there'd be a chance of getting some."

Liston finished part of his work for the moment, covered the tray, and wrapped it in linen. Now they could talk without worrying about saliva spraying onto the instruments.

He put the Instrument Kit on a shelf, pulled out a chair beside Lucius, and sat down, stopping Lucius's hand as he reached for his pen. "What you're saying makes a lot of sense, but in my experience, there's one small problem we need to address."

"What problem?"

"One you'd find hard to understand until you had a clinic of your own." Liston didn't answer directly, instead taking a roundabout approach. "What kind of people do you think come here for amputations?"

"Mostly sailors and laborers, right? Didn't we count them? A lot of sailors come in because the ship's doctor can't treat them at sea, so their injuries get neglected for too long. Laborers either keep looking for work or put off treatment to save money, until things get this bad."

They had already compiled the data. They'd finished it after returning from Kraft's. Thanks to the medical record template Kraft had provided, which already included occupation, analyzing it had been easy.

"Right, so you know what kind of people they are. How many of the words on this sheet do you think they'll recognize?" Liston tapped the list of items Kraft had provided with a finger.

It was full of technical terms, some of them newly coined. Their meanings had only just been explained in the morning lesson, and the ink on their notes had barely dried.

"Forget this sheet. They couldn't even understand the simplest book. If they could read and write properly, why wouldn't they get a clerical job?"

"Uh... maybe we could simplify it as much as possible and explain what each item means?"

Lucius realized the flaw in his idea, but still wanted to salvage it. He didn't want to give up on an idea that had come to him in a flash.

"Do you think you could explain everything to them clearly enough that they'd go home and keep records on schedule?"

Liston had considered something similar, but explaining what he needed to people with no medical training was too difficult. And teaching people who couldn't read to understand every item on a chart was even harder.

"Even if you had Kraft's teaching ability and somehow managed to explain it all to them on the spot, they'd still have to remember it five or ten days later."

"Then, if they forgot, couldn't they ask someone who could read to go over it with them?"

Liston leaned back against the chair, speechless at a suggestion that had been thought through, but not all the way. "They won't come in for a free follow-up, but they'll have time to find someone to read it for them—for a fee? Or do you expect sailors to find someone out at sea to help them fill out the form?"

"Fine, you're right." Lucius gave up on the tempting idea.

He put away his paper and pen and continued reading the next medical record. To his surprise, this one contained an additional follow-up note.

The record belonged to a baker who'd gotten drunk and stepped barefoot into a ditch. Some heartless bastard had tossed a fragment of shell there, and it had cut a deep gash in his foot. He'd waited several weeks before seeking help, by which point a large patch of black gangrene on his foot had to be removed.

He'd missed his five-day follow-up, but he'd actually come in on the twelfth day.

"If I remember correctly, this one's new, right?"

"Let me see." Liston leaned closer to look at the record Lucius had pulled out. "Yes. A little late, but at least we got one."

"I wonder when we'll be done with these records. They're useful, sure, but they take so much time. My head hurts after writing for too long."

"I'm afraid we'll never be done. Kraft said every patient needs a full medical record at the very least, plus progress notes." Lucius spoke as he read.

The follow-up had been recorded according to the latest version of the list Kraft had provided. To make it easy to read and remember, it listed symptoms from head to toe, along with mental state, breathing, digestion, urine, and stool.

Several entries were marked "unknown," such as the color of the urine and stool. The dim public latrines made those items impossible to check.

Aside from the unknown entries, Lucius found one correction. In the mental-state section, a blacked-out mark came after "drowsiness," replaced with a slash to indicate its absence.

"Was this changed?"

Lucius picked up the paper and pointed out the black mark to Liston.

"Yes, I remember. He said he'd been waking up later than usual lately and was hard to rouse." Liston straightened up and took the record. "I accidentally checked 'drowsiness,' but after thinking it over, decided it wasn't that serious."

"It's not mentioned in the notes."

"Those subjective impressions aren't very meaningful when they're not especially reliable, are they? Everyone has periods when they feel especially sleepy, and he seemed in good spirits." Liston leaned back in his chair.

"Fine. I'll mention it to him when I hand over the records." Lucius put the sheet back, then tapped the stack into neat alignment.

This was the last record for the day. He picked up the whole stack, said goodbye to Liston, and headed back to the Academy to hand it in and collect his next five days' allotment of Clear Clarity Potion.

The diluted solution they'd first prepared in a large mug was probably almost gone. In another half-month, they'd have to make up another batch.

Kraft wasn't the only one who'd been busy this month. In fact, he'd set the entire Medical School in motion, with new courses and a host of related tasks growing out of the new surgical methods.

There was obviously no way one person could handle all that work, so some of it had fallen to Lucius and Liston.

Liston's clinic had essentially become the main source of information on the effects of the Clear Clarity Potion on adults. Kraft couldn't spare the time to visit often, so he'd entrusted it to Lucius, who had received the most instruction.

Lucius wasn't annoyed by this. On the contrary, he understood very well how much taking part in this work would benefit him. With this experience under his belt, he was practically guaranteed to land a lecturer's position at the Academy someday.

Dreaming of a bright future, he returned to the Academy with the latest records and entered the professor's office. Kraft had taken it over for the time being, turning it into his office. Everyone knew they could find him there.

"These are the new cases from the past five days, along with a twelve-day follow-up for an earlier patient." Lucius set the papers down at the corner of the desk and glanced at the sheets covering it, packed with neat little writing. A densely filled schedule was pinned beneath the ink bottle.

Kraft wasn't doing well, Lucius had heard recently. Between the heavy workload and the strange patients who kept showing up and wearing him down, no one could have been doing well.

The room was thick with frustration and exhaustion. Gloom hung over the person at the desk, and provoking him now would definitely be a bad idea.

But his sense of responsibility still made Lucius steel himself to interrupt Kraft's work. "There's a small issue with one of these. Lecturer Liston said it wasn't a big deal, but I think it's worth mentioning."

"Being thorough is a good thing. Go ahead... cough, cough." Kraft spoke in a slightly hoarse voice. He grabbed the teacup beside him and gulped down some cold barley tea, then choked and coughed.

He hurriedly covered his mouth, but a few drops still splashed onto the words he'd just written, smudging the ink.

"It's nothing serious. A patient said he's been waking up later than usual lately and is harder to rouse." Lucius was ready to leave once he'd finished speaking. He didn't think it was particularly useful information either, but his sense of responsibility had compelled him to mention it.

"What?"

To Lucius's surprise, Kraft ignored the ruined manuscript and stood up to stop him. "Which medical record? Where does he live? Let's take a look."