In the largest, most prestigious magical school in the country you are it’s top healer. You’re making your rounds and teaching your apprentice the MANY stupid and dangerous ways students manage to injure themselves.
Broad swords scattered across every available surface. Shields, nicked, shattered, battered from ages of war. A tattered armored padded shirt sat unused under an equally tattered anatomy chart, stretched raw and powerfully across the side of the room.
Some of the swords had been made by countries that no longer existed, with only the tools of their undoing left behind.
Carol stared as she slipped inside, a hand clenched around her nose. Blood trickled down and splattered across the floor underneath of her. She winced at the noise.
The nurse’s head snapped over to watch her closely. White hair, a shock of it combed into something that had been noble style once. Scarred features from the number of wars in distant memory, and a feral gleam to her yellow eyes. Long winding scars across her throat and across her exposed collar. “Another injury?” Her voice was a bit rough.
“Uh, I uh, got rid of the uh, cartilage in my nose.” Carol pointed, slowly removing her hands. Her grey skin flapped unseemly against her face, and blood ran freely down, waterfalling across her lips.
The nurse stared at her.
Carol shrank slightly and hesitated in the door frame, and the nurse rolled her eyes and walked over to her, guiding her cautiously towards the bed.
“You really need to be more careful with wizardry,” The nurse advised. “What were you even trying to do?”
“The professor told us to figure out how to breath underwater using the proofs on the board,” Carol complained. “But I think I smudged my numerals a bit.”
The nurse’s hands, calloused, worn, heavy, slid across Carol’s head. Hands pressed in tightly, and lightly squeezed. Carol recognized a working when she felt one, but couldn’t see any writing on the nurse’s body, nor a book she was using to guide it, so squeaked when her nose started to burn.
“Hands away from your nose,” The nurse muttered, tugging her arms down. “And lay down, I need to make sure it grows back right or you’ll end up crooked nosed until I break it again.”
Carol, who had been starting to raise her hands again to staunch the flow of blood, squeaked, and slipped her hands back down against the blankets, feeling the warm liquid drip down the side of her hand and onto the mostly clean sheets.
“Don’t touch it,” the nurse advised again, sighing and flexing her fingers as she worked another spell to yank the nose back into position.
Carol meeped again and remained motionless as the nurse crossed the room and knocked on the door to the side. “Doctor Moriko,” the nurse said.
From deep inside, a rattly angry noise. “What is it this time? Didn’t I tell you to handle this?”
The nurse, despite her growly and toothy demeanor, rolled her eyes. “Yes, and you told me to get you if I needed anything.”
“The idea was that you wouldn’t need me, this is basic healing, I can’t hear anyone dying out there!” The doctor said, crossly.
Carol meeped. What if she was dying quietly? Would the doctor emerge before she choked to death on her own blood?
“We’ve got another student that’ll need glasses. She blew up her nose because she couldn’t read the board.”
Carol squeaked indignantly. She couldn’t afford glasses, don’t be utterly ridiculous.
“Ughhhhhh,” The doctor said, rising from her cocoon, tattered medical journals from a dozen planes hitting the ground like the pitter patter of marines invading beaches. “Let me get the school funds.”
The doctor pulled herself out of the room, rubbing her eyes, and glared indignantly at the girl. “How did you even qualify for the Fortress University?”
Carol gave a nervous smile. “…Uh, high scores?”
Moriko turned away in disgust and threw money on the bed. “Get yourself some glasses, you idiot.”