“Now that we know it’s a parasite, we should try everything we have on hand in case something works. If all we can do is wait for more medicine to arrive, we may as well try—even if it amounts to nothing,” she had decided.
There was a clear desperation to her face, a paleness to her complexion that spoke of the hours of sleep she wasn’t getting. Although she was taking some time to sleep, the constant anxiety she faced kept that sleep from being restful. Nevertheless, she never failed to have a bright smile when working with the patients. Even as she tended to those who had lost consciousness, her bright demeanor was uplifting to their exhausted families.
Despite understanding why the medicine was rationed the way it was, the families of those who were too sick obviously struggled with the feeling that their loved ones were being left to die. They had to be frustrated and heartbroken.
But even among that despair, there was one girl working tirelessly and desperately to make a difference, as small as it might be. There was one person giving everything she had to keep their loved ones alive for even one moment longer. The hopeless, forlorn atmosphere of that room gradually began to soften around her.
“We won’t forget how much you did for her. Mother was so happy.”
As patients started to succumb and pass away, their families came to Misha with heartfelt gratitude. They brought her close to tears herself. She could only ever shake her head modestly in reply.
Misha quickly realized that if she had run around the city searching for other People of the Forest, not only would she likely never have found any, but even if she had, it wouldn’t have changed how much medicine they had access to. Nel had sensed the coming of the plague on his own and had come to help as fast as he could. As cold as they were in tone and demeanor, the People of the Forest would never let people die for no reason. That was their pride as a tribe that made their mission to fight against illness and infirmity in every form. Ryne and the others could not have arrived in the capital any sooner.
Even though she understood this in her head, Misha constantly found herself asking, “But what if...?” Ryne had spoken to her harshly when they had first reunited, chastising her for failing to take the best possible course of action as fast as possible, both because he had foreseen this was exactly how she would feel and because it had been a mistake on her part.
Deep down, she couldn’t help but feel like she was somehow responsible for everyone’s suffering here. When she closed her eyes, the faces of the dead came to her in her dreams. They never said anything. They just stared at her sadly.
If only someone had just blamed me.
She thought back to when those men had accosted her in the castle. Though it had hurt to be shouted at like that, thinking back on it now, she had also felt something like relief.
But before she could latch on to that foolish way of thinking, Ryne had shown up to shatter her delusions.
“You can’t just apologize and make everything better. Licking your wounds like that means nothing. If you have time to wallow in self-pity, you have time to help patients. Luckily for you, we’re short on people, so there’s plenty of work you can do.”
While she was in the midst of blaming herself for what was happening, Ryne grabbed her by the scruff of her neck and threw her into the laundry room.
As rough as he was, spending half a day in a daze cleaning soiled sheets and bandages had finally gotten her to the point where she could help out in the infirmary again. She didn’t really know how to handle being thanked for the work she did there, so the moment the families were gone, she bit her lip and turned back to the medicine room in search of anything else she could do to help.
The others around Misha saw her desperation and tried to stop her, but Ryne insisted they let her be.
“For her own sake, she needs to be able to immerse herself in something. If things get really bad, I’ll make her take a break, even if I have to drug her, but for now, let her keep working.”
The inability to let go of those you had failed to save was an inevitable struggle for every medical professional. As young as Misha was, she still called herself an apothecary, so this was a trial she would have to overcome. That had been enough to silence the objections.
After some time, as plans shifted from completely curing people to simply buying time for more medicine to arrive, there was enough medicine to spare for the first room of patients, where there had been no hope of being able to save anyone. The People of the Forest claimed they were reversing course on their previous decision so that they could determine how far gone someone could be yet still be saved, but much of the reason came from seeing how hard Misha was trying to save those otherwise hopeless patients.
The People of the Forest already had a powerful sense of kinship between them. Seeing one of their children, someone they should have been protecting at all costs, run herself ragged trying to do whatever she could was too much for them to bear. Ryne had rolled his eyes but otherwise hadn’t objected to Nel’s decision, so his personal opinion couldn’t have been much different. Misha was the only one who didn’t see through the facade, crying tears of joy at the news and diving right in to help distribute the medicine.
Unfortunately, as they had predicted, the vast majority of patients in that room showed no improvement even with the medicine. However, for those few who did start to improve, there was no shortage of celebration. If their lives could be extended one day longer, for even half a day longer, there was that much more chance of a miracle. That atmosphere quickly settled over everyone in the room.