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The Least Common Denominator XX.I Body Mass Index
It was cold.I don't recall how or why I was here, but I was currently in my old hospital, holding my trusty clipboard filled with charts and lab results for my numerous patients as I seemed to be doing my usual rounds. The atmosphere was sterile and depressing. It didn't even take much for me to recognize that I was on autopilot as I entered a ward filled with patients that I didn't even recognize."Your treatment is going well, Miss XXXXXXX..."A blur... a straight static echoed in the place of my patient's last name as I jotted down a prescription. I barely recognized my own handwriting as I held out a pale hand towards the nameless patient's relative."Take this for your daughter's potassium levels. It's available in the pharmacy down on the first floor."Strange... I feel like I haven't
The Least Common Denominator XX.II Body Mass Index
"Whu!"I woke up to a start, my heart pounding and stress somehow leaving my body. At the back of my mind, I knew for a fact that I was dreaming of something just now. Something about falling from a height... I certainly remember doing that. But that's not all... There were tinges of guilt inside my chest that seemed to linger from my dream. I didn't know how, or why, but if it's there, maybe I dreamt of something bad again?Who knows.Blearily blinking my eyes open, I noticed that I was somewhere that's far from what I expected to wake up in. Was I in an emergency room or something? The amount of- OH FUCK!My heart hammered in my chest as soon as I realized that I had been lying around in the middle of doing my damned job! What happened?! Did I blackout?! Why was I laying down in the middle of the town hall?! I s
The Least Common Denominator XX.III Body Mass Index
"You've certainly improved."After finding Lace in the middle of making what seemed to look like a crude imitation of a lock-stitch suture, I had to hand it to the older woman to how fast she managed to pick up on the technique. Not that it wasn't anything fancy, but using what looked to be a wooden splinter as a makeshift needle was both an amazing, and cringe-worthy achievement. Then again, any kind of suture would've been okay so long as they held together and closed the wound in a satisfactory manner.But still, the part where she used a small splinter as a needle instead of something harder like a chipped-off piece of metal like I did earlier was pretty suspect, to say the least. Suffice to say, I was both amazed and horrified by what she was doing."L-Leader!" the older woman yelped just as she was finishing up her stitching job. It would see
The Least Common Denominator XX.IV Body Mass Index
I never thought in my whole second life that I'd ever willingly enjoy making a diagnosis, but this one patient was really trying his best to crack me up..For all of the wrong reasons."So you vomited earlier according to the woman that took you here," I began, suppressing the urge to tap on my nonexistent clipboard as I let my mind meander a bit at the potential possibilities. "Do you recall seeing what you vomited out?""No?!" my patient almost screamed at me as he groaned about the pain again. "Why would I remember what the hell I vomited out?!"I resisted the urge to sigh again as I simply stared at my patient with absolutely no clue on how to proceed. If only I had a lab to throw this guy into, I'd probably already have some results to base a diagnosis on. It's dumb that I can't even figure something like this out without modern science. I'd probably kill myself out of shame if it turned out to be something as simple as drinking bad w
The Least Common Denominator XX.V Body Mass Index
Doing surgery without the necessary tools, without the necessary sterilization procedures, without the technology that made the whole thing possible in the first place. Hoo boy... We're going full-on medieval style. How appropriate for the time and technological advances available."A blocked intestine?"I turned to Lace as she asked her innocent question. Intestines were already common knowledge in this era, right? She should already know about that part of the body. So instead..."The patient said that he ate some fruit off of a tree yesterday and nothing else ever since. Seeing as the guy was probably hungry, he possibly wolfed it down, seeds included."I suppressed the cringe bubbling up from my spine as I professionally relayed my diagnosis. There was no denying that the whole situation was borne from the stupidity and impatience of one man, but that wasn't a reason to crucify or make fun of him for it. I'd worse examples of stupidity
The Least Common Denominator XX.VI Body Mass Index
And there it was... At the back of my mind, I was honestly just waiting for the other shoe to drop. And here it was in all of its glory...The man that ate a fruit whole was back with a vengeance."He was starting to turn really pale, and his medic said that you'd do surgery on him," Emerald rapid-fired in her panic, still carrying the man on her back like his life depended on it. "He was really noisy at one moment, then the next he became completely silent."My humor and sarcasm dropped."What?""He turned paler by the second too, and his stomach's getting bloated."My eyes widened at the symptoms being relayed to me. Didn't this guy just have a bowel obstruction of some kind? How the hell did his condition deteriorate this quickly?"Put him on the table face up."Dammit. This was looking to be more complicated than I thought. I mean, dealing with the human body was always needlessly complicated
The Least Common Denominator XX.VII Body Mass Index
I forcefully blanked my mind out as I pulled up all of the relevant information that I could manage. With a hand still hovering dangerously close to the patient's body, I shook my head furiously as I steeled myself for the inevitable scream that was going to come out of my patient's mouth as soon as my crooked scalpel made contact with his tender flesh."Get ready..." I whispered more to myself than towards my assistants as I let the scalpel's edge rest on the pale skin. "I'm going to start the incision."Like a poorly-practiced butcher, I forced myself through the hesitation that was threatening to swallow me whole as I let the blade glide across the abdomen like it was nothing. The edge might not be as smooth as I was used to, but it did the job well enough as I made a vertical incision down at the center of the abdomen; coming from just level with underneath the last bone of the rib, all the way down to just above the bladder-"UUURGGHHH!!!"
The Least Common Denominator The State of Affairs II
Death was always a concept that I have been strangely intimate with.Yeah. Ironic. Seeing as I killed myself in the first life without even looking back.But now that I think about it, death was always a specter of life that I somehow manage to find myself embroiled in for some reason. Whether it was the death of my grandparents wherein I first felt the call of death for the first time in my life, to becoming a doctor which were always associated with death if you really think about it, my life was, for all intents and purposes, pretty fucking morbid. And as I sit in solemn silence in front of the graves of my fallen comrades, I find it quite surprising that I honestly don't feel anything beyond exhaustion and existential dread."Sis?"Death was always eternal; never stopping, never waiting for anyone. A natural conclusion to the passage of time; nothing is able to escape its firm grasp on the conceptual being of every man, object, or natu
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