"Yes sir. His family did explicitly ask that we don't try to remove it."
"Don't try to remove the thing that isn't there?" The doctor sighed, "Fine, forget I said anything."
"Yes sir."
"Alright then, remove the bandages and open him up," Palani turned away from the scans and examined his patient, "There's a lot of shrapnel in there, the sooner we get it out the sooner we stitch him up and call it a night."
"How do you want to retrieve the shrapnel?" Jessica asked as she helped one of the other nurses cut away the gauze holding Salem's chest together. "Magnetic removal device? Or manually?"
"I wouldn't dare use the magnet for this much shrapnel, the chance of further damage is too high," Palani shook his head, "No, we'll remove the larger pieces by hand, once the bulk of it is out we can switch to the magnet."
They went to work in near silence, first removing the medifoam that had halfway solidified inside his chest, then using forceps to remove the larger pieces of shrapnel.
The most curious thing happened as Palani removed one of the biggest pieces; the metal slid out of muscle easily enough, but no blood followed. Palani frowned, and turned away to drop the shrapnel on a surgical tray. When he looked back at the wound he couldn't find it; it had disappeared entirely, where a large laceration had existed there was only intact muscle. He ran his fingers along the flesh where he'd seen the cut, but that only confused him further; it was completely normal, save the searing heat radiating from inside the muscle. As quickly as he noticed it, the heat disappeared, and Palani sighed to himself.
"Has he been given any regenerative meds yet?" Palani asked, though he suspected he already knew the answer.
"No, doctor," Ward responded, "We wouldn't administer necrotussin without your approval."
"I figured as much," the doctor muttered, "These high-level government jobs just keep getting weirder."
They worked steadily, removing shrapnel and medifoam and flesh torn beyond repair, all the while ignoring the "nothing" that supposedly wasn't there. Palani was mildly disturbed to find he had no idea what the nothing was; he only saw it once or twice, and each time it disappeared almost immediately, hiding behind his patient's organs. It was as big around as a pencil and roughly as long, with a smooth, dark, scaly body. For the most part he ignored it; there was plenty of shrapnel to worry about. He'd be here for hours even without the distraction, and while curiosity may have killed the cat, it would most certainly not prove to be the death Mara Palani.
Meanwhile, Korana could only watch through the window of the adjacent room as surgeons crowded around her husband. She'd been by his side from the moment they got off the phantom until he went into surgery; once they'd reached the medbay, the nurses had led her into a private viewing room. The High Queen stared, wide-eyed as doctors put her husband back together again. This wasn't the first time he'd been seriously injured, she knew he would live, but that didn't make it any less terrifying seeing his innards; she had no intention of going anywhere until Salem was in one piece again.
Briarios looked at his mother and sighed; he'd only seen her stricken with worry like this once before, and it wasn't a memory he relished. Soluna sat on a bench beside him, and Augustus leaned against the wall on Korana's other side, half conscious on account of the empty flask in his lap; he had very singular methods for dealing with stress. Briarios took one look at his mother and knew she wouldn't be moving any time soon, and at first he didn't intend to either, but he was needed elsewhere.
"Sorry to interrupt," Jaeger's voice came through a speaker on the wall, "But Grizzly team has returned from the planet's surface. Mr. Rott will be in the brig shortly."
Chapter Twelve: How Bad Could it Be?
Start from the beginning
