Self-Hypnosis
I never once expected an annihilation of such magnitude. I did consider injured personnel, but the number of wounded soldiers exceeded my expectations. I didn’t know how the elves did it, but it was a fact that the elves completely annihilated humanity’s army.
We had a station set up to treat wounded soldiers. Alas, because there were no wounded sent over after a long time, lots of doctors left. There were only two doctors left; the two doctors were from the garrison soldiers division. They had never witnessed any major incidents. They were as slow as snails just treating the wounds. They even treated the soldiers while weeping and puking. I speculated they were more susceptible to breaking than the burnt soldiers. The place for the wounded wasn’t large; impossible to fit hundreds. The elves’ medications would be helpful for the wounded, but I doubted that the elves would help us in that situation.
“Anna, rush to the city; call as many doctors over as you can. Have them bring medication and anything else required to treat burn wounds.”
Truth be told, I couldn’t care less about the wounded soldiers as their lives had nothing to do with me. I wasn’t the one who got them killed. I had fulfilled every possible moral standard by providing them with a location to take shelter and be treated. By contrast, Veirya remained around the wounded soldiers the entire time. She took hold of their hands and listened to their groans. Though she never said anything, she remained by their sides the entire time.
Even Leah ran back and forth, carrying basins of blood. My entire family was there to help the wounded; thus, it wouldn’t be too appropriate for me to look indifferent. But nonetheless, I couldn’t help feeling nauseous when I saw their burnt flesh, open wounds, the black liquid pouring out of their wounds and the limbs that weren’t intact. The air around the place was repulsive, thereby attracting masses of flies. We couldn’t dispose of the dead in time, so we had no choice but to toss them aside. Flies stopped on their open lifeless eyes. We didn’t even have a piece of fabric to cover them.
“Can’t you go any faster?” I asked.
The injured had been left in critical condition for a long time by the time they arrived. I suspected the elves deliberately delayed their delivery. Lots of them were already dead by the time they arrived. Soldiers continued to die one after another after their arrival. All they did was lie there and plead, “Help me,” in the form of murmurs as they waited for their blood to run dry before finally going totally limp.
The two doctors still continued to dawdle at the table, however. They didn’t have the foggiest idea as to how to treat a wounded leg. They shouted, “We can’t help it. It’s difficult to treat this wound! We need to amputate it, then bandage it, stop the bleeding and disinfect it. The problem is that the wound still hasn’t been bandaged!!”
Veirya looked over to us and suddenly remarked, “I. Know some medical skills. We can. Treat them inside. I can. Treat some.”
“Me, too.” Ciara also offered to help: “I don’t have any medications, but I can bandage them and whatnot. I believe that we are all willing to help.”
“I won’t allow you to.” I didn’t hesitate to interject. In a serious tone, I explained, “I won’t let any wounded personnel into our house. I’m not cold-blooded. The issue is that we can’t do anything about the wounds and corpses here. Are you going to force Leah to see corpses back home, as well? You want to stink up our place, too? Also, the corpses’ temperatures are so high that they’ll rot very quickly! I won’t risk your lives!”
A doctor turned around and yelled, “What do we do, then?”
“Amputate their legs.” I offered a simple solution: “If it’s hard to keep their legs, just amputate them.”
“They’ll die if we amputate their limbs!!”
“And they’ll die if you don’t get a move on! We can’t save the severely wounded. Relieve the severely wounded with a quick finish, and then hurry on to personnel with minor wounds! Every extra one saved counts. You have to learn to accept and reject!” I grabbed the doctor’s collar and pushed him over to the table.
The injured soldier was still conscious. His leg had basically been blown off. His bones had already snapped. His breathing was erratic. He aggressively grabbed my arm and, with his pale lips, softly muttered, “No… Sir… don’t… please… save me… save me… I… I have a child… I don’t… see… see… my child… and my wife… I… I don’t want to die… Please…”
It didn’t take much effort for me to pull my arm out from his grip. I ignored the soldier. I pushed the doctor over: “Chop his leg off. Do what you can. Whether he survives or not is his business. You, too! Don’t waste too much time and medicine on one person. If you can’t save them, throw them out!”
It was called the alligator principle. Once an alligator has caught your leg, it’ll rip your arm off if you try to pull your leg out with your hands. The only solution was to chop off your leg. If you struggled, you’d just have more to lose. The most crucial course of action was to limit your losses.
We had no time or medicine to waste on such severely wounded soldiers. It’d be nice if they made it, but if they didn’t, we were genuinely hopeless. We fulfilled our obligation. We could only save more by giving up on those we couldn’t do anything about.
“Don’t!! Don’t! I have children! Don’t!! I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die!!!”
The soldier’s screams were loud, but they didn’t last for long. The doctor looked at the soldier and then pushed a section off the table. Half of his body dropped to the ground. He hadn’t shut his eyes yet; his gaze was aimed in the direction that I left.
Veirya grabbed my arm. I sighed as I knew that I might have given myself a pain to deal with.
“He. Has a child.”
“Lots of people here have children.”
“He was injured.”
“Lots of people here are injured.”
“We have to save him.”
“And we have to save other people, too.”
The two of us both wore neutral expressions. I wasn’t totally cold-blooded. I wasn’t comfortable watching someone die as a result of my command, but what could I have done? There were lots of people who had injuries that couldn’t be delayed. Wasting too much time on someone who barely had a chance of survival would only cost the lives of others, for the reason that saving him alone would cost too much time and medicine. That would not be fair on the others. Our goal wasn’t to save everyone; our goal was to save enough people.
“We. Can’t abandon him.” Veirya then paused before continuing, “We. Can’t abandon anyone. Otherwise. Nobody will. Be able to fight without concern. In the future.”
I calmly explained, “The war has already ended; the curtain on the war between humans and elves has already come down. The elves won. We still don’t know if Her Majesty is alive or not. Do you honestly think humanity will gather all of the entire nation’s power to go and fight the elves? Veirya, you’re mistaken. You’re the only one who is worried about Her Majesty. Right this moment, the people in the imperial palace are already discussing who to crown next. They don’t and won’t care about Queen Sisi or think about revenge or what have you. Our goal now isn’t to save everyone; we’re trying to save as many as we can.”
“They. Sacrificed everything. For Her Majesty. They deserve. To receive treatment.”
“Only those worthy of help deserve help. Veirya, you won’t always be repaid for your investment. Only those qualified to receive a return on their investment will receive that return.”
That was Veirya’s last comment. She didn’t consider my argument to be of any significance. She turned around to the doctor then went up to him. She seriously demanded, “You have. To save everyone. Do your best. Unless they die. You must continue to help them.”
“Veirya!! This is not time for you to be acting stubborn!!” I waded my way through the corpses to reach Veirya. I grabbed her by her arm and scowled: “Now is not the time for you to be acting emotionally!! Our current duty is to save as many people as we can! If you waste medicine and time on someone who has no hope, what are you going to do about the others?! Are you expecting them to just wait to die?!!!”
Veirya still wore a straight face; she wasn’t angry, and she didn’t argue. She just calmly commanded, “Don’t stay here. And concern yourself with things here. I. Order you. To leave this place.”
“You…”
Veirya completely shut me down. Words weren’t her weapon, but she completely silenced me. She commanded me while totally composed, freezing all of my blood. I thought our relationship had progressed a fair lot. I thought that Veirya and I cared for each other and thought about each other. I thought I could speak to her on the same level, and we loved each other. However, she had never considered me someone worth keeping by her side. She never put me on the same level as Angelina and Queen Sisi. She had always considered herself my master; she never considered me a human being. Thus, we were never fated to be in love. Everything that I thought was just things that I conjured up in my mind. Veirya never thought what I thought she thought. She never shared the feelings I had for her. Veirya. Never. Loved me.
I stood in place in silence for long time before finally quietly replying, “… Fine.”
Veirya turned around and stopped speaking.
“I’m going to the elven lands now,” I stated.
I looked up at Vierya’s back; nevertheless, I no longer had any lingering feelings when I saw her back. I, as a matter of fact, was somewhat irate and discontent. Veirya never cared about my feelings.
“You’re going to go. Rescue Her Majesty?”
“That’s the plan.”
Veirya didn’t seem to care about anything. Not that I blamed her. She didn’t love me or think that she hurt me with what she said before. She believed her attitude to be perfectly justified. To be fair, I had no right to be angry as everything that I thought were just ideas I conjured up in my own mind.
“How. Will you rescue her?”
“I have my own way.”
I had my own way of doing things, and I could think independently.
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