Nadine - The Beginning

14. The Office

Every time we look at each other we just start laughing again. We laugh all the way to the medical area.

"Princess we need to stop laughing before we go in there."

"You're right."

We both take a couple of deep breaths and then start laughing again. After a couple of tries we finally get it.

I open the door and walk in. There are 3 servants in a dress like mine all around a center desk.

I take a deep breath and walk up to them. "Hello I'm Princess Nadine and I am here for my first day."

They all curtsey.

"Nice to make your acquaintance ma'am." One of them says.

I curtsey. "You too. But I'm here to learn medicine. Is the doctor in?"

"Right this way ma'am."

One of the servants leads me to the end of the hall and knocks on a door. I hear Doctor Cruor yell "Come in!"

The servant opens the door and walks in. "Doctor Cruor the Princess is here to see you."

"Oh yes. Good. Good. Come in Princess. Was the farewell party nice? I'm afraid I couldn't make it this morning."

The servant exits the room and shuts the door behind me and Mary.

"It was very nice doctor. They had a nice send off."

"Great and who do we have here?" He walks over to Mary.

"This is Mary sir. She is my personal servant."

He looks back and forth between the 2 of us a couple times. "I was unaware of this. But I do believe this will be beneficial to all of us."

"How do you mean doctor?"

"Well if Mary joins you for all your training, she will pick up the training as well." He looks at Mary. "You may not get as much training or hands on experience but you will learn the way we do things here." He sits down on his desk. "This means that if there is ever a bad emergency or extra help is needed, you will be able assist. Also with Mary getting the training, if you are ever injured she would be able to help you immediately. Which would be much better than waiting on a doctor to arrive."

I nod and look at Mary. "What do you think?"

She looks at me. "I was just coming because it was your first day."

The doctor laughs. "Nonsense. It will be good for you. You 2 can learn together. Help each other study. I mean, even if you only study the basics, a little medical knowledge never hurt anyone. What do you say Mary?"

I can see the tears forming in her eyes as she nods.

I smile and reach out and hold her hand. "This sounds like a good plan doctor."

"Ok follow me and I will introduce you to the other staff." He looks back at me. "Princess. I understand you are a princess. But to study medicine and learn from the other servants you may have to let them drop the formality. I do believe they will be nervous around you and probably to scared to correct you if you would do something wrong."

"Ok I will talk with them doctor."

He smiles and we walk back out to the desk.

"Servants. This is Princess Nadine and Mary. They will be studying medicine here with us. For the first day, I would like you to give the them a tour of the entire medical area. Make sure they know where everything is. Where the patients are. Give them the background on the patients. Show them where the medicines and clean linens are. Make sure they can find everything when asked. If the patients need anything they may assist."

The all nod and 1 says "yes sir."

"Great. I will leave you with these 3 today. I must finish up a couple reports. I will go over reporting with you in a few weeks. Right now I just want to you know where everything is."

"Ok doctor thank you."

He bows and goes back into his office.

I look at the 3 girls and they look scared. "Hi everyone, you can call me Nadine while I'm here. and this is Mary. We're both looking forward to learning."

"We are looking forward to teaching you ma'am."

"No." I shake my head. "No ma'am. I'm just like everyone else when I'm here. Forget I'm a princess."

One of the girls gets a smile and the other 2 still look scared. "Really?"

"Yes. I won't learn if everyone does everything for me. Or gets everything for me. Or stands over me all the time. I want to be like everyone else here."

The girl that was smiling before starts jumping up and down and runs over to me. "I'm Dorceti. This is Elkie and Vitchen." She wraps her arms around me. "I just know we're going to be the best of friends. Come on I'll show you around a an empty room to start."

I smile at her while Mary laughs. We follow her into an empty room and she starts a tour. "Each room can hold two patients. The cupboards are for clean sheets and linens and things. There's a bucket for water on both sides. There's this curtain we can pull to divide the room if we need to. We don't keep medicine or anything in the rooms. So it's what you see is what's here. Any questions about the rooms?"

Me and Mary both shake our heads. This seems pretty obvious.

"Just so you know, Vitchen is kind of rude sometimes. Don't take it personally. She's been doing this for so long. Sometimes she forgets that some of us are still learning."

"How long have you been here?" Mary asks her.

"I've been here almost 1 year. I just do basic stuff. I wash patients up. Clean wounds. Clean rooms. Make sure patients have water. Deliver food to rooms. Sometimes I have to help patients eat. Just stuff like that. I don't do anything with the medicine."

"Vitchen and Elkie do all the same stuff I do and they do more. The doctor sometimes tells Vitchen to give medicine when he's not here. And they both have to do documents on patients."

"Do you get a lot of patients Dorceti?" I can't help but think that since we're vampires we don't need doctors that often.

"Our patient count goes up and down. Sometimes there is no one in here and we all clean and read. Other times the beds are full."

"But since our bodies heal themselves pretty quickly what all reasons do vampires come in?"

"Well there's always poisons. That's a big one. People come in poisoned and we have to figure out what poison it is and then give medicine. There's childbirth and pregnancy problems. Injuries, for the most part injuries heal themselves quickly but, there can be poison or other complications. Fang problems. Sometimes people get bad blood or food, that can cause problems. There's a variety of different reasons."

I just stand there nodding. "I guess I never thought of all that."

"Oh there's more. You'll be shocked at all the stuff you see. Even in 1 year, I've seen all that and even a few weirder things. Follow me over here please."

We follow her into a closet.

"This is where we keep the extra cloth. That whole shelf is extra bedding. We keep a few extra dresses here. This whole shelf is clean aprons. Sometimes you will get messy. You should probably put a few extra pair of gloves and a couple veils in here. We don't use them so they would be just yours." She stops and looks at my hands. "Probably more gloves than a few. Gloves will get dirty fast. Over here is the bathing area. We have plenty of clean gowns for patients." She looks at us again. "I'm not sure if you will be bathing the patients. But you just take a bucket with some clean water and wash them off if you do. We keep lots of buckets in here. Sometimes if you need to drain an infection you can just grab one for that too. These linens over here can be used to wash people or dry them off. Whenever anything is dirty you just put it in this big bucket. Other servants will come and wash it every day."

"Sorry to interrupt. Lunch is being served and there are a couple of patients that need help."

I run out of the closet. "I would love to help." I'm so tired of listening to Dorceti talk.

Mary and I follow Elkie to the desk where Vitchen is mixing something in bowls. Vitchen looks up at us. "Great, I will have each of you help a different person. It seems they both have the same thing. Stomach issues. They probably ate off the same piece of bad meat. I am mixing the herbs wormwood and mint into some broth. Both are said to sooth a bad stomach. Both of these men are very weak and have not been able to keep anything down for weeks. They would be dead if they were human. We must keep trying to feed them." She stops and looks at me and Mary. "Each of you a take a bowl. The men are in that room and that room." She points us in the right directions. "Sit beside them and get them to eat as much as possible."

I nod and walk into the room she pointed me into. It smells horrible. I get closer to the man and he looks horrible. He is so white and his skin is all sunk in. "Hello sir. I'm here to help you eat today." He barely has the strength to look at me for long. I grab a couple of the cloths out of the closet and sit down beside him.

I put a spoon of the broth to his lips and he pushes them closed harder. This is not what I expected. "Sir, if you don't eat, you will never get better." I try again and he pushes them closed again.

"How about some blood? Would you like a drink of blood?" I put some blood on a spoon and he takes it.

He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. "I'll just keep giving you blood for now. You seem to like that sir." He eats half the blood on spoons.

"Well that's half gone sir. Would you try some broth now please? Just a few bites at least."

He looks at my veil and then opens his mouth.

He ends up eating half the broth and drinking all of the blood and water. I wipe up a few drips off his chin. "You did so well sir. Thank you so much."

I grab the bowl and mugs and walk back out to the desk. Vitchen and Elkie are sitting there. "How did he do?"

"He ate half the broth and all of the water and blood."

Elkie looks at me surprised. "Really? That is very good. He hasn't been eating the broth at all."

Vitchen looks up. "Well maybe he will start to get better now."

"I hope so. Where do I put the dirty dishes though?"

Elkie points. "Cart right around that corner."

I turn to go to the cart and Mary comes out of her patients room. "He ate it all!"

Vitchen looks up again. "Nice job girls. Get rid of the dishes and I will show you the medicine area's."

I lead Mary over to the cart and we drop everything on it and head back to Vitchen.

"This is the main entry desk. We are right in the middle and can hear noises from any of the rooms here. Now you can both step behind the desk and I will show you this cupboard. This is where we keep the herbs. We have some wormwood, sage, rosemary, thyme, myrtle and a variety of others down here. They each do different things. You will study them as the doctor instructs."

"So you are the one who handles all of the herbs?"

"Yes. I make sure the correct herbs go out to the correct patients. You can follow me over here now. This cupboard is where more of the heavy duty drugs are. They each have a use. These will take care of poisons. We use this to force a vampire unconscious." Mary gives her a scared look. "Sometimes the injuries are to painful. We can make them unconscious while their bodies heal. It can save a lot of pain this way. These tubes are for dripping blood into the mouth. We always have to make sure each vampire gets blood daily. Very important. Never forget the blood for each of your patients. Every single day."

We both nod.

"It doesn't matter if you give them to much. But it can be deadly if they don't get enough. So even if you have to drip it in, make sure they get it."

"Yes ma'am."

"Great I will send you back to the doctor now. I believe you have had a good tour."

She points down the doctors hall and walks back to her desk.