The Cure
The Egyptian woman was dead.
The agony and pain was gone from her. Her lungs no longer spat blood on the curtains. Her weak body of southerner would no longer embarrass the rest of human race that had to co-exist here in the north with the coldness that only kept strongest ones alive.
Nobody wept for her.
Except her little son. A bastard. A mockery of family. Son of a whore.
“Doctor, doctor please!”
And after it, the silence. Pierre Dôn had stood in the hallway. Seen the both doctors going in and heard the scream and suffering. He had not followed the foreigners. He didn’t need to. It was in his rights. If his wife had chosen to insult the very vows they had given, then what courtesy, custom or way demanded her husband to be there with her dying bed?
Pierre had even tried to arrange so that she would not get the honor and condolence for dying in her home.
It had proven difficult and problematic and in the end Pierre had not time to arrange before the foreign doctors had arrived. To cure his wife. Terminally.
He had made enough mistakes in his letters so the two doctors should had been one, but instead he had forgotten that he had already asked for these services from the east when he sent the letter to the west…And both had arrived in the same day.
In the end, double the better. Hadn’t his own doctor not already made visits in the East? Pierre had only one concern over this. In his letter he had specified that if the cure is successful, then and only then He will pay what the prize would be given to him by the successful doctor. For the easterner, he had already paid in advance, but if the westerner would succeed?
In the west laid the empires of Rome and false-Rome, there stood the Danes and the French, the Germans and the Spanish minors under Egyptian scorn. Whatever cure was needed there; it would be bitter sweet potion that would leave foul taste in many mouths. And if people knew that it came from Finland, then the flavor would so easily be tasted in here as well.
But Pierre knew nothing but man’s honor for keeping his word. His wife was ill. She needed to be cured away from this misery. Pierre would do anything in his powers to provide such care for her. And by that he would have to make collections with his honor. Whatever prize was given, Pierre would pay it.
When he looked to the hallway, it was darker than usual. The screaming had stopped. Maids had fled from there weeping and crying. It was done. It was over. Both foreigners passed aside him, one even offering his doctor’s lamentations as he went on trough the hall way.
His own doctor came last. He remained silent and thoughtful, as if heavy thoughts would forgive him and his master from the sins of this day. It was slightly factitious.
“So, which one of them succeeded?”
But the old man just looked his own beard and gave Pierre a haunting glance.
“What was named for the prize?”
“A heavy prize was named.”
And the doctor spoke one word, one name and all color crept in the lairs from Pierre’s expression.
“For the love of god!”
“Did he…did the …succeed?”
“I peg your pardon?”
“In kill…cure, the doctors…ach, who killed my wife? Will the prize become collected?”
“I killed her. I got there first.”