Fight, Flight, or Freeze: The Healer's Story
Chapter 99: First Patient

Chapter 99: First Patient

Apparently, I could ignore it.

Somehow, I had managed to fall asleep only to have the side of the cage my head was resting against open and someone to grab me by the hair.

"Let’s see how useful you are," growled the voice on top of me.

My hands shot up to grab his wrist, my nails digging into this flesh, trying to relieve the pressure on my skull as hair was pulled out of my head in chunks.

Ignoring my attempts, the massive man dragged me across the ground, not caring about the rock and sticks digging into my back and legs as my feet frantically kicked, trying to get some traction.

We didn’t seem to have gone too far, but I remember the sound of the gate opening and closing.

Trying to calm my racing heart, I looked around, looking for something I could use as a weapon. But the darkness was absolute, and I couldn’t see the guy dragging me, let alone find a way to escape.

"Heal him," the guy snarled as I was flung up against the side of yet another cage. When I opened my eyes, I could see what was around me, thanks to a bunch of fires inside of metal barrels lighting the surrounding area.

The cage in front of me seemed to be bigger than the one I had woken up in. In fact, it looked like a palace compared to mine.

This one was much, much bigger—almost 7 feet by 10 feet with a bed, a mattress, and even a table. Hell, there were even weights in one corner of the cell.

I groaned as it hit the bars but came to my feet as quickly as I could. I didn’t need another kick or jolt of pain right now.

I took my time to study the interior of the cage a bit better. How the hell did I miss the guy on the bed was beyond me, but he was massive.

"Heal him," came the voice behind me, and I was pushed forward until my face was pressed on the bars.

"I need to touch him," I grunted, trying to get my throat to work. "I can hardly see him, let alone heal him."

The guy with his hand encompassing my entire head simply sighed, and I could hear the sound of keys jingling in his hands as he looked for the one to open this new cage.

Right, I would need keys before I could get out of my prison and escape.

Filing that bit of information away, I waited for the door to open, and I was once again thrown into a cage.

Coming to my feet, I used the minimum amount of light to make my way to where the guy was lying on the bed.

"Hello, can you hear me? My name is Doctor Wang Tian Mu, and you are—" I stuttered over my words. I was responding as if I was still working at the General... Shaking my head, I continued, "Not at the General Hospital in City D."

There was a low chuckle from the man on the bed, and I breathed out a soft sigh. Patient was conscious.

"No, I am definitely not at the General," he said, his raspy voice weak.

"Do you know where you are?" I asked. If he was a fighter, he might have suffered from a concussion. "What is your name?"

"My name is Yin Jie, and I am in Hell," he replied, and I could see a smirk starting to form on his face.

"Well, you aren’t wrong. There is no point in asking who the President is because I don’t even know the answer, so I am going to assume that you don’t have an issue with your memory. Can you tell me where it hurts?" I continued talking to him as if he were any other patient, ignoring everything but the man in front of me.

I waited for his answer and picked up his wrist, intent on taking his heart rate. I looked down at the watch on my wrist, happy that I thought to put on one of the working ones I had stashed in the bunker. The idiot Sha Ling might have taken my go bag, but this was the first time I had noticed that they had kept me in the same clothes as what I arrived in.

And if that was the case...

I dropped my head, hiding my smile.

If that was the case, I had hidden a stash of a few protein bars in my bra and the inside of my pants...

Too caught up in the food I had squirreled away on my body, I didn’t notice the green threads coming out of my hand where it was touching Yin Jie.

Suddenly, I was sucked into his body, just as I was with Ming Zhu.

"Fuck," I breathed out, looking around at all the damage done. His ribs four and five on his left side were completely broken, and his sternum was dislocated where the manubrium was articulated to the body of the sternum, otherwise known as the sternal angle or the angle of Louis.

I had never seen a break like that before, and I didn’t even want to guess the amount of force the other guy would have to be putting out to be able to cause that amount of damage.

"You need to protect your center better," I joked, surprised that Yin Jie could hear me.

"Yeah, got that," he coughed, and I could see his lungs contract as they tried to force some mucus up and out of them.

Was that early-onset pneumonia? I mean, what the amount of shit his body had been through, it would make sense that it was worn down enough to be able to get pneumonia, but still...

"One of the guys who was trying to teach me how to fight used to move my hands into the guard position saying: ’One to keep you breathing, one to keep you beautiful.’ You’ve managed to fuck up both," I continued as I looked at his face.

He had taken a few shots to the face, and his lip was split, but it was nowhere as bad as what Ming Zhu had gone through.

"One to keep you breathing, one to keep you beautiful. I will have to remember that," he smiled, and I could see the pain starting to take hold of him as his eyes began to flutter shut.

"Get some sleep. I’ll see what I can do to get you better."

Yin Jie grunted, but it was only a few seconds before his breathing evened out, and he was asleep.

Since part of me still seemed to be inside of his body, I thought about his brain and was immediately transported here.

Slight swelling, but nothing so wrong that I needed to worry about a concussion. It was fine to let him sleep.

The list in my head of what I needed to fix for him sorted out, I got to work putting the fighter back together.