The musty sll and stench of decay lingered in the room for a long ti. The clock hanging on the wall had no markings, one hand stuck in place with the number "1" etched on it, while the other had rotated most of the way around.
Two Plague Doctors stood in front of the clock, dressed in black robes and wearing beaked masks. One held an oil lamp, illuminating the face of a mummy, while the other wore white gloves and lifted the hideous eyelid with tweezers.
"Eyes gone, no blood, just dried gravel, preliminarily diagnosed as early symptoms of 'Gaze into the Abyss'... Syringe."
Strange reached out to Shiller. Shiller looked at him, and he looked back at Shiller. The two stared at each other.
"Are you planning to have do both the surgeon and assistant's work?" Strange asked.
Shiller then realized. He went to the tool rack nearby to find a syringe, and then said, "It's not that I don't want to help, but usually in the operating room I'm just the guy standing beside the bed cheering the patient on. You'd better not expect any professional assistance from ."
Strange snorted coldly and said, "You do more than cheer. You also mock and plot against surgeons."
"You're wrong there. I wouldn't speak ill of surgeons in the operating room, after all, they have the scalpels in their hands." Shiller shook his head as he selected a syringe from the rack.
"Will this do?" Shiller brought over two syringes. Strange rubbed his eyes and said, "Those are injection syringes, bring that finer one from the row below."
Shiller brought a finer and smaller syringe. Strange inserted it into the mummy's arm and actually drew out a tube of liquid. However, the liquid was black and appeared to be mixed with so dust.
Strange paused briefly, handed the syringe to Shiller and then said, "Take this to the testing bench for a wax-oil mix."
Shiller went over. He had just seen this section in the book he was checking. Although he was a psychiatrist, he had studied at dical school. And despite not taking final exams in the normal way, his natural mory was so good that he could practically rember everything he read.
First, he picked up the purple candles stacked on the shelf in front of the testing table, lit the candles, dropped two drops of wax oil in a small brass spoon, then used another thick white candle under the spoon to continue heating.
Holding the spoon in one hand, he took a tin sheet in the other, and after mixing the blood from the syringe into the wax oil, he picked it up with a needle and sared it on the tin sheet.
"No color change," Shiller observed and said, "But the coagulation is very slow. Should we do a plant juice reaction test?"
"Test the toxicity with Mandala." Strange said while using a sharp blade to cut open the mummy's index finger. After discovering the cavity beneath the skin and the granulation tissue protruding from it, he said, "Never mind, no need to do it. It's confird to be a burned Witch. The limbs have already started to mutate."
Shiller put down the things in his hand, just about to say sothing, when he heard the clock make a "clang" sound.
The mummy on the bed suddenly started convulsing.
"Ran out of ti?" Strange looked up at the clock, the hour hand had completed much of its rotation, and the latter half was marked in red. This could an that if the patient stayed on the bed too long, abnormal reactions might occur.
Shiller rolled up his sleeves and walked over saying, "Isn't this where my expertise cos in? Quiet! Or else I'll calm you down!"
"Do we have sedatives?" Strange asked.
"No, but we have Mandala, right? Since it's a Witch, it's still human, the poison works the sa."
Shiller said this as he walked to a nearby shelf and picked up two spiked green fruits. He took a pestle from the workbench next to them and pounded it casually, dropping many black granules, then smashed it hard twice more, squeezing out so clear juice.
Shiller then pulled out the injection syringe he had used earlier, poured so water into it from a water jug, added the juice, shook it vigorously, and handed it to Strange.
"I'm thinking of naming it Mandala anesthetic, what do you think?"
Strange looked down at the syringe in his hand and then said, "I can't imagine what modern dicine would look like if you were born in the Middle Ages."
While he spoke, the mummy on the bed suddenly sprang up, swinging its left hand and striking Strange on the forearm.
"Damn! Don't touch my hand!!" Strange quickly took a pair of pliers from the tool rack and smashed down. With a "clang", the mummy was knocked back onto the bed.
"You damn bastard, don't you know the importance of a surgeon's arms?! Shiller, co hold him down, administer a secondary anesthesia!"
Shiller also put on gloves, took the pliers from Strange, held both sides of the pliers over the mummy's neck, pressing it firmly onto the bed.
Strange took the syringe, injecting the liquid into the mummy's vein, assuming it still had veins.
It turned out, it probably did. Less than 30 seconds after the injection, the mummy convulsed once and then stopped moving.
"Is he anesthetized or dead now?"
"Don't you trust my drug concoction skills?"
"If he's dead, just throw him into the furnace," Strange said, "That way we can save so ti for the next patient."
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