milliways_bar | (no subject)

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Steph's in the Bar again, sprawled across a couch, reading.

It's a book on Arthurian History, and her eyes are a little glazed, but she's determined to get through it.

Don't ask why.

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"...convent? No..." She shakes her head. "No, we stayed at home. Well, I did run away and live on the streets for a bit, but Robin made me go back to Mom."

"But the sisterhood is the best place for widowed and abandoned women. And you said the hospital..."

He's confused.

"We can take care of ourselves," Steph repeats, looking at him curiously. "Hospitals aren't convents. Not in my time. Mom's just a shift nurse. Works at night, comes home during the day. Or - she did, anyway. Don't know what she's doing now."

"Then who pays for the hospitals?"

"The people who use them, of course. Who pays in your time?"

"Donations, partly, from the rich who feel generous. And the Church."

Steph ponders that. "I guess sometimes the rich donate. Bruce Wayne does, a lot. But mostly it's user-pays. Your system's probably better than ours."

" - of course, our health-care's probably better than yours." She grins.

"It depends where you are. Many people do survive wounds."

Steph blinks. "...what sort of wounds? I mean, are we talking slight-scratch, or leg-chopped off?"

"With swift enough care, it's possible to survive the loss of a leg. But of course, you can never work again. And if you don't seek care, even slight wounds can kill."

He's thinking of Gaheris, whose wound really hadn't been very bad.

"Mmm," Steph says. "Yeah, we're ... a little more advanced than you guys, I think."

A little.

"How would it be done in your time, then?"

Lest it seem the narration has forgotten about Carney, not at all. He's there, watchful as ever.

"With - drugs and stuff. Antibiotics. And if someone loses a leg, they get prosthetics, so they can still be almost as good as before. Hardly anyone dies, unless they're really badly hurt, like I was."

"..antibiotics? Prosthetics?"

These words are unfamiliar.

Difficult to explain, too - Steph never even finished high school, she's no doctor.

"Well, prosthetics are fake limbs, that work like real ones. And antibiotics are ... medicine."

Of the future.

"That stops people dying."

"To stop wounds going bad?" he guesses, hopefully, blinking at the idea of fake limbs that actually work.

"Yeah! Exactly."

She isn't sure, but that sounds about right.

"But all you need do to stop a wound going bad is keep it properly clean. Everyone knows that."

"...yes, but drugs help."

Stop using your logic at her! She doesn't know very much!

"Lots. Like, it's way easier. And once they've gone bad sometimes we can fix them."

"...that must be a relief to many. And a fine thing for your armies."

"Totally," Steph says.

She isn't sure how to respond to the army bit, so she leaves it.

"Saves a lot of lives."

"I would my lord Gaheris could have had your drugs", he says, mostly to himself.

He doesn't actually care much about Gaheris' death, except that it's moved his country one step closer to civil war.

"Perhaps you can bring a healer from here back to your world?" Steph suggests, thoughtful.

"It's too late for my lord Gaheris", he says with a shake of his head. "He took a wound from Sir Bedwyr, and left it untreated."

While in hiding, but eh. Details.

"Oh. I'm - I'm sorry."