Chapter 3364: The Miraculous Divine Doctor (Nineteen)

Wanda stood at the operating console, straightening her clothes. She wore a very typical Victorian-era working woman's outfit: a coarse black long-sleeved blouse with gathered cuffs, a thick Scottish plaid pinafore dress, a white apron wrapped over that, and a dark green plaid square kerchief wrapped around a headband on her head.

Shiler caught sight out of the corner of his eye of some stains on her sleeve, looking like she had gotten some kind of dark liquid on it. So he asked, "What work did you do in Winchester?"

"I inherited a potion shop from my mother." Wanda tucked her hands behind her back, tightening her belt as she spoke. "I have a small two-story house on Libes Street. The second floor is my bedroom and dispensing room; the first floor is the potion shop."

"Every morning I gather or purchase raw herbal materials, brew them into various potions to sell in the shop. Occasionally I also sell leftover raw materials I can't use up."

"Jarvis was an apprentice at the blacksmith's on this street, later got into some mechanical academy, and became an engineer after graduating. I learned from neighbors that the two of us have already been married two years, just haven't had children yet."

Shiler and Strange took on three more patients. Just as he had predicted, the patients' ailments were all the kind with massive operative workloads, especially troublesome to handle — clearly Wood was deliberately picking fault.

But this played right into Shiler and Strange's hands; what these two professional doctors feared least was a war of attrition through sheer volume. Strange's operations were pure muscle memory. While debriding patients, they could still chat and ponder the game's background setting.

"So you know how to compound potions?"

"Yes, I make potions very well. The shop sells a lot — sometimes I can't keep up. My travel expenses to get here were also earned by making potions for a few days."

Wanda finished straightening her clothes and began cutting bandages with scissors. She said, "If I hadn't been chased by those police and drained my magic power too severely, I could also configure some refreshing potions for you."

Shiler glanced at her with some curiosity and asked, "Does compounding potions absolutely require magic power?"

"Of course." Wanda nodded. The scissors went *shhhk* through a whole swath of fabric. While holding the other edge down with a wooden ruler, she said, "The key to compounding potions is the timing of magic infusion. During the brewing process, magic must be injected. Some potions still need enchantment and secondary enchantment after compounding is complete. Generally, the more magic power consumed, the more expensive the potion."

"How much can the most expensive sell for?"

"I'm not considered a very strong witch in this world. At most I can make secondary-enchanted potions — a bottle sells for about 20 to 30 silver coins. But basically only nobles buy potions that expensive; commoners buy the kind for a dozen copper coins at most."

Shiler sighed. Wanda's minimum wage was higher than his and Strange's maximum wages combined.

"Do you know this in reality?" Strange suddenly asked.

"Ah?" Wanda let out a short, puzzled syllable. She said, "I'm not a traditional witch... uh, I'm not a witch at all. I'm a mutant."

"Then how do you have a codename like that?"

"It's complicated to explain." Wanda sighed. "When I was little, to cover up the fact that Pietro and I were mutants, we moved house often and tried to live in remote places as much as possible."

"I would occasionally display abilities beyond normal people, and some people would see. People in remote villages didn't know what mutants were, so they called me a witch."

"And because the power I used was mostly crimson, they started calling me the Scarlet Witch."

"I actually think that during the witch hunts, many of those victimized witches were probably female mutants. Like me. If I had lived in that era, I might have been burned at the stake too."

"Couldn't you handle a few ordinary people?" Strange said while excising abscesses growing on the surface of a patient's liver.

"Now it's no problem, but what about when I was a child? Back then I wasn't this strong or this stable, didn't know how to properly use my abilities at all. If they caught me, I might have instinctively killed one or two, but in the end there still wouldn't have been a good outcome."

Wanda placed the cut bandages onto the tray — half on each of the two instrument stands sandwiched between the three beds. She stacked the waste pans to one side for later processing, then put the used and temporarily unneeded instruments onto the tray to take for washing.

Because these patients all had extensive trauma — skin ulcers, internal organ abscesses, limb deformities, and the like — the waste pans and instruments had everything on them. The bloody smell mixed with the stench of excrement, fuming so badly one could barely keep one's eyes open.

But Shiler noticed Wanda didn't show any particularly disgusted expression. She put on gloves, grabbed a brush, and went at it scrubbing. This made Shiler marvel involuntarily — Wanda was truly born to be a nurse.

"You know, ma'am. Even in the best hospitals in New York, the best departments, interns graduated from the best nursing schools — when they first enter an operating room, they aren't as calm as you."

"Is that so?" Wanda smiled. "This is nothing to me. At 13 I worked on a ranch in Nevada — 12 hours a day in barns full of cow dung, castrated goats, set bones for newborn calves..."

"Did you meet your biological father around that time?"

"Yes. But we had a falling out, so I ran off on my own. I wandered the world for a while, did odd jobs everywhere, did every kind of work, but never lasted long at any."

"Because they discovered your mutant identity?"

"Not exactly." Wanda sighed. "Sometimes someone had designs on me, sometimes the boss was too harsh, sometimes I just didn't like the job. All kinds of situations."

Wanda deftly finished scrubbing the instruments, washed clean the three waste pans full of all sorts of residue and bone fragments, and put them back on the instrument rack. She took Shiler's filled glass jars to the shelf and arranged them in order, then threw the things needing steam processing into the distiller and set the temperature.

"Come help me hold this down." Strange said. Wanda walked over and found a tentacle thrashing wildly inside the patient's abdominal cavity. She directly grabbed a hemp rope from the nearby instrument stand, tied the base of the tentacle, and fastened it to the railing beside the operating table.

Strange raised an eyebrow. "Good method."

"That's how I castrate rams." Wanda shrugged. "It's the most humane way."

"Nurse, over here." Shiler called again. "The patient has no vital signs. Come help me saw it open from the pelvic bone here, then throw it in the fireplace."

"Oh, heavens." Wanda crossed herself at her chest. "May his road to heaven be smooth." She picked up the other end of the saw and began coordinating with Shiler to dismember the body.

"I really appreciate your relaxed state, ma'am." Shiler said while moving the separated corpse parts. "Most new interns are tense like they might faint at any moment, not daring to take half a step extra."

"That's because you two are top-tier doctors." Wanda wiped bloodstains off the operating table with a rag, then said. "Maybe you've always been role models on their path of learning medicine. Working alongside your idols is always nerve-wracking."

"Aren't we role models on your path of learning medicine?" Shiler turned back and asked with a smile.

"My path of learning medicine hasn't started yet." Wanda tossed the bloodied rag onto the nearby tray, swapped for a clean one, continued wiping, and said. "Perhaps when I embark on this path, I'll also realize your greatness, and then be nervous like a little girl too."

"Won't happen." Strange said ruthlessly. "When you truly step onto this path, you'll realize any doctor who can't finish their reports has no reason to live. And we often can't finish them. You'll be so angry you'll want to kill us."

"That's you." Shiler immediately distanced himself. He said, "I've long heard from the neurosurgery nurses that you're the person with the most overdue reports in the whole hospital. Compared to you, I'm only slightly negligent."

"That's just because I'm busy with operations. And don't think I don't know your reports are all written by your interns. After the game ends, I'll go find your department's head nurse for coffee..."

"Think clearly. If you expose me, no one will write your 80-plus reports either. Then you'll have to use the Ring of Suspension to escape..."

Strange was utterly unmoved. He snorted coldly, tossed the tumor he had just excised onto the tray to the side, and said, "Who knows who it was, drifting in through the window on gray mist for a whole week straight..."

Shiler, who had just found a moment to drink a sip of water after being busy half the day, heard this and choked half to death.

"How do you know? Isn't it Tony with that big mouth again? No wait, how would he know I..."

"Come hold this." Strange said. Wanda walked over and took the hemostat from Strange's hand. Meanwhile Shiler pulled the lever again to bring in another patient, waiting for someone to help him move the patient to another operating table.

Wanda glanced back, then simply waved a hand. The patient floated up out of thin air and landed steadily on the target operating table.

The liquid in the distiller was already boiling, constantly pushing against the lid. She waved a hand again, and the liquid flew out of the container into test tubes. One hand held the hemostat, the other even found time to wipe sweat for Strange.

"Done." Strange took back the hemostat. Wanda hurried over to the new patient, gently wiped the blood smeared over his eyes with a handkerchief, and whispered, "Next comes anesthesia. Relax, it won't hurt soon..."

Shiler had to admit, right now the best medical skill in the whole operating room belonged to Wanda. Her arrival had significantly raised the moral level of this operating room.

And it had also greatly increased the whole operating room's efficiency. Shiler and Strange could both focus on surgery; Wanda could handle every other problem.

In one morning they actually processed nine patients. Except for that unlucky bastard who was too severe to save, the rest were smoothly discharged. Although not completely cured, at least their lives were saved.

Of course, Shiler also collected some extra compensation commensurate with their medical level from them. On the shelf holding bottles and jars, a whole row of filled glass jars had appeared out of thin air — Shiler's spoils of war for the morning. Shiler estimated they could sell for at least one gold coin or so at Bear the orderly's.

"Sure enough, this kind of money is earned fast."

Shiler naturally hadn't forgotten his silencing plan, but the times he truly needed to act were few. Because this hospital had no Zhuyuan Force, all surgeries were done and the patients sent away immediately — there was no postoperative care to speak of. 80% of patients would likely relapse, and 20% would die of infection. It really saved Shiler a lot of trouble.

At noon, the two of them decided to take a short rest. Mainly because they were worried Wanda would get tired, after all, this morning Wanda had the highest workload. If she really got tired and ran into problems, they wouldn't be able to find such a good nurse again.

Seeing Shiler and Strange sit by the fireplace, Wanda thought they were tired too. So after thinking for a moment, she said: "My magic power has recovered quite well, I'll mix you a simple refreshing potion."

(End of Chapter)