Until the Bitter End

5: Hippocratic Hypocrisy

Learned helplessness is not a trait you're acquainted with, dear.

Good. Help yourself.

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Content warning for: Eye trauma

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Any aspiring doctor and medical practitioner who wanted to truly engage in the business took an oath to do no harm. According to the Hippocratic Oath, a doctor wasn't meant to do any harm—not onto patients, not onto people, and certainly not on purpose.

Of course, the Hippocratic Oath was a mystery unto itself, in its own way. It was an oath of contradiction and hypocrisy. Did 'do no harm' extend to cutting the dough of a cookie open to mend the fragile bits inside a body? One could argue that surgery in itself was harm, even if it was to mend something more severe in the body. A cookie had to spend days, weeks—sometimes even months recovering, often in pain.

And what about something so seemingly innocuous as experimenting with medicine to see which worked best for the patient? Medicine could have a vast variety of unexpected side-effects, ranging from nausea and fatigue to sleeplessness, anemia, and allergic reactions. And yet it was a necessary step to take with treating many patients, a calculated risk where 'do no harm' was disregarded, molded into 'do as little harm as possible'.

As far as Affogato was concerned, the Hippocratic Oath meant nothing when somebody was charging at him with a sword.

Affogato kicked his body forward, pressing the entirety of his body weight into the movement. The spear punctured deep into the fabric protecting the cookie's fragile stomach, aiming blindly for the vague space where the chest cavity failed to protect the vital organs deep inside. The pointed tip of the spear pressed in deep—Affogato was briefly surprised to meet so much resistance.

A scream punctured the air, high, shrill, and filled with agony. It wasn't Affogato's.

A second later, he heard a thud behind him, followed by a heavy voice snapping out a curse. Affogato pulled at the spear, twisting it. The cookie lurched forward, attached at the spear, and Affogato panicked, kicking the cookie away. The spear came loose with a dizzying recoil, and the kick forced the bandit screaming onto the ground, arms wrapped around his stomach.

Affogato turned, lifting both of his hands, raising the shaft of the spear over his shoulder like a club. He blindly swung, aiming for whoever or whatever it was that struck the ground beside him.

It snapped back sharply, rebounding off of the cookie before they—Affogato couldn't tell what any of them were, only that they were wrapped up in layers of black and had black bandannas pulled tight over their faces, a lack of color that made it easy to blend in with the darkness—could pull themself back to their feet. He didn't know why they were down there—perhaps they tried to tackle him? It didn't matter.

What did matter was their shriek—the way that they crumpled back to the ground, arms cradling their head. Affogato's hands shook so horribly that it was hard to keep the spear straight. He could feel the echo of his racing heart pulsing in his fingertips as he lifted the spear again, aiming for the back of the skull, doing his best to ignore the lingering shake of the long pole that still permeated in his arms.

"Go away!" Affogato cried, bringing it down. It whistled and bent in the air, striking down on the cookie with a sharp crack. He wasn't sure where exactly it hit, already lifting it up again. "Go—"

Something large slammed against his side all at once, so suddenly he didn't have any time to react. The spear went flying, his grip lost, and Affogato hit the ground hard, wheezing for breath to fill his empty lungs. The weight was on top of him, grappling with his body to force it into submission, making it impossible for Affogato's fingers to scrape into the ground and crawl away. The attempt failed, Affogato instead opted to roll onto his back before the cookie could settle themself fully.