[3rd Person POV]
"He's burning up, Sue."
"I know. You think I don't know that? Who's been by his side for days taking care of him!" The woman responds haughtily.
"I was busy, work keeps me busy. How else would you expect to pay for a doctor of all things." The man argues.
"It's not like your DOCTOR is doing anything for him! If you had just come home-"
"Sue, I had work." She throws her blistered hands up in disbelief, storming out of the room in her expensive heels.
"Susana, don't you walk away like that! Your son is still in here!" He calls after her. She slams a door in response. The doctor renters the room tentatively.
"May I continue now, Sir?" The old medic asks politely. After all, this man may not be a Noble, but he is very wealthy. Wealthy people must always be respected, you never want to offend someone with more power than you. At least, not to their face.
"Yes, yes, continue..." The man pinches the bridge of his nose and falls back into a satin arm chair. The bony doctor scrambles into the room, unpacking his medical bag onto the empty bedside table.
He feels the temperature of the boy's flushed skin. It's hot, and bright red with a smelly liquid appearing all over his body. The man watches tiredly as the doctor works, dabbing the sweat off the boy with a cold cloth.
"What's wrong with him?" The man finally asks.
The doctor doesn't look up, instead checking to see if the heat has dissipated at all, "He is hot. If he doesn't cool down soon, he may very well light up on fire and blow away in the wind as dust." He says. The man is unfazed by the strange conclusion, only growing more defeated instead.
"Well, then fix it. That's what we're paying you so handsomely for, isn't it?" He grinds out. His gravelly voice holds all the warnings of an angry business man.
"Of course, Sir."
The doctor continues to fiddle around with various tools and devices, but none of them stop the burning of the boy's small head. His face looks like it may explode any minute. The man becomes increasingly frustrated, having to down two bottles of liquor by himself before he can't take any more.
"GET OUT!" The doctor jumps in fright, "YOU'VE DONE NOTHING! GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!" He yells, failing to stand from his chair. He eventually pulls himself up, swaying a bit from side to side.
"Sir, please, these things take time-"
"I don't have time. DO I LOOK LIKE I HAVE BLOODY TIME TO YOU!" The man stumbles over to the door, calling down the hall for his wife, who is asleep in the bedroom and has no intentions of dealing with her drunk husband this late at night.
"Sir, I do have one idea. It's a new form of-" The doctor tries one last time.
"SUSANA!" No response, "Blast it, where is that woman?" He whirls on the doctor, shaking his fist while walking backwards out of the room, "Fix it, I SAID! FIX IT OR YOU'RE BLOODY DONE FOR!" Then he's gone, rampaging through the house to find his wife.
The terrified doctor wipes sweat off of his own forehead. He shakes his head and opens his bag up again. Reaching in, he pulls out a long polished scalpel. He wipes it down and looks at the sick boy shaking under his wool blankets.
"Finally. Let's get rid of the bad, yeah? We'll just let all of it out. You'll feel much better by tomorrow." He promises exhaustedly.
~*~
Eventually the boy recovered from his fever, growing to become even bigger and stronger than before. In fact, he hasn't had a touch of illness since.
His doctor's head hung outside the Imperial palace for three days and three nights. The exact amount of time that he spent illegally bottling and selling the boy's blood during his treatment, after he realized it wasn't working.
The kid soon forgot about what happened to him while he was sick, and life went on as usual. The only difference was his slight apprehension towards sharp objects, particularly ones aimed at his face.
Of course, his father was having none of that. The first chance he got, his son was shipped off to the finest Knighthood Academy money could buy. He didn't allow him to come home until he was a man, and had defeated his phobia.
Knighthood Academies were relatively new in the Empire, but as far as the man was concerned they were the greatest invention since the gold coin. When his son returned home seven years later, he was the perfect picture of a great warrior.
Unfortunately, that vision faded with time. His son was different from the last time the man saw him. He didn't let anything go. Suddenly, his boy was arguing with him, and even refusing to be named heir to the family business.
So the man did the only thing that he knew worked. He followed his own example and sent his son away, enlisting him in the Imperial army.
Years later he received news that his son had left the army. So he waited for a strong young lad to show up on his doorstep. He waited. He waited for a man of importance to take over his business so he could retire. He waited some more, for years. He waited to see his son again, even when his wife passed away in her sleep.
He kept waiting for his little boy to come home, to need him.