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Arthur always seemed to forget that Merlin was more than just his servant.
He was also the physician's apprentice.
Or at the very least Gaius stubbornly wanted him to be, dragging the poor boy towards the patient's bed when he was dead on his feet from servitude of many kinds. He'd sit him down on a stool and show him the remedies and methods and diagnostics of a doctor for whatever given ailment had arrived on their doorstep that evening, all whilst Merlin tried to blink away sleep and remember at least a quarter of what he'd been told.
It wasn't that Merlin had no interest in the healing arts. He quite fancied the aspect of helping people, and his healing magic wasn't quite as profound as Kilgharrah had made it seem to be. Gaius had told him that perhaps having a better understanding of the body and how it works may aid Merlin in using magic to interfere with the various systems that kept a man alive, in lieu of simply using a healing spell flat out.
It made sense, but no matter how Gaius explained it, it all seemed so foreign to him. He knew basic anatomy; the heart and lungs within the ribs, then intestines, how they connected to one another, the kidney and what it does. But then Gaius would go on and on about the nervous system, the circulatory system, and so forth and he just couldn't imagine these lengths of ribbon, leagues long, weaving their ways through his body in such an organized manner. He could see the veins in his wrists, and in the crook of his elbow, but they were simple lines of blood.
Gaius had mentioned surgery a few times, a new phenomenon that was an incredibly risky procedure to endure. Most that attempted it died of shock or infection, and if they survived the initial recovery, often the injury would return like a ghost.
Not always though, not always.
Sometimes they would fully recover, the wound sealing over with a scar so neat and tidy.
Merlin struggled to imagine cutting into someone to heal them.
But then he'd seen his first autopsy.
It was an older lord, one of Uther's oldest council, and he'd not woken up. His wife, the lady Gretchen, was a bit of a fuss, and worried that there had been foul play involved. Lord Harry wasn't the most liked by the other members of court and she vowed she would bring down Uther's law on them, if she found out who had poisoned her lover.
Gaius highly doubted there was any conspiracy to uncover, but agreed to examine his digestive track for signs of toxins.
Merlin stared down at the man on the table, his body stiff and cold. The stillness was unnerving.
Gaius gestured to the body. "There is no discoloration of the skin. Some poisons can give someone a blue or pinkish hue, but that is absent in this case." He took a wet cloth and wiped down the man's torso, to be sure it was clear and easily visible. Then, he grabbed a small, clean blade from his wares and brandished it before his ward. "We will cut down from behind the ears, along the collar bones, and meet in the middle. Then we make a long incision down the front of the torso."
"We're cutting him open?" Merlin asked.
"Well yes," Gaius said, as though it were obvious. "I'd have a rather hard time examining his intestines whilst they're in there."
Merlin nodded and sat on his stool, lanky legs sprawled at odd angles beneath the table. He grimaced as Gaius's scalpel broke the skin, but didn't blink until the Y shaped incisions were complete. The way the skin parted along the cuts was intriguing, the surface parting neatly. Then, Gaius slid his hand into the seam he'd created in the flesh, and lifted it. In his other hand, he brandished a sharp knife, and gently began to cut the flesh away from the organs and bones. Near the bottom, he explained that he lifted the skin up and away from the organs, and Merlin could even hear the stomach fall from the surface tissue. The skin was folded over the chin, and the sides of the lord's body, leaving a clear view of the contents.
Merlin's insides turned as the red and yellow innards of the late lord revealed itself. The ribs appeared, not separate like Merlin had imagined, but as a set of shields across the chest, encasing the heart and lungs in their own private chamber. The sallow shapes that slunk out from under the ribs had him baffled. Illustrations were clean and had a distinctive shape to them, but now he thought his guess was as good as any if someone were to ask him which parts were the stomach and which were just fat and flesh.
"Alright then?" Gaius asked, catching Merlin ogling.
Merlin swallowed and nodded, allowing Gaius to continue his work.
Gaius took out a set of heavy shears and began to clip a line down either side of the breastbone, separating it from the ribs. "Lucky," Gaius mumbled to himself as he worked. "Not too much calcification. We won't be needing the saw today." He gave Merlin a look, as though excited at having made a shocking statement.
Merlin made a small half smile, but quickly brought his eyes back down to the body on the table. He wrinkled his nose, a strange new scent accosting him, but tried to keep his expression schooled blank otherwise.
As Gaius lifted away the center of the chest, more organs came into view. Not a single one of Gaius's anatomy books could have prepared him for the mess that was the human body. There was a dark triangular shape between the knots that were the intestines and the rest of the organs behind the ribs, which he guessed was the liver, larger than he had thought it would be. Above that, he could make out two imperfectly mirrored shapes that were the lungs.
It was admittedly overwhelming to watch as Gaius removed the organs, setting them aside and separating the ones he needed to examine with a small blade. He explained the process as he went, but Merlin had trouble paying attention, more distracted by how shockingly yellow the heart was, and how much like meat the liver appeared. He would have thought that a man's insides would be more red, more full of blood, but the clots Gaius set aside were almost black and gelatinous, unlike anything Merlin had ever seen bleed.
Gaius seemed unsurprised by Merlin's stunned state, and continued to show him the samples he was taking; a few slivers of the liver, a few vials of bile and other intestinal fluids.
At last, Merlin had to excuse himself when he began to cut open the bowel. The smell of stool mingling with the fermented smells and overall stench of blood pushed him past the point of nausea and he was sick in his chamber pot.
He felt embarrassed, as he wiped his mouth. There was a man dead on the table and he couldn't hold his stomach. He almost felt as though he was disrespecting the man, despite his best efforts to keep composure.
Downing a cup of water, Merlin couldn't help but think of his own insides as he felt the cool liquid snake its way down into his body. It almost made him throw it back up but he soldiered through. It all seemed so unorganized, the vital ingredients of life all stacked on top of one another in a cage of bone and fat. The clean track he'd imagined his blood running through instead seeping into organs and muscles like a sponge.
He'd never realized how artistic the art of medicine was. Gaius truly must have a keen eye for the human body to operate on people, dead or alive. It was like grasping at a current in the water. How did the old man see in there?
When Merlin returned to the main room, Gaius was cleaning the area, the body sutured closed as though to heal, so that his wife may retrieve him for burial.
"Ah," Gaius said, upon seeing him. "You lasted longer than I thought you would actually."
Merlin nodded in understanding. "Yeah."
"It takes quite some getting used to." Gaius turned to his table and gestured to several jars and vials. "Didn't see anything of note, as expected. Signs of heavy alcohol use, but we could have guessed that. Still, I'll be testing these samples for any common poisons in the area, to set the Lady Gretchen at ease."
Merlin nodded again, coming to help clean.
He would go on to see much more gruesome sights in his adventures alongside knights and princes, but the memory of seeing his first heart held in practiced hands would stay with him through it all. Over time, he could see a mirage of what Gaius saw, in the mess of shapes that were nestled in a person's torso, and, true to his word, it aided him in healing magic, being able to sense the individual organs and veins and suture them from the inside.
It was a wonder to him how bodies worked, how each muscle pulled and contracted to lift an arm, a leg, a head. From time to time, he'd feel his own heart beating and rest his hand on his chest. Breathing deeply, in and out, he would imagine his own lungs, all grey and pink and yellow, absorbing the air before pushing it back out.
It was a miracle the human body even worked.
And he had a greater understanding of why they were oh so very fragile.