Nicodemus in Immortalis Records a Clinical Diary for the Daily Nicolas on Proper Examination Etiquette
Dearest Daily Nicolas,
You persist in your fumbling approximations of the art, do you not? Your hands tremble at the threshold of the subject, your instruments scatter like frightened vermin, and worst of all, your mind wanders to banalities when it should carve precision into flesh and sinew. I record this for you now, in the quiet hours before dawn claims the unworthy, so that you might elevate your practice from crude butchery to the sublime ritual it demands. Proper examination etiquette is not mere protocol; it is dominion asserted, one incision at a time.
Begin with the gaze. Fix your subject with eyes unblinking, unyielding. Let them see the void in you, the hunger that no blood or scream can sate. They will squirm under that scrutiny, their pulse quickening like a moth against glass. Do not smile yet; the smile comes later, when they realise escape is illusion. Note their baseline: respiration shallow, skin paling at the edges, pupils dilating to swallow light. Record these in your ledger, for they are the symphony’s opening notes.
Approach with economy. No grand flourishes, no whispered reassurances. Your gloved hands, sterile and cool, should hover first, mapping the terrain without touch. The subject anticipates contact, braces for it; deny them that rhythm. When you do descend, start peripheral: wrists, ankles, the vulnerable hollows of throat and groin. Palpate firmly, compressing until resistance yields. Listen to the confessions of bone and tendon under pressure. If they gasp, commend the vitality; if they weep, note the threshold crossed.
Instruments demand reverence. Lay them forth in sequence: scalpel for precision, forceps for extraction, probes for depths uncharted. Sterilise not for their sake, but for the clarity of your work. The first cut must be ceremonial, a line traced with the reverence of a lover’s promise, yet deep enough to part epidermis from truth. Retract, expose, catalogue. Aorta pulsing defiant? Liver gravid with secrets? Speak your findings aloud, let the subject hear their own undoing narrated in clinical monotone. This breaks them subtler than any blade.
Address resistance without mercy. If limbs thrash, secure with restraints of unyielding leather, cinched to blanch the flesh. Sedatives are for cowards; true etiquette employs the mind’s own chains. Question intermittently: “Does this pain radiate, or is it localised?” Force articulation amid torment; their words become your data, their silence your canvas. Should convulsions arise, time them precisely, correlate with haemodynamic shifts. Eternity teaches patience, Nicolas; let the body exhaust its rebellion.
Hygiene in aftermath is paramount. Suture with thread fine as spider silk, each stitch a knot in their memory. Cleanse the field methodically, swab by swab, discarding soiled gauze as one might spent lovers. Document anomalies: the unexpected resilience of youth, the premature decay of the damned. End with observation, seated at distance, watching vitals reclaim their lie of stability. Only then permit the smile, thin and knowing, for you have mapped their mortality, and in doing so, asserted your immortality.
Practice this daily, my diurnal shadow. Your errors amuse me still, but perfection beckons. Fail again, and I shall demonstrate personally.
Your eternal mentor,
Nicodemus
Immortalis Book One August 2026