The first patient I killed was a mistake. A burly fellow named Victor Harlow walked into my surgery complaining about fatigue, but I was distracted by the little pig popping in and out of my cuckoo clock. This isn't a euphemism for anything—there really was a small pink pig where the cuckoo should have been.
Anyway, I downed an entire bottle of laudanum and the pig went away. I gave Victor a shot of blood medicine (this is medicine for treating blood-related illnesses, not medicine made of blood, although it is the same colour) and he just keeled over, his spirit leaving his body like steam from a kettle.
