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“You’ve got no reason to hold her.”
“I don’t like the way you’re talking to her.”
“Well, this isn’t a country club. I’m not obligated to treat this feral little fucker like a princess, and the medical bay isn’t nearly secure enough to hold her.”
Doctor Ares looks me up and down. I know what he’s thinking. I don’t look like trouble. I am five feet two of blonde curly hair and blue eyes. I look like I was made in a porcelain doll factory. Angelic.
I see Doctor Ares raise a brow. “She’s a fairly small female. I can’t imagine her being that much trouble.”
“That’s a good thing” Tyko replies.
“What am I missing?” Doctor Ares murmurs the question, his eyes running over me.
“It’s classified, doctor. I can’t tell you. And you probably wouldn’t believe me if I did,” he scratches his chin. “Hell, I still don’t believe it.”
Tom
My mystery patient sits on the end of the bed and swings her feet back and forth in small motions. That’s encouraging. Means the tailbone injury isn’t as serious as I first thought. Maybe she’s only bruised it. Or maybe, and this doesn’t make any sense, it is already healing.
I don’t like the agent with her. Tyko. No last name. It’s not uncommon for people to abandon their real names when they come to work for this facility. They’re beginning new lives. Their old ones are forever over. You’d think that would result in some kind of camaraderie and mutual understanding between agents. Nobody here is perfect. Everybody has fallen from grace in one way or another. Some agents treat the people around them like their last chance at family. Then there’s ones like him, who seep hostility from every pore.
He seems afraid of this girl, which makes no sense at all. A man like him should be capable of overpowering a girl like her without issue, and yet they were scuffling when she came in. Maybe she’s stronger than she looks, but there’s still a limit to how much power the female frame can generate. Smaller skeletons, thinner muscle attachments, less torque generated in the limbs. Simple physics.
I should finish the exam up and send her on her way. There’s really nothing clinically wrong with her aside from an injury which will heal on its own. But something tells me that I need to keep her close. If this were a public hospital, I’d be suspecting some kind of abuse. In this place, every day life is abusive by normal standards. The people here throw themselves into armed engagements, occasionally are seriously injured, sometimes they die and when they do, they are not mourned. It is understood that this is a place of last chances. It is the end of the road.
Sometimes, I wonder how I ended up here. Or rather, why I decided to stay. I had a choice. Unlike most of the inhabitants of this dark underworld, I was never disgraced and forced out of a military unit. I thought I wanted a quiet life. I thought a white picket fence, a wife, and a civilian hospital job would suit me. I was wrong. My marriage ended in divorce and I was drawn into this dark world by my brother and his fiancee, the need to make sure that they would be alright.
I’m a healer by trade and by nature. The military didn’t change that and neither has this place – though it has made it hard. This girl looks at me with eyes which are strangely innocent. She doesn’t belong here. Most of the eyes that meet mine are jaded, like the agent looking after her. He looks at me like he doesn’t know I’m human. He sees the world as nothing but a series of ambulatory meat obstacles. The girl looks at me like she doesn’t know what I am. She’s confused by me. I can tell by the way she flinches when I touch her that she expects to be hurt. Looking at the agent with her, I can understand why.
I do not want to let her walk out of this examination room with him. I need to get in touch with management.
“Stay here,” I say. “I need to consult some files.”
“Sure, Doc. You do what you need.”
I leave the room, pick up the phone in my office, and call the Head. I of course, do not get the Head. I get her assistant, Trevor. Trevor is new. He arrived a month ago and his sole job seems to be obstructing access to the Head.
“Something important, Doctor?”
“I have a patient in my exam room with a concerning presentation. I need to speak to the Head immediately.”
“I’m afraid she is unavailable today.”
The woman is only contactable when she wants to be. Since coming on board, I’ve spoken to her a handful of times, but I know she has eyes on everything that happens inside her organization.
