Black Sunshine
Chapter 4 - In a World Built on Cruelty, is Embodying Kindness not the Act of a Radical?
Doctor Shorque pushed the plunger on the syringe full of morphine with a sad sigh. While normally he loved making house calls, this was a particularly sad one. Carla Levine had been his patient for the last 10 years. Not long in his own life span, but he had watched her grow from precocious youngster to wizened grandmother in that time. And these were her last breaths.
He watched solemnly as she closed her eyes and sighed with relief from the pain. The steady beeping of the heart monitor punctuated the sniffling of the large family behind him. It was only a matter of moments before the beeping became steady, and sniffling turned to sobs.
“Please accept my condolences, Timothy,” Doctor Shorque said as he turned to the grief stricken pixie behind him.
“She lived a long and full life, doctor,” Timothy Levine, her oldest son said with a brave face.
“If there’s anything I can do, you need only ask. The coroner is outside but he will wait for as long as you need.”
“Can I have you look at Sarah’s cough doctor? I know it probably seems out of place with all of this going on but it’s been really bad these last few weeks and I just want to be sure it isn’t something serious.”
“Of course, I understand your concern. She’s always been a little susceptible to the city smog, but we wouldn’t want anything nasty to slip through unnoticed, now would we?”
“Thank you. She’s this way, doctor,” Timothy said as he led Doctor Shorque into an adjoining room.
Pixie apartments were interesting. They were the same apartments let to the larger humanoid species of Helios City, but they were legally allowed to have a lot more tenants. A two bedroom apartment was capable of housing nearly fifty pixies quite comfortably. Which was handy because they preferred to live in large family groups.
Doctor Shorque was led into a room that would have normally been a child’s bedroom or perhaps a small office, but hanging on the walls were what looked like large bird houses. If bird houses looked like fully furnished condominiums. Timothy landed on a platform which acted like a porch before he knocked gently on the red door. A middle aged pixie woman opened the door, the black and pink spiked hair, scattered piercings and dark make-up making her look more like a rebellious teenager.
“Yeah? Whaddaya want?”
“Sarah, the doctor’s here,” he paused, “for mother. But I wanted him to check on your cough while he’s here.”
As if to demonstrate the problem at hand, Sarah erupted into a coughing fit that sounded horribly painful and wet. Doctor Shorque set his brown leather medical bag on the floor, (naturally checking that he wasn’t going to squish any pedestrian pixies, and opened it up.
“Oh dear, that doesn’t seem to be your usual cough, Sarah. How long has that been going on?”
“What? I don’t know. A week? Maybe two?”
“I wish you had called me in earlier, could you turn around please, I need to hear your lungs,” Doctor Shorque pressed a smooth glowing green stone against the woman’s back after she turned, rolling her eyes in the process, “Good. Deep breath in. And out.”
The stone amplified the crackling sound in her lungs as she breathed. He thankfully pulled the stone away, as she started hacking again as she tried to breathe in deeply.
“As I thought. You’ve got bracklung, Sarah. No need to worry though, I have just the thing. We should have that cleared up in a matter of a week.”
He expertly sifted and measured an alchemical powder that would clear her lungs into a vial of thick yellow liquid. It looked vile, and admittedly didn’t taste much better, but the results spoke for themselves. Getting the right dose for a pixie was no small matter (pardon the pun).
“Alright, Sarah, make sure you drink one drop of this in the morning and before bed for the next week. I’ll come back around that time to make sure everything is cleared up.”
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
“Thanks, doc,” Sarah murmured, looking away and pouting, as she took the vial that was a little taller than she was.
“Thank you, doctor,” Timothy said, waiting for Doctor Shorque to put away his supplies and leading him to the front door, “We really appreciate all you’ve done for us.”
“You’re very welcome, Timothy. I’ll be back to check on Sarah, and also on Clara. She’s had difficult pregnancies in the past, and we wouldn’t want any more misfortune this year, now would we?”
Doctor Shorque gave a professional nod to the Coroner’s men as he left the building, and began the walk back to his office. It was a brisk autumn morning and the sun was shining delightfully through lazy, white clouds. It was shaping up to be a nice day, in spite of the tragic way it began.
At least that’s what he thought before he saw Nera lying bleeding in the alley as he passed. He knew her from the shadier side of his work, he had patched her up from many a knife wound, and bullet hole. He wasn’t proud of the work he did for the various gangs in Helios City, but he felt it was his duty as a man of medicine to heal the sick and injured.
He had no qualms about keeping things from the police, it was not that long ago that his own presence in the city was considered illegal. He had relied on the kindness and discretion of the family hiding him from the roving vigilantes and spies trying to remove the Gillas from the city when he was just a boy. Thankfully, those days were over, but the lesson had thoroughly taken root in him - you can’t trust the police.
He pulled all manner of medical apparatus from his bag. Patches to stop the bleeding, and mend the bones, but something was wrong. There were places where they weren’t actually doing anything.
“No, please don’t tell me…,” he began, pulling an odd looking brass monocle from his bag and inspecting her. Nera began sputtering, her consciousness painfully regained.
“What are you…,” Nera started scrambling away with just her arms, her legs unmoving, “wait, Doctor Shorque? What are you doing here?”
“Oh, Nera,” he said, pulling the monocle from his eye, “I don’t know who did this to you, but I’m afraid there is only so much I can do, you need a hospital.”
“Hold on, why can’t I feel my legs?”
“Nera, please,” Doctor Shorque put a gentle hand on her shoulder, “I’m afraid whatever ruffians did this to you, severed the pathways that magic uses to heal physical ailments. You are going to need at least a month in the hospital to recover from this. And several more in therapy beyond. Where is your car? I will drive-”
“No!”
“Nera, you-”
“Doc, you gotta do something, okay? They took Solana.”
“Who did?”
“I don’t know, but I intend to find out.”
“Why not, and I would never suggest this normally, leave this to the police? Or what about the Lilies?”
“Because she got the job at the hospital, doc. The fancy one. If she isn’t there in three days, she loses her dream job, and I absolutely cannot let that happen. I can’t trust this to anyone else. Please, doc.”
“Nera.”
“Please, you gotta know how to do something. I can pay, I have plenty of Sil. You know I’m good for it.”
Doctor Shorque was torn. This is one of those moments that they don’t prepare you for in medical school.
“Nera, there is something,” he winced as he heard himself say it. He couldn’t believe he was even considering this.
“Then do it,” she said, not an ounce of hesitation in her determined eyes.
“There are consequences-”
“I don’t care as long as it lets me rescue-”
“Nera Neroni, you stop and you listen to me right this instant!”
Nera looked at him in shock. He was admittedly a little surprised himself. He sighed, allowing his patience to return.
“If I do this, you can’t tell anyone. I would lose my license, permanently. I can reconnect the pathways and get you healed but they are going to disconnect fully after a while. There is maybe a thirty percent chance that they can actually be fixed at the hospital afterwards but you are looking at over a year of recovery if they manage, and you will likely never be at full capacity afterwards.”
“Oh,” Nera blanched.
“There is the very real possibility that you will be unable to move your legs for the rest of your life if I do this. And I don’t even know how long it will last. A day or two maybe. Three at the absolute most and that’s unlikely.”
Nera lay on the filthy concrete of the alley and considered. He waited patiently for her to come to the logical conclusion and let him drive her to the hospital.
“I understand,” she said, determination burning in her eyes, “but I have to save her and I’d pay any price to make sure she’s safe. Do it.”
“This is going to be agonizing, Nera. I’m sorry but there isn’t anything I can do about that,” he said as he began pulling out the complicated brass implements he needed to do this horrible, good deed.