Chpt. 10) Healer

Adjani and Oni followed me to my ship, and we settled in for a moment. I took off and navigated our way out of the asteroid field before jumping to hyperspace for a second, putting hundreds of light-years between us and the asteroid field. Once stopped, I punched in the number to call the order and waited patiently.

“Hello, thanks for calling Sol Federation Military Core Council. My name’s Kati, and I’ll be assisting you today. How may I help you?” Kati asked in a bored tone.

“You can’t,” I answered immediately.

“Please hold,” Kati said, and Fantaisie-impromptu in C-sharp minor, opus sixty-six by Fredric Chopin, began playing.

After three renditions of the song, a man finally answered the call, and he used a voice changer to give himself a deeper voice, “Hello? Who are you?”

“It’s me, Violet,” I said, mocking his voice.

The voice sighed again, followed by a click, and the nerdy guy on the other end asked, “What do you want, Violet? I’m busy. A few of our members have gone quiet without warning.”

“I’m looking for the final member of my crew. We need a doctor to round us out. We need Dr.Whisper.”

“Dr.Whisper? He’s been missing for years. Why him?”

“He’s the best, of course. Now, can you help or not, Steve?!”

“That’s not my name, and I’ll look into it.”

“Scott?” I hedged, “Sullivan? Stan? Shiro? Saltian?”

“Okay, here’s what I got on Dr.Whisper.”

“Svetlana!?”

“He was last spotted in Nortain Hospital, in Alpha Centauri. GC-002b.”

“SKAVERNATHER!!?” I exclaimed, and Skavernather hung up, not answering my name guesses. I shut off the comms and began putting in the coordinates. As I did, I turned to my passengers and said, “Hold onto your butts, kiddos. We’re going to Alpha Centauri. One of the core worlds.” Adjani cursed and strapped himself in his chair just as I pushed the throttle forward and jumped to hyperspace.

“So, what’s de plan? Just go in and ask nicely?” Adjani asked after a minute of silence.

I thought for a moment, “Well, if we’re going to a hospital, we can't be armed with anything. So, no guns.”

“And no knives, yuh stabby maniac,” Adjani spat back.

I nodded with a sigh, “Yep, no knives. And Oni, you’ll have to stay with the ship.”

“I know,” Oni said, “Just call if you need help.”

My ship dropped out of hyperspace, and I turned my attention to the world in front of us. The brown, green, and blue planet was backlit by its three stars, giving it a beautiful glow and illuminating the multiple lines of cargo ship lanes going to and from the planet. The only other notable thing about the planet was the half-dozen federation frigates orbiting the planet.

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I bit the inside of my cheek as I cursed, “Well … fuck.”

“I don’t like dat word right now,” Adjani said, clearly agreeing with me.

“Yes, yes, I know, I know,” I said, waving a hand at him. Then I pulled up a comms panel and accessed the Sol-net to do a little research on Nortain Hospital. A website came up, and I scrolled through it till I found the employee roster for the hospital. The roster opened up with so many employees and residents that there weren’t any pictures of anybody on their payroll. Luckily, they had a search bar, which helped me find Dr.Whisper.

DR. E. WHISPER: ER HEAD OF SURGERY

CURRENTLY ON DUTY

I smiled as a plan slowly came together. “Adjani, I need you to fly us in for a medical emergency,” I said as I got out of my seat, “Oni come with me to the back.”

Adjani got up and took my seat while Oni and I went to the back. “What’s de plan?” Adjani asked as he put on the comms headset.

“Oni! Smash my leg!” I exclaimed with a deranged smile.

“WHAT!?” Adjani exclaimed.

“Okay,” Oni agreed, and her right hand was instantly covered in dark metal and morphed into a big hammer.

“WAIT! WAIT!! WAIT!!!” Adjani screamed as he looked back, and Oni brought the hammer down with a loud crunch.

“FFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKK!!!!!!!!!!!!”

***

We sat in the emergency room as I groaned in pain and cursed under my breath after an ER nurse stabilized my shattered right leg. My plan wasn’t going exactly as planned. Who knew a school bus full of elementary school students got in a massive accident, and the closest hospital was Nortain Hospital? How unlucky am I today? Why couldn’t the children just die on impact and save me the trouble of wanting to kill them all? Why me?! WHY?!! And the nurses around here weren’t even hot! They were almost all men, with the occasional old lady! Can’t they at least have one hot nurse around here to distract me?

I turned to Adjani, who sat next to me as he checked out the male nurses. I rolled my eyes and huffed under my breath, “Men. You’re all the same.”

“What was dat?” Adjani asked, not taking his eyes off a nurse in blue scrubs.

“Nothing,” I grumbled as another pulse of pain shot through my leg after I unintentionally flexed a muscle.

The ER nurse in blue scrubs that Adjani had been staring at and fantasizing about came over to my bed with a clipboard, “All right. Ms.Violet Ricme. Now that the emergency is over, I will be taking you to get X-rays and set you up in a room. After that, Dr.Whisper will see you. Do you have any metal on or in your body?”

I grunted, “Finally. I’m mostly metal. All my limbs and parts of my face and head are prosthetics with a metal alloy base.”

The ER nurse nodded, “All right, that will make this a little more difficult, but still doable. Let’s go.” The nurse left and grabbed a wheelchair, helped me into it, and wheeled me into a radiology room.

After a few X-rays of my shattered leg and putting me in a bland room with nothing but a private bathroom and a bed by myself, I did nothing but wait and wonder. Where the hell did Adjani go? He followed us to radiology and the room, but he didn’t follow me into the room. I leaned forward on the bed, trying to see into the hall, but I didn’t have the neck of a giraffe, so I couldn’t see into the hall all that well.

“Adjani! Where the hell are you?!” I yelled but got no response. I sighed and laid back in the bed while I waited for something to happen. Out of boredom, I tapped my ear and called my ship.

“What’s the situation?” Oni answered the call immediately.

“I’m bored. So, I’m going to talk to you until something happens,” I said simply. Oni ended the call.

I pouted and flinched as I heard the door to my room open, followed by another pulse of pain. Adjani came into my room in a hurry with a small line of white liquid on the left corner of his lips. “Fives, we have a slight problem,” he said in a panic.

“You bottom bitch,” I said, ignoring his panic.

“It’s — What? H-How — what are yuh talkin' about?” he stammered as he processed what I said.

I pointed to the left corner of my mouth and said, “You got a bit of jiz leakage right there.”

Adjani’s eyes widened, and he wiped the right corner of his mouth, “Did I get it?”

“Other side, Dumbass.”

He wiped the left corner of his mouth, getting the jiz off his face before he continued, “Fives, we have a problem. Dr.Whisper—”

Adjani stopped talking as the door opened, and a tall, beautiful woman with boxy glasses and long, curled purple hair with blue and pink highlights tied up in a tight bun. She had porcelain skin and wore black scrubs under a lab coat. She gave me a brilliant smile as she fixed her golden eyes on me. Holding a file to her side, she said in a sweet, cheery voice, “Hello, Ms.Ricme. I’m Dr.Whisper, and I’ll be handling your surgery.”

I looked her up and down, my jaw slack as I slowly muttered, “No sexy nurses, but at least there’s a sexy doctor. One that I’m not looking for.”

***