Clinic Files

[Sira]

June 9th 2018 5pm

Bad ideas. Sira was great at following through on bad ideas. Especially when everything seemed to be going wrong. The clinic was fine, so busy some days she didn't know when one ended and the next began. It was everything else.

In the fading light of day she stood staring down at her roses which were dying. They had been doing so well and it was almost as if overnight they decided to start wilting. The pattern on the leaves said they'd been hit with the mosaic virus, but how did it take over so quickly. She'd lose the whole arch. She'd have to start completely over.

The chains holding up the swing in the arch's bow had snapped on one side. It was where she had intended on spending the last hours of daylight reading, but now her plans dragged against the ground.

She turned to stomp her way back down the length of her pond, glaring at nothing at all. Her ire was all internally focused.

Back in the city there was an RV she could barely drive, sitting idly, because now she wasn't sure she'd be able to convert it into her mobile lab. The upgrades it needed ended up being outside of her budget and she wasn't going to ask Lexius for more money. The equipment she had put on hold was now on back order. Not for the first time she toyed with the idea of just cancelling everything and giving up. Give the money back. She hadn't spent any of it yet. Gawain had joked about hauling the RV to camp and converting it into a house. It didn't sound like such a bad idea now.

She passed through the doorless archway and slipped down the spiral staircase, turning out into the living room to stop by Bryn's bed and ruffle his ears. Good old Bryn was reliable. Faithful.

With a sigh she straightened and continued around the circular hallway. She tossed her book on the couch as she passed it, then wandered down the dim hallway to her bedroom. She had every intention to get changed out of the things she'd worn to sunbathe in earlier, the cover up over the bikini even though no one was around to spy on her. But then she saw the flyer she'd picked up the day before on her way through the marketplace. It was brightly colored advertising the most ridiculous of things: Foam party.

How crazy, right? A mountain of foam so vast people get lost in it as they dance and cavort. Apparently duel, if she read the flyer right, which wasn't something she was interested in. Really, she shouldn't be interested in it at all. It was a recipe for utter disaster. Nearly unavoidable to slip and slide and bump into people.

But... it wouldn't be her first time. One corner of her mouth quirked up as she remembered Michelle and Dana and the rest of their friends falling all over each other, laughing, and having the best time of their lives. It was while Liam and she had been broken up, and it was the very first night she agreed to go out. They never did manage to convince her to start dating again before he came back sniffing around, but she'd been fun again. More herself than ever before.

A version of herself she lost in a black van and months of torture.

Stupid. She reached out to grab the flyer to crumple it up. But sitting right there was an eye dropper vial where a couple droplets worth of strange, almost luminescent green liquid sat inside. Too little to test properly. That much she had confirmed. Garrett had been trying to get his hands on more, but the dealers had proven slippery. All the more with the Watch being so hyper vigilant.

Her hand hovered near the bottle, fingers stretched out and ready to take it into hand.

What if...?

Bad decisions are bad. Sometimes Sira just didn't care.

[Sira]

February 2012

The knife cut smoothly. The flash of red oozing from the torso surprised Sira enough that she jumped and almost dropped the sharp implement. The crowd around her had a good laugh at her expense.

"You guys! Come on..." But she laughed too through her complaints. "Who did this?"

A man in green scrubs in the crowd raised his hand. "All me! Isn't it great? It's strawberry flavored."

Sira looked back down at the cake. It was the Operation man on the outside and apparently vanilla cake and strawberry ooze filling inside. She shook her head and laughed again as she finished carving out the first slice to plop onto a plate. The crowd cheered and someone took over to slice up the rest to divvy out. Soon everyone had plates and forks.

"So how does it feel, Dr. Moyer, knowing that in twelve short hours, you will officially be done with the indentured servitude that is residency?"

Dr. Masters was holding up his fork towards her face like it was a microphone. The aging surgeon was dressed and ready for a tour in the OR and armed with the warm smile she'd come to rely on over the past four years. He had been a patient mentor.

"Well, Richard," it was still odd calling him by his first name, "I am looking forward to finally having a decent paying job so maybe I can pay off this soul-crushing debt before I die." They had a good laugh at that.

"Excellent, I understand they offered you a very nice package to stay on in the ER." He tipped his head a little looking puzzled. "I thought Liam was doing well working for his father, though. The news makes it sound like they're robbing the country blind with that last contract they landed." He watched her keenly as he took another bite of cake.

"It's more than I had hoped for, really," she confessed with an embarrassed smile. "Especially since they knew I'd have taken pennies to stay in the city. Liam is..." She faltered, brows knitted together. "The money is all tied up right now. I'm probably going to dip into my inheritance for a little longer until he sorts things out." With her eyes fixed on her plate where she was moving around crumbs with the tines of her fork she missed the older man's concerned look.

"And have things gotten any better since...?" No matter how gently he asked, the rift that had formed between her husband and her since the miscarriage still ached. It burned inside Sira every time she thought about it.

"He's been away a lot more. It's for the best. Being busy helps." She tried to smile.

Luckily just then someone stuck their head into the break room. "Sorry to break up the party, but multiple buses on route, shooting in Edgewood park. Multiple GSRs." And that was enough to cause a flurry of action as people jumped to fill their duties.

Sira was pulling on her coat when Richard took her by the arm. "Listen, Sira. This summer there will be an opening in my fellowship. It's yours if you want it."

Her smile was surprised and pleased. "Really? You want to drag me out of the trenches?" She laughed, light and easy. "I'll think about it, thank you."

Unfortunately she never got the opportunity to give it any thought.

--------

7 am. It had been a terribly long night. Ambulance after ambulance had flooded into the bays and they were slammed for the entire shift. Sira loved each and every moment of it because it kept her heavy mind too busy to worry. Liam was finally going to be home after a two-week business trip she didn't even know about until she caught him leaving with his bags.

She'd cried. They'd fought. Do you even love me anymore? He'd left without a goodbye kiss and they hadn't spoken since.

His plane was supposed to land early evening. With luck he'd be home in time for dinner and Sira wanted to have a beautiful meal on the table. She'd bought a new dress, she'd do her makeup, she'd light candles. Maybe, just maybe things would be alright. She stepped through the hospital's rear entrance so preoccupied with thought she barely noticed the unfamiliar faces in the parking lot. The hospital was big enough that she couldn't possibly know everyone, but no one had access to that lot if they weren't an employee.

"Dr. Moyer?" The voice came at her from the side, a little behind her. Positioned so she had to turn her whole body to look at the man in what looked like a security outfit of some kind. He had the look of a military guy, clean shaven, high and tight cut, rigid posture. And cold, cold eyes.

She had her mouth open to say something that never got a chance to come out. Faster than she could think black fabric was descending over her head and pulling tight into her throat, strangling and silencing her all in one go. More hands were on her twisting at her arms and then she was moving. Then she was being heaved and she found herself dropped on the hard metal floor of a van. She heard shouts before the door slammed shut and the van lurched forward with squealing tires.

She wasn't going to be home for dinner.

[Sira]

Summer 2013

Sira was bloody from finger tip to elbow, with more splatters of thick ichor dotting the front of her apron and the plastic shield covering her face. It was times like this that she felt more like a butcher than a doctor, and at this very moment less like a surgeon than she needed to. The body laying on the table in front of her was relying on her training and expertise, not weak complaints about long ago her surgical rotation was and didn't care that she never even started her fellowship.

This man had come to her because he didn't want to die.

"Clamp here," she said sharply to the red-haired youth who was playing her assistant. "No, right there where the blood--better." Unlike her, Cal had absolutely no place in an operating room. As he was the only of her choices that hadn't gotten queasy at the idea of seeing his friend cut open, he got to play the part. The back room of a warehouse wasn't an OR anyway. She'd learned you did what you had to in this city.

Her scalpel pierced the next layer fascia so she could retract the tissue to get a good look at the organ underneath. As good a look as she could get. Inside the human body is utter darkness. Holding your hand up to the light so your can see your bones through your skin might give one the mistaken impression that somehow light passes through all of us. It would have been so much help. Hopefully the bullet she was looking for was about where she expected it to be.

"Find it yet, doc?"

That was the man on the table who was fully awake. Sira couldn't remember what his name was and it wasn't important for her to. She flashed him an annoyed look. "Stop moving."

This surgery was difficult enough without him squirming around. She knew he felt no pain, because she didn't allow him to. He had to be awake because there were only so many systems she could control at once and anesthesia would be far too risky. An X-ray machine would have been an absolute luxury. A sterile field kit and her own abilities would have to be good enough.

Carefully, she eased her hand into the now open cavity to feel past the pancreas, mindful as she went of any internal damage. It wasn't just with her fingers that she searched. She knew where the bullet was supposed to be because she knew where he hurt. Fine tendrils of thought tangled with his nervous system, his veins, to locate where it was. But oh did she sigh when her fingers hit something hard lodged into the smooth tissue.

"Get ready to cauterize," she told Cal as she carefully shifted the organ within its cavity so her eyes could see what she felt. There was the flash of metal. Another pair of hands would have helped so much, but with a stroke of good luck she managed to grab another clamp to remove the bullet with a delicate hand. The boy was quick to jump in with a tool not meant to be used on human flesh, but would have to do, to zap the sources of fresh, dark blood.

From there things were much easier. It was all knitting flesh back together and ensuring that he wasn't bleeding anymore. It was sanitizing the wound and covering it with thick, padded gauze, then a layer of elastic bandage wrapped around his torso. Barbaric was what it truly was, but it would work.

"You need to get plenty of rest," she warned the man whose name she'd never know. "I want to see you in a week, not any sooner because you busted your stitches."

It was too bad that after all that he was stabbed to death a scant two days later.

[Sira]

Friday September 21

It had been Sira's intention to make her way home, but after dinner she found all she had the energy for was to make it back to the inn. It wasn't very late. It wasn't like she'd had too much to drink--that mop water they'd been served with dinner was pretty potent, but she hadn't drank very much. Because it tasted utterly awful. It was because her stomach was churning in a way that had nothing to do with the strange burrito she'd sampled.

She held it together until she'd gotten inside the room. Not her room, which was cluttered with medical supplies she needed to inventory for the fall, but Hunter's. The hacker must have been through town recently, because there was a whole new pile of clothes in the corner that hadn't been there the last time she'd borrowed her friend's room.

Just inside the door, just after closing it behind her, she collapsed against it and let go the breath it felt like she'd been holding the whole walk home.

'Where something dress-like' he'd requested. So she had worn not a dress, but a pale, pale blue skirt paired with a white camisole, and a white cardigan over the top with a pale, pale pattern of flowers and swallows, like a very faded Chinese silk painting. She'd felt a little overdressed when she showed up to the 'mexidwarf' fusion restaurant, but maybe it was all worth it when he'd told her she looked foxy? That wasn't the first hint of butterflies in her stomach, but it definitely was when they turned up to eleven. After all, who in their right mind would ever expect her to do out on a date with...?

No one. But it had happened. And actually? It wasn't that bad. The food was barely edible, the drinks may have been cleaning fluid, but spending the evening just the two of them? Way more than she had ever expected.

Not that the night hadn't been full of ups and downs. She managed to get herself away from the door so that she could go raid the dresser for something she could sleep in. Most of Hunter's clothing barely counted as such, but she could do with an over large tee shirt. She stripped out of her clothes to get changed, avoiding looking at herself in the mirror so she couldn't see her blush.

The kiss. It lasted for maybe ten seconds? If that, before they were interrupted by their inattentive and rude waiter. It wasn't that he'd kissed her. It wasn't that she'd wanted to kiss him at that very moment, it was the moment they'd had before. A raw moment, truths laid out bare, emotions shared. She had said yes to the date on an impulse.

'What was your most irresponsible decision?' he'd asked. She'd almost laughed it off and said 'going out with you'. Instead she told him about trying the Pixie Dust. Instead of being some stupid, crazy, and wild moment shared it had twisted into something else.

Maybe she'd said the wrong answer after all.