Written for my 20 Fandoms Challenge. Warnings for very mild medical gore, just blood mentions.
His hands are steady as he lights the cigarette. His gaze is focused on the wall in front of it, eyes outlined by dark circles concentrating on the beige tile in front of him. He wants to think about anything, anything, that doesn't involve remembering how his shoulders ache, how his legs are stiff and sore, how no matter how many times he cracks his neck he still feels like something is off. A twelve hour surgery is no joke, but Black Jack always delivers on his promises.
"There's no smoking in here."
He squints and looks for the offending voice. The owner of it is a child, a little girl with eyes like his daughter's, and she does not look pleased. Another trait shared by Pinoko.
"I'm a doctor," he says, unclear why she can't tell that from the bloodstained scrubs.
"No one is allowed to smoke!"
He ignores her and takes another drag, exhaling at the nicotine calms his system. His nerves are alive and buzzing, still in the throes of surgery. He half wishes he had another heart transplant to do. He wonders if he'd be able to beat his record for longest consecutive time in the operating theater. Maybe next time.
"I'm going to scream if you keep smoking!"
"Shut up," he says. "When you have a medical li- degree, you can tell me where I can and can't smoke."
"You can't smoke in here, Black Jack," says a passing doctor.
The little girl is triumphant, and Black Jack considers his options. He's got another client lined up for this area and not only are the facilities here nice, but the doctors aren't holier-than-thou bureaucrats more invested in the cash in their bank accounts than the people in their hospital. That is much rarer than he wishes it were, and he has been to hospitals around the world. There's always someone looking to make a buck. Black Jack is no exception, although he likes to think he spends it better.
He puts the cigarette out on the bottom of his hospital issued scrubs. He realizes he is still wearing a cap and takes it off, shaking out his hair as the little girl watches.
"What do you want now?" he asks.
"You're really a doctor?" she asks, frowning. "You don't look like one."
He is standing there in full scrubs with bloodstains coating his chest, just finished from a full heart transplant, and he still doesn't look like a doctor. He clenches his teeth and wishes he had not put out his cigarette.
"I'm a doctor," he confirms.
She crosses her arms, not completely unconvinced. "But my mom's a nurse, and she says she's not allowed to dye her hair. Otherwise it would be all sorts of pretty colors. That's what she says."
"I didn't dye my hair," he says, tilting his neck back so that the back of his head his the large window of the theater. "This is how it's always looked."
"But people don't have…" The girl doesn't know how to describe his hair, so she traces a zigzag in the air to mark the line between black and white.
He never knows how to deal with children. What does he say now? Does he tell her, oh, little girl, when big Doctor Black Jack stepped on a mine at age eight it scarred half his head so that his hair's pigmentation was ruined? He is fairly certain these things aren't considered appropriate for children.
"When I was eight I stepped on a mine," he says. "It scarred half my head so that my hair's pigmentation was ruined."
If he cared about that kind of thing he'd have a medical license. He watches her mouth fall open in shock with no small amount of satisfaction.
"Did it hurt?" she asks, voice rising.
"Yes," he says. "But a doctor saved my life. Just like I saved someone's life today. There's a tradeoff, see." He doesn't know if kids know what tradeoff means, but she must be smarter than she looks because she nods thoughtfully, as though she is attending a university lecture.
"So this person's life makes up for your life being saved?"
"Not exactly," he replies, making the effort to look at her and not the tiles, now swimming with sleep deprivation. "I've saved a lot of people. I'm a doctor because I want to be, not because I have to be." He is not that selfless.
"But…?" He has lost her now.
"The parallel is there regardless," he says.
"Okay," she says. He isn't sure she understands but it isn't his job to make sure she does. No one has ever said that Kuro Hazama should be a teacher, and there is a good reason for that.
He can feel his eyelids shutting without him wanting them too, falling asleep for a brief moment before he sharply pulls his head up. He digs his nails into his forearm, thinking the mild pinpricks of pain will help him make it through this conversation, but he forgets that his left forearm's pain receptors are long gone, and so it is fruitless.
"Is being a doctor hard?" asks the little girl.
"Of course it is," he says.
She looks down. "I want to be a doctor, my mom says it's easier to be a nurse."
"It is," he says. "Become a doctor anyway. Run your own hospital where you can hire nurses with any color hair."
Her eyes widen. "Do you really think I could?"
He shrugs. "Why not? It's your hospital."
She grins, and he pushes himself off the window and starts heading to the call room, heedless of the knowledge that two of the med students like to enjoy each other's company there around this time. He and his sleep are more important.
"What's your name?" she asks.
"It doesn't matter," he says. "You'll know who I am if you become a doctor."
Arrogant words, but no one has ever said he is not arrogant, and for good reason.