How could a Pearl of such incompetence work for a Diamond of all gems?
That was what I thought when I first met the haughty yellow Pearl on only my second week assigned to Yellow Diamond's palace. I was to run the palace's infirmary, a job that I had fully expected to be beyond boring given that it wasn't exactly a place that screamed "Workplace Hazard."
And yet, there she was, standing in the entrance of my office with a look of superiority on her face that was quite shocking to see on any Pearl. There were barely suppressed lines of pain around her eyes and a shallow crack through the white gem on her chest. "And who do you belong to?" I asked at first, and she huffed like that had been a positively ridiculous question.
As I examined her gem, I had another question for her. "How did this happen?"
"It was an accident," she replied. She did not elaborate.
I had only been in the palace for a week and already this Pearl had gotten into an accident that had cracked her gem. I hoped for her sake it was just a coincidence that I was seeing this so soon and she wasn't nearly that accident prone.
I patched her up with sealant and gave her a good polish. She looked as good as new, though the crack wouldn't heal completely for a few weeks and it likely still hurt like mad. When I went to apply a numbing oil for the pain she shooed my hand away.
"I need a clear mind to properly serve my Diamond."
I watched her leave the infirmary with a somewhat befuddled expression on my face.
I saw her again before I had received even a single other patient. She had a nasty looking bruise on her jaw that darkened the yellow complexion of her face in a most unpretty way.
Whatever blunt force had caused it clearly hadn't been traumatic enough to dissipate her form, but it was going to need some tending to before she could be seen in Yellow Diamond's company again. A Pearl that didn't look perfect was not a Pearl that was worth having around.
"And how did this happen?" I asked again.
"There was a malfunction with a door."
I decided not to bring up how ridiculous it was for a horizontally sliding door to malfunction in such a way that it closed only on her jaw. Instead, I made sure there wasn't any damage that might hinder her speech and I covered the bruise up with a yellow paste that melded to the colour of her skin. She remained still the entire time, watching my face with half-lidded, unimpressed eyes.
The third time I saw her I tried not to roll my eyes. The back of her shoulder was bleeding, and this time she looked somewhat sheepish as she clasped a hand over the wound as though trying to stop it from making too much of a mess. Not that there was any danger of that, since any blood she left behind on anything would dissipate once she got too far away. Any gem knew that.
"Another accident?" I asked.
"I... stumbled. Into a control panel." This time she blushed, but there was a fire in her eyes that warned me to leave it at that. I didn't ask any more questions, though not because I was afraid of a Pearl. No, I just didn't care that much.
This wound I could patch up and stop the bleeding easily enough, but I wasn't going to be able to cover it up like I had the others. "You'll need to adjust your outfit to cover it up," I said.
"My uniform is not negotiable," she responded as though personally offended by the suggestion. She paused, and glanced down at the frayed and bloodied ruffle around her shoulder. She phased the garment back into presentable shape and her nostrils flared slightly, though it did little to hide the bandages. "I suppose this will have to do."
I saw her many times after that, amidst other gems that visited the palace. But the Pearl was by far my most frequent patient. Various clumsy accidents had her coming into my office with cuts and bruises on her body, or cracks and scratches on her gem. I patched them all up and wondered silently how she hadn't been reassigned yet.
One day she was brought in by a quartz guard. It took her a full week to reform.
On the day she came with such a badly injured arm that I wondered how she had managed to keep her form together, there was no hiding the pain in her eyes. There was also no hiding the obvious shape of two massive fingers and a thumb that marred her heavily bruised skin.
I decided that day not to ask her about her injuries anymore.
During my time at the palace I saw the Pearl occasionally in passing. She was almost always at Yellow Diamond's side, walking hurriedly to keep up with the Diamond's massive stride. I don't know why I watched her so carefully, but something about her had caught my attention. When she was at Yellow Diamond's side, rushing to keep up, eagerly opening doors, bowing, saluting, and in general doing everything a perfect Pearl possibly could, there was something in her eyes that I had never thought I would see in a Pearl. She looked... stressed.
But that was ridiculous, because Pearls weren't supposed to do much. Weren't they just... decoration?
I tried not to think about it too much, and instead went back to lounging around my office, waiting for my next nonexistent patient.
One day when she came in, she was with another Pearl. This Pearl was blue, and given the visitor we had at the palace that day, I had a pretty good guess as to who she belonged to.
They were both sporting some nasty bruises, and while the yellow Pearl was still and silent during her treatment, the blue Pearl hissed in pain at the slightest touch.
"Not used to this kind of treatment?" I asked in jest.
"My Diamond is usually more gentle with me," the blue Pearl responded in a voice that I had to strain to hear. The yellow Pearl looked at her with what appeared to be vague disapproval.
I had another gem in my infirmary one day who worked in the infirmary on Yellow Diamond's arm ship. Her injuries weren't too severe, but she wouldn't be able to work for the time being. It was an unfortunate time too, because Yellow Diamond was planning a trip to one of the colonies.
Yellow Diamond assigned me to temporarily work on her ship because I had the "necessary experience." I never found out what she meant by that because nobody was injured during the trip. I returned to the infirmary in the palace and my patient was released shortly after that.
One day the yellow Pearl was escorted to the infirmary by a guard. She looked dishevelled and fumbled her way blindly through the door as the quartz watched her with mild amusement. It took me only seconds to figure out what the problem was.
There was an abysmally deep crack in her gem.
I rushed to her side and helped her onto a table so that I could examine her more closely. She was shaking, parts of her form fazing into and out of existence as she gripped the edge of the table with two tight fists. She couldn't see, and she could barely hear me as I asked her questions about her symptoms. At that point, I knew better than to ask how this had happened.
For the first time, as I administered her treatment, she cried out in pain.
The crack in her gem was so severe that she needed to stay in the infirmary during her recovery. For three weeks she lay on a table in the corner, quietly waiting to be discharged. It took a lot of sealant, and a lot of numbing oil for her to recover, and as she did I watched her and wondered at just how patient she was. In all that time she didn't ask for anything or offer any information. She just... lay there.
"How do you handle it all?" I asked her at a time when the numbing oil wasn't muddying up her thoughts too much.
"Handle what?" Her voice was more breathy than I was used to, a symptom of the cracked gemstone on her chest. She sounded almost like the blue Pearl.
"You know..." I faltered, unsure exactly what I had meant. "You're just... always in here with injuries. It must take a toll."
"I just do my job," she replied. "We all do."
"Do you like it?"
"I'm devoted to my Diamond."
"Are you afraid if you do something wrong... you'll get reassigned?"
At that, her face hardened. "Pearls don't get reassigned," she said. I had nothing to say to that, which was just as well because she rolled over to face the wall.
It was something that always stuck with me, and I knew I probably shouldn't have pried. Because I knew that this Pearl was not Yellow Diamond's first Pearl. And I think she knew at the core of her being, that she wouldn't be her last either.