Sometimes, my days are just a little more than odd. They told me I would get used to the strangeness of a thousand universes compressed into one, but that was a lie. This is the story of Universe Hub 17, informally known as the Hospital, and the first time I dealt with a patient that could float.
"Name?" I asked, reading over the patient's information on my clipboard as I led them to an examination room down the hall. The lack of footsteps was unsettling.
"...Mark." His voice was flat, like he had forgotten how to mimic emotion. I had dealt with a deity once before, but that was a long time ago. It turned out that as they got older, the ones whose physical bodies had been left behind or destroyed eventually forgot the way emotion sounded, and didn't bother trying.
I checked his report. In place of his name was a shifting, writhing mass of ink lines, rewriting themselves as the tails faded. "...Right. Okay, take a seat." My patient seemed troubled by this, and I realized my mistake. "...or, if you wish, you can remain standing." My patient was a little over five feet tall. His not-height was helped by the fact that he was hovering a good foot off the ground. Seeing the way he anxiously rubbed his fingers together, I made a note in his records that he would need to be sedated in the future. speaking of which...
"You're here for reconstructive surgery, right?" I already knew the answer, but as my mentor had drilled into me over and over, the patient should always be checked for signs of possession. If they didn't know what it was, they wouldn't be able to answer.
The shadows seemed to pull towards Mark a little, tugging at the walls on which they were cast. "Yeah. I was killed a while ago, cut across my throat." Now that I was watching, I noticed that his mouth barely moved when he was speaking, probably from the nasty gash he had under his chin, and he didn't turn his head to watch me when I crossed the room, although his black eyes seemed to flicker a little in fear as I pulled out the IV stand I had in the corner.
As I set everything up and called a nurse via the telepathic panel on the wall for a mild sedative, I noticed Mark had started drifting higher into the air. Not a lot, but enough to make me remember how other doctors described the way fliers, even the magical kind, reacted to anesthesia. In a word: Oof. With this knowledge in mind, I retrieved the IV bag that had appeared on the stand and led Mark to the table in the middle of the room, instructing him to lie down with his arms by his sides. He was already in his gown, and as the surgeons teleported in (and while Mark was distracted) I took the IV needle in my hand and pushed it into the crook of his elbow. He flinched, but thankfully didn't move his arm in doing so. He was still floating, not fully on the table, just kind of... lying on the air. As the drip started and his breathing became more regular, his eyes flickered over to me. An innocent, childlike, and terrified look took over his face.
"Please..." he whispered. "I don't want to die. Please... please..." His hovering body suddenly fell out of the air, hitting the operating table with a quiet thud, and the surgeons began their work while I watched from behind the ether screen, fascinated by the way he had just stopped. I had seen so many patients before, from the smallest pixie to a giant whale (that one had been tough), ferocious as a living nightmare to as fantastic as a shapeshifter in their prime, but somehow there was always something new to learn about the universes.