The bare hallway echoes I tread it, my shoes tapping against the iron floor. A few officers glance at me, slanting their eyebrows. It's not uncommon for medical droids to run errands around the frigate, though the actual nurses are rarely seen otherwise. I bank left to one of the storage rooms and pull a list out of my pocket, reading it carefully. I gently collect medicines and gauzes from glass shelves and set them onto a metal tray, trying to ignore my reflection. Droids are malfunctioning more often now, and today I had to let half of them reboot, hence this errand. Usually by now I am patching one limb, amputating another, and injecting serums into patients. Being the youngest of five nurses in my quadrant is exhausting.
I return to my assigned infirmary, tray in hand. Already there is a fellow nurse, EK-9372. She greets me with a smiling nod and swoops a painkiller vial off my tray for her patient, Private ZC-5813.
"'Afternoon, Kyu," he greets in a rustic, sleepy voice. My name is QL-3298; he knows I hate to be called 'Q'.
"Good afternoon, officer," I reply as politely as I can. EK turns to me and asks, "Did you get forty-seven's serum, by any chance?"
"Yes, I did. Here it is," I answer, handing her the vial. She takes it, with a faint smile of thanks. Her eyes look bright and alert, matching her blonde, tightly-gathered hair. Her young looks are deceiving; she has been Class C for two years now, making her twenty-nine years old. Z-C's eyes, however, seem swollen and aged for someone of only twenty-seven. In fact, his eyes and current breath suggest that he has been chugging more than just painkillers lately. I'll have to change the cabinet lock.
I move on to a back room, where a droid awaits. I hand it the tray, knowing it will restock the medicine properly. Of the ten droids in this ward, this one gives me the least trouble; the others require repairs every other day. I used to watch the repairman's technique whenever he was called in, so now I'm able to repair them myself. That was a year ago, when I had just changed ranks to Class B. Now I'm at the age of twenty-one, adjusting to my new quadrant in the recovery ward. Our promotion weeks are the only way we keep track of our ages. No one is informed of their exact birthdays. Not in the First Order.