No Evil Angel
Chapter 4
One May Smile
During the hour, another doctor comes to visit her.
It's a woman, who is perky despite the chaos roaring outside the door whenever the squeaky hinges are pushed in. People running with cots, orders being screamed, someone speaking over a comms system in the ceiling. Everything is hurried, and in the small room they've set her aside in, it remains a level of calm.
But from outside the window, the uniformed man still peers in from across the corridor.
Still watches her.
"Hi-Vala?" This doctor wears a wide grin usually only found on people who are lying or intending to lie. "Am I saying that correctly?"
She's not, but it doesn't matter. "Yes."
"That's quite a unique name, what's the meaning behind it?"
She doesn't answer. Isn't really sure, never asked her mother how she was named or for what reason aside from necessity, supposes she'll never know.
This doctor catches on quite quickly about her ill want of communication, of dialogue, of holding conversations and divulging intimate facts about herself.
"I'm Dr. Baz," she introduces herself while holding a folder and a clipboard against her chest. Her stance isn't one of superiority, or aggression, quite the opposite actually. "I'd like to ask you a few questions—if that's okay?"
"I'm getting very tired of answering people's questions."
"You're waiting on information about your husband, right?"
That is the area of questioning she's more than happy to answer.
"Yes, he was downtown with me—"
"Well, Dr. McCoy told me that he's exhausting all venues in order to hear back, that you were kind enough to give him an hour."
"That's right."
"Do you mind if I take fifteen minutes of that hour and just talk with you?"
"About what?"
"About your husband." When she doesn't immediately deny her conversation, the doctor snatches the opportunity, crafting her words very carefully, making it seem like this is all in her control, that she holds the power. "May I sit?"
She only nods, peering from the peripherals of her sight as the other woman sits in the chair, the bundle of paper and clipboard settling face up on her lap, and what looks like a report—a file visible on the top.
Dr. Baz folds her hands delicately obscuring her file, and when she glances up the woman is staring at her intently. "We're talking with all the victims of the bombing, giving them the opportunity to chat with a counsellor about any feelings or fears they might have."
"I'm fine."
"You say that now, but you're in shock—"
She tries not to roll her eyes because this poor doctor doesn't know the first thing about shock, doesn't know the first thing about trying to navigate her mind when it feels so closed off, trying to feel something—anything—good or bad, for months on end.
Trying not to love because it only leads to pain.
"I am not in shock."
"All right." The doctor nods, and the swiftness of her response dictates that it's not genuine, but patronizing—like she doesn't know how to translate her own emotions, the pains in her body, the scar that still pulses with each of her heartbeats, the phantom pains of a fetus still kicking, still dancing to singing birds. "Are you aware of what happened?"
"Does that truly matter?"
"Why wouldn't it?"
"People celebrate the loss of innocent lives as if they were lambs to the slaughter, as if they were sacrifices for a just cause. You promote the dead to a saintly status and rely on them to fuel the rest of the population into permitting the violence to continue. You mar their names, using them as flashpoint in civil unrest."
"Are you saying that all the people who died—the women and children Christmas shopping—aren't important?"
"Not as much as I'm saying that this could have been prevented." Now the doctor won't meet her eyes, won't listen to her hedonistic explanation of exactly what is occurring in this country. "People want their freedoms, want the truth, and resort to violence to get it. In return, the government turns their actions into terrorism instead of martyrdom and labels them as evil. The whole issue could have easily been prevented by allowing basic rights."
"And what right do you think that bomber didn't have?" Dr. Baz loses the softness to her voice, the understanding emptiness in her eyes, her face, once a mask of expressionless, now tied up into a common one of vengeance, of anger, of hate. "What right do you think he was protesting?"
"The right to know." When the doctor doesn't appear appeased with her answer, she articulates, "everyone has the right to know what's going on, and yet the government tells them so little."
"You seem find enough to me." Dr. Baz harshly scratches something down on the file, then signs a wavy signature, before exiting the room without another word.
A/N: Chapter title borrowed from Shakespeare's Hamlet