Posted 22 Mar 05 on TF.N.
swswswswsw
The vet center is painted in the peculiar mixture of sterile white and sickly green that all hospitals, regardless of planet or species, seem to use. There are forms upon forms to write every week, no matter if she has done them all before. The inmates are horrifying, missing arms and legs and eyes, and sometimes all three. The patients with burns are worse, though, their fur gone and snouts and ears charred. She can hardly stand to look at them sometimes, and she is always glad when she is past their ward. She doesn't go near the infectious disease ward, though. She is thankful for that. The poxes the scarheads introduced into the galaxy are said to be particularly disfiguring.
The worst, though, is the psychiatric ward. She can hear them screaming behind their doors, and others being dragged to and fro in straitjackets, teeth bared and snarling. Some of them sit on chair, fur slowly rippling in disturbing patterns, and it's not always due to medication.
"Ma'am? Are you all right?"
She goes in and sits down in the uncomfortable plastic chairs and looks at her husband and shudders as she always does. His fur doesn't move at all, not even in the little rustles of dreams. His eyes are open and stare blankly at the ceiling, his face slack and body relaxed. She thinks he looks like a fresh corpse, and she's seen a lot of them over the years.
Despite her disgust, she looks at him and talks of her week: the new girl at the office, who she's sure is another pesky corporate spy; the earthquake on one of the colonies that killed 3 million; even the three comets arching overhead. She talks and she talks, her hands clenched tight, her claws drawing blood from her palms. Her fur moves wildly – anyone can tell her state of mind from it.
And when she can't talk anymore, she lurches out of her chair and runs out of the ward, the attendant giving her a sympathetic look as she passes. She slows down through the psychiatric ward and by the time she's going through the burn ward she is walking sedately, looking straight ahead. She walks and she walks, and she walks straight out the Covepi'starn branch of the Bothawui Veterans' Center and as far away from the Coma Ward as she can possible manage.
She only visits the hospital once a week. It's all she can manage.