Edit 8/7/14

The autodoc stared her down, despite the fact it had no eyes, just great, long, spiderlike mechanical limbs wrapped in fine translucent paper. It mocked her with the promise of salvation.

Callie sighed and rolled over to her other side so she no longer faced the contraption. Her trip from the Lucky 38 back to the Tops was missing. She knew this was the Tops because the bedding smelled like Benny and like her and like sex. Also, the ceiling was the right color. Benny wasn't there, not in the bed and she couldn't hear him fussing in the other room. The panel to Yes Man's office was closed. He could be in there.

Sitting up, she stretched her hands over her head to work away the soreness. She was wearing a different shirt and no pants. Great, this could only mean she managed to puke up her guts, again, while her brain fried itself. Or her brain fried Mint's brain, something like that. At this rate, her fitness advantage over the other Wastelanders would be rapidly deteriorating. She thought of the ramifications of that. Was she a Waster now? Or did her residence in the Strip preclude her from that title? Was this a once-a-vaultie-always-a-vaultie situation?

The sudden, rapid introduction of her family name, from the mouths of bots and under-animated screens raised a host of additional questions. They were probably reasonable questions for someone coming out of do-or-die survival mode and turning to look towards a possible future. Did anyone else from Vault 3 make it out alive? They must have. She had heard the vault was full of raiders before she ever knew that it was her original home, that the residents had been slaughtered. But what about everyone else in the exploration teams?

Her bare feet hit the carpet and she made her way to the office door, swinging it open. Benny sat in one of the wheeled chairs, precariously tipping it backwards and his feet were on the desk in front of him. He spoke with Yes Man in quiet, but not hushed, tones. He was trying not to disturb her in the other room, rather than trying to hide something from her. When Callie entered the room his attention shifted immediately to her.

"Girlie," he crossed the room to meet her, burying his hand in the curls at the back of her neck. "Sorry to say, you missed dinner."

"I was out that long, huh?" Inside the suite, with no exterior windows, it was difficult to tell the time of day.

Benny glanced at his watch. "About six hours. Not too bad." Come on, you must be starved." He kissed her forehead and headed back towards the suite, abandoning whatever his conversation with Yes Man had been. Damn him and his normalcy. Everything seemed so easy for him, these little expressions of emotion tossed about in a casual manner, while still feeling utterly sincere.

Callie followed him out and settled down on the couch in the lounge, pulling a blanket over her legs. The room felt a little colder than she remembered. Benny called down to…well, wherever he called when he needed something done. He ordered what sounded like more food than she could possibly eat on her own. He may have failed to eat when she had her fit. No, he was more practical than that. He wouldn't skip meals just because she was business as usual. After he hung up, he joined her on the couch, throwing an arm over the backrest, not quite touching her.

"Food will be just a few minutes. So that autodoc," not a moment too much wasted before back to the main topic. "Looks in pretty good condition."

"Yeah," Callie fidgeted a bit under the blanket. "It's missing a diagnostic module, but everything else looks good." She hesitated before continuing, not really knowing if she wanted the answers to her next questions. She had a lot of questions like that. Arcade. "Where did I pass out? In front of the 38? That's the last thing I remember."

"No, the lobby here. Swank saw the whole thing." His face tightened. "I should have sent someone with you, even if I couldn't go myself."

"It's okay. I'm a big girl. Besides, this is supposed to fix me, right?"

"Girlie, I'd say I like you just the way you are, but we both know that's not true." He sighed and shifted towards her. At this close distance, she could see the lines at the corners of his eyes, the wrinkles developing and setting in his forehead. It occurred to Callie that she should have met him halfway and moved closer as well, reinforcing intimacy. But this time she couldn't will her body to move. Benny didn't seem particularly put out. "I know you don't need or want me hovering around you all the time like a mother hen. I also know you're not interested in tagging around me like a side-kick."

Callie vocally scoffed at the very idea.

"But right now, it's taking a hell of a lot of resolve to let you out of my sight because I know you might not be able to take care of yourself for a few hours at a time and it's because of my shit. Shit that I did."

They hadn't really discussed his/her accident in depth. Callie didn't think now would be the time either.

"But here's the thing, you are my girl now."

Okay, so every time he said that she kind of wanted to punch him in the face but she also kind of got a weird feeling in the pit of her stomach about wanting to jump him and kiss all over his face, so, the two impulses canceled each other out and it was a wash.

"I can't help but worry about you. And I'm ashamed in this case I could only get you a plan, and not just get the damn robot for you." With that he had said what he needed to, lit a cigarette, and let the silence settle between them.

"I'll get better." It was almost a whisper, but she actually said it with clarity and resolve.

There was a knock at the door and Benny got up to answer. It was the food. Now that she could see what he had called down for, it was clear that it was even too much for two people. But, like most of the food available in the Mojave, it was primarily prepackaged rations that would just go back into circulation if they didn't eat it. There were a couple of fresh items too.

"Come on," she started, grabbing a snack cake on her way to the bedroom. "I want to get a look at this autodoc."

Benny followed her after, raw barrel cactus fruit in hand.

Callie rolled the autodoc next to the bed so she could look at it while seated. Pulling back the thin plastic film from the display panel it was clear that this unit had never been used.

It occurred to her then that she had never disconnected her Pip-boy from House's network. She had intended to do so when she made it into the clear with the autodoc. She flipped through menus until she found the network connections panel. Rather than simply disconnect from House's internal network, she turned off the transmitter entirely. This would disconnect her from Yes Man as well. His expression of "personal" preference earlier had unnerved her, but she didn't have the time at the moment to investigate further. For now, she just took herself off the grid entirely.

Benny plopped down next to her on the bed and bit into the fruit. Callie turned her attention back to the autodoc and the problem of the missing diagnosis module. There was no way her Pip-boy could stand in for it. On the vital statistics screen, she was still displayed as the picture of perfect health, her hunger bar slowly filling as she absentmindedly took bites from the snack cake.

Benny wouldn't be much of a help on that front either. A shame since he had just expressed regret at not being able to help more. But it wasn't his fault. It wasn't as if Tribal life had prepared him for a career in medicine or the sciences. While he seemed to have first-aid experience, none of Mint's memories pointed to medical skill beyond covering wounds, basic medicinal plant knowledge, and lancing infections. Still, it was better to ask than assume Mint had showed her everything.

"You're not secretly a doctor, are you?" She toggled through various menus, scanning what each one did. There were literally dozens of slots for information that would tune the bot for specific problems. The level of precision was potentially amazing, provided it was assisted by a qualified doctor.

"I thought these things were supposed to be better than any doctor's hands?" The juice from the fruit had run down his hands, making them sticky.

"They still need to be told what to do. Remember, a piece is missing."

"I'd say we get you a doctor then, but I don't know any I trust. The Followers supply most of them around here…" his voice trailed off. "We're probably not on the best terms with Old Mormon Fort right now."

Questions she wasn't willing to ask quite yet, still on the tip of her tongue.

"Are you sure about this, Benny?" Instead of asking about Arcade, she went with another topic, one no less disturbing or potentially damaging, but one that couldn't wait. "This will kill off the last of her, you know. You lost her, only to get her back."

"Stop that," sticky fingers pressed against the back of her hand. "I told you before, I grieved for her. I accepted her death a long time ago. Yes, I was thrown for a loop when you came around saying that you were her, believing you were her. Hell, if it did make me remember. I'll grieve for her again if I have to. But I think that her brain is already dead in that skull of yours. You know who you are."

Callie fell backwards onto the bed with a thump, letting her legs still hang off the edge. "I still see you sometimes. You and her together. It doesn't feel like me anymore, because it's not me and it's not fair to pretend it was me. I don't know if I can take that away from you…"

And he was over her, pressing his lips against hers and straddling her hips. That crazy, unnatural heat he radiated was all around her again and she forgot the chill in the room. He kissed her over and over until she was quiet.

"No. By doing this, you're giving me the chance at a future with you. With Callie. That's the only thing you can give or take away that I want from you."

Her lips felt swollen as she spoke. "Okay."

They sat up again and Callie looked at a few more screens. Benny spoke largely to himself.

"We had a shaman, he might have known. Not about the autodoc, but maybe about the medicine part. He died last year though. He almost hadn't come with us to the Strip. For a while I thought I was going to have to kill him too. But he followed, they all did. He didn't take an apprentice though, part of leaving the old ways behind, I suppose."

He continued to fill the air with sweet, meaningless words that rumbled on while Callie tinkered and thought. She didn't have the best reputation with doctors, having killed two herself and then whatever had happened to Arcade, which ruled out the Followers.

But a bot was still a bot, and robots she understood. The autodoc's menus were a bit like a paint by numbers kit. There were blanks that needed to be filled in, but it would do the work on its own once it had those bits of information. The problem was, it wouldn't accept the command 'just look for all the brain matter that…doesn't match the other brain matter.' It needed precise technical terms. Clearly it wasn't really intended to replace a doctor; it reinforced some job security for medical professionals, at least in this iteration.

Callie knew a little medicine. She had trained a little bit in the vault even after her assignment to tend to the vault's robots. Those who were science minded often took to medicine as well, and it was best to have some emergency backups. That wasn't her primary skill though and it hadn't all come back to her. But she could do this, she had to do this. She just needed a little help. The other Pip-boy had medical texts, it had originally belonged to Mitchell. But that one was fried over a week ago and she had no idea what had become of it. The Followers probably had that too.

"I can do this." Her statement pierced the steady stream of Benny's rambling.

"Huh?"

"I can program the autodoc. I can. But I need help. I need a medical textbook. One that specializes in the nervous system if possible, but I'd take a general text too." She turned and looked at Benny. With a solid textbook, she could fill in the missing pieces of the procedure.

"Well I doubt we have one of those lying around. But like hell I'll let that stop us."

Callie got up to start packing what she would need for the trip. An abandoned library, or college, or hospital, any would do. Or maybe if she asked nicely to the NCR…

"Sit back down, Callie." He put a gentle hand on her sternum and pushed her back down on the bed. "I'll get that book for you, but you are staying on the Strip. You talk about how you hate when people expect you to do things for you, but then you try and take on responsibilities that don't need to be yours."

She opened her mouth to protest but no sound came out. Instead, she nodded. He was right. She couldn't go by herself and he was neck deep in planning further steps out. But he had also wanted to keep as few people as possible involved.

Even from the other room, she could make out his words as he called down. When he returned to the bedroom he offered her a hand up and pulled her against his chest. "Thank you, thank you for staying." She nodded into his shoulder. Words would come back to her eventually. For now she just had to accept her own weakness.

There was a knock at the door and Callie followed Benny into the lounge. On the other side of the door stood Swank, looking quite refined in his pressed suit and clean shirt-cuffs.

"Callie, tell Swank here what you need."

"I need a neurobiology or neurophysiology textbook, ideally. If not one of those, a general medical textbook, just make sure there's a chapter or two about the brain and nervous system." Her hands were shaking. The room was so cold.

"Anything else?"

"No, no that should be it."

Swank put his big hands on each of her shoulders and looked her right in the eyes. She could see his resemblance to Benny this way. Before it hadn't made itself that obvious. It was that funny sort of sincerity. "Trust me, I'll find this for you."

She nodded. She'd do this.

"I'd tell you to take supplies but you know what you're doing." Benny clapped Swank on the back as he showed his half-brother out of the suite. Callie couldn't keep her legs going any longer and crumpled up on the couch, pulling the blanket up over her chest, leaving only her head exposed.

Maybe a nap wouldn't be too bad.

Benny and Swank stood just on the other side of the threshold for several more minutes talking. At one point Benny laughed, then Swank laughed back. This was going to work out. Benny had slotted himself in next to her on the couch again, this time letting his arm drape over her shoulder.

"So what do I do now?"

"Whatever you want, Callie. Just don't go too far, in case." He pressed a kiss on the crown of her curls.

"In case. Right. I think I'd like to sleep for a bit."

"Mm, that sounds good."

Even in her half-awake state she felt Benny slip away, leaving her alone on the couch and heading back to the office and Yes Man.