Cort had fallen asleep in her father's office again. She had had another migraine, she felt drugged and her head was pounding like a kettle drum. She must have forgotten herself while studying, although she hadn't done that for a while once Dad had decided hunching over a monitor was giving her one hell of a pile of referral pain. It smelled like old lubricant and blood on top of the antiseptic though, so Stanley had to have hurt himself trying to fix Mr. Handy again and the robot had followed him in to see...Dad.
"DAD!" Cort shot up and instantly regretted it. One for the surge of pain that lanced behind her eyes, and two for realizing that the entire day -week? Who knew how long she'd been out after taking the damn swan dive in front of the first person she'd seen out here- hadn't been some pill induced hallucination.
"If you're done yelping, let's see if you can leave me hell alone now." A voice followed by a white haired black man came through the door to her left. Cort slapped at at his prodding, which ended promptly with a penlight to her eyes and a screech.
"What the hell are you DOING?"
The man scratched at his beard and crossed his arms at her. "Fixing up your raggedy ass. You're fine, aside from a class-A headache and some residual photo-sensitivity, which isn't surprising for where you fell out of, assuming the suit you're in is yours. You should adjust eventually, just keep the glasses on for now. Now get the hell out of my clinic." He nodded towards the end of the bed, where her sunglasses perched on top of the rest of her belongings.
Cort blinked an eye open. "Wait, you're a doctor? What the hell kind of bedside manner is that? How the hell did I get here? How long have I been here? Is my father here?" She continued babbling until Church jammed a tongue depressor in her open mouth and started her sputtering.
"One"," raising his fingers, " Yes I'm a doctor. A very overworked doctor to be precise, Doc Church to you. Two, it's the manner that gets you the hell out of my clinic as soon as I know you're entirely capable and ready to. Three, Sheriff Simms dragged you in. You now owe him about 50 caps."
"Capth?" Cort gobbled around her temporary impediment.
"It's money, you'll learn it, if you have any braincells left after the drugs I had to pump into you. Shut up. Four, you've been here for about a day and a half. Five, don't know, don't care." With that rejoinder, Doc Church retrieved his stick and left calling over his shoulder. "Simms will probably find you immediately. When you get out."
Cort made a face and mouthed unflattering words at the doorway, while swinging her legs off the decidedly worse-for-wear mattress she was slouched on. She wiggled her toes and pushed against the floorboards. Well, not too terrible, she thought. The headache's even going away, which is impressive after the light bulb in my eye socket. That's not a doctor, that's a fucking sadist. She checked over her arms and legs and was surprised and pleased over how well her scrapes were healing up under tidy dressings. Poking through her belongings, it was apparently due in part to all of her Stimpaks being thrust into her, if the holes running down each limb were any indication. They were going into me eventually anyway. At least now everything's a dull thud instead of a scream. Not so bad after all. After scrabbling her belongings into her rucksack and pausing to tie her hair into submission with a bit of surgical tubing snaked from under a shelf, Cort put her armour back on and stiffly but surely bee-lined for the door.
