A/N: I usually put all the chapters for the week on Doc manager on Sunday, just so I have no excuse to get behind. This Sunday, I slept in till noon because SWTOR. I still intend to not get behind. Let's see how that goes.
In a break from tradition, this one is firmly planted in canon first anime, post series.
62. Hospital
"Thank you for your time, sir," said Ed, and he and Al left the hospital room, back to square one on tracking the Uranium bomb.
"He didn't look too good, brother," said Al as they headed down the hallway. "After spending all that time around you, and Granny Pinako, and Winry, I can't believe people here are crippled from losing a limb like that," he added.
Ed sighed and pushed his bangs back. "Well, they're too busy using science to kill each other," he replied. "Honestly, bombs in the ground? Seems like too much work just to blow off part of a leg."
Ed looked over at another patient who was missing an arm, and another with gangrene festering around his knee. Al sighed next to him, "It just seems so…"
"Primitive?" Ed supplied.
Al shook his head. "Wrong," he said. Ed nodded. A world without Winry definitely felt wrong. He rubbed his right arm, the last connection he had to her. He wondered if, with her medical training, maybe she was working in a hospital like this one in their old world. Winry had been an expert in animated prosthetics at fifteen, and Ed had only recently begun to understand how talented she was. It wasn't until he realized his injuries would have permanently crippled him in this world that he realized how lucky he was.
"Brother, look!"
Al had his nose pressed against the glass of another room. Ed looked over and saw it was the maternity ward. Winry had always been good with kids. In emergencies, she and Pinako acted as midwives in Risembool. He wondered how she'd be with her own kids. He also felt a pang when he remembered they wouldn't be his. He wondered what their kids would have looked like. Al used to tease him about having ridiculously blond children, and Ed tried to picture it in his mind.
He felt Al's hand on his shoulder; he's getting melancholy again. It's time to leave and continue their search for information. Regrets would have to wait, for now.