Waiting Rooms
for the prompt: "maybe one of them gets injured or thinks the other is dead or something like that". It didn't turn out all that… direct to the topic but I like it.
Missouri,
July, year four
The chairs in the waiting room squeak. They squeak every time Worth shifts—any time he so much as twitches. He's vaguely aware that this would be a thousand times more unbearable if he still had to breathe, but he's not in any kind of mood to be grateful for small mercies. He doesn't want small mercies, he wants the big one.
His hands clench and unclench in his lap, dry and exposed and useless . He's a doctor for christ's sake, he's not supposed to sit in waiting rooms. Putting a doctor in a waiting room is like submerging a vampire in a river full of dead people's blood. It ain't natural.
There's about three main reasons people get into the medical profession: they want money, they want the ability to control a situation, or they have a passion. Worth wasn't about to admit to any kind of passion, but he'd cop to wanting control. When you've got somebody on the table under you, there's nobody else to rely on. No praying to gods, no filing paperwork, no sweet-talking the system—just implacable organic flesh and whatever training you bring to the table.
Sitting here, in a waiting room, hoping to hell that everything goes alright? That's not something Worth knows how to deal with.
An oddly graceful body settles into the seat beside him, the usual suit jacket removed for now. Frankenstein left his gloves on, but the pushed-up neon orange sleeves leave a lot of green flesh exposed. Worth wonders if that's just a dry fact, or if there's some significance behind it. Could be Hanna wanted the jacket for something, whatever it is he's doing right now.
"He's going to be fine," the zombie said, as calm and certain as a mountain. "It's really not more than a flesh wound, all things considered."
Worth grunts. He's aware of the statistical probabilities—they're in his favor—but it doesn't make the waiting any easier.
"If you're worried about his credentials—" the zombie starts, a hint of irony in his dry voice.
"'F I wasn't sure the bastard could manage I'da done it myself," Worth snaps. He tugs a wisp of fur from the cuff of his coat. Hanna had promised that this guy was the real deal and Worth, as he was fond of saying, had never been much of a witch doctor. Conrad ought to be in good hands.
There were a lot of things that you could use to work on injured vampires, apparently, that vampires themselves had trouble handling. It was a bit like chemo, he'd been told, but he'd waved off that metaphor with an irritated grunt. He wasn't here to be patronized.
The waiting room is really a parlor, and the operating room is a bedroom that's been ritually sterilized, somehow, Worth doesn't understand it really, and the walls here hang with seriously fucking unsettling masks. The phalluses on the bookshelves were alright with him, but the masks?
The zombie stands, after a moment, and steps in front of Worth. Worth focuses on his knees, where the black slacks are wearing thin at the bend.
"Stand up," the zombie says, folding his arms over his chest. His gloved hands tuck under and over his dark elbows, and even that little motion manages to be firm but gentle.
"Wot?" Worth says, twisting his head up to look the dead man in his faintly glowing eye.
"Stand up," Frankenstein repeats.
The doctor squints. "…why?"
"I'd like you to punch me," the zombie says.
Worth looks up at him, the green-teal skin and the elegant stitch marks, the blank square jaw and the ridiculously baggy orange shirt—looks him up and down and starts laughing. He laughs hard. He laughs so hard he bends over at the waist and his temple bumps against his knee, and comes up gasping.
The zombie clips him in the jaw and something meaty busts inside the joint.
Worth comes up from his chair swearing.
His first intention is to hold back—he doesn't want to bust a stitch or nothing, god knows how he'd put the guy back together—but the dead man doesn't seem to be pulling any punches and, well, Worth hasn't had much experience playing nice anyhow.
Deadguy McKungfukid kicks him in the chest, and Worth doesn't even know what to do with that, he doesn't think he's ever actually been kicked before, at least not when he wasn't already lying on the floor. They get into a grapple, still standing, knees bent and arms straining, and the zombie pushes, and Worth goes down sideways and okay, yeah, fighting on the floor he's good at.
It's different than fighting Conrad. It's a lot like fighting Lamont used to be, except Lamont fought nasty and the dead guy just fights efficient. Also there's a lot less name-calling.
Frankenstein pins him, with some effort, and elbows him square in the face. Cartilage snaps. Worth's eyes water, his nerves scream, and a surprised laugh bubbles up out of his throat. He's split his lip under both fangs. Never mind the previous observations, that was just meanspirited.
Worth gives up at that point and just laughs, as his nose knits back together and his bruises suck back into his skin like flowers blooming in reverse. The jaw he pops back into place with a wiggle of muscles, and it heals too. The dead guy doesn't have a scratch on him, although his shirt has come unrolled at the sleeves and his hair is a little mussed.
"Can't even believe ya," Worth says, between gasps of laughter. "Damn, man, yer crazier than I thought."
The zombie tilts his head, above Worth, and a slight smile bends his dry lips. "You respond better to violence than comfort."
Worth shrugs. "Got me pegged," he admits, still grinning.
"And pinned," the dead man observes. "The procedure should last another ten minutes by Hanna's estimate. Would you like to try for best two out of three?"
The smile that splits Worth's face is wide enough to worry a doctor, if there was a third one in the house.
"Yer gonna regret that, brother."