THE TRAUMA TEAM
Boooooooo Doooooop…
Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep-!
Squid rolled over in her sleeping bag and waved her arm around in a futile attempt to find the volume knob on her CB radio. She'd put it far enough away that she couldn't even reach it without getting up, so after a few painful seconds she just covered her face and resigned herself to the dispatch tones. Eventually, the noxious sound was replaced by the staticky voice of Doctor Alvarez.
'Clark County Dispatch to Freeside EMS… We've got a priority 1 BLS call by Freeside's North gate. Cot is required. Bystander calling in for an adult female. Caller states that the patient was bludgeoned in the head, currently lying unconscious. Light bleeding. Normal Breathing. Scene safety not clear. Use discretion. Page Beatrix to come up ASAP.
Squid looked at her bedside clock.. It was almost 7:00- fuckin 1900! She'd laid down for a "quick nap" at 2:00. She didn't feel like she'd slept at all.
Still, a trauma call was always worth waking up for. That was the kind of good stuff that made the whole "Followers of the Apocalypse cadet" deal fun. She was trying to stay off chems, so these calls were the only rush she got anymore. She stretched her whole body to fumble around for the speaker mic.
'Are there any available units in the area? Repeat, priority 1 call, unconscious. North Gate. BLS.'
Finally, she snagged the mic by its dangling, coiled wire and secured it in her palm. She held the mic up so close to her mouth that it was touching her chin and pushed the button. It made a gross crunching noise.
"Foxtrot-Street-69, I'm on it, all about it, gotta have it! Grabbing my shit right now, I'll stage at the tire pile around the corner. Uh, no cot."
For a few seconds, there was nothing but fuzz over the radio. Then:
"Squid, you're not currently allowed to "self dispatch" until Bayen has called in or been dispatched. Are any other…?"
Squid turned off the radio before she could hear the rest. This was some real shit! She was gonna be first on scene for a Priority 1 trauma! This was as real as it got for a BLS crew.
Practically bursting with energy, Squid jumped out of bed and started grabbing her stuff. Gloves in pockets, kickass sneakers on feet (double tied), knife on the floor- shit! On belt, jump bag over shoulder. Badge pinned on sleeve.
Squid took a look at herself in her crusty bedroom mirror before she headed out- adjusted her clothes and stuff. A bonafide Freeside Hero grinned back.
She walked out into the other room. Something dripped down from the bloated, decaying ceiling and splattered on her shoe. Right on the white part that she'd drawn all over. She shuffled to the side, into the world's oldest, smelliest couch, where Tata was reclining with a big gun and a bottle of whisky. There was a book lying open on his lap. The TV on the floor was playing static.
"Ayy- Where do you think you're going today, little miss?"
Squid suddenly wished she hadn't stopped walking.
"Nowhere, Tata."
Tata laughed. He raised his rifle up with one arm and pointed it at Squid- no- at the bag hung over her shoulder. Maybe he would have poked it if that didn't mean getting up.
"Mmmmm. Yeah. Packing your bags and leaving in the night, every week… You know you-" he belched. Something might have come up with it, because he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "You… Good lord, Catalina, you spend more time with those anarchist sellouts than you do at home."
"They're not sellouts tata! If you paid any attention to what I- I mean, what they do out there you'd be proud. I know it."
Tata didn't like that. He knocked the butt of his rifle against the floor. "You don't know what you're talking about. You know they've always been on their side? They do their handouts in Freeside, but they whore themselves to the NCR for money. That's why only NCR sheep know how to read anymore- because the Followers are whores!" He was working himself up now. He had lumbered up from the couch now, and was holding the rifle under his arm. Squid took a few steps back. "You know, I barely see my own daughter anymore? Isn't that fucked? I miss you, Catalina! I miss my little girl! How can I raise you if you aren't here!?"
"I'm sorry tata! I'm sorry, it's just, life's been hard lately, you know? I've been trying to stay off psycho like you told me. And the Followers have been like family. They've been really helping me out."
Everything stopped. The TV static was the only sound now. Tata's face twisted into a strange expression as he turned the words over in his head. "The Followers? Like Family?"
Squid's blood ran cold. "Hey. Hey. You know I didn't mean it like that tata. Come on."
He started walking towards her. He wasn't talking anymore. He'd dropped the rifle on the couch, his fists were clenched-
Squid hit the deck and sprinted back through the doorway into her room. She jumped up onto her bed with the footsteps heavy behind her. Her heart was in her throat. She heaved the bag up through the window, hoisted her top half through, almost there-
"Get back here! Get back-!"
"Gettoff!" Squid kicked back at him, but she knew it wasn't any use. She was far enough through the window that she just kept trying to claw her way through. The pain didn't matter. She was grabbing at every hole in the wall to keep get some leverage. "I said Gettoff!"
She'd managed to get a leg through, but now she was in an even worse position somehow. It hurt bad. Desperately, she tried to find something to hold onto but there was nothing left to grab onto and Tata started pulling her back through. The skin of her fingers dragged against the rough bricks.
Before she could even realize what happened, there was a ripping noise and Squid was on her face in a pile of bricks and ancient plaster. She pushed herself up and looked around. Her face hurt. Her head hurt. Tata was yelling.
No time to think. The bag had made it, so she threw that over her shoulder and stumbled away. Maybe towards the North Entrance. Maybe not. First she just had to get away.
At first, everything was a blur, but soon, the alleys became familiar again. Soothing. She stopped to figure out which way she was going to go.
Squid was breathing heavy. Her stomach was all cramped up. Her face was wet. Not with tears, though. No tears. Just sweat. She felt her lip tremble a little as she tried to orient herself in the Freeside maze, but she bit it before any noise could escape. She just set her course and started hiking.
No crying. No thinking. No pussy shit.
Didn't you say you'd be loving me night and day
Or were you foolin'?
Didn't you sigh ev'ry time that we kissed goodbye
Or were you foolin'?
Not too far down the road just outside the gates of Freeside, amidst the sharecropper fields of Maize and Tobacco, there laid a cozy wooden shack with an aluminum roof. Moth-bitten blinds had been drawn across the empty window frames. They danced in the hot summer breeze.
The air was heavy inside. The pillows on the bed had fallen between the gap, and the covers were sweaty and strewn about. The room was quiet but for the old song on the radio, and Savanna's heavy breathing as Isaac held her in his warm embrace. She had laid her head down in his lap to rest. Isaac was clearly worn out too, with his blonde hair sticking to his sweaty forehead, but not like she was. Sex was easier for him.
"My sweetpea…" He ran his fingers through her long black hair. Brushed it out of her face. "Do you need some water baby? I could-"
"Don't worry baobie. I'm okay." She nuzzled up against him. "I just, you know. Just gotta catch my breath." She tried to do like Isaac had told her, breathing in through her nose and out through pursed lips. It didn't feel like it was making things better.
With a little groan of exertion, Savanna rolled all the way onto her back. Splayed out across Isaac's lap- naked, vulnerable, she pointed her thumb at the headboard.
"Could you grab the pillows for me?" There was a rustling as Isaac contorted himself to fish the pillows out from between the headboard and mattress. She kissed him on the belly. "Thank you baobie."
Getting situated into a comfortable position was a lot harder than it used to be. She had half the limbs to work with, and twice as many aches. Something inside of her back, some old piece of shrapnel or something, hurt enough to make her wince as she sat herself up against the she wriggled into a position where it hurt less but she could still feel it. Stuck inside of her. Just out of reach.
When she saw how Isaac was looking at her, she felt a pain in her heart too. A feeling of shame. The lust, the warmth, the desire, they were all gone from Isaac's eyes. He was looking at her with pity. It wasn't his fault, but at the same time, she couldn't stand the thought. It was like a worm in her brain.
He'd just fucked her, so what had changed? Did he only feel lust for her in the moment? Did it leave him completely when the act was done? Or did he ever see her the way she saw him? Maybe he just saw sex as an obligation- because that's what boyfriends and girlfriends do. She looked down in disgrace.
If that's how he felt right now, who knows how he felt about her when she wasn't lying naked in bed with him. Even after her miraculous recovery, she would never grow back into that pretty young girl who Isaac had fallen in love with. This was how she was always going to be. From now on. This is what he was going to have to live with. She closed her eyes.
"I'm really sorry Isaac." She opened her eyes again. Let her gaze wander around the room- around the house. The whole place was pretty much just one big messy room. Books, clothes, odds and ends were strewn about the floor, hanging on the walls, stacked up on the furniture. Ornaments of their life together. The life that they'd committed to.
The tears hadn't come yet, but Savanna could feel a lump in the back of her throat.
"Pardon?" Isaac scratched the back of his head. "Aw, you're alright Sweetpea. The pillows weren't stuck too bad."
She felt like screaming. Felt like pounding on Isaac's chest and asking him why he was still leading her on like this. But she didn't. She took a deep breath, exhaled, and tried to find a quiet place in her mind. A place where she could recover. She pictured the place she used to retreat to as a child, a little cliffside cave lit with strings of colorful lights. She tried to put herself there before she spoke again. The radio on the coffee table crooned out a verse in the silence between.
Didn't you say you'd walk miles
For my caresses and smiles?
Didn't you phone that you hated to be alone
Or were you foolin'?
"Isaac, do you still think I'm beautiful?" The suddenness of the question didn't seem to catch Isaac off guard in the slightest. He gave her a gentle smile and kissed her on the head. His fingers danced across her cheek and cupped around her chin.
"Doubt you were thinkin' that sorta thing when I was on top of you a minute ago." He gave her another kiss, on the forehead, then on the nose… Their faces pressed close together. The scruff on his face tickled her cheek. His eyes were so beautiful. She'd never met anyone else with green eyes like his. "You already know I do. And nothing I say is gonna change whatever is going on in your head right now, so I won't try."
Savanna broke free from his grasp. "Hey! That's not why I'm-" She struggled for words. She had probably been reaching with her initial spiral, jumping to conclusions, but she still felt that pain in her heart. It was still coming from somewhere. Stuck inside of her, just out of reach. "I'm just wondering how? Do you not see it?"
"See what?"
"THIS!" She put her hand on her chest. Her heart thumped against her hand. "Look at me Isaac! Seriously. I'm fat, I've got half my arms and legs off, I can't breathe…" She let her miserable self slump forward. "If I were an animal they would've just put me out of my misery already. You didn't sign up for any of this when we got together! And you didn't deserve this for saving my life!"
Isaac got down on a level with Savanna and shook his finger accusingly. "Hey now, don't start with any brahmin shit like that! I know you. You start with this stuff and you can't stop. It goes in circles!"
"I know. I'm sorry."
"Stop sayin' sorry to everything!"
"I'm- damnit! Look, what do you want me to say? I'm objectively ugly. In a conventional sense. Sometimes, it makes me wonder if you actually still think I'm attractive. And if you, like, think about me sexually. When we're not having sex."
There it was. A lot had just spilled out, more than she was usually comfortable sharing. But right now it felt good to spell it out so directly. Out loud and also in her own head. It seemed like Isaac appreciated it too because his expression immediately softened. He wasn't big into subtext.
"I… can see how that'd get to you." He seemed to think for a moment. Choosing his words carefully, no doubt. "I ain't quite sure what to say, Sweetpea. I think on you a lot. When we're lying in bed at night, I'll just look at you sleeping next to me and think about everything we went through to get here. How lucky I am. How I want to hold you close and kiss you all over... It's hard to explain. Sometimes I'll kiss you on your pretty little nose- you never notice." He grinned a little bit at that. "Uhh, and sex stuff. I mean, Jesus! How does a man even talk about that? Can I skip that part?"
"You were just inside of me, you freak." Isaac shook his head.
"Okay fine! But it don't feel right saying it out loud."
He leaned over to whisper into her ear. His voice had a little tremor, as if he was still nervous to speak of such things even quietly. She could feel her face turning red as he spoke. Not at all in a bad way, though. She almost wanted to giggle.
Love is supreme when a couple can plan and dream
The way that we do
Love is no guess when you picture your happiness
The way that we do…
"Oh, baobie. I love you so, so much." She kissed him on the lips. They broke apart, and kissed again. And again. She could feel Isaac digging his nails into her back as they held each other tight. Eventually, the kissing turned into hugging, and Savanna found herself draped over Isaac's shoulder. It wasn't a bad place to be. "But… I'm sorry to keep asking you this stuff, but how can you think that kind of thing about me? How does your mind do that?"
"Well, I don't know why. Do I gotta know why?" He was playing with her hair again. Couldn't help himself. "At some point you did something to my head and I guess it's just stayed that way, cause I always feel the same kinda feelings when I look at you. You're a beautiful woman."
Savanna tightened her grip on her lover. Her heart, which had been throbbing with pain, thumping hard in her chest, was now filled with the soothing warmth of Isaac's words and his tight embrace. A part of her felt silly about the false alarm; relieved that her gut feeling was so wrong. Putting a stop to the spiral in her mind was no small feat.
But that was only a part of her. There was still a small part that doubted the sincerity of Isaac's words, that picked apart every sentence for deception and double meanings. There always would be. For as long as she looked like this, for as long as she felt like this, she would always ask herself these painful questions. Questions like:
Am I just an obligation to him? Does he stick around because he thinks it makes him a good person?
If he didn't feel personally responsible for me, would he have left already?
Does he ever regret saving my life?
Isaac had told her, over and over again, that he wanted to spend his life with her. He told her that he dreamed of growing old and raising kids with her. He'd told her all of that. And yet, whenever she had time to think, dark thoughts would cloud her mind and her eyes would well up with tears. They made the future seem so impossible. So cold. So dark.
Roses and kiddies and such
Is that expecting too much?
Didn't you say it would happen that way
Or were you foolin'?
Later that night, between the crumbling walls of old Fort Mormon, a man and a woman were cleaning up the last traces of a bloody mess in a tent full of medical equipment; The operating theater. This was where the real magic happened, but today's big show was already over.
If you looked more closely, you'd see that the man- Doctor Eddie Vasquez, a tall man with a pinched face and small glasses- wasn't really doing much of anything. Just polishing his surgical instruments, as if they weren't already spotless. He had placed his scrub tech, Emily Ortal, on fluid cleanup duty. She looked miserable.
"I think we're about done here, Doc. But, if there's anything else you need before I go…?
"Don't grovel, Ortal." He gave his face a good rub. A deep one. The kind where you massage your eye sockets with your palms and see black spots afterwards. "Today was bad. Worse than usual. I feel like we should be past the point where you're still fucking up like this. It's every day with you." Emily didn't respond to that. He still hadn't looked at her, but he could imagine the expression on her face. He dug in further. "I mean, Kelly, I almost understand. She's old. She's tired. But you should be better by now…"
"I'm trying my best Doc! You know that." Her voice was weak. Her face, red. Ashamed. She was looking down but Doctor Vasquez stared into her eyes. He wouldn't let her avoid his gaze.
"If this is your best then you should leave this field. Before you kill more cases."
Emily looked away. She didn't make a sound, but he could tell that the tears were coming on. He could always tell the moment when they started crying.
"Well, I guess we're- guess we're all finished here, then!" Emily started towards the door flap. Doctor Vasquez cleared his throat loudly before she could make it out.
"Yeah! You're finished. You can leave." Emily quickly scurried out the tent, leaving Doctor Vasquez alone with his thoughts. He shook his head. "Fuck my life, man."
Technically, today's case wasn't actually dead, so they hadn't actually "killed her" per se. She was only "good as dead." Her brain was irreparably damaged from the bleeding and she was taking up a ventilator in Usanagi's intensive care unit until she died or had her organs harvested. Or both.
There had been many mistakes. Certainly, the techs had made some mistakes in the panic of the moment, but the patient had suffered the most under Doctor Vascquez's scalpel. It was he who had failed to intubate the patient for almost two minutes, while she lay chemically paralyzed and unable to breath on the operating table. It was he who had berated his techs for suggesting that they fetch the equipment to monitor intracranial pressure and EEGs before immediate surgery, only to spend an unacceptable amount of time finding the lesions and draining the hematomas.
It didn't take any time at all to find the surface bleed. The patient had a nasty bruise and a crack in her skull where the epidural hematoma was. But she had another one deep within her cerebrum. He could tell immediately, by the way her brain pushed against the holes he sawed into her skull in his desperate attempts to locate the lesion and get a good angle from which to drain the edema. When he finally found it, drained it, and stopped the bleeding, he knew in his heart that today's case wasn't going to recover. He didn't need an EEG or neurologic exam to tell him the obvious.
Doctor Vasquez pushed his hair back and looked up at the ceiling. The lights shone through his eyelids. He thought about how Doctor Saller (not Isaac, that snot nosed little punk- his father, Lucas) would have reacted to his work today. All the little mistakes he made. The way that he let them get to him. That was half his problem. He let the little stuff get to him. He let it freak him out and throw him off his game.
It had always been like this. Over all these years as the lead trauma surgeon at Fort Mormon, he still did this shit. What did that say about him?
"They should be able to trust you with their life. Every single one of them deserves the very best. If you can't give them that, then you're not fit for this position."
He thought he'd be able to do it. He thought the mistakes would stop happening as he gained experience. He thought that whenever Doctor Saller shouted at him for his blunders, berated him for the small things, that he would never make a mistake like that ever again. Eddie was scared of Doctor Saller at the time, but he thought that by the end of his residency, that he would be some sort of super surgeon.
Coming in to work every day filled him with dread. As if Doctor Saller was still alive, and was still watching over his shoulder at every moment. There was a common misunderstanding that Doctor Vasquez liked his job, since it was his entire life. He hated his job.
He kept his pager turned up to full volume in his tent, and yet he still felt sick to his stomach when he went to sleep. He never wanted to miss a page again. Half the time, he slept in the operating theater.
"You're always talkin' about how you wish you were better at this. Wish you were better at that. Would you want someone like that as your surgeon? If you want all that then why don't you pick up a text book for once in your life, Eddie? Be better."
Every day was a rigorous push for more. More knowledge, more skill, more strength. A day off felt to Eddie like a day completely wasted. His heart yearned so badly for any kind of fun, any kind of recreation, but he had made himself into a devoted soldier. His mind was a sunless place. He knew that even a small taste would be dangerous.
"For the greater good," he told people, when they asked him why he did this. He didn't really see himself as a normal person anymore. He was a slave who performed surgery for the people of Freeside. He didn't feel happy about it anymore. He didn't get a rush from operating, or from saving someone's life. It didn't make him feel happy to see the joyful faces of the families. This was just what he did.
Some things still bothered him though. Nothing made him happy, but every failure hurt him deeply. Every failure reminded him of Doctor Saller's shouting. Or worse, his quiet disappointment. Made him think of wailing families, and the solemn feeling of realizing that it's over for someone. That nothing you do will matter, and any interventions you perform are simply to ease your own conscience, or to feed your ego.
He didn't like to feel this way. But he couldn't control it either. Those were visceral, primal feelings that he couldn't just block out or ignore. Consequences of the lifestyle.
"When you put on that badge, you're gonna give up a lot. There'll be some bumps. It'll hurt. You'll look in the mirror and you won't recognize yourself at the end. But I promise you, Eddie, it'll be the most beautiful journey you ever take."
Doctor Vasquez looked at his reflection in his scalpel. Turned it over in his hand to catch every angle. He'd been a child when Doctor Saller told him that. No older than fifteen. And in the end, he had been right. He really didn't recognize himself anymore. When he looked back a few years- back to residency, or to the cloudy memories before, there was nothing left of that man. Doctor Vasquez had destroyed him completely. He felt nothing but contempt for Eddie Vasquez.
As for the journey… he wondered sometimes when he would find the pot of gold at the end. When he would understand why he had to do this, day after day, with no reprieve. When it would all come together and he would finally see the beauty in it.
Everyone else seemed content with their work. Everyone else found beauty and meaning, and took the job at their own pace. Even "Saint Usanagi" found fulfillment with no days off. So what was he doing wrong? Why did they deserve to have it easier than him? Every time he thought about the rigors of his residency, of his life, compared to everyone else's, he felt the sting of injustice in his heart.
What did they do to have it so good?
Out by the old Sarsaparilla factory, The orthopedic surgeon was enjoying the warm summer night listening to radio New Vegas on his porch. There was a little puddle of his signature home brewed "Hard Sarsaparilla" left in the bottom of his bottle, and he was swishing it around idly as he watched the moon rise over the strip. It really was a beautiful night out there.
The surgeon went by the name of Sunset Scotty. Surely there was a time, at some point in his distant past, that people had called him by his real name, but he'd been Sunset Scotty for so long that it was more than just a nom de guerre. It was an identity. The giant cowboy hat, the aviator sunglasses, the plaid flannel shirts… It was almost like a personal brand.
The song on the radio was coming to a close, and Scotty decided to finish off the last of his drink. He took a moment more to enjoy the final few notes before the programming from Mr. New Vegas began. And when he switched the radio off, he found himself sitting for a while longer in the quiet. He'd been enjoying life's quiet moments more recently. Listening to the thrum of the lights and the chirping of the crickets. He didn't feel compelled to stand.
He set down his empty bottle on the ground. There was a strange sensation in his fingertips as he let go of the bottle- a peeling, and a cold and raw sort of pain. He looked down and saw that there was blood smeared on the bottle. Little bits of peeling skin were stuck against the moist paper label. He drew his hand back in disgust.
"Shit! Must've been holding it too long…" He tried to press the wound against his shirt but found that it made the pain even worse. And something else was sticking now. He took a deep breath. Grit his teeth. When he pulled it off, he could feel the skin above his palm come peeling off.
So it was going to be one of those nights. Scotty tried his best to stand up without using his hands but was overcome with nausea and immediately fell back down on his butt. At least the skin there wasn't peeling yet. Unfortunately the skin on his feet had suffered some necroses and though the bandages and cushions helped, getting up was a task and a half. He took another deep breath, braced himself and tried again.
It hurt. It made him queasy. No getting around that. Walking inside, opening the door with the crook of his arm. But he was going to have to live with this kind of pain for a while. He asked Beatrix if it ever got better and she said it did. So it's not like this was forever.
It was dark inside. Scotty didn't turn on the lights. He limped through the darkness to his work desk and cracked open his first aid kit. He turned up the volume on his radio setup with his elbow, and tuned into Fireground-5. He didn't sit down, as awkward as that made the whole process. He didn't want to stand up again until tomorrow morning.
"Hey Sunrise Girl. If you're on this channel, radio me back. I'm going to go check Fireground 1 now."
Then he turned to Fireground-1, the main operations channel. It was just static for now. He cleared his throat, then depressed the mic button using his two forearms pressed on either side of the mic. "WHISKEY-66 to GLOBAL-66. Repeat, WHISKEY-66 to GLOBAL-66." For a moment there was silence. Then,
"GLOBAL-66 to WHISKEY-66. That's GLOBAL-66 to WHISKEY-66. Why don't we switch channels?"
Normally, Scotty would be happy to hear her pretty voice, but tonight he just felt empty. He switched the channel to Fireground-5. It was a pain navigating the radio without his hands.
"So… are we still on for tonight?," came her lovely voice through the static. It seemed kind of like she already knew what the answer was going to be. Scotty sighed into the mic.
"Sorry Hazel. It's one of those nights." The static was answer enough. He hung his head. "It's… not that I don't want to see you. I just don't think we'd have a good time tonight."
He wasn't lying. He did want to see her. He'd been looking forward to tonight. According to Beatrix, he would probably have a hard time getting it up soon, and so he ought to be having his fun where he could get it.
"It's fine. I hope you feel better tomorrow." Scotty rolled his eyes. He had begun working on the painful, difficult process of bandaging his hands with non-adhesive dressings, so he took his time to think about a reply.
"Yeah, me too," he said, finally. He waited for a response. And waited. Aaaand waited. But there was only static.
He wanted to wait forever. Even though tonight's plans were shot and even if Hazel was upset now, he wanted to hear her voice again. Get some closure for the night. A goodnight at least. He hated going to bed upset and uncertain like this; it was bad for the mind and bad for the soul.
Scotty finished wrapping the dressings around his hands and knuckles. He closed up the first aid kit and turned down the radio to an acceptable volume. He kept it tuned in to Fireground-1, in case anyone wanted to page him. Then he headed for the bottling cellar. His BAC was way too low to sleep tonight.
Hard sarsaparilla was good stuff. Sadly, the alcohol content wasn't very high. When he descended into the cellar, down the steep, crumbling staircase and into the dark, he resolved to take two bottles, just to make the night a little more pleasant. He came up the stairs with four bottles. Cradled in his arms, wobbling dangerously. Much like Scotty himself. Walking around all day made his feet ache and his legs wobble.
As he willed himself up the steps, something burst- something on the bottom of his foot. An ulcer, maybe. Something big. He yanked his leg up and his other foot couldn't hold the weight. He tried to reach out for something to grab onto and his hand found a railing but the bulky bandage kept him from holding on. He would have reached out with his other hand, too, but he was still instinctually holding onto the bottles in the crook of his elbow. His stomach dropped and his eyes went wide-
The rest was a blur. There was a lot of thumping and then he was lying on his back at the bottom of the stairs, in a lot of pain. Surrounded by broken glass and lying in a puddle of alcohol. His ears were ringing. His hat had fallen off his head and was still rolling gently on its brim. As if he had been bested in a duel.
He tried to move, but he could feel the skin of his back and behind his shoulders peeling under him. Under his clothes. He groaned in pain and rolled over onto his side. The spilled Sarsaparilla was cool against his cheek.
When did it all start? And where had it all started? Did it even matter?
Most ghouls could trace back their disease to some event, or to obvious prolonged exposure. Scotty didn't even know when he'd been exposed. It had all come on so suddenly- and yet, it was progressing so slowly. So agonizingly slowly. He almost wished it had all just happened at once.
Amongst the spilled liquor and broken glass, there was still one bottle that laid mostly unbroken. The bottom half had shattered off but there was still plenty of beer pooled in the bottom. Sunset Scotty wrapped his bandaged palm around it and raised it to his lips.
It didn't even feel good going down. In fact it just made him feel more sick to his stomach. He wanted to puke. His head was pounding. But there was a comfort in familiarity. He took another sip, and laid the bottle to rest.
He wasn't going to get up again tonight. He wasn't sure he ever wanted to get up again. This was where he would be sleeping. Maybe this was where he would die. It would be delightfully ironic, the orthopedic surgeon falling down the stairs and dying. His eyes closed. His head laid back against the moist concrete floor. He did his best to sweep away the halo of glass shards around his head.
He would try again tomorrow. Tonight was a wash but tomorrow would be better. A new sun would rise over the Mojave and he would be greeted with a beautiful summer day. The wounds would blister overnight and the pain would subside.
The road to healing- stabilization, rather, would be a long one. But he had to keep focus. So many people were counting on him. He'd made it this far. He had to see this through.
Some time earlier in the day, when the sun was still setting, Squid and Bayen exited the OR together. The wheels of their empty stretcher clattered against the uneven terrain beneath them. Bayen pushed, Squid steered. The beeping of monitors and the urgent voices of Doctor Vasquez and his techs grew quieter until eventually they disappeared.
People were huddling around the campfire by now. She could hear them laughing and telling stories. She could smell the smoke. They weren't drinking yet but they would be soon; the energy was already thick in the air. Squid felt a tug that made her want to drop what she was doing and commiserate with them. She had spent a lot of time "in her own head," today, as the adults would say. And she didn't like it there. She would rather sit and tell everyone about today's call and all the badass shit they'd done to get the patient there alive and how no one ever appreciated the EMS guys. But that was fine, because there was something cool about being underappreciated.
Some of them had talked to her before about how it was "unhealthy" to have this many adult friends while also not knowing almost anyone her age. She thought that was stupid. She was a goddamn Freeside Hero! Not some street urchin, not some kid next door. She operated on a whole different level than those freaks. They didn't understand her at all.
"You've been kind of quiet today, Squid. Something on your mind?"
Squid nodded idly. "Yeah. You know. Family stuff." She scratched her head. "Tata stuff."
Bayen nodded. "I see." They kept pushing the stretcher. The gate guard, Billy the Adult, gave them a lazy wave from atop the wall as they approached. They stopped for him to open the gates "Are you going to stay at your house tonight?"
Squid rubbed her yellow, short-bitten fingernails against her palms. For once, she found herself staring down in genuine shame. She tried to force her chin up but only succeeded in retracting it back into her neck.
"Not… tonight man. Gotta wait for things to cool off." The big wooden doors creaked open, and the outside world came spilling in. The Freeside stench. Squid didn't want to take another step.
Bayen sighed. It wasn't an angry sigh though. It sounded like maybe he could understand.
"You know what? I can walk the stretcher back to my house by myself. Which is where I'm going to sleep. But you do whatever makes you feel best. Just don't get completely piss drunk."
The clattering of wheels. The creaking of the doors. And Bayen was gone into the night. There was no goodbye this time, no "Hell yeah bröther! We sure rocked that call!" Squid stared at the doors for a while.
She looked back at her friends gathered around the campfire. She couldn't really make out the words, but she knew what they were talking about. They always talked about the same stuff. They talked about the stupid and sad and nasty shit they'd seen today, or this week, or whatever. They talked about who was dating who. Real juicy stuff.
Suddenly, Squid wasn't really interested in hearing about other people's problems.
Instead, she sat down on the ground and leaned up against the doors. The pebbles bit her ass, but it was whatever. She pulled out her notebook. Flipping through the pages, there were lots of doodles of badass EMTs and Bounty hunters and Drifter's she'd made up in her head, and even more drawings of little guys shooting at each other. None of the pages had lines so it wasn't much good for writing but she'd have to make do. She took a good, long look around to make sure no one was watching, then set the book against her lap and poised her pencil.
DEER DIARY…
TODAY SUCKED. I WISH I HAD NOT LEFT MY ROOM. I DONT NO WHAT I DID TO PISS TATA OFF SO BAD BUT HE CHASED ME AND MADE ME USE MY ESCAPE EXIT TODAY. I ALMOST DIDNT MAKE IT.
TATA IS A GOOD STRONG MAN + SUPER SMART BUT I ALSO WISH I COULD LEEV AND STAY WITH THE FLOWERS FOREVER. I ALSO MISS MAMA. I STILL DON'T KNOW WHY SHE LEFT. SHE MADE TATA HAPPY. THE FLOWERS ARE GOOD BUT I MISS MY FAMILY.
I RAN MORE CALLS WITH BAYAN TODAY. THERE WAS A TROMA CALL! BUT IT WAS KIND OF LAME. BAYAN TOLD ME THAT TROMA IS NEVER AS COOL AS YOU THINK IT WILL BE.
BAYAN WAS NICE TO ME TODAY. SOMTIMES I WANT TO SAY THANK YOU TO HIM BUT I CANT DO THAT SINCE IT WOULD MAKE ME LOOK LIKE A PUSY. HES A GOOD PARTNER + GOOD FREND. I HOPE HE NOWS THAT EVEN THO I ACT MEEN SOMETIMES I DONT HATE HIM IM JUST HAVING FUN.
WELL I GESS THATS EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENED TO ME TODAY. IM GOING TO BED NOW. I HOPE TOMOROW IS BETTER THAN TODAY. THANKS FOR LISENING DIARY. SEE YOU NEXT TIME!