by @f3nix With the best intentions
"A double toast! At your brilliant timing, for the second damn time."
The nurse spoke turning his gaze to the parking lot, beyond the window whose bars, swallowed by rust, had lost all their decorative hypocrisy. His cheerful lashing tone clashed with the fixture of his gaze elsewhere.
The lump of words channeled along the patient's Eustachian tubes like a sticky egg liqueur, while the neodymium lamp commented on the phrase with a quick moth’s flicker.
Through the steel bar on the side of the bed, her bleary, half-closed eyes returned to her the image of a lanky shape exiting the bedroom.
She wondered why she had only been noticed now, only now despite the endless carousel of drowsiness in which she had fallen for eons. A never-ending display of Chinese lamps, swarming with the nightmares of a painting by Bosch.
The impetus of thirst coagulated in a guttural moan, insufficient to make the sarcastic human crane turn back towards her.
The sound she emitted reminded her of a documentary with a koala, forced to walk on hot coals during a forest fire. It was something she had seen with Lucian that last night spent together before she left in secret heading to the clinic.
I had to fix it for us, Lucian. For once only, maybe the right one. And instead, look where I fucking got myself.
A sudden laugh tried to make its way. The spasms brought to her mind the horrible awareness of those tubes that, like worms, were violating her body. She had not noticed but two figures were now observing her from the edge of the bed.
"Rise and shine, Ms. White. You had a car accident just a mile away from the clinic. Fortunately, on his way back home after the shift, Valery noticed the wheels of your vehicle in the ditch along the avenue. We had to operate you urgently, a lung had collapsed and we had to contain internal hemorrhage in the abdominal cavity. It was not easy but someone up there decided that your day had not yet arrived. "
As he spoke, the doctor's eyes stared at her in dullness and, at the same time, darting with curiosity.
She would have said that some of her savior’s facial muscles - not all the necessary ones - were struggling to reproduce a slow smile. The attendant loomed from behind the doctor's silhouette, tilting his head silently to one side.
For God’s sake, tear all this stuff away and just give me a damn glass of water. Then I'll pay you what I owe you and leave.
She would have shouted at them, but the only breath filtering from her broken mouth didn't even sound like a koala moan anymore.
"Yes, I understand the curiosity, Ms. White." The doctor's eyes now reminded her of those of an abyssal fish.
"You have crossed the border and turned to us to participate in the pharmacological trials and, may I add, further to helping medical progress, you have also come because we pay fairly well."
A wet and repeated slap against the floor, in a point her eyes couldn’t reach, seemed to smear those statements along the washed-out walls. Through scarcely oiled winches, the human crane behind the doctor leaned forward in her direction.
"Well, Ms. White, notwithstanding the circumstance, you will be pleased to know that we have decided to still include you in the program. You will earn your fair compensation, after all."
Perhaps because of the narcotics, the doctor's face kept changing as if his features were playing hide and seek in the blind corners of her perception. A sound came from a low point close to the bed, similar to a badly restrained gurgle, while the doctor quietly turned away.
"You will have your money, despite your unfortunate condition or, perhaps, thanks to it," he said in a last laconic murmur.
***The end of the prompt ***
*** My continuation ***
Stepping out from the bedroom, the nurse bent his neck and asked the doctor “Should I let her drink now?”
The doctor looked through his notes and waved his finger negatively.
“Not yet, Perkins. Not in her condition. Only increase 4% glucose solution intravenously to 4 more milliliters and continue wetting her lips.”
“Sure thing sir.”
“…and… get her ready for the main procedure. We’ll be growing her new lungs from the preserved cell population of the collapsed one.” He winked to the tall nurse. “Are you excited? I am.”
“Doctor, do we have enough sampling material?”
“Yes, we have donor materials of every kind: epithelial cells, nerve cells, hormone-producing cells, blood cells, and structural or supporting cells. I thought you were familiar with these results.”
“I am, doctor. I was just making sure.”
“I presume all the legal technicalities were taken care of?”
“Not really.”
“Why?”
“Our registration office contacted her significant one”, the human crane looked at his notes,
“Lucian Bute… and it turned out that he isn’t her husband, but is merely her boyfriend and legally cannot assume responsibility.”
“Well, that’s too bad.” The doctor curled his lip and his eye assumed a stern expression. “I won’t give a rat’s ass of how you get the legal permission, but get it! Too much is on the line!” then after pondering added, “… and for Ms. White as well. She cannot survive on the artificial respirator indefinitely.”
“It seems, doctor, you are giving Ms. White too much extra attention. That doesn’t sound like you. I gather, she impressed you in some special way.”
“I know you are joking Perkins, but this isn’t the appropriate subject. Don’t you get it? This is much bigger than just saving Ms. White. This is about saving all the Ms. Whites out there…and Ms. Blacks, and Ms. Reds and Ms. Yellows as well.”
The razor-sharp lights of the operation room pushed their photon flow into Helen’s eyes. Its energy went through her cornea, iris, and pupil, and through hyaloid canal assaulted her optic nerve and literally boiled her retinal blood vessels.
Helen saw the doctor swimming to her through the river of vomit, while the human crane walked through this nasty smelly liquid holding the bunch of shiny metal instruments high in the air. Helen could smell their minds and that smell had nothing cerebral in. It was entirely visceral. She could sense their intelligence being colds and sticky. It was nothing more than a tool in the services of his drives and needs. Incapable of mental passion and mental interaction; they couldn’t relate to someone else’s suffering, not being able to comprehend anything other than their own physical sensations.
She saw how these completely egocentric creatures approached her lifeless body, ready to assault it with their vast, pervasive, diffused passive sexuality. Repulsed, Helen lost consciousness.
“…lancet…scalpel…hemostat…laser thread feeder…” Perkins silently furnished the instruments as Dr. Sartor continued doing his voodoo in the open abdominal cavity. Finally, gestured to the nurse to wipe the sweat off his forehead: “That’s it. Now it’s in God’s hands. Damn it, Perkins! I think we did it!”
“Let’s close up that broad then” human crane chuckled.
“Valery,” Dr. Sartor told Perkins quietly, but firmly, casting a quick look into human crane’s eyes, “I told you many times and am telling you now - zip it! This type of language is not appropriate when you speak about patients. Keep your cynicism at bay and be professional. One day, your mouth will get you fired. I am telling you this like a friend. You are a damn good nurse and I would hate to lose you. Ok.” He inhaled deeply, “Let’s close the abdominal cavity and pray that the technology would work and the donor cells will grow properly and took the root.”
‘Wow!’ Valery thought, ‘Why would nature award such a man with fish eyes? How fair is that?”
Ms. White didn’t know, how much time has passed, but little by little the nightmare that surrounded her stay in this evil clinic started to retreat. One day, it even seemed to her that now she could breathe the usual way as she did before the crash and before the whole ordeal.
“Rise and shine, Ms. White,” Dr. Sartor was trying to force a smile on his face. ‘How can someone be so ugly?’ Helen thought. ‘Oh, what a freak’
“We have good and bad news for you. Which one would you want to hear first?”
“Bad one,” to her surprise Helen uttered. Her voice was still weak, dry and crackling, but all analogies with a koala moan were out of the question.
“The bad news is that you still have to be here in the clinic until your full recovery for another…mmm” he rolled his fish eyes and drummed his finger on his lip, “month, month and a half until your new lung will reach its full size. The good news, however,” he tried to smile again and again the smile was short of Helen’s approval, “is that the procedure... the revolutionary procedure guided cell growth was successful and we have very high hopes (and justly so) for your full and complete recovery. Now let me take a look at you.” The doctor removed Helen’s robe and stared at her stomach, and the scar that went from her solar plexus to her pubic area.
“Good, good, good,” the doctor muttered, “the size of the swelling diminished, the scar is getting less noticeable. You are in a good shape, Ms. White” he said out loud.
Helen didn’t allow anybody to looks at her like this except for Lucian. Instinctively, she covered her breasts and pubic area with her hands.
“Excellent,” continued the doctor, covering Helen back with the robe, “reflexes seem to return and all other cognitive functions going back to normal.”
Helen looked out the window of the second-floor master bedroom of her newly bought house. The red orb of the sun was setting on the horizon painting clouds with intricate multicolored ornament. It was breathtakingly beautiful and Helen deeply inhaled filling with cool air all her lungs. Her gaze moved down to her new 540i BMW. This was the car of her dream, which she finally was able to purchase.
Tired of playing with the control of their new Posturepedic bed, Lucian picked up the newspaper that lay on the nightstand.
After reading for a while he exclaimed, “Look, there’s something about the doctor that treated you!
Dr. Steven Sartor and his assistant Valery Perkins were fired from the private clinic and their correspondent medical licenses were revoked. Hm… I wonder what he did? Wait…
The clinic settled the lawsuit paying the plaintiff three million dollars…” Lucian mumbled looking as his eyes were sliding through the article, “ ah… There… I found it.
Dr. Sartor is going to answer for his criminal methods of treatment and for the emotional and physical abuse and sexual harassment, he subjected his patient for the entire duration of “so-called” revolutionary treatment. The name of the accuser remains concealed to protect her privacy. Hm … I wonder who the accuser could be? What do you think?”
Helen walked from the window to the bed. Her movements were gracious, elegant and sexy. She lifted Lucian’s chin us and told him, looking into his gentle puppy eyes, “What difference does it make, love? Don’t be a bore. Let’s do what you are so well qualified for.” She turned off the nightstand lamp; put her knee on the bed getting ready to sink in Lucian’s embrace. A mysteries smile wandered on her lips.