Chapter Text
The children’s wing smelled of lemon cleaner and sterile wipes with the faint undertone of baby powder, plastic, and vomit.
“Look!” A three-year-old struggled in his caretaker’s arms. “Cwooown! Wanna ball!”
“Excuse me,” a nurse in scrubs walked towards us from the registration desk. He was human, broad shouldered with a thick shock of gray hair highlighted in purple. I’d worked with him before, if tangentially, when spillover in the children’s wing meant they sent a child over to our capsules for a general physical. I didn’t remember his name, and though I could have zoomed in with my eye to scan his badge, I didn’t want to push my luck either. Like the legendary Earth bird, now extinct, it felt better to stick my head in the sand and hope I remained unnoticed.
Wishing I had opted for the wig, I looked down at my hands, pushing the grav bed with the capsule atop it.
“Entertainment,” Charles stepped between me and the nurse. My eye zoomed in, quite without my express consent. Bradley. I looked away again as Charles explained, “We’re on the list.”
“Puppy!” Another pudgy human child walked up to Sherrinford and held out his fingers. Beside him was a Felix, who knelt on the floor, his elbows at his side, nose extended and twitching.
Sherrinford affected disinterest as the little girl smiled at him. Through the earpiece, he murmured, “The female has a Vitamin C deficiency.”
I looked. Her gums were red, the thin skin beneath her eyes bruised with exhaustion, and she had a rash running across her cheeks and forehead. It fit the symptoms, though most foods were fortified. Maybe she had an autoimmune disorder?
“No,” Sherrinford said. “They have her on a special diet. Her parental triad are Elevationists. They’ve handstitched stars along her trousers.”
“How did you know what I was thinking?” I subvocced.
Sherrinford barked. “You subvoc your thoughts. It should be irritating.”
“It’s not?”
“Your thoughts are refreshingly organized.”
Charles and the nurse were speaking softly, their heads close together as the clowns began blowing balloons from their fingers.
“We should go,” I subvocced.
Unfortunately, our attempts to escape unnoticed were hampered by Sherrinford being a dog. As he backed away, an oddly uncanine shuffle, the little girl grabbed him around the neck and squeezed.
Another boy approached me. He was tall and long-limbed with zig-zags shaved into his dark hair a copper tint to his light brown skin. “Are you a clown?” he asked.
“No.”
“You’ve got the nose.”
“I know.” I knelt in front of him. “Do you want it?”
The boy nodded, and I pulled it off of my nose and placed it in his hand. “It’s easier if you do it yourself. Gladstone!” I called out to Sherrinford who now had a circle of admirers.
The nurse finished his discussion with Charles and another aide called the children in the waiting room towards her.
“You’ll have to take payment up with the administrators,” Bradley said.
“Of course. Of course.”
As the boy placed the nose on his face, I stood. “Take this,” I added, pulling the rainbow tarp from atop the capsule. “Give it to Charles and he’ll have something special for you.”
The boy grinned and he nodded, nose jerking up and down on his face with the motion. I started walking backwards. “Show’s over there, kids,” I said to the group surrounding Sherrinford.
“Puppy!” the red-gummed girl shouted.
A second girl, older but also with stars sewn on her trousers and an extra on a pocket atop her heart, ordered, “Gladstone! Come!”
“I will not respond to that name,” Sherrinford grumbled in my ear.
My lips twitched. “Disguise, remember? It’s on your tag.”
“I do not understand how Sherlock finds joy in this.”
“Dr. Watson?” Bradley walked over to me. “What brings you to pediatrics?” He glanced at the capsule. “That’s not one of ours, is it?”
I shook my head. “No. Shortcut. Wasn’t expecting the clowns.” My heart pounded as I relaxed my fingers from their grip on the gravity bed handle. It was a cargo model, with a wider base than what we usually used to cart medical capsules.
“Heard you were looking for a new place,” Bradley said. “There’s room in our commune. It’s just outside the main dome, sublevel five, hydroponics.”
Tim and Carla were the worst gossips. “Thanks,” I said. “But I think I’ve got it worked out. Nice hab. Baker sector.”
Bradley’s eyes widened. “That’s practically surface. How--?”
“Difficult hab-share. There’re bets on how long I’ll last.”
“I hope you bet on yourself.” Bradley laughed.
“I always do,” I grinned.
One of the clowns leaped up on a gust of wind, an effect for show as the gravity pack on his back was most responsible for his lift, shot up to the ceiling.
Bradley peered into the capsule. Holmes’ head and shoulders were visible through the window, though thankfully not his chest. “He’s not looking so good,” Bradley said.
“Induced coma. His readings are fine.”
“He looks cyanotic. And that capsule’s an older model, even for us. Take him out, check his vitals manually. I’ll vouch that he looked like this when he arrived.”
“I’m not tangling with one of Dr. Akito’s inducements.” Akito was notorious for her insistence on controlling every aspect of her patients’ care.
A wave of nausea passed over me. I swallowed as the hallway around me leached of color. The clown flipped, his pointed toes tapping the ceiling. Tap. Tap. Tap.
Above me, the hum of a delivery drone. The clown threw birds. They fluttered through the air in flashes of ribbon, falling. The drone shook, and it’s cargo atop, afixed only by magnetics and no secondary straps, teetered. Three metal rods rolled free.
Clatter. Clatter. Squish. A scream.
“Lemmy!” The little girl with the star-stitched trousers lay, a rod of plasti-steel stabbed through her belly into the flowered laminate floor. The painted blossomed bloomed grey blood.
Time slammed back into place.
I moved, abandoning the capsule as Bradley shouted something. My leg flared, screaming pain as I dove towards the group of children. I grabbed the girl, Lemmy, with one arm as we rolled together.
Shouts. “Let her go!” A scream. “Mommy!”
Above, the drone swerved, raining pipes that hit the floor like physical ordinance chipping stone.
Stay down. The boy grabbed for me as the hard fire pierced the air, punching through standard armor far better suited to energy weapons than projectiles. I pulled away, running, reliving the loop and knowing thirty seconds was too little to save them. Too much to die with them. Trying anyway.
Lemmy sobbed in my arms as I struggled to breathe down pain and memory. If I had a seizure now, someone would notice Holmes and crack the capsule. Or worse, I’d be carted off for treatment while the capsule ended up who knew where.
“Lemmy?” A woman stood over me.
I loosened my grip. “Mx.” I took another breath. “She’s okay.”
“You saved her life.”
“Luck,” I said. The pain was passing. Perhaps the Five God’s hadn’t wholly forsaken me. My mouth was dry and my hands shook. Soon, the headache would come. I needed sugar.
Sherrinford barked.
The earbud. It had fallen from my ear. I looked around, catching sight of it a meter away.
“Dr. Watson?” Bradley stood over me, arm extended. “Five Gods, I never saw anyone move so fast.”
“I’m fine,” I said. “I have to get my man to Long Term Care.”
“Take a minute. Catch your breath.”
An unattended toddler knelt on the floor, grabbing at the earpiece. “I need that!” I pointed at the kid.
Sherrinford had dashed over to the kid. He held out a paw.
“A Gladstone!” Bradley exclaimed. “I loved that cereal as a kid.”
The toddler cocked his head at Sherrinford.
“I need the earpiece,” I said.
“Wait, is that Gladstone yours? I thought it was a part of the show.”
‘It’s a long story.” The light had taken on sharp edges. My head ached. The back of my throat prickled, like I’d tried swallowing sandpaper but it had lodged itself in my throat. I swallowed again, trying to gather enough saliva to push it through. Back. “Please.”
“Sure.”
Bradley walked over to the kid and with a few hushed words, returned with the earpiece and Sherrinford at his heels, “You’ll want to sterilize this,” he said, handing me the mini-earbud. “Johnny licked it.”
“Thanks.”
“The Gladstone’s really yours?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
Bradley grinned. “Right, you can’t own a best friend, as they say.”
I smiled, then winced, rubbing my fingers over my cheek.
“Did you hurt yourself? You hit the ground hard. Someone should check you out.”
“I’m fine.” I stood. My skin was cold and sweaty, and nausea lingered, but I’d held myself together through worse. At least no one was shooting at me. At least I’d been able to save someone this time. “I need to get my capsule to Long Term Care.”
“We can send one of the aides,” Bradley said.
“No!”
“Just transfer the location to their card. You don’t have to do anything more than hook it in, do you?”
“I gave my word,” I said.
“You might be in shock, Dr. Watson.”
“I know my capabilities, nurse.” My tone was harsh, but I needed him off my back. “Don’t question me.”
“Watson!” Bradley stepped into my path.
“Move.” I kept walking, Sherrinford at my heels.
Bradley stepped back. He muttered something. It wasn’t complimentary. I didn’t care. I slipped the earpiece into my pocket.
Holmes’ capsule was where I’d left it, and unscratched, thank the Five Gods. I took the handle, swinging it in a slow, wide arc towards the main hall. As I pushed the capsule through the double doors into the main hallway, from behind me, someone called out, “Dr. Watson!”
I pretended not to hear.