Purple Monster

The Nurse showed her to a waiting area and pointed out the vending machines – She vended a black coffee and sat down, she would wait until he came – out new lungs were still tricky. They’d asked her who his next of kin was she had shrugged and said she didn’t know then they’d asked her if he had any girlfirends or boyfriends – she’d said she didn’t know about boyfriends but she was his girlfriend. With that answer she had been placed on the forms as his next of kin. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that.

His family had disowned him but this gave her the right to kill him. She shrunk into her coat – the still suit regulated temperature but she was still cold. She stared at the walls full of important medi notices about being careful clubbing she smiled wanely these had been a continueal thing for almost 200 yrs now and the paranoa was still mounting though with synth safes drugs had pretty much seised to be illigal in most places bar a few religous states. One or two of the remnant states of the US were the worst for this and appearing in the wrong outfit could result in a beheading – hell being the colour or wronge sex could end with similar fates.

Then her mind turned to the concept of hunting down the attackers and inflicting pain on them entered her mind. If Snake died, even if Bodge died and Snake lived she would find them, these human assassines who had stripped her of her heaven. She should have asked about the audience – she felt a stab of muted guilt at that – with the club having been hit too alot of innocent or at least clueless people could have been hurt.

She thought she should have asked the Security if they had actually caught/killed any of the attackers. She vowed to go down to their offices as soon as Snake was safe. She felt she should visit Bodge again but found that her revoltion for the life support was making that the least of her prioritys – this cuase yet another stab of guilt – she chewed her lip in distraction.

Snuggled down in her jacket on the hard plastic seats she begain to doze off, nightmare images creeped in jerking her awake – that and the stabbing pains from her own wounds. About 2 hrs later the Nurse turned up to say there had been a complecation with left over bone fragments and hemeorgin but that the surgoens were working hard to stem the bleeding. Unfortunatly with replace large complecated things like lungs they still had to chop you open. The stress on the body was a danger being knocked out to do it another. They were working on being able to grow the lungs inside a person but that was still some way off. They now grew you the necessary organs from a sample of your own tissue – the denuuded your cells and got them to replicate into stem cells, the stem cells could then be programmed to grow into just about any organ that was needed and it was keyed to that person riding transplantation of the fear of rejection. It was a fantastic improvement unfortunatly autoimmune diseases where still abit of a trial and if you had one of them the transplant was still out the window.

A piece of his original rib had lodge as a sliver in the side of his aorta – the large blood vessel of the heart. It may have stayed there all his life without cuaseing a problem but it had been dislodged during the surgery and mass bleeding had occured – trueth be known he had infact bled to death before they found the problem. That of course wasn’t as bad as it sounded with modern technics the nurse informed her to try and carm the adjitation.

‘Why wasn’t it picked up in the pre op scan?’ she asked. The nurse stuttered and failed to answer that ment they had probably skipped the scan as they’d already opened him up one and ‘sorted him’ out. She was furious, she was scared , she was worried and she was pacing a whole in the hard wearing carpet. She drank three more cups of foul bitter coffee from the vend – this increased the adjitation – she didn’t care.

Finailly the nursse appeared again -‘hes in the recovery room now – you can look at him through the glass but untill the steri-gel hardens over the wound you wont be able to go in.’

She stared through the glass bubble at Snake. She lay her forehead against it, it was an insipid warm denoting plastic rather than the coolness of glass – she’d wanted the cold to joilt her – to check this was reality.

Finally tears begain to stream down her face, but this was quiet controlled crying not the raking sobs of grief – she hoped those wouldn’t be needed for a while at least – with her life they where always inevitable.

It was a furthur 45 minutes before the steri-gel had hardened over the wound – a one way semi permiable membrane – it kept the blood in but the could escape out without letting germs in. It also created a transparent hard layer over the top which protected against knocks and the movement of the patient – though it made the wound more uncomftable. Letting moisture out ment it didn’t go so manky either – it was brilliant stuff.

The felsh eating infections that came with the super hospitals of a 100 years ago had made its invention pretty much necessary for the continuation of the medical practice as the anti-biotics became less and less effective and needed more money to get pathetic results.

She sat by his bed again hoping to be there when he opened his eyes but two Security turned up to talk to her – this time they were in the job uniforms, this time they were intimidating. Face screens and all. ‘I can’t talk to you with helmets,’ she said. ‘They make me go cross eyed.’

She heard a muffled laugh and thought it was Gaz one of the guards she tended to have breakfast with at Dev’s. He pushed the visor up, ‘How’s Snake?’ he asked, she warmed to him. They hadn’t been allowed in the clean room – well you never knew what Security might have on thier shoes.

‘He’s had two ops and not woken up from either yet – he’s got a ton of diamond in his chest and a new lung.’ she shrugged sort implying it was nothing – she ad to or she would cry infront of them and that was the last thing she intended to do – she’d rather get in a fist fight with them. Gaz whistled, he looked genually concerned unlike his mate who was standing nonchantly to the side looking bored. He was young, tanned chocolate and had rookie written all over him. She’d seen that stance before – its what they generally did just befroe they threw up.

‘Bodge?’ he asked.

She looked away from him, ‘Corp have given him my excess medi-allowance but it don’t look good.’ There was no way she was going to look at him she was controlling her shaking bearly.

‘Ah’ was all he managed to that news, medi-allowances where a sore point as it was with Gaz.

The Young Rookie interupted with impatience, thrusting a pic infront of her nose, the smart paper seemed to be corroded though as there was an corrupted image of the goth chick. She squwinted at it, ‘What you done to your smart paper man?’ was all she could think to say – she recognised the goth but what should she say?

‘Do you recognise her?’ he hissed, eyes flaring in his head. Gaz was starting to get twitchy.

She took the smart paper from him and squinted at it some more, ‘This looks like the goth-chick whoi was follwing me about the other night – followed me inta the bog an everything.’

Rookie nodded his head and then tried to bully her into revieling more about an illigal old drug and sex ring she was supposedly running. She pursed her lips and stuck her hands on her hips and glared, it was cold hard and old. He shrank back.

‘Look Mr Rookie,’ she hissed ‘I like music and beer why would I be setting up a ring that fried my audiences brains? Think about it.’ she thrust the smart photo back at him. ‘Why’s this so manky anyway?’ He was stuttering with indignation.

‘All the images taken – all the vid-stream everythng is like this.’ Gaz said.

She chewed the side of her mouth distractedly with that news, ‘they have some sort of pulsed scramble?’ she asked.

Gaz shruigged he was secuirty not a systems expert. ‘That’s how they nocked the lights out – I doubt anythings shielded here – not since the nuke embago. An EMP devic that cycles would do that – shit.’ she ran her hands through her hair – she had failed to put it back up- it was in a tangled matted state. Gaz was staring at her, the Rookie had the imbecilic slake jaw. She didn’t notice she was pacing.

‘What do they want?’ she looked at them expectently, Gaz shrugged.

‘We were sort of hoping you could tell us,’ he smiled apologetically.

He put his hand on her arm, she tensed inspit of herself, he didn’t seem to know. ‘The Nurse said Snake was your Boyfriend but do you know what he does in his spare time?’ the question dropped in the void. No she didn’t did she – otherr than he was obviously some sort of Masher.

‘He had lots of tech,’ she mumbled but shrugged. Gaz nodded.

‘He’s deep in the Corp and we’re not allowed access to his file, he’s a top level MAsher, we think he was the target of the attack.’ He said The Rookie stared at him, he’d broken about ten protocals and she was greatful. The other thing was he could be right – she’d been bloinkered thinking that she was the target, Snake was obviously in deep – he knew about the security systems becuamse they were there to protect him.

‘Anway you know where we are,’ Gaz said.

She nodded, ‘How many people actually got hurt?’ she asked.

‘Tenty-six, two fatalities, it was the panicked crush that cuased most of the damage – the bullets only aimed at the stage.’ Gaz said.

‘Oh… thanks,’ she said feeling small.

She went and stared at Bodge from a distance, the greasy monster was still pretty terryfying. Snake Didn’t seem to be even thinking about waking up so considered going back to her room to sleep but she just didn’t feel at ease with that descission so she got her self some more bitter coffee and set herself up on the plastic chairs once more.

The cute nurse came back on duty and told her she should be resting, she got another free meal from him and tried to ignore the rummbling of her belly, it was also starting to cramp from all the black coffee she was throwing at it. The plastic seats were ergonomically designed meaning they were uncomftable for any sort of relaxing position. She still swung her boots up onto it though flecks of pink glitter rained from them onto the turgid white. Her arms up behind her head she pondered the nature of the attack. The Goth Chick had been involved somehow and even if Snake was a high level masher him being the target didn’t quiet make sense. Normally Mashers were kidnapped or defected to other Companys. Even if they had crippled a rival the rival would still want them alive.

Mashers rarely had loyalty to a Corp, Snake did but most didn’t – mainly becuase you were bound to be stolen at some point and if you remaind loyal you ended up very very dead or worse. Snake was only loyal becuase they had given him a gateway out of hell Juvi was not a nice place and once in there were few ways out. He’d been offered the chance of Masher and taken it. he was getting past Corp security on an electronic level, finding info or scrambling it, maybe stealing money though that concept was a bit redundent as each Corp had their own finiancial system.

He eyes where becoming heavier and the dry thinking harder, the Dr frowned when he walked into his foya to find her snoring and drooling over his carpet.

Posted: Saturday, November 21st, 2009 @ 11:56 am
Categories: Uncategorized.
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