May I Enjoy My Life: Arknights SI

Entry 1 - Day 0

I am going to fucking die. 

If I don’t die from Super Cancer, I’m going to die of malnutrition, or possibly exposure. And if that doesn’t get me, I’ll be killed for my shoes or coat, or because I looked at the wrong person funny. If somehow I manage to not get mugged, I’ll die instead from being killed by yet another brutal government crackdown for the high crime of…existing, I guess? Oh, and if the lastest progrom doesn’t get me, maybe the extra-dimensional demon invasion will kill me instead. 

Assuming, of course, I am not already dead and this is just my dying hallucination before my brain runs out of oxygen. 

If you’re reading this, somehow, consider this the last will and testament of James McCoy. Doctor James McCoy, actually. Fuck me. I survived medical school for this? 

If you’re wondering how I know that I am going to die, it’s simple. I’m on Terra. Even better, near as I can tell, I’m in Ursus, in the city of Shiraziberg (wherever the fuck that is). On Terra, life is brutal, and in Urusus, life is cheap. At least the vodka is cheap too, though I’m not inclined to give myself steatosis. There are enough ways for me to die already. 

Now, you may be wondering, “James, what’s the big deal? Plenty of people live in Ursus, and they do just fine. As long as they’re not Infected. You’re not Infected, are you James?”

I sure as shit hope not, but here’s where the sudden twist comes: I ain’t an Ursus. Ursine? Whatever. I don’t got bear ears. Or whatever the fuck they’d call them here. You see, I’m just a regular old Homo Sapien. We only have one set of ear, no feathers, or scales, or any other animal bits like the natives here do. I showed up here last week. Bit of an unplanned trip. 

How? Doesn’t fucking matter. But I know Terra, even if I’ve never been here. 

And I’m going to fucking die. 

Entry 2 - Day 6

Well, it’s been a couple of days, and I’m not dead. An impressive win streak for myself that I do hope to continue. It seems to be summertime, or what passes for it here in wonderful Shiraziberg. It’s actually warm enough that I’ve been sleeping in alleyways and on park benches and surviving. Or, well, I was doing that. Somehow, things have gotten better. 

I’m still shocked an Emperor’s Blade hasn’t shown up and killed me. That would be just my luck. 

Anyway, for the first few days, I was living rough. Eating out of trash cans, staying low, trying to not go completely fucking crazy. My phone didn’t get any signal, so not only could I not do my dailies, but I couldn’t communicate with anyone. I’ve been journaling on it, fun! My one way of trying to keep my sanity. Too bad I can’t use it to farm 1-7. Ha ha, funny in joke, please laugh. 

I had no contacts and no money that anyone would accept, and I was scared shitless, so I stayed out of the way. Interestingly, I spoke the local lingo, despite the fact that I very much do not speak Russian. I am passingly fluent in Spanish, but you can thank Mr. Carrasco for that. I guess these bears speak English? Only, not really? I can sort of tell I’m not speaking English, but there’s a Babel Fish or something in my ear that helps me out. 

Well, after a few days of lying low, I was starting to calm down and thinking things were going to be alright. I was shuffling about, trying not to look conspicuous, but it was hard. My clothes, well, they don’t stick out like a sore thumb, but they’re a bit off. A decent jacket, slacks, and nice running shoes. At least I wasn’t wearing scrubs. The atmosphere here is…dingy. This is a factory city or something, and there’s soot everywhere and the air quality is shit. I thankfully had a few N95 masks in my pocket, old habit, so I had one of those on to filter the air a bit. 

As I was walking, I heard a scream and shattering glass, and I knew something bad had happened by the way people were shouting. I swore, but I started running in the direction of the commotion, pushing my way through the crowd that had gathered. Sure enough, there on the ground, was a young boy, about 10 or so. They were installing windows on the building above us, and a pane of glass had fallen and shattered. It thankfully hadn’t hit the kid directly, but there were shards of glass in his chest, left arm, and right leg. Some of them not inconsiderably small. 

I guess they don’t do safety glass in Ursus. 

I was already pulling on my gloves and pulling out the small first aid kit I take with my everywhere. I shouted, “Doctor, step aside!” and people listened. There was a crying woman next to the boy, his mother, I guessed. 

“Hello, I’m Doctor James McCoy. Is this your son?” I asked the woman as I did a quick visual exam. There was blood, and a lot of it, and glass everywhere. I had to approach carefully so I didn’t end up with a cut myself. The woman had a fragment of glass in her hand, but it was small and superficial. It could have cut a tendon, but it was obviously a low priority. 

“I, yes, this is my Kolya. Doctor, please, you must help him!” 

“I’ll do what I can, ma’am,” I said, and took out my scissors and cut away the boy’s jacket. There were plenty of fragments in his chest, but that didn’t explain the heavy bleeding. Some of those were serious, but I wasn’t going to mess with them. This wasn’t the time or place to be pulling out glass shards. “Any pre-existing conditions I should be aware of?”

“No, none!” 

I nodded. That was good. The problem was the leg. I pulled my belt off, making another quick cut to confirm my suspicion. Yep, large fragment, right along the medial side of his right femur. It had cut the femoral artery. 

“I’m going to need to apply a tourniquet,” I told the woman, wrapping the belt around the leg and gritting my teeth as I tightened it as much as I could. The blood flow eased, then stopped, and I secured the tourniquet, then continued to triage. 

The wounds were tricky: You don’t want to pull out the glass shards and potentially cause more damage, and some of those could have been quite deep. However, he was breathing alright, even if he was getting tachycardic. Taking off my jacket, I grimaced at losing my one warm piece of clothing, but I used it to stabilize the head and neck as I bandaged the cuts there. He’d hit his head on the pavement when he’d fallen, and I was pretty worried about a serious head injury on top of everything else. After that, I quickly bandaged the wounds on the arm, one fragment of glass had completely penetrated the lower arm between the radius and the ulna and was sticking out the other side, but seemed to have miraculously missed the anterior crural interosseous, though it was still bleeding pretty badly. 

That done, I did what I could to apply pressure to the chest wounds. Didn’t look like a lung had been punctured, rib cage was doing its job, but it was still massive trauma in the right pectoral and, oof, the hypogastric region. Pray God that it didn’t puncture the intestines. 

I was feeling pretty damn out of my depth and hopeless. I may have graduated from medical school and earned the title of Doctor, but I hadn’t started my residency yet, and this was the sort of thing you would see in a nightmare ER scenario. 

So involved in treatment was I that I completely missed it when the ambulance arrived after what felt like forever. Two EMTs hopped out, masked and gloved up. I nodded to them, and briefed them. 

“I’m Doctor James McCoy. We’ve got a severed left femoral artery, proximal to the kneecap. I’ve applied a tourniquet. Possible head trauma, recommend full spinal stabilization.” I ran through the rest of it, then paused. The medics were working, getting the kid on a body board, but they were looking at me expectantly. I searched for a moment, then kicked myself. 

“No sign of oriopathy, but recommend standard anti-infection protocols until the labs come back.”

“What?! My Kolya is not one of those filthy infected!” the mother said, but the EMTs relaxed visibly at my words. That was what they had been waiting for. 

“Thank you, Doctor,” one of them, a woman by her voice, hard to tell in the bulky safety gear, “Do you want to continue treatment?”

“I…” I hesitated. But then nodded. This was my patient. Sort of my first patient as a real doctor. “Yes. I’ll ride along to the trauma center.” 

The EMTs nodded, and I hopped into the ambulance with them. Not my first ride in an ambulance, even as a practitioner. My first had been when I was 12 and got a concussion falling out of a tree, but I’d been on a few more since then. We still didn’t take out the glass, but we did start the kid on a transfusion and applied a better tourniquet, so I got my belt back. It was slick with blood, so I just put it in a hazard bag. 

Interestingly, while everything wasn’t in exactly the same place as it would have been back home, the tools and materials were all very familiar. The ride was rather bumpy, the roads in this city were actively shit, but we made it to the hospital. 

We did the handover to the ER docs, and I breathed out a heavy sigh of relief. I went to go clean off and get out of my now blood-stained clothes, when an older gentleman with white tufts on his fuzzy ears stopped me. 

“Here, you will be needing a change of clothes, yes?” he said, and handed me a pair of scrubs. 

“Yeah, thanks,” I agreed, accepting them gratefully. 

He eyed the state of my clothes, which were wrinkled and more than a little stained from being worn continuously for several days. “Did it happen in an alleyway?”

“Busy street, actually. I, uh, tripped and fell earlier,” I said by way of excuse. 

“Hmm,” he nodded, and let me get changed. I bagged up my clothes, wondering what the hell I was going to do with them, then stepped out. To my surprise, the old guy was still there. 

“Thank you…Doctor Medvedev,” I said, reading the name tag. 

“It is no trouble, Doctor McCoy,” he said with a smile. His name tag said he was…I think the equivalent of a senior attending, or something? “Physician of the highest category” was what my Babel Fish was giving me, though the actual term was “Врач высшей категории.” 

“That is an unusual name,” Doctor Medvedev said as I walked towards the exit. “Please, for our records, might I see your papers?”

I slowed, then grimaced. “I…don’t have mine.”

That was a lie, my license, newly minted, was in my wallet. It’s just that it was a California Medical Lisence, and wouldn’t mean shit here. 

“Ah. That is most troubling. You are not impersonating a physician, are you? That is a most serious crime.”

I sighed and turned to Doctor Medvedev. “Look, I saved Kolya’s life. Maybe not the most impressive doctoring ever, but I was being a good Samaritan. I’m not trying to con my way into a job. Honestly, I probably should have just walked by, because, well, I don’t have any papers proving who I am. Not that you’d recognize, anyway. But, well, I took the Hippocratic Oath, same as you, and I couldn’t leave a little boy to bleed out on the street.”

“Hippocratic Oath?” the old doctor’s brow furrowed, and I kicked myself. I began to sweat. 

“Uh, you know,” I then recited not the Oath I’d taken when I graduated from UCLA Medical School, but one that I was familiar with due to my gambling addiction. “‘May I enjoy my life and practice my art, respected by all men and in all times.’” 

Hearing that, Medvedev’s dark expression cleared, and he smiled. “Ah, why didn’t you say you were with Rhodes Island? Yes, I respect your work in Oripathy Treatment a great deal, even if it’s not popular here in Ursus. Though I do understand why you would, perhaps, not wish to show your papers.”

“Uh, thanks,” I said, rubbing the back of my neck. “Yeah, I sort of…didn’t want to spread that around. I know RI isn’t popular everywhere, and, well, neither are people from Columbia.” 

If Ursus was basically Russia, but somehow worse, then Columbia was more or less America, but with that Manifest Destiny cranked up to 11 and with extra exploitation. I hoped I could pass for Colombian. It was mainly populated by…shit, bird people? What were they called again? Anyway, I could probably pass for a frog person, since it was pretty hard to tell them apart from humans from what I remembered, and I THINK there were some in Colombia? I probably should have read more and pulled less, honestly. 

“Hmmm. There isn’t a Rhodes Island outpost here in Shiraziberg. And unless I miss my guess, you’ve been living rough, Doctor McCoy. How did you end up here?”

“I was supposed to go to Kawalerielki in Kazimeriez. But, there was an unexpected Catastrophe, followed by bandit attacks. I’m actually just a Resident, I was supposed to work in the Rhodes Island clinic there. I was studying for a specialty as a neurologist, especially working with the Infected,” I explained, making half of that up on the spot. I had been very interested in Neurobiology, mostly because neurologists make a fuck ton of money, and it would make sense that if you were going to study oripathy that neurology would be one path forward there.” 

“Hmm, interesting, I usually see those who want to study oripathy take the vascular route, but the effects of oripathy on the nervous system are certainly something we could afford to better understand,” Dr. Medvedev said, stroking his short salt and pepper beard. He nodded. “So, you’ve graduated medical school, then?”

“Trimount University Medical School,” I said with a nod, praying he wouldn’t look too hard into that. And that it was a real place. Turns out it is, by the by. 

“Very good, very good. Hmm. Well, I take it you don’t have any papers or contacts?” 

“No, sir.” I let my shoulders slump and scrubbed my face with my hands, letting just how defeated and tired I was shine through. “And I’ve lost all my papers, and I have no idea how to even begin to get in contact with anyone.”

“Well, at least you speak Ursine quite well. You have a bit of a Colombian accent, but not too bad,” Medvedev said with a nod. “Here, I’ll take you to the cafeteria and get you something warm to eat while I consider what to do with you.”

He was as good as his word, and while the food was, well, pretty bad hospital food, I’d never tasted anything so good, and wolfed down two portions. As I ate. Dr. Medvedev, who told me to call him Sergei, asked me a few basic medical questions. I could tell he was checking my credentials, and I did my best to answer. I think I probably flunked the oripathy questions pretty hard, and admitted my studies in that area were poor, but I think I did OK on the rest. Some of the harder ones baffled me, and I had to admit I had no idea what those presenting conditions would mean, but he seemed to accept that a first-year resident wouldn’t know this stuff. 

“I have some contacts who are familiar with Rhodes Island,” he said when I was done eating. “Not strong, but they are the experts in oripathy treatment, and while that is not my speciality, I try to keep up.”

“Even with how the Infected are treated in Urusus?” I asked, then bit my tongue. Probably not the right thing to ask.

He grimaced, glanced around, then leaned forward. “I do not approve of how my nation treats the infected. Oripathy is dangerous, yes, but it’s not an easily transmissible disease, as the peasants believe.”

“Not until the very late stages, before that, even basic precautions are enough,” I said with a nod. “And if it’s acute or that terminal…well, there are signs, and they can be quarantined.”

“Yes. We should do more to help them than simply send them to the gulag. So, I will reach out to my contacts. In the meantime, I will have you help me at my own private clinic. I am getting old, and there are always more patients than I can see. Plus, it will help you continue your training.” 

“Thank you, sir. Is the clinic here in the hospital?” I asked, feeling truely grateful.

“Yes, I mostly work in cardiology. Not your chosen speciality, but if you want to work with the Infected…”

“A solid understanding of the vascular system and cardiology would definitely be of benefit,” I agreed. 

“As for where you can stay…my wife and I are alone now, our sons moved out a decade ago, but we keep a spare room. You’re welcome to stay with us.”

I could not believe my luck. And, so, for the past couple of days, I’ve stayed with Sergi and Ivanka Medvedev. Ivanka is an old babushka who really wants someone to mother, and has picked me. From the pictures I’ve seen, their boys are both at least a decade and a half older than I am, and married to boot. One’s a business manager of some kind, the other a bureaucrat, both work in other cities. Communication on Terra is pretty dogshit compared to what it is back home, so they don’t get to speak to their parents often. 

As far as rotations went, well, I did alright, actually. It was pretty much like any other residency program. The equipment, while again a bit odd, was definitely stuff that I figured out how to use fast enough, and Ursi are physiologically not that different from humans. They’re generally bulkier and their pulse and blood pressure are slightly different, they’d be hypertensive and bradycardic oddly enough, but I figured it out real quick. 

I did also to ask to borrow Sergi’s books on Ursine physiology, explaining that the ursus population in the Trimounts was fairly low and I was used to liberi (bird people), perro (doggos), and zalak (rodents), and that I’d studied up on kuranta (horsies) since they were predominant in Kazimierz. He accepted that, and hit me with a real zinger. 

“Forgive me, but I’m not entirely certain which race you are. You appear…anura?” 

Uh, I think that was frog person, but I had a better answer after some thinking cap time. “Aegir, actually. I’ve actually been having a problem with dry skin,” I said with a grimace. “You don’t have any moisturizer, do you?”

He brightened at that and nodded. “Ah, yes, are you semi-aquatic?”

“No, no, though I get real dry if I don’t take long and regular baths. I’m a pretty good swimmer though,” I said with a smile. It was true: I swam in high school and had made State, though I hadn’t been good enough for college. I was pretty good on boats as well, and loved surfing when I could get out on the waves. 

Sergi provided me with some skin cream that I made sure to apply nightly, and I also made a point of taking long soaks in the bathtub. I loved it, even if it wasn’t really necessary for my biology like I led them to believe. Aegir ranged from fish people to squids to my precious Orca Waifu, but humans are just kinda boring.

Why am I even telling you this? Who the fuck is going to read this anyway? Whatever, it doesn’t matter. Ivanka found me an adapter that somehow charges my phone, so the cool thing is it won’t run out of power, ever! 

Shit, I might not even actually die after all.

Entry 3 - Day 19

Fuck. I am so going to die now. 

I think I just gave myself super cancer. 

Worse yet, the Emperor’s Blades are DEFINITELY after me now. 

On the positive side, I think I saved a kid's life. On the negative side, me doing that is why the Emperor’s Blades are certainly going to try and kill me. 

Let me back up a bit. 

During my first day on rotation at the hospital with Dr. Medvedev, he confirmed that I could not use Arts.

“How are you with a standard Arts apparatus, Dr. McCoy?” he asked me, and held up a small wand with a glowing green tip on the end. 

I made a face and took it. “Honestly, I have zero aptitude for this stuff. It did cause some problems, but I was always told I could still become a doctor, even lacking Arts ability.”

He laughed and smiled. “I have very little facility with Arts myself. Can barely even heal a cut, even with a wand like this. Well, no matter. It’s quite true you don’t need ability with Arts to be a good doctor. Honestly, I was hoping I could have you use it. I’m always having to call a nurse.”

That was the end of it for a while. I secretly tried to use the wand a few times, but I couldn’t feel anything beside a faint tingle, or get it to do jack shit, so that was the end of that. Or so I thought. 

A few days later, a kid came into the hospital with his mom. I wasn’t on rotation with Medvedev at the time, he’d passed me off to Doctor Tatiana Kuznetsova. She was a 30ish Attending who seemed happy enough to have an idiot Colombian intern follow her around.  

We had just admitted a new patient who’d come in with his mother, complaining of full-body aches, fever, and heart palpitations.

“Hello, I’m Doctor Kurzetsova, this is Student Doctor McCoy, he’ll be assisting me today if you don’t mind,” my attending said as we stepped into the room. 

The patient in question was curled up on the table, whimpering and trembling. He had on a thick jacket despite the warm weather, as well as a cap, and his nervous mouther was clutching at his hand. She appeared terrified, and I could easily see why: the kid looked to be about 10 or so, and he was in bad shape. 

“Yes, please, just help my Andrey,” the woman begged. 

I stepped forward, already wearing my safety gear. There’s a lot more safety stuff doctors wear on Terra, and for good reason. Oripathy is deadlier than even HIV/AIDS, and while it’s almost as hard to spread, there are exceptions and it’s best not to take risks. So I had on full gloves, mask, face shield, and my scrubs were a bit more heavy duty. Not that it would matter. 

“When did symptoms start?” I asked, even as I knelt down by the bed. “Hey, big guy. I’m going to need you to look at me, OK?” 

I examined his eyes, and noted his pupils were dilated, probably because of the pain, even as I hiked up his sleeve and put a cuff on his arm and checked his pulse. He was tachycardic, even for a human, which in an ursus is real bad news. 

“BPM is 92, 121-92,” I reported.

“Andrey, he has been sick for two weeks, but it keeps getting worse! I did not want to take him to the doctor, we do not have much money, but he has been crying so much,” the mother said. 

“Fever?” Dr. Kurzetsova asked me.

“He’s at 39.8,” I reported (their temperatures seems to be in Celcius. This is high, though Ursine body temperatures are typically about .1C higher than humans, their average 37.1, so this was a high fever). I looked to the mother. “He on any medication?” 

“Paracetrov, two pills,” she said. That’s acetaminophen, close enough to what I would call Tylenol. 

“Adult, or children's?” I asked automatically, though I did wonder after the words were out of my mouth if the dosage was different here. 

“Adult,” she admitted.

I looked at Kurzetsova. “That’s 1000mg here, too?”

She nodded grimly. “Well over the standard dose. He weighs what, 45 kilos?”

“Forty-four,” the mother said, and I gritted my teeth. That was about 97lbs, the dosage for that weight would have been 500mg every 4-6 hours. This was double that. 

“So he’s on an adult dose of an analgesic and antipyretic, and he’s in this much pain and with that much fever? We might need to consider a-”

I paused, as I had rolled up the other sleeve. The mother gasped, hands flying to her face, eyes wide. Doctor Kurzetsova looked over and swore, “Son of a Sarkaz whore!” 

There, on Andrey’s arm, small black crystals were poking through the skin. The boy's eyes were watering with pain, and he looked at me, pleadingly. 

“Please, doctor. Make it stop. It hurts. I can feel it in my skin. It hurts so bad.” 

“He’s Infected?!” Kurzetsova hissed at the mother, who shook her head rapidly.

“No, no, he can’t be, I- those weren’t there, I swear! Please, I’ll just take him home, I-”

“We need a full crash OIP right now!” Kurzetsova was saying, but the rest of her words were lost to me. 

I could…feel…the crystals. Even through my gloves. 

Slowly, I removed Andrey’s jacket, and he sat there, trembling. There were black crystals on his right arm, spreading up to his chest. I ran my hand over his shirt, and I could feel more of them. 

“Acute oripathy,” I mumbled to myself. “This spread quickly, didn’t it?”

Andrey didn’t say anything, of course. He was just a kid. I pressed my gloved hand to the crystals, and I heard Kurzetsova swear at me. I ignored her. The crystals…hummed. I could feel them. Like they were warm. Could feel them all over Andrey’s body, in his body. Circulating through his blood.

I am not real sure how I did it. Or what I did. I do know why. This kid was in pain. Dying. Probably pretty damn fast. There are two types of Oripathy. The kind you see in Rhodes Island, at least in my experience, is Chronic. It takes months, years, even decades to progress. Crystals that slowly grow throughout the body, spreading, multiplying, and causing great pain and damage. The prognosis is always terminal, but the death can take an agonizing eternity for the sufferer. There’s no cure, only treatments to slow the progress.

The other kind is Acute Oripathy. It spreads rapidly. I hadn’t even known it existed until I started studying here, though I guess there was an offhand mention of Misha having it in the anime. Acute Oripathy spreads throughout the body in a matter of days or weeks. It’s terminal within no more than 90 days from the first onset of symptoms, which typically begins mere hours after infection. 

The differences between the two kinds are vague based on the literature I’ve read so far. My best guess is that both the infectious load and the type of infection determine the type of oripathy. I desperately need to learn more. 

Well, if I survive. Because what I did next was stupendously, monumentally, stupid.

I could feel the oripathy humming. Pulsing. Feel the originium crystals in Andrey’s body growing. They called to me. 

So I called back. 

Andrey screamed in pain as the crystals ripped out of his skin and tore through my gloves, absorbed into my hand. I screamed in pain, too, the shock of it horrifying. But I didn’t stop. There was now blood everywhere, but I could feel those crystals in Andrey’s body. I was getting them out, somehow, and the only way he lived was if all those crystals were removed. 

Additionally, as soon as the originium hit my blood stream, a fire started burning in my veins. It wasn’t hot, but cold, a terrible, burning cold that drove the breath from my lungs and made me see stars. But in that pain, I felt…something. Energy, I guess? And I was, for the first time, able to use Arts. 

Even as I ripped the crystals from Andrey’s body, I began to heal the boy. I turned the energy from the Originium into life energy, healing energy. It was unfocused and uncontrolled, but it did knit back together his wounds as fast as I made them. Even as I ripped apart Andrey’s organs, which were already crystalizing into orignium shards instead of functioning tissue, I re-knitted them back into what they should have been. 

When I finished, some minutes later, Andrey was out cold, his flesh pale. There was blood absolutely everywhere, coating me from head to toe. My own clothes were torn and ragged, as I pulled the crystals out of Andrey’s body, and into my own. And I hurt. That fire was still freezing my veins, making my breath come in ragged gasps, and I could just feel the Super Cancer spreading through my body. 

“Shit!” I gasped and stood up, grabbing my stethoscope and putting it with clumsy hands on Andrey’s chest. No heartbeat. I swore, and shouted, “CODE BLUE!” and started chest compressions. 

“Step aside, please,” a calm, unfamiliar voice said. I shiveled my head around, then had to look down. A pair of fuzzy pink ears that didn’t even come up to my shoulder were by my side. I blinked, and a calm pair of blue eyes looked back at me.

“S-Sussurro?” I gasped. What I saw was a fox-girl, about 4’6”, dressed in a lab coat. Her large pink ears had a black trim on the edges, and a fluffy tail with a white tip poked out from a slit on her coat. She had on gloves and a mask, though her clothes hid the crystal growths along her neck I knew existed.

How? Well, she might be a 4☆, but Sussurro had hard carried me in IS and early on in my career as a Dohktah. Distinctly different than my career as a doctor, largely due to the number of murders. 

The little doctor, she was definitely an adult now that I did a double-take, not the kid she appeared at first glance, flicked her ears in surprise. “Yes. Please, step aside, doctor.”

I complied, stopping chest compressions. Sussurro, and it really was her, took out a medical wand like I’d seen before. She pressed it to Andrey’s heart, muttering something in what sounded like Italian. The kid sucked in a sharp breath and sat up, looking around wildly. 

“Mama!” he cried. 

“Thank God,” I said, sagging against the wall and wiping my blood-stained brow. I had thought all that had been for naught. 

“Good, can you walk?” Sussurro said, helping Andrey to his feet. He was covered in blood and his clothes were mere rags, but he nodded.

“I…I think so. Where is Mama?” 

“She was right…” I looked around, but the room was empty, save for me, Sussurro, and Andrey. 

“She fled, along with Doctor Kurzetsova. I can’t say I blame them. I was only in here for the tail end of that, and it was quite the horror show,” Sussurro said. “We need to go, now. Come.”

“What? But why? He needs treatment,” I said. “He’s got acute-”

“Whatever you just did, it’s going to be hell to pay, Doctor McCoy. And I am not sticking around long enough to find out what happened,” Sussurro said firmly. “You and the boy come with me, quick like.”

I grimaced, but nodded, and hastily followed Sussurro out. We nearly bumped into an out-of-breath Dr. Medvedev. “Doctor McCoy! Who is-”

“You are Medvedev?” Sussurro said. “We need to get these two changed, and quickly. I don’t have time to explain. Decontamination procedures.”

“I- yes, this way,” Dr. Medvedev said, and ushered us down the hall, which was completely empty. There was a shower with a curtain there for decon, and he and Sussurro ushed me and Andrey both in there.

“Strip, shower, change. Fast,” Sussurro urged. 

“What, with a patient, a kid to boot!? Do you want me to get sued and lose my license!?” I demanded.

“I want you to not end up in the Gulag or shot,” she said, shoving me inside. “Now, McCoy!” 

Andrey started crying, but I got the kid and me both out of our bloodstained clothes, he helped, thankfully, and then hosed us off with the harsh chemicals, then rinsed with water in just about two minutes. Sussurro threw open the curtain and shoved clothes at us, scrubs and not hospital gowns.

“Quickly!” she hissed. I could hear Doctor Medvedev nearly shouting with someone down the hall, and I grimaced and hastily got Andrey and me changed. 

“I want mama!” I cried, even as I helped him into the slippers. 

“We’re doctors, and your mama wants you to be safe,” I said firmly. “You need to come with us. Doctor Sussurro is from Rhodes Island. They specialize in treating the disease you have. You don’t want the pain to come back, do you?”

Hiccuping, Andrey shook his head. 

“Then I need you to be brave and come with us,” I said, grabbing Andrey’s hand. 

He nodded, scrubbing tears from his eyes, but the kid was a trooper. 

“Gavial, I need that extraction, now,” Sussuro said, lifting a radio to her mouth as we made our way away from the shouting. Behind us, the door banged open.

“SECURITY! STOP RIGHT THERE!”

“RUN!” Sussurro ordered, and I picked up Andrey and broke into a sprint, kicking off the slippers and just booking it as the kid clung to me and cried, Sussurro moving fast despite her short stature. 

“This way!” I gasped. I learned my way around the hospital a bit, and I led us towards a side entrance that led to an alleyway where the staff smoked. I wasn’t a smoker, though I’m considering taking it up with the hell my life has been lately, but I still knew where it was. 

Unfortunately, there were two armed security guards blocking the door when we got there. Both of them were big, muscular Ursines, one of them more bear than man, and both of them with big clubs in their hands. They both had on full gas masks and heavy safety gear. We skidded to a stop, but right behind us, three more security guards appeared, panting and out of breath. 

“Fucking infected trash,” the bear-man growled, raising his club. 

“Stop! I’m Doctor Lucia Sussurro from Rhodes Island! These two are patients under my protection!” my brave, but very short, companion said, holding up an ID card. 

“Shut the fuck up,” the guard snarled, and swung his club at Sussurro, who ducked under it. I gasped as another guard hit me in the back, and I clutched Andrey to my chest as he wailed. I thought was about to be in for the beating of a lifetime.

I was right about the beating, but wrong about the targets.

The door banged open, and a humanoid hurricane slammed into the rear of the two guards ahead of me. 

“EVERYBODY CHILL OUT!” the newcomer roared, even as she rammed one guard into the wall and kicked the other so hard he bounced off door he hit and went skidding across the ground. The she whipped a massive scaly green tail into another guard, knocking him into one of his companions and sending both sprawling. Her fist made a beautiful uppercut into the last guard, and teeth went spraying as she knocked him out cold. 

“Good timing,” Sussuro said, looking about. “But we’ve got to go.”

“Aw man, having fun without me, Lucia?” Gavial laughed, grinning and showing a row of sharp, crocodilian teeth. She had a long mane of green hair and pointed ears. She was actually surprisingly short, a good half a foot or more shorter than my 6’ even. I’d always pictured Gavial as a hulking giant of a woman. 

I blame the Japanese height impairment. Or Chinese, now that I think of it. I use JP voices anyway. 

“No, no time for explanations. Let’s get out of here,” Sussurro said, and motioned towards the door. She paused, then leaned towards my back. “Are you well, Doctor McCoy?”

“Fine,” I grunted. “Just a bruise. Let’s go.”

My diagnosis turned out to be correct, though I did have a pretty bad contusion on my left latissimus dorsi. 

We ran out into the alley, even as sirens began to wail behind us. 

“Oh shit, you did piss them off! Whatever did you and this kid get up to, Lucia?” Gavial asked as we ran. 

“A good question,” Sussurro panted. “Talk later. Now, hide.”

“Righy-o! Come on, I borrowed us a car!” Gavial said. 

There was a taxi waiting at the end of the alleyway, and the driver’s eyes went wide. He started to pull away, but Gavial grabbed him through the open window and hauled him out.

“Sorry, pal! We’re borrowing this! Here, for the trouble! I’ll try not to crash it!” Gavial said, and dumped a wad of blue credits on the man before depositing him on the sidewalk. 

“Stop, thief!” the cabby cried, but it was too late, Sussurro, me, and Andrey piled into the back. 

Gavial cackled with laughter as we peeled away from the hospital. Though she only sped away for a bit, before slowing to a much more moderate speed. If anything, she drove less insanely than some cab driver’s I’ve seen, which, based on her event, seemed a little out of character. 

“So, what’s up?” Gavial asked, glancing in the rearview mirror as cop cars with flashing lights sped past us the other way. “Something got those guards all hot and bothered. I thought we were just picking up a wayward intern. A rather mysterious one, at that!” 

“Uh, Doctor James McCoy,” I said, giving a weak smile as I finished buckling up Andrey, who was pale and looked frightened, but seemed to be trying to be brave. “You’re doing great, kid. This is Doctor Gavial. I know she looks like a scary lady, and she is, but only to germs and kids who don’t eat their vegetables.”

“Ha ha! And patients who don’t take their medicine!” Gavial chuckled. 

“And bad guys,” Andrey said quietly, but he managed a small smile. “You’re cool.”

“I try, kid, I try. What’s your name?”

“Andrey Ivanovich. I’m 10,” he said, giving a shy smile. “Does my mom…does she know about…?”

“I think she probably knew you had oripathy, Andrey. Which was why she was scared to take you to the hospital,” I said with a sigh. “She was right to do so.” I turned to Sussurano. “I’m pretty sure he’s got acute oripathy. There was crystal formation all along his right arm, onto the right pectoral. I felt, uh, well, I guess that’s not real medical, but I suspect he’s got a blood density level over 0.3u/L.”

Oripathy is broken down into three levels of progression. Stage one is defined as Blood Originium-Crystal Density of less than .30 units per liter. There can be minor lesions on the skin, and with an X-ray, organs might have a faint shadow of crystal formation. Stage two begins with a blood density between 0.30-.50 u/L, with moderate lesions on the skin, like those Andrey had possessed, and blurry organ outlines thanks to increased crystal growth. It’s also the point at which medical intervention has to take place, or the patient progresses to stage three. 

At Stage Three, density in the blood exceeds 0.50 u/L. Horrific skin lesions often cover the body, and they often grow abnormal body parts. Internal organs begin to shut down due to crystallization, and cases cause severe impairments to bodily functions. Inevitably, this leads to death, though it can be a long, slow, and incredibly painful death. 

As I said. There is no cure for Oripathy. Treatment administered in Stage 1 or Stage 2 can slow the progression of the disease and alleviate symptoms. But it’s always terminal. 

“Hmm.” Sussurro lifted up Andrey’s arm and examined it. “I’m going to feel your chest, OK, Andrey?”

He nodded, and she ran her hands over his right and left pectoral, then inspected his left arm. “No signs of crystallization. Are you certain, Doctor Murphy?”

“I…” I swallowed, then took a look at Andrey’s arm myself, even as we continued to speed through the city. “Well I’ll be damned. It’s…gone.”

“And when did you become infected, Dr. McCoy?” Sussurro asked. 

“Huh? I’m not, as far as I…” I trailed off as she held up my right hand. There, in my palm, were several small black crystals. I swallowed. “Oh. Fuck.”

“Hey now, there are children present! Watch your mouth, or I’ll have to wash it out with soap!” Gavial said in chipper tones. 

I began to tremble all over, clutching at my hand. I lowered my sleeve and hissed as I saw more crystal growths all up my arm. I patted my chest and found more of them there. I began to weep, shivering and sinking back in the seat. 

I was going to die. 

I was going to fucking die. 

And there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. 

Author's Note:

It's summer so I have more time and I decided to be dumb and write a new story because I'm playing a lot of Arknights. Don't worry, new chapters for the other things coming soon.