Registered Nurse Liz Niell strapped an emergency respirator onto the face of a
Human man on a stretcher, and thumbed its activation nub on one side. As they
reached their destination, the paramedic began explaining to the receiving
nurse at the Critial Emergency Treatment room that the man had been the victim
of a Xeltan attack, and an unknown number of poisonous spines were now embedded
in his flesh. Their voices faded as Liz fast-walked back to the recieving dock
where another ambulance was already pulling up.
As she took control of the next stretcher, she visually scanned the male
patient that lay on it, groaning. This patient was covered in bruises and cuts.
As Liz dropped the stretcher off at CET with the receiving nurse, she heard the
paramedic explaining that he had been brutally beaten by multiple Exans. The
next stretcher bore an Exan patient who had multiple wounds from energy beam
weapons, from "gang activity," clarified the paramedics.
At her shift's two hour mark, Liz got her first break. Stretcher-running duty
was exhausting, so nurses were only assigned for two hours at a time, then
rotated to another position. She yanked open the bag of snacks she had bought,
and sat in the break room scrolling through her portable. Pulling up the duty
roster, she skimmed the names on the left side and found her own. Next up for
her was lab duty. "Awesome," she thought, "something boring. Finally."
---
"Anything interesting today?" Asked the lab supervisor, Dr. Zad, a Mondan
exobiologist.
"Well, stretcher duty," Liz replied as she lined her tubes up in the
centrifuge.
"Ah," replied Dr. Zad, "the old Chinese curse, 'may you have an interesting
life'..."
"Yeah, exactly," agreed Liz. "Brought to life in me." She poked idly at her
portable while waiting for the centrifuge to finish.
"What was that you're working on again?" Asked the Doctor as he scrawled notes
with a stylus on the screen of his medical pad.
"Oh, it's the blood samples from the poisoned Terran from a few hours ago. I'm
testing for Xeltan venom to verify."
"Ah. Right." Dr. Zed fell silent for a moment and focused on his pad screen.
"I'll just... I'll just mark your chart for you."
"Huh?" Liz cocked her head and raised one eyebrow. "I'm not even done the test.
We should wait for the centrifuge, just to be absolutely sure."
The Doctor cleared his throat, "Eh... we better not, Nurse. If we medically
verify too many of these types of attacks, we could lose funding. I'll just
write that the test was overall inconclusive."
Liz couldn't believe what she was hearing. "Doctor, that's--"
Dr. Zed cut her off, "Liz, just trust me, we don't want to go there."
The centrifuge finished. Liz tapped her pad screen. "POSITIVE," said the
screen, "X TYPE BIOTOXIN DETECTED".
"Doctor, the results..."
"Liz, I get it. I'm a scientist. I want the truth, too. But in this instance,
it's just not worth it. Trust me."
Liz let out a pointed, exasperated sigh. "Then why am I even working in here?"
She stormed out of the lab and took a left, toward the vending machine. She
needed another snack, pronto. As she passed the CET waiting room, she saw a
Xeltan, definitely over two meters tall and nearly as wide with bulging
muscule, who was shoulder-shoving and slapping the face of a human who looked
as though he would rather be anywhere but in this room. His cranial spines
flexed and glimmered in the harsh hospital lighting. She couldn't quite make
out what he was saying as she attempted to look like she wasn't listening, but
she was able to discern the heavily-accented words "human," and "humanist," as
well as a Xeltan curse that she couldn't pronounce (for lack of the proper
vocal anatomy).
Liz moved out of sight into the alcove where the vending machines were, and
called Earth Defense on her portable, and attempted to keep her voice hushed.
"Hello? Yeah, I'm a nurse working at the Nightingale Med Center? There's a
really big Xeltan here in CET, and he's getting violent. I mean, they're both
in a hospital already, I guess, but I'd rather not have this get ugly. Can you
send someone?"
When the call was done, she walked as fast as she could inconspicuously walk
toward the front of the building.
By the time she got all the way out to the front waiting room, a short,
muscular, clean-cut Human patrol officer, whose badge said "Miller," arrived.
She raised her hand and got his attention, "Officer, it's this way."
She led him back toward the CET waiting room, scanning her portable to open the
security door. She reminded the officer of what she knew while they walked,
"An Exan was starting to get pretty agressive. I called as soon as I saw things
start to go south between him and a human patient." She made a left through the
doorway. The scene had gotten uglier, and the Exan was getting far more
physical.
Officer Miller leaned over and said in a hushed tone to Liz, "Why don't you,
uh, just go back to the lobby and wait for my backup to arrive, huh?"
She did, and when that duty was done, she shrank back into the vending machine
alcove to watch as inconspicuously as possible. She was surprised to see the
first officer walk past her alcove to leave, looking frustrated, and the second
officer, a Mondan woman, release the cuffs on the Exan, say something to him
she couldn't make out, and begin to arrest the Human victim. The exan, looking
grumpy but somewhat deflated, slunk out, looking embarrassed.
Liz stepped forward and spoke to the officer. "Ma'am?"
The officer's head whipped around and she raised a hand to Liz, "Stand back,
Miss. Keep your distance. Do not come any closer."
Liz raised her hands in a gesture of surrender, "No, no, it's okay! I'm just...
I saw what happened, it was actually that Exan that--"
The officer interrupted, "Miss, unless you want to be arrested for hateful
conduct and interfering with an enforcement patrol officer, I suggest you fuck
off." She cuffed the human.
