by RD Hale
'Aargh, aargh,' the drunk says, sounding like a confused pirate as he spluts and splatters, courteously offering his hand. Affronted, he slams his beer bottle down when we do not respond in kind. Splashes soak already damp trousers as the drunk relinquishes his attempt to greet us.
'Wow, this is exciting.' The girl's eyes are encircled by baffling delight.
A robotic voice says: 'Welcome,' as we ascend the access ramp and pass through a rising automated door.
We venture into the soft lighting and neutral colours of the lobby to ring a bell. When no-one comes to the counter I ring again, but still no answer. Voices can be heard from an office so I peer through the screen, glimpsing two receptionists chatting beyond a doorway. The slouching fatties are enthralled by the latest episode of a soap opera which is obviously far more important than their job.
'Excuse me!' I bellow, prompting one of them to glare, before turning her attention to her colleague and continuing their banal conversation.
'EXCUSE ME!' I yell.
The pig ignorant woman sighs, quickly finishing her sentence to speculate on how a particular plotline is going to pan out: 'The man's an absolute snotlump! She should definitely leave him.'
'But he's so cuddly and very, very sorry. I'd take him back if it was me,' her colleague replies. I really do not care.
The first woman thoughtfully plods to the reception desk and a skinny belt clings to her broad waist which has not so much as a hint of curvaceousness. The photographic identification fixed to her uniform looks like a mug shot and her hair seems to have been randomly chopped with a pair of blunt scissors. Her bulbous nose and bloodshot cheeks suggest her misery stems from every moment she has been unfortunate enough to glance in the mirror. She shuffles through a pile of papers without bothering to make eye contact.
'Can you read and write?' the receptionist asks.
'Probably better than you,' I reply and she slides a form and pen under the screen, folding muscular arms with a lingering stare.
'Wow, aren't you smart? Fill this in and hand it back to us. You can take a seat,' the receptionist instructs in a mechanical tone.
Clutching stationery, we enter a waiting room where alcoholic undesirables have congregated, probably from fighting after one too many beers. The benches could seat about fifty patients, but there are close to one hundred louts and most of them are slumped on dappled beige flooring. A scabby-faced boy, wearing a frayed brown coat, sits on his mother's knees as wideopen eyes dart around the room. Enfeebled coughing barely seems able to expel the air from his lungs.
'Hey, cover your mouth. You better not be contagious,' a drunk snarls.
'Shut up, leave the kid alone,' Sylvie snaps.
We identify a large enough space in the seating to avoid coming into contact with these wretches whose lack of hygiene would disgust even the soap-fearing Scoop. As we wait our turn middle-aged perverts leer at the girls, dwelling in grotesque fantasies which could not be realised even with the use of force.
'What are you creeps looking at?' Sylvie snarls.
An obviously homeless man enters, huddled in a dust-thick overcoat and as I hope he does not come to sit beside us, he does exactly that. My eyes are drawn to sockless ankles with a fungal infection which probably crept up through his leaky moccasins. Repeated sideways glances reveal his lumpy face with freakishly long eyebrows and teeth like yellow wood chippings saturated by liquor.
'H-hello,' the man grunts as though he is choking on his tongue.
'Hello, ni-' the girl is interrupted by a nudge of my elbow.
'Don't talk to them,' I insist without caring who hears as I attempt to fill in the form with my left hand, scrawling my name over the line. 'Can you do this for me, once you've finished hers?'
Sylvie completes both forms, making up answers which are likely to be borderline gobbledygook due to her drop-out level of literacy. She hands the paperwork into reception with a smirk as the tense mother and frail child are called into the doctor's office, escaping an environment which no family would visit if they could afford insurance.
'What are we doing here?' the girl asks.
'The doctor's going to fix us,' I reply.
'You mean like at the lab when they inject needles into us and we wake up better again? Is it like that?' The girl pokes her nose towards mine, releasing the pressure on her cheek and I lean away to gain a clearer view of the damage. Surprisingly there is no swelling, with only slight bruising around the wound which is an inch across and at risk of infection from the spores being discharged by our present company.
'It's stopped bleeding,' Sylvie observes.
'If we had a spare one hundred credits Medigel could heal us within days, but we have no money so we'll be fixed up the old-fashioned way,' I explain.
Sitting back in my seat, I stare at the clutter of posters with torn corners breaking free of sticky tack. Many offer advice about the prevention of illnesses and one depicts a man curled up on the pavement with yellow growths blighting his skin. The caption reads:
GEV is a punishment from the goddess. It afflicts the immoral and can be prevented through cleanliness, piety and abstinence.
Numerous advertisements for drug trials and medical experiments are plastered between advice posters and they all have the same stipulation - you must be at least eleven years old to participate. One reads:
Volunteers needed. We will pay up to TEN THOUSAND CREDITS! We will exchange your heart, liver or kidneys for artificial organs for research purposes. This procedure is one hundred percent safe. Artificial organs are better than the real thing. DO NOT MISS OUT!
'One hundred percent safe they claim. Funny how people randomly drop dead after having artificial organs fitted, but they find the offer of cash too good to turn down,' I mutter.
'But ten thousand credits, you could buy a Level Two Citicard.' Sylvie stands to gain a closer look.
'Don't even think about it!'
The three of us spend a miserable wait in necessary silence, hoping every name announced will be one of ours, until finally: Dynah Mite - Room 2 appears in red dots on the electronic display. Sylvie nudges the oblivious girl and they enter the doctor's room, leaving me to ponder why a Medicentre which only attracts riff-raff would be in the heart of a Level Two district.
Combats cling to the gluey bench as my legs squirm because a couple of vagabonds whose coats appear to be crawling have filled the empty seats. Squashed between this vermin, I sit wary of what ailment I may contract until finally I stand.
The tearful mother pleads with a nurse as she is escorted from the doctor's office and the medical assistant nudges her along without a sliver of empathy as her child's right of life is revoked.
'Please, he'll die if he doesn't get the medication. He's only five years old. I don't have one thousand credits. He's contagious, he could affect my other children.'
'That's what medical insurance is for. You are causing a disturbance, you'll have to leave before you get arrested. Your child's life is in the hands of the goddess now. If he is worthy he will be spared.'
The boy trips but does not fall due to his mother's supportive hand and she sobs as they squeeze past undesirables cramming into the Medicentre, most of them opting to laze on the floor. Some fall asleep or maybe drift into comas and others stand - bleeding, moaning about their pain or ranting about the events leading up to their injuries. But one unstable exception lies down, singing a song and he looks like the happiest person in the room.
A nurse stands in a doorway and my eyes are magnetised to a hairy growth on her chin. Indiscreteness is met by her furious scowl as though she can hear my mind questioning why she has not had the unsightly wart removed.
'My cock!' the nurse barks to looks of bemusement and unsurprisingly no-one replies. 'The doctor is waiting to see my cock!' she barks louder, but still receives no reply to the bizarre announcement and her elephant-like legs thunder across to me of all people.
The nurse's mountainous figure stands over the
only human person in the room, with hand thrust into hip and hair scraped into a ball at the back of her bulbous skull. My eyes roll upwards to meet her glare.
'Are you or are you not Mike... Hock?' the nurse snarls and everyone in the room sniggers as it finally dawns that Sylvie is more literate and quick-witted than I gave her credit for.
'Yeah, I'm your... I mean Mike Hock.'
'The doctor's waiting for you, room one. Hurry up, please.'
Sidestepping the squirming drunks, I enter a door which fails to slide shut behind me. Presumably, the closing mechanism is broken and several waiting patients can see into my private consultation. The doctor sitting at the desk is a smug-looking man with black hair waxed into a side parting.
With a flick of the holoscreen the text he was viewing minimises into a thin line and then a speck and disappears. He strums his fingers on a cluttered desk with a half-drunk carton of coffee in one corner, a kinetic motion toy in another and in the middle - a stethoscope, a tendon hammer and what I believe is a handheld brain scanner.
'Hello,' I say, but the doctor stares at the blank holoscreen without replying so I take a seat, prompting him to spin around with a crumpled brow aimed at the patient who is evidently wasting his limited time.
'Why don't you take a seat, Master Hock?'
'Er, I already have.'
'I can see that, Master Hock... and how did you hurt your hand? Fighting, I presume?'
'Er yeah.' I avert his gaze to examine the picture of a road-sign with upside down lettering which reads: ʇuǝpıɔɔɐ uɐ pɐɥ ʇsnɾ ǝʌ,noʎ sıɥʇ pɐǝɹ uɐɔ noʎ ɟı
Those beady eyes continue to stare through thin-framed spectacles as the doctor folds arms and I gain the impression any polite prompting may antagonise him into refusing treatment. I await the response of his compassionless face, but the only movement comes from twitching eyebrows which have mastered condescendingness to an artform.
Eventually, the doctor gets out of his seat in a creepily slow manner and speaks through his lipless mouth: 'Well Master Hock, there are a lot of bad people in this world and most of them end up in places like this.'
'But it wasn't my fa.... OWWW!'
The doctor snatches my punching hand, jamming his thumb into my swollen flesh firmly enough to potentially worsen the injury. Somehow, I resist the urge to retaliate because no matter how unpleasant the treatment maybe, there is no alternative other than to let broken bones fuse into a misshapen claw.
'Does this hurt?' Thin lips vanish inwards as the doctor sneers.
'YES!' I screech.
'And this? Yes, you've broken your metacarpal. I'll call the nurse, she'll put it in a cast. It'll be fine in six to eight weeks.'
'So I'll be one handed for six to eight weeks? Is there nothing else you can do?'
'Well, I could have the nurse inject nanites directly into your bones to accelerate the healing process.' The doctor smirk steals my optimism. 'That's if you were able to pay.'
'Forget it, just bandage me up please.'
The doctor places his bony finger onto a button on his desk, holding his chin aloft to signify his 'expertise' has diagnosed the bleedingly obvious in order to provide the crudest available treatment.
'Nurse, Master Hock requires the use of the casting machine.'
Awkward minutes pass as I stare at the ceiling, occasionally glancing down to check if the weirdo is still looking down his nose - which he is, silently and unflinchingly and causing me to wonder whether he is a robot or a sociopath. The elephantine nurse at last stomps through the malfunctioning doorway, looking as joyful as she did before.
'Come here,' the nurse grunts and as I follow her instruction, she snatches my wrist and shoves my swollen hand through a hole in a yellow-tinged contraption which clamps over my forearm to provide an airtight seal. The pain throbs until a cool substance slops over my skin. When the machine stops whirring I cannot move my fingers and she yanks my arm out to reveal a rock-hard glove.
'The cast will fall off in its own time,' the nurse grunts.
'Do you have any pain killers?'
'Yes, that'll be twenty credits.' The nurse's curling lips reveal grey teeth.
'Okay, forget it. Can I use the Antipain before I go please?'
'No you can't, there's no time. We have people waiting.'
'Fine, I'm leaving,' I fume and before my stamping feet have reached the doorway a calamitous crash reverberates through the walls, followed by a garbled screech as though a monster is on the rampage.
'OWWW! What are you? Get out! Someone call the STG!'
Disgust transforms into amusement as I storm into the waiting room where a belly-laughing Sylvie struggles to maintain her poise whilst dragging the sheepish girl. A hyperventilating nurse is slumped against a desk as the office door swishes shut: her humiliation brought on by a reeking attitude which should be at odds with the responsibilities of her role but is so common place I can only imagine it is not.
'They tried to put a needle into me,' the girl explains as the exit door rises.
'Come on ladies, let's get out of here.'
The drunk who originally greeted us is slumped on his side, snoring as we march away from this public service agency with no desire to return any time ever. Hunger pangs now rival my broken bone in the inconvenience stakes and we are further adrift than anticipated but our new friend is quite the consolation prize.
'Look.' The girl stops mid-lawn to turn her cheek, showing the wound which does not seem to have caused an ounce of distress.
'Wow, the gash on your face - it's sealed shut. It looks almost healed,' I gasp.
'I didn't need that nasty needle.'
'You should've seen it, Arturo. A horrible nurse tried to stitch her, but she sent her flying into the table. It was hilarious!'
The Lengths We Must Go To
Late in the afternoon, we head home and a scramjet zooms into the upper atmosphere as we wander through a housing estate. Paint flakes off house panels and crooked antennae rattle in the breeze amongst loose tiles. Some properties have conservatories, one has a lopsided basketball hoop in the garden and a broken fence reveals a filthy greenhouse. The area seems lifeless and all the paintwork is faded, like looking at an old photograph or a painting exposed to prolonged sunlight.
'These are more like the houses in books, different to the other places.' The girl tiptoes ever-so-gently like a form of politeness. 'Do you live in a place like this?'
'Nah, the kids around here go to school because they have parents - with jobs. Our home is wayyy better than this, I think I'd die of boredom if I lived here,' I reply.
'So they are poorer than you?' the girl asks.
'No, financially they're better off. The thing is the residents are wealthy enough to believe in the law, but too busy working to have any fun. They don't do drugs or party or anything. Well, apart from a few rebellious teens who get mad at their parents for giving them an easy life!'
'But you live in a nice place?'
'The warehouse is amazing but it's an absolute tip really. We make the most of it and there's plenty of room. That's why you're welcome to stay. We won't even charge rent and we could if we wanted to!' I laugh at the notion of a slum hotel.
'Really, Arturo?' Sylvie's cheeks swallow her frowning eyes.
We cross a road and trundle towards a pair of boys sitting on their doorstep as they play with remote-controlled spaceships - flying holograms that swoosh overhead firing laser beams. The unfolding of this small-scale intergalactic battle causes the girl to jump as I chuckle, ‘It’s just a game!’ The alteration of perception prompts her to point, holding hand over mouth as a laser beam blasts a ship to fragments and a victorious boy pumps his fist in celebration.
'Cool, eh? I always wanted one of those when I was a kid. I mean they're pretty basic technology now, but back in the day they were the most amazing things in the universe!' I reminisce.
'So why didn't you have one?' The girl's question evokes a bitter sense of childhoo
d materialism.
'Because nobody was willing to spare me two hundred credits!'
'Aw, poor little orphan boy!' Sylvie smirks as she stretches arms downwards, rolling her shoulders. 'By the way, I'm starving after my heroics today. I'm so hungry I could eat a whole pig!'
'Hmmm, I'd definitely bring the bacon home if I could.' I drool.
'My mouth is watering and only one thing can cure my malnutrition right now - chocolate. Lots and lots of chocolate!' Sylvie insists.
'Well, you'll not have to wait much longer. Our destination is upon us.'
My cheeks are drawn inwards by a deep breath as we reach a field of grass tufts partially devoured by a large white and green building. It is a SuperMart – a store with unrestricted access which should provide the perfect target; however the girl represents an element of risk. A crowd is marching downstairs from Ampfield Station and cars swoop in from the nearby highway so we should be able to blend in amongst the genuine customers.
'When we leave this place we might have to run. If we start running, it's important you follow. If you see us put anything in our pockets, don't speak and don't copy. In fact don't touch anything, just to be safe. I'll need to take my hoody now.'
With my pilfering outfit fully restored and a young girl dressed like a wounded plumber, we join the procession of shoppers. Serpent-headed speakers mounted on entrance walls hiss: 'Welcome to Ampfield SuperMart,' and we stroll past a fat security guard with greying hair who looks incapable of catching any would-be thief. He eyes us suspiciously as sweat soaks through his flab-stretched uniform but a group of mouthy teenagers behind us provide the ideal distraction. Sylvie and I pick up shopping baskets and chatter away as we pass through aisles of sickly green tiles.
'While we're here, remember to visit the chemist. Don't forget about the ointment for your little problem, Conrad,' Sylvie adopts a twang as cheeks dimple and bulging eyes fix mine but I can play this game.
'No problem, Amelia, but please buy something new to wear and change out of them awful clothes. They're inappropriate for an eleven year old!'