“Oh god… don’t remind me of Kewan, please,” she says with a half-chuckle. Ugh, and now she was being reminded of that, too… she didn’t know if Jay had told Hermit separately or if he managed to hear his monologue after the 1010 hijacking, but she wasn’t going to press it either way. Didn’t need Hermit knowing anything.
She somewhat freezes up when he asks about the operation. She was going to have to lie and make it sound convincing. Sure, she was in another world, but she’s still bound by patient privacy laws! “Hmm, how can I put this without getting in legal trouble…” She purses her lips as she thinks. “Well… it was after I was put on permanent duty at the navy hospital. Trauma surgery shifts, making devices for soldiers that needed them, that kind of thing.
“Uh. Someone from the same cruiser I was on came through during one of my surgery shifts, and I knew the person fairly well… it made me really upset to see them in such a sorry state, and when I say sorry, I mean sorry. They had gotten too close to an explosive device from the enemy and had shrapnel all over them. Big metal rods straight through their body. Bleeding everywhere. Some folks had taken care of a little bit of the bleeding and sawed off the sections of the rods that were sticking out, but that’s about it. Just kept bleeding and bleeding. They almost died when they got to my operating theater…” Her voice was starting to become shaky… “I could feel my blood practically boiling… so I said ‘fuck it,’ ripped off my glove, slammed my hand down onto their chest, and rerouted all of that excurrent flow back into their body. I kept it from gushing out until my nurses and attendants could get any other bleeding that would happen under control.” Whatever went on, it’s obvious it’s starting to get to her.
“And then we surveyed the damage…” Suddenly, as if she had hit a switch, her speech becomes much less conversational, her tone just as cold and distant. “We could save them, but… they’d never be the same. I sawed off their pelvis, legs, and arms, since those were too mangled. Some pieces of shrapnel had gotten into their innards, so we had to remove some of those and implement an in-body nutrition and dialysis system. Then I had a nurse grab some cybernetics that would fit them that I had made and were on standby, just in case.
“…It worked. I saved them. But…” She trails off for a moment before shaking her head. “Forget about it. It was a success. If it weren’t for those emotions and my powers, they wouldn’t have survived.”
He was glad he got a laugh out of her, even if it was just a small one. However, the feeling fades once she talks about her story. It sounded terrifying from the start but just got worse and worse as she went on. But what else did he expect when asking a question such as that. Having to replace someone’s arms, legs, and a few organs with cybernetic parts? He could guess who this mystery patient was, but he wouldn’t mention it.
He started to feel bad he even asked. This was supposed to be a fun time with each other’s magic. Hmm... maybe if he told a story of his own she’d feel better. It’s always better to share, right?
“I used to be bigger than I am now when I was a teenager. It was at a time where I didn’t really have a place to call home so I slept underground, in alleyways, and, on clear nights, rooftops. With the lights of the city shining and the cool breeze, rooftops were my favorite place to relax. But then a fire broke out on the building I was sleeping on.
“Fun fact! Did you know ooze hardens and becomes totally useless when in contact with fire? I didn’t know before that. I was almost trapped up there, but I knew my powers well. I could detach myself from the parts that hardened, and ran down the walls, feeling my way around since I couldn’t see thanks to the smoke.”
He leaned forward until he was loafing like a cat on the couch and looked at her with an easygoing smile. “Look on the bright side! It’s a good thing we’re both good with our powers, even under pressure. Or else we’d both be much worse off.”
