Summary: Tommy dies, and then wakes up changed. (I'm going to be so real this is just crack treated extremely seriously and for WHAT) / AO3 LINK
CWs: Body horror, medical trauma, death/death mentions, kidnapping
-
TommyInnit died on Saturday, June 20th, at 9:34 PM.
Legally, that is.
One moment he was bleeding out in an alleyway, dying an unremarkable death after he snarked off to the wrong dickhead who was trying to take his wallet.
The next, he was waking up to harsh fluorescent lights, aching in every part of his body, and unmistakably alive.
A curly head of brown hair came into his vision, and as Tommy's eyes focused, he saw a wide smile on their face.
"Hello! How are you feeling?" The man asked, unusually cheerful given...well, everything.
Tommy groaned in response. The man smiled wider.
"Ah, yes, that's to be expected." The man laughed. "You almost didn't make it!"
Tommy's memory came back to him, and he shot up into a sitting position. Immediately, his vision went black, and the only thing keeping him from falling backwards was the man's hands on his back and arm. They were gloved, and ice cold.
Tommy blinked a few times until his vision returned, hissing in pain as his stab wound flared in agony at his movement.
"How—how am I–?" Tommy tried, breathing raggedly. The man steadied his hand on the back of Tommy's neck. "Catch your breath! We have lots to talk about."
Tommy frowned, but did as the man said, trying to even out his breathing and bear through the pain of his injury. Steadily, his other senses came into focus, and he started taking note of his surroundings.
He was laying on a cold metal table, in a hospital gown, and looked right at home amongst what seemed to be an operation room, from what Tommy had seen on TV. Various instruments for recording his heart rate and other statistics he couldn't decipher were hooked up to his arms, beeping a bit rapidly along with his heartbeat.
Other than the man, Tommy was alone. There were no nurses, no doctors, nobody.
The pain was beginning to be unbearable now, and Tommy desperately sucked in a breath with a choked whimper. The man tutted sympathetically at his side.
"I'll turn up the morphine for you, lad." The man said, and eased Tommy back down into a lying position before meddling with the IV bag at his left. "We'll talk in a bit, alright?"
Tommy didn't get to respond before chemical relief swept over him, and it was so welcome that his mind faded into nothing soon after.
---
The second time he woke up, he was in a different room.
Instead of a metal table, he laid in a bed, with a thin blanket over him and a squashed old pillow under his head. An IV drip was still inserted in his hand, the tube leading to a bag hung on a stand on wheels by the bed.
His thoughts were much clearer now, and the pain was more manageable, though he still moved gingerly into a sitting position to not anger his wound again.
The mattress was thin and springy underneath him, something he regarded with a bit of a wince, but he supposed beggars couldn't be choosers.
Wait.
The gravity of the situation flooded back to him, and Tommy snapped his head up to look around the room. It was small, with the only furniture being a rickety bedside table and chair, Tommy's IV stand, and a ratty rug beside the door.
The room had no windows, and a barely-there dampness clung to every breath he took. Tommy vaguely related the smell to a basement or cellar. Certainly not a hospital.
His teeth felt wrong in his mouth.
The sound of footsteps made him flinch, and he gritted out a noise of pain through his teeth as his stomach screamed in pain. His IV-less hand moved to the wound on instinct, and Tommy felt bandages wrapped around his abdomen under his hospital gown.
The door opened to reveal the same brown-haired man from before, balancing a laundry basket on his hip. He smiled brightly when he saw Tommy.
"Oh, wonderful! You're awake!" The man exclaimed, setting down the basket near the door. "You just can't be kept down, huh?"
"Where am I?" Tommy asked, cutting through pleasantries. The man's smile flickered for a split second.
"This is my office!" The man said with pride, gesturing broadly. "Well, this is the bedroom, but this whole place is where I do my work."
"The name is Doctor Malpractice, by the way!" The man breezed right along, not waiting for Tommy's response. "What can I call you?"
"...Tommy." Tommy answered, warily. Something about this whole thing rubbed him the wrong way.
"Wait, you said your name is Malpractice?" Tommy realized, furrowing his brows. The doctor laughed easily.
"Yes, quite ironic, I know." He said, bending to rifle through the laundry basket. "Don't you worry, I only do honest work here, contrary to the name."
The doctor straightened and tossed Tommy what he recognized to be his clothes into his lap.
"I took it upon myself to wash up your clothes while you were out." Doctor Malpractice mentioned. "Go ahead and get changed!" The doctor encouraged. "Take as much time as you need, you're still healing."
"...Thanks." Tommy said, hesitantly. "Um...where am I?" He asked. "I don't...I don't remember—"
"Clothes first!" The doctor interrupted cheerfully, picking up the laundry basket. "We'll talk once you're changed. Just come meet me outside when you're done." He said, balancing the basket on his hip to open the door again.
Tommy strained his neck to see outside of the door, but the doctor quickly closed it behind him. The only thing Tommy could pick up on was old, yellowed wallpaper, and a sickly orange light that reminded him of his grandparent's unused basement.
Tommy took a moment to orient himself, breathing in through his nose.
Something was still screaming at him that this wasn't right, but Tommy didn't know enough to have a concrete reason to back up the feeling.
He decided to shelf it for now, and picked up his shirt.
Incredibly, it was entirely free of blood. If Tommy hadn't been intimately aware that he was bleeding out earlier, he would believe that the fabric had never been stained.
The only thing pertaining to the incident was a thin but noticeable rip in the shirt's midsection, where the mugger had stabbed him.
Tommy shuddered involuntarily, hissing through his teeth when his wound flared up at the action.
Unlike before, though, the pain faded with just a few breaths. Tommy blinked, then remembered the IV stand he was still hooked up to. It must have been feeding painkillers into his system.
Tommy decided to stop thinking and carefully reached behind him to untie the hospital gown.
----
Tommy had no way of telling the time down here, but he figured it took at least half an hour to wrangle himself into his clothes. By the end of it he was exhausted, and it frustrated him that such a simple task had already siphoned his energy.
Despite that, Tommy dug deep and headed towards the door, using his portable IV stand to hold some of his weight as he wheeled it along with him.
Tommy turned the old brass doorknob, and was startled by how quickly the musty basement smell was replaced by chemical cleanliness as soon as he pushed the door open.
He'd entered into a hallway, lit with that same sickly light he'd briefly seen before, the source being a pathetic little lightbulb hanging from the ceiling.
Fluorescent artificial light glowed from the end of the hall, where the old dark wood floor abruptly transitioned to pristine white linoleum like what Tommy saw in the operating room.
Curious and hesitant, Tommy pushed forward, the quiet sound of the IV stand wheels moving over the floorboards seeming so much louder in the silence.
The room the hallway led to was almost exactly like a hospital ICU, with the exception of a few notable things. Number one being the absence of windows.
Tommy expected no windows in the operating room he woke up in, but in patient dockings? It was eerie. Tommy didn't usually spare a thought to windows until there was an absence of them.
The second thing Tommy noticed was the lack of hospital beds. The room was large enough to fit several beds on each wall, but there were only three, and they were unkempt and unmade, as if recently in use.
The third odd thing was the lack of machinery and doctors, nurses or anyone else, even patients. It was empty except for Tommy. There was no hustle and bustle like one would expect from a hospital, and the quiet put him on edge.
"Doctor Malpractice?" Tommy called, his voice filling the emptiness of the room only slightly, but it comforted him.
"Tommy?" The doctor's voice called, and a few seconds later the man's head poked into the room from yet another door to the right.
"Ah, wonderful! You're up!" Doctor Malpractice praised with a smile, and opened the door fully. "Come meet the others! I was just about to start lunch."
"Others?" Tommy felt himself immediately relax. Maybe this wasn't a weird abandoned hospital after all.
"My other patients, of course." Doctor Malpractice said fondly, and gestured for Tommy to follow him back through the door.
Tommy was immediately greeted by two other men sitting at what looked like an old folding table, playing cards. They looked up as he entered, and twin looks of shock and alarm crossed their faces.
"A kid?!" The man with pale hair immediately redirected to Doctor Malpractice, fury in his eyes. "Are you fucking kidding me?!"
"Now, now, Phil—" Doctor Malpractice said, stepping backwards, and Tommy barely managed to stumble out of the way as the man—Phil—suddenly got up from the table and lunged for the doctor.
Pain lanced from Tommy's knife wound like a lightning strike at his sudden movement, and he saw spots in his eyes as he choked a gasp of pain.
Doctor Malpractice yelped as Phil got near him, and reached into his coat as he jumped away from the pale-haired man. Tommy watched with growing terror as Phil suddenly hit the floor with a wheeze, what looked like smoke pouring from his mouth.
"Goodness, you should know better by now!" Doctor Malpractice said, sounding shaken as he stared down at Phil's trembling form with a strange apathy in his eyes for the man's condition.
"Wh-what's happening to him?" Tommy managed to say, his free hand clutching his wound. Doctor Malpractice turned to him, and Tommy saw his coldness switch to concern.
"Oh dear, you didn't open your stitches, did you?" The doctor worried, pulling Tommy's shirt up to inspect his bandages like it was a normal thing to do.
"H-hey!" Tommy said, weakly smacking at the doctor's hands. "Personal space, man, what the fuck?!"
"Doc!" A new voice said with urgency, and Tommy and the doctor turned in unison to see the other man kneeled by Phil's convulsing body with a hand on his back.
"Oh, whoops!" The doctor said, and reached into his coat again. Phil suddenly gasped like he'd never breathed before, and descended into choking coughs, smoke jerkily leaving his mouth. The other man helped him sit up, and Phil leaned in to his support, his chest heaving.
Tommy watched the scene in wide-eyed horror, and wrenched away from the doctor inspecting his wound. "What the fuck is going on here?!"
Doctor Malpractice blinked at him, as if surprised by his outburst.
“Oh, Phil had a little spell of disobedience, nothing to worry about.” Doctor Malpractice said flippantly, gesturing to the man still heaving for breath. “See? He’s fine!”
“I meant the fucking smoke, you twisted dickhead!” Tommy didn’t back down.
“Oh! That was his core,” Doctor Malpractice said, like it explained everything. Tommy stared.
“Bud-“ The other man spoke up, sympathetic green eyes behind big square frames. “You’re not gonna get a super good explanation from the Doc, he’s a little…”
“A little great at my job, obviously!” Doctor Malpractice laughed and put his hands on his hips proudly. Tommy’s skin was starting to crawl, and he took another laborious step back.
“Somebody fuckin’ tell me what’s going on!” Tommy demanded, his voice as shaky as his legs underneath him.
“We’re—changed,” The man in glasses quickly said, as Phil finally seemed to catch his breath, his head lowered. Tommy faltered in his anger, something in him deeply unnerved by those two simple words.
“What do you mean, changed?” Tommy demanded, trying to sound forceful. It came out more scared than authoritative.
“Oh! Doy,” Doctor Malpractice lightly bopped his forehead with his palm. “I’ve completely forgotten to explain, I was so focused on making sure you wouldn’t die on me!”
He moved closer again, grasping Tommy’s jaw in a gentle but unyielding grip to pry his mouth open, Tommy’s weak struggles completely ineffective against him.
The doctor pressed his thumb to the top of Tommy’s mouth, and Tommy felt the overwhelmingly sickening feeling of his teeth shifting. Phil and the man in glasses sucked in sharp gasps, and Tommy tried yet again to struggle free, his heart rate spiking. What were they gasping at?!
“Et voila!” The doctor announced proudly, stepping back and letting Tommy go, standing out of the way so the other two men could look upon Tommy with uninterrupted, horrified gazes.
Tommy touched his teeth, his upper jaw feeling sore and achy. His eyes widened in shock and fear as his fingers touched teeth that were much, much longer than they should have been, sharp and thin, unfolded from the palate of the top of his mouth like mandibles.
“What did you do-?” Tommy choked out, his tongue moving against his changed mouth and teeth in a way that repulsed him as he tried to speak.
Doctor Malpractice grinned widely, his eyes shining with the utmost pride in the face of Tommy’s horror.
“I made you better!”
