Tracking Chip Extraction/“Do You Have Anywhere to Go?”
Chapter title is pretty self-explanatory, but this'll be the last combination chapter in a while. Thanks again goes to my beta-readers @whumped-by-glitter and @generic-whumperz
TW/CW: medical whump (featuring a somewhat detailed procedure), trypanophobia (fear of needles), allusions to as well as explicit references to past whump (slave whump, nsfw whump, noncon), discussion of modern psychiatric health wards
Vikash texted his best friends and roommates to say he’d be a little late coming home, and that he had something he had to finish up at the end of his shift. The late afternoon to evening rush of emergencies left him little breathing room to check up on Khaled. Once he was officially off the clock, he planned on sneaking the man into an empty examination room, excising the chip, and being in and out in less than five minutes. Khaled himself seemed less than enthused about waiting until the end of the day until his tracker could be removed, but he seemed to accept it quickly enough. Last he heard from Ashley, he was sitting at one of the tables in the breakroom, fiddling with a child-sized juice box, staring blankly at a wall.
Khaled was really selling this whole ‘crazy cousin’ act.
They found an empty examination room for their clandestine little operation. Vik gathered up his supplies that he’d need and led his patient into the empty room. He gestured Khaled toward the examination table after he closed the door behind them.
“So, here’s what we’re gonna do: you’ll take off your shirt and lay on your stomach, then I’ll give you an anesthetic, make a small cut, take out the tracking chip, and patch you back up,” Vik explained. “The whole procedure shouldn’t take longer than five minutes, I’ll be in, then out, and we’ll be done,” he reassured.
Khaled scrutinized the tools laid out next to the doctor, eyes scanning each item as if he was looking for something. His mouth downturned into an uncertain little frown as if he was struggling to find it. Vik cleared his throat. “Is that, um–do you have any questions about the procedure?” he asked, trying to understand the man’s hesitation.
“Yeah, I…” Khaled hesitated. “Is the anesthesia a needle?” He cast his eyes to the floor as he explained shakily. “I-I get weird about needles… bad things happen when I get stuck with a needle...”
Vik wasn’t entirely sure what that meant, but it didn’t matter at the time. “Luckily for you, this anesthetic is topical, meaning it goes on top of your skin, not under it,” he replied. He held up the bottle of lidocaine spray and turned it around in his hand. Khaled leaned in to examine it as Vik held it out to him. “Of course, if you have any heart conditions or if you’re allergic to this type of anesthetic, we may have to consider something else.” He paused. “You don’t have any heart conditions or allergies I need to know about, do you?” he belatedly asked.
Khaled shrugged. “Master kept track of those things on my app.”
Vik understood all those words, but not in that specific order. “Come again?”
“On the app,” Khaled reiterated. He reached into his pants pocket and took out a cellphone. “I have a barcode tattooed behind my left ear, that’s my identification code,” Khaled explained. “You scan it with the slave-tracking app, and it’ll tell you everything about me.” He tapped in a few things, murmuring what sounded like potential passwords to himself, before handing the phone to Vikash with the screen open to a photo-taking app. “Go on, scan me!” he invited him.
Vik took the phone from him. Khaled bowed his head and reached a hand up to hold his left ear flat, revealing the barcode to the scanner. Vik focused the camera to get as clear of a picture of Khaled’s ear as possible before clicking. The photo immediately directed him to a profile with a table of information listed under a full-body picture of him: his serial number, name, age, blood type, allergies, prescriptions, owner, and status. “Owner and Status?” Vik read aloud. A notification box popped up advertising Khaled as a runaway who had assaulted his master. Come to think of it, Khaled said something about headbutting his next owner in a parking lot, didn’t he?
Oh my god, he wasn’t lying!
Wait, the medical information! Vik exited the pop-up notification and scrolled back to the pertinent information. “No known allergies, good cardiovascular health–we’re alright then,” he summarized. The tracking chip extraction could proceed as planned.
He changed gloves and picked up a sterile wipe from the tray as Khaled laid on his stomach, back facing up. It was like a punch to the gut when Vikash saw the gashes he remembered from their first encounter, now healed into sinuous scar tissue. He focused on his task by wiping the skin he was about to work on with the sanitary wipe. Then, he followed up with a spray of the numbing medicine.
“It’s cold,” Khaled murmured.
Vik wasn’t about to apologize for things outside his control, so he didn’t deign to answer that comment. He glanced at his tablet, where an image of Khaled’s X-ray was displayed, using it as a guide. It looked like the microchip was implanted right under the tattoo of the skull and snake. It’s brilliant, really, he acknowledged. The blackish blue ink covered what minimal scar tissue remained so effectively that Khaled did not even know where the chip was in his own body. Vik palpated the area around the snake. He tried to feel around for any sharp edges, or unusual shapes prodding out just underneath the skin.
He found it right around where the snake exited the eye socket. “I hope you weren’t emotionally attached to this tattoo, dude,” he sighed as he picked up his scalpel. He nicked the serpent’s neck and sliced down, beheading it and exposing the dermis beneath. To his credit, the man beneath him didn’t so much as scream, though he made sporadic flinching movements as Vikash tweezed the microchip out of his shoulder. “I’m sorry, I’m sure this is uncomfortable, we’re almost done,” he reassured him. Khaled’s profile said he was captured and sold in 2015, and so a lot of excess tissue had grown around the intrusion. He tweezed with one hand, and took the scalpel in the other to cut as he pulled. “You’re doing so good, we’re almost done,” he murmured as he worked quickly. Beneath him, Khaled threw a silent thumbs-up.
Vikash finally excised the chip and set it aside in a sterile steel tray. The chip landed with a metallic clatter that echoed through the room as the doctor closed and bandaged the wound. “And, there we go!” he announced. “You’re done!”
Khaled pushed himself into a sitting position. “Really? It’s out for real?” he asked. A small smile graced his lips as he eyed the bloody chip in the tray. He looked up at Vik, eyes shining in gratitude and awe, like he had hung the stars in the sky, or strung Lord Shiva’s bow. “Thank you,” he whispered.
This was why he became a doctor, after all. And, after one year since he made that promise to help Khaled and other people like him, it looked like he’d finally deliver on his promise.
“No problem,” Vikash replied, all too happy to throw the chip into the biohazard waste bin. “Now, put your clothes back on, and…” He scrutinized Khaled’s clothing. Hoodie, t-shirt, a pair of hospital scrub pants to replace his blood-stained skinny jeans? None of it was appropriate for a cold February night. “Let’s stop and get you some warmer clothes first.”
A short man with a rust-red beanie on top of bleached-blond hair waited for them at the staff locker room. He had changed out of hospital scrubs and now wore a beaten-up pair of sneakers, blue jeans, and a jacket over a graphic t-shirt bearing a buxom anime woman. He looked up from his Nintendo switch and waved at Vik, his welcoming smile waning a little as he saw a person he didn’t recognize.
Vik’s jaw dropped. “Eric, what are you doing here?” he asked. “Your shift ended hours ago!”
“Ashley told everyone your crazy cousin was back from rehab, and I was going to hang around because I know how you get, dealing with family drama and all.” Eric directed his attention to Khaled. “Although, now I see that this is not Vikram Gill, and now I think you got some explaining to do?” he asked, looking back at Vikash.
Vik opened his locker and took out a pair of sweat pants, a long-sleeved shirt, an athletic fleece jacket, and a heavy coat. “Okay, Eric, Khaled, Khaled, Eric,” he introduced them, waving from one to the other. “He’s a–well, he’s been, um–Khaled, let me see that app again,” he requested, giving up on explaining Khaled’s situation himself.
Khaled logged into the app again and bent down so Vik could take a picture of his ear. Vik wordlessly handed the phone to Eric. Eric skimmed over the evidence, his thin eyes widening in shock as he took it all in. “Yeah…” Vikash said.
Eric kept pulling up more tabs on the app as Vik changed his clothes. His fair face paled as he read more and more. “Most effective punishment–burning, most dicks sucked in a single hour–twenty, kinks–thigh-high stockings, nipple play?” he read aloud.
Khaled’s face flushed bright red. His hand made a flinching move towards the phone, as if he wanted to swipe it back, but he stopped himself mid-way. “It really says all that?” he squeaked.
Vikash shook his head, as if physically trying to dislodge the words he’d just heard. “Never mind that, let’s just go!” he decided. He closed the locker once he had changed, putting the padlock back on before scooping up his gym bag and slinging it over one shoulder. Eric handed Khaled’s phone back to him. “Now, do you have any place to go, Khaled? Somewhere safe?” Vik asked.
“I, um… I don’t know,” he faltered. Vik supposed he should’ve expected that Khaled had nowhere to go after this. No family living nearby, he assumed, and he didn’t know what this guy’s friend situation was like. Maybe the only place he could’ve gone was back to his abuser. Seeing as this abuser was dead, that option was certainly out.
“I know some places that would probably take you for the night,” Eric suggested. He took out his phone and typed in a query in the maps app, tilting the screen toward Khaled as he showed him the results. “Look, there are shelters like Guiding Light, Second Chance Shelters, San Isabella Ministries, Mother Helena’s, Augusta Francesca Shelter from Domestic Abuse–”
Vik noticed the face Khaled made at the names. Perhaps a generic homeless or DV shelter wasn’t the best solution. “I literally just pulled a tracker out of his shoulder, Eric. We should probably direct him somewhere safer,” Vik suggested. And somewhere he can begin to work through all that trauma, was unspoken, but understood between the two friends.
“Oh, well, in that case, we have Winter Cherries Health and Wellness Center, Joyous Springs Behavioral Health Hospital, where Vik’s cousin is detoxing, Sunavalon,” Eric listed. “They’re all psychiatric hospitals that do 72-hour holds.” Eric’s fingers pinched the screen to zoom in and out of the map. “So, you’ve got options, man,” he concluded. Khaled raised his fingers to scroll around the map himself, his eyes skimming reviews of each location he selected.
Vik cleared his throat. “I, uh, I know from experience that Joyous Springs has been really good to Vikram. They treat both addictions and mental health crises, but it’s super safe! They lock the doors every night, and they don’t allow any kind of tracking technology inside like cell phones and things like that,” he helpfully described. “Group therapy, individualized therapy, team-building projects, it’s really cool, I think.”
Khaled turned to him. “Would you like me to go there?” he asked.
“It’s up to you,” Vik answered, “I was just describing how it was for my cousin, but the choice is yours.”
“Well…” Eric tapered off. They should assume this poor former slave wouldn’t have health insurance, or any way to finance his stay. “We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.” If Vik and Eric were expected to foot the bill, their salaries were ample enough to take the $2,000-some hit. Or, they could set up a payment plan with the institution that Khaled chose if they didn’t want to hemorrhage so much money in one go. The point, as Eric said, was that they had options.
Khaled pouted, going thoughtfully silent as he stared at the phone in Eric’s hand a few seconds longer. “Yeah…okay… I’ll go to Joyous Springs,” he decided.
“After we get you some warmer clothes,” Vik reminded him. He glanced at the clock in the locker room. If they left now, then they’d be able to reach the secondhand charity down the block about half an hour before it closes.
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