Chapter Text
The potholes on the road on the way to Delphi were unbe-fucking-lievable. The manhole covers were an inch above the gravel and every time Pharma’s prius hit one she squared her shoulders and imagined the tires shredding to the rim. One time last week she’d been stuck behind a station wagon dragging itself down 12th with both of its front tires already completely blown out, lurching into one of the many repair shops on the main Messatine thoroughfare. It wasn’t even twenty miles out of the center of Iacon and the parks department - or - whoever it was whose job it was - couldn’t be bothered to pave the roads properly. Pharma’d only lived up here for a month and she was already sick of her ten minute commute to the clinic.
She clenched her teeth again as she barely swerved to avoid another pothole, crossing halfway into the opposite lane as the light turned green. Cue honks and curses. Pharma looked ahead diligently. $250 for a tire change.
Delphi Immediate Care was on the edge of Messatine's city limits, tacked to the end of a mostly empty strip mall across from the cemetery that marked the boundary between the greater Iacon area and the county beyond. A grey midcentury storefront, streaked with black runoff from the overflowing gutters, teetering on the margin of desolate slum and a garden of death.
Each morning Pharma would spend a few minutes sitting in her car in the Delphi parking lot, Iacon Classical Radio playing, head in her hands against the steering wheel, peering out across 18th street to the cement columns of the graveyard fence. The music would fade into the periphery and she’d find herself thinking about what things had been like before. Back south in the city, twenty miles down the train line. A vein that pumped life from this desolate corner of the world to a better past, where the hospitals were well staffed and the streets were clean and paved. Sometimes she thought about Ratchet.
Medicine isn’t about winning, Phar, Ratchet said. Admonishing but also approvingly, because Ratchet always went as hard as she did and it exhilarated her at first to have someone to measure her energy against.
You know who says things like that? Newly minted Critical Care Fellow Pharma had asked, snapping her gloves. People who don’t win.
Where’d that Pharma gone? she wondered now. It hadn’t been more than a few months since she and Dr. Ratchet had stalked the halls of Deltaraan together, working miracles.
Critical Care Fellow Pharma had been irrepressible and idealistic and stared death in the face with eager determination. The Pharma of today stared out across the cemetery, the yellowed grass and the tombstones like broken teeth. The Pharma today had to face another day as the only physician in one of the only clinics in the Messatine neighborhood, providing primary care to the disadvantaged people that lived there (mostly occupational injuries from the factories) and doing anything necessary to keep within the meager non-inflation-indexed Medicare stipend.
Pharma had liked the idea of being the clinical manager when Prowl offered it to her. The paperwork and the authority were familiar. The petty, demeaning begging she’d been reduced to, however, wasn't. Nobody had money to give to Delphi and Pharma didn’t have the power to take it. The Pharma of today looked death in the face when she wrote a prescription for drugs that she knew her patient couldn’t afford or signed out another package of sharps and naloxone to the Messatine PD, and she looked away.
The waiting room was already open and filling up when she walked in from the cold. First Aid was at the nurse’s station at work on the antique desktop computer, her surgical mask already on. Pharma tried not to make eye contact with any of the patients she passed on the way to the front desk, pulling on her lab coat.
“You do realize that if you keep unlocking the doors before 8 people are going to keep coming in before 8,” she asked, standing stiffly in front of the CNA. First Aid peered up at her, equal parts chastised and firm.
“Yeah, sorry, I know, it’s just – like, it’s 30 degrees out there and I always feel really bad seeing people line up outside. They’re just trying to be on time? It’s better than coming late and screwing up your schedule.”
Pharma pursed her lips. “With the amount of charting I need to do for these people my schedule’s getting screwed up either way. We might as well avoid turning our waiting room into a street corner. I mean, is that a dog? Really, Aid? Are you even looking at the door?”
“Oh, my god, I didn’t notice!”
“Jesus Christ, Aid. Okay, get the dog out, get into scrubs, let’s get to work.” Pharma reached over the desk divider and grabbed the clipboard with the day’s patient schedule on it, already ready for a tylenol. First Aid was always too busy reading… well, whatever kind of weird porn she was into on her phone to be a very useful addition to Delphi. At least Pharma could rely on Ambulon, the RN who was already in the exam room finishing up the workup for her first patient as Pharma came in.
Pharma nodded at Ambulon and motioned for the nurse to go. That was the most Ambulon ever got as a morning greeting, but unlike Aid the ex-Con understood the power dynamic between the two. And she put in vitals quickly.
“Good morning, Ms.. Kaon, I’m Dr. Pharma,” she said, pulling up the rolling desk chair so she could sit down across from the examination bed. Her patient was sitting perilously on the edge, legs crossed under the hospital gown and hands neatly in her lap, eyes invisible behind thick, dark glasses. “What brings you here today?”
“Well, Dr. Pharma – and nice to meet you – I’ve got a problem with headaches that have gotten a lot worse recently, and I’m worried that it’s a problem with my eyes.”
“Recently? How long have you had these episodic headaches?” Pharma had turned back to the computer and was skimming through Ambulon’s initial workup.
“Since the accident, I suppose. Electrical accident when I was in my twenties, but I’ve had the eye issue since I was much younger.”
“Scale of 1 to 10.”
“What?”
“Pain. Scale of 1 to 10. And localization, intensity, duration – oh, and any associated symptoms, including but not limited to nausea, vomiting, visual or auditory hallucinations, local or general paraesthesia or loss of feeling?” Pharma had turned her attention completely to the computer monitor at this point, typing furiously as she listed off possible comorbodities. With the amount of patients crammed into her schedule she couldn’t afford to waste time picking apart every new patient’s medical history, much less listen to a sob story about an OSHA violation. She already had a list of likely issues and she just had to cross out the unlikely ones.
“7 at its worst, it lasts a few hours and it starts right here-“ Kaon tapped her forehead “and gets worse over maybe an hour.”
“Concurrent symptoms?”
"What?"
"Con-uh, symptoms that go along with it. Do you throw up? Get nauseous?"
The patient leaned back. Pharma didn’t like that she couldn’t see her eyes; Ambulon noted that she had severe corneal scarring in her chart so she probably couldn’t see very well anyways, but still. She didn’t like not knowing things.
“I feel a little sick afterwards, but I’ve always been able to keep food-“
Kaon was interrupted by a frantic tapping on the exam room door.
“What is it?” Pharma called out, not bothering to turn away from the computer.
“Hey, Pharma, sorry to interrupt-“ First Aid was interrupted by barking from the waiting room as she peeked in. “Uh, there’s a person in the waiting room who doesn’t speak English and I think they want to see the doctor?”
Pharma turned to stare at her, then slowly turned back to her patient. More barking.
“I’m sorry, let me step out for just a second,” she said, smiling big and fake.
Never a dull moment in Delphi.
Kaon watched the doctor leave, slowly swinging her feet, waiting until the door closed. She waited for a second, looking around the room and squinting until the white blobs in her vision formed into furniture pieces. Once she was sure the doctor was gone she stood up and minimized the medical chart open on the computer, pressing her face as close to the monitor as she could in order to read the tabs. She’d palmed her zip drive when she’d changed into her hospital gown and she patted the side of the computer until she found the slot to plug it in.
She wasn’t the best fit for this job, but she’d been with the DJD for the longest time and she knew what she was looking for. She did this last time Delphi got a new physician too; besides, she’d been to an actual doctor for actual health problems more often than anyone besides maybe Tarn.
She clicked through the applications on the desktop until she found what she was looking for. The directory of on-hand schedule II and III narcotics was password locked, but once she loaded it onto the drive and took it home Tesarus could have it decrypted within the hour. And once they knew what Dr. – was it Farmer? was packing, they’d decide if she was valuable enough to keep around. A quick drag and drop, the employee key code that she’d gotten from the previous head doctor, and she ejected and unplugged the little USB drive just as the doctor came back into the room.
“Those aren’t for you to look at,” she said sharply when she saw Kaon at the computer.
“Oh, sorry. I was curious,” Kaon smiled, curling her fist around the zip drive. She’d just had time to pull her medical chart back up. It was empty, of course; she’d made sure to have it purged. “Did everything work out out there?”
“Just a service animal problem. God, people can get anything licensed as a therapy animal. Unbelievable.” The doctor – Pharma, that’s right – popped her knuckles and sat down at the desk. “Anyways, I’m giving you a referral to get an MRI at Tesarus General. It’s the closest facility with a radiology department and I want to make sure that it’s nothing neural.”
“Really, you don’t even want to do an eye test?”
“If something’s wrong with your eyes, your vision can’t really get worse than it already is. Schedule a radiologist appointment, take motrin, lots of fluids, no reading on computers or tablets and call 911 if you start vomiting uncontrollably or experience loss of consciousness. Ah, here we go-“ she reached under the desk and pulled out a few sheets of paper that she’d run off of the printer and handed them to Kaon. “Just follow these directions.”
Internally, Kaon was broiling with anger. This doctor was rude, supercilious, controlling, worse than the last one all around. And oh, she’d have so much fun taking her apart, god, when Tarn let her get her tools on her the rest of the team wouldn’t have anything left to work with afterwards. Those nice long fingers, pretty white teeth, even face, that was all prime real estate. Kaon knew how to use an electric probe so thin it barely left a mark in the skin going in when it cooked you from the inside.
She’d leave the face intact for Vos when the time came.
On the outside she smiled dumbly, thanking the doctor profusely, docile as she folded up the discharge orders and gathered her clothes. Pharma pulled off her sterile gloves and left without saying goodbye, on to the next patient.
Maybe if she’d been a little more polite Kaon’dve cut her some slack later.
Probably not.
She got dressed and put her dark glasses back on, throwing her paper robe in the hamper on the way out of the exam room. Nobody bothered looking up from their work when she left through the waiting room.
Vos was standing across the street smoking a cigarette, the Pet nosing in the street gutter.
“Get out of there,” Kaon said affectionately, nudging his nose away with her shoe. He whined. “What, was Vos mean to you? Were they being a big meanie? Were you being a bad doggy in the doctor’s office?” She cooed, leaning down to rub the huge dog's chops. Vos, completely obscured by their high collared black coat and beanie, snorted.
“You did perfectly, Vos. Two minutes was all I needed. Let’s get out of here.” She said, standing up. It was too cold to loiter next to the cemetery gates. The PT was parked on the next block; even though a white unmarked van was pretty anonymous, she didn’t want to risk the ex-Decepticon nurse recognizing their vehicle pulling into the Delphi parking lot.
Vos flicked their cigarette to the sidewalk and ground it down. “і лекар?” they asked, jerking their head towards the clinic as they started walking away. Kaon still didn’t understand what they were saying but she got the gist of it.
“Oh, don’t worry. I get the feeling that the new doctor’s going to be a good investment. And I can’t wait for Tarn to meet her.”