Chapter Text
Dan folded his fingers and cracked his knuckles, before setting them on his desk. He took a deep breath in, and right-clicked with his mouse.
"Hello, all!" he said, giving his webcam a short wave and a warm smile. "So," he continued, "today we're going to be playing..." he clicked another button, and the stream display changed. "Surgeon Simulator!" Dan laughed, glancing at the excited chat that appeared to exist only in caps lock. "As you guys know, I am, in fact, a doctor. So, it will be fun to see how uh, Doctor Dan fares, I think.”
He clicked into the window of the game, and loudly clicked around for a moment, watching the hand on screen respond. “Oh God,” he laughed, “these controls are awful. Okay. Wow.” He laughed again as he accidentally knocked over a water bottle on the startup menu table, and picked it up and threw it out of his own reach. “Oh! I’ve got quite a throwing arm!” He cheered, immediately grabbing the coffee mug and throwing that too.
“DANIEL VIOLENCE!!!!”
“BOTTLE POG”
“THROW THE NOTEPAD”
Dan chuckled at the excitement in the chat and made a little ‘pipe-down’ motion with his hand. “Okay, okay,” he said, watching the stream of caps lock slowly diminish back into lowercase letters and variations of ‘pog’. “Let’s actually, like, play a level, guys.”
He clicked into the first level and his eyes widened into the big, white-and-brown concentric circles they tended to become. “Perform a heart transplant,” he read. “Wow, okay, starting strong.” He moved the hand on screen, laughing again at how bulky and poorly-responsive it felt. Dan lifted the sheet from the body and let out a sharp, barking laugh as he regarded the open ribcage. “This is, like, maximumly invasive surgery,” he tossed the sheet to the floor beside the body. “What am I going to call you?” he mused, patting the face of the patient awkwardly with his in-game hand.
“BOB”
“HORACE”
“BARTHOLOMEW”
“KURT”
“BERTHA”
“Bertha!” He pointed at his monitor excitedly, “Yes! Yes, Bertha, that’s your name. Big Bertha.” Dan patted the patient’s face again, and chuckled as he slowly moved the hand away towards the bedside. “Oh, alright. So we’ve got, wh-“ He paused. “Is that a fucking hammer?”
He laughed again, maneuvering his hand over to the tool table. “Chat, should I use the hammer?” He paused, and the reviews came in as an absolutely resounding yes. Dan picked up the hammer, shaking his head as he struggled to get the video game fingers around the handle. “Okay. Just gotta- oh, God, why is my wrist doing that?” He laughed again, trying to wriggle the arm into a normal position, but he just couldn’t do it. “Alright, um. I think we’re just going to go in with my wrist at whatever angle this is,” he said.
Lowering his hand sharply to the ribs, he gasped and jumped back at the loud crack and bone breakage. “Um. Okay.” He laughed nervously, eyes flicking to a chat full of excited pogging. “The sternum is in the way,” he muttered, dropping the hammer back on the table and trying to tug on the bone with his in-game hand.
It didn’t budge. “It’s not coming out, chat,” Dan ruffled his own hair in thought. “Do we hammer it again?” He paused a moment for the yesses to come in, mixed with a few scattered demands for him to use the bone saw, and picked the hammer back up, this time at a slightly less terrible angle. “Alright,” he nodded, raising it up. “Let’s go.” He squared the hammer above the left side of the sternum, raising it up and then holding down. “Let’s go let’s go let’s- NO!”
The screen exploded in red display, bone shattering everywhere. Dan’s already-round chocolate eyes widened. “BERTHA! BERTHA, NO, PLEASE!” The chat blazed in concerned caps lock, echoing Dan’s apparent upset. “NOT LIKE THIS!” In his panic to try and rectify the problem he had apparently caused, he managed to drop the hammer directly into the now-accessible pool of organs in his chest. The screen flashed red again, more pressingly this time, and Dan shrieked accordingly. “WE’RE LOSING HIM, CHAT, WE’RE LOSING HIM!”
Without any of the tools or helping hands Doctor Dan typically had access to, it seemed, he was thoroughly terrible at this.
It didn’t help that it took two of his hands to operate one hand that didn’t care to respond very well.
Chat screamed along with Dan as he flailed with the controller and struggled to pick up the hammer, only increasing the rate of blood loss as it knocked around inside the bone-fragment filled chest. “BERTHA!!!! NO!!!!” He shouted again as the game over screen flashed up, letting him know that he had, in fact, killed Big Bertha.
“Daniel?”
Visible in the corner of the webcam, the door to Dan’s room opened slowly, revealing the backlit frame of his roommate in a t-shirt and sweatpants, clutching a pillow, looking utterly concerned.
Dan stopped his crocodile tears and burst out laughing, hanging his head in shame. “Are you… alright?” Herbert asked, and if Dan could have seen his eyes behind the light reflecting harshly off his glasses he would have seen pure confusion, but he only laughed harder.
“Yeah, yes, Herbert, I’m fine,” he laughed, gesturing vaguely at his computer. “I’m live, say hi to the chat.” Herbert took a few strides closer, setting a hand on Dan’s shoulder so he could lean down and regard the webcam.
“Hello, chat. You’re not hurting Dan, are you?” he asked, pushing his glasses up with the pillow he was holding. Chat excitedly greeted him with lots of exclamation points and emotes, all to the effect of ‘hi herbert!!!’.
“No, they’re not,” Dan chuckled, “I lost a patient in the video game.”
“Patient.” Herbert repeated the word, and turned his gaze away from chat and to Dan.
“Yeah, I’m playing Surgeon Simulator,” he explained, pointing at the screen. “You do, like, surgery. But I just messed up the heart transplant.”
“A heart transplant? Dan, that’s perfectly simple, you just cut the sternum down the center and sprea-“
“I know that,” he waved at Herbert to quiet him, and gestured to a chair out of frame. “Here, pull that up. Let’s have you try.”
“Must I really?” He pouted.
“Yes!!” Dan insisted, laughing. “If you think it’s so easy, I want to see you do it!” Herbert huffed, but obeyed nonetheless, shuffling the chair into frame next to Dan and holding his pillow between his crossed arms and his chest. Herbert was handed the controller and given a brief explanation of the controls, before he pressed the button to restart the level.
“Mm. Okay, well we should start by removing this shee-“ Herbert lifted the sheet and stared blankly at the open chest in front of him.
He blinked.
Dan wheezed and hit the desk.
“Herb-“
“Daniel, did you do this to him??” Herbert demanded, looking thoroughly horrified.
“No!” Dan whacked Herbert’s thigh indignantly, earning an offended glare. He laughed harder. “No, this is just how the game works!” Herbert sighed and dropped the sheet to the side.
“Okay, fine, let’s get something to cut the breastbone.” Herbert hummed, having heard Dan streaming enough to know how to narrate his actions. With a great amount of effort he maneuvered over to the tools, desperately trying to knock things over to get to the bonesaw.
“Ooh, almost got it,” Dan encouraged, smiling as he watched focus settle into Herbert’s brow, his tongue poking out in concentration. Herbert pressed the trigger to grab the bonesaw, and it went flying out of frame. Dan burst out laughing, and Herbert’s mouth hung open in offense which only made Dan laugh harder.
“How is that fair??” He demanded, wildly gesturing for a moment until his pillow started to fall away from his chest and he quickly snatched it back up and put his hands back in place. “I hate this.”
“You see why it was difficult for me!” Dan insisted, and Herbert shook his head, searching for a new tool to use in-game.
“The complete disregard of gravity and medical science should be enough grounds for this game to be pulled from the shelves,” he mumbled angrily, and Dan chuckled as he scanned the screen.
“Chat says there’s a level in space,” he read, and Herbert scoffed.
“I am not playing that,” he declared, eventually settling a hand over the electric drill and successfully gripping it. Dan almost choked on a laugh. “If the game wants to be absurd, Danny, I’m going to get absurd too,” Herbert decided, revving the drill threateningly.
Dan did choke this time.
“God, Herbert, you mean business, don’t you??”
“I do.”
“No formalities at all? Where’s your bedside manner??” Dan teased. It wasn’t like Herbert was known for that brand of courtesy in real life either.
He hesitated, holding the drill over the patient’s breastbone, and stared quietly for a moment.
“Hello,” he eventually said, “I’m Dr. West. I’ll be breaking your ribs with this drill today.” And with not a word more, he slammed the blunt end of the drill into the center of the patient’s sternum.
Dan fell out of his chair laughing.