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Restless, restless, restless. So much to do, yet so little to engage. It was all so infuriatingly dull, even those things he had once found fascinating. Books he had picked clean of every crumb of knowledge, foreign specimens of which he had studied every last detail, files that he had organized and reorganized countless ways... It was driving him insane.
"And they call me crazy for occupying myself in the delightful mysteries of the human body!" exclaims the Medic, partially to Archimedes and mostly to no one in particular. "How can anyone haunt this cursed lab all day without going mad??"
Easily, replies the bird, considering anyone is of sounder mind than you.
"Now that's just rude." He paces the length of the room, twirling a scalpel in his hand. "I wonder, Archimedes, how many days of monotony to sap a man's sanity?"
Less than you'd like.
"But more than it's been?"
The bird remains silent for a few moments, coolly regarding the man with one shiny black eye.
Aren't you hungry, Doctor?
"What?" Medic stares blankly at the dove perched on top of the surgical light, covered in the blood of the unconscious man laying on the operating gurney. His gaze flickers to the gore covering the cold steel of the table, bright red and slick and glistening in the sterile light. He could smell the metallic tang that hung thickly in the air, taste it on the back of his tongue.
It wasn't until he tried to draw breath to speak and choked that he realized his mouth was watering.
Archimedes tilts his head knowingly.
"I..." Before even noticing what he was doing, he slowly approaches the just barely living body, moving like a wolf stalking prey with teeth bared and eyes bright with hunger. His voice wavers and dies in his throat as he reaches the table, again swallowing the saliva pooling in his mouth. He falls still as the dove takes wing and lights on his shoulder.
You say there is nothing more intimate than to hold one's very beating heart in your hands, Doctor, murmurs Archimedes into the Medic's ear. But you don't believe it. You want more.
Slowly, Medic lowers his ungloved hands into the open chest of his patient, feeling the warm, pulsating flesh slide and quiver around his fingers. He reaches deeper, and cups the dying man's heart in his hands. "So full of life," breathed the doctor in awe as the organ convulsed feverishly, pumping what little blood still remained in the man's body in and out.
Take it.
His hands begin to flex, gradually tightening around the man's heart. He could feel it straining against his grip, expanding and contracting desperately despite its ultimate futility.
That's it, encourages the dove on his shoulder, though the Medic can barely hear above his own heartbeat. It pounded strong and clear in his ears, in stark contrast to the weakening thumps of the organ in his hands as he lifts it from the man's chest. He does not pull it free as blood sprays over his clothes, his hair, his face, instead leaning down until his lips touch the scarlet flesh, and he licks the blood that stains them.
Archimedes smiles as the doctor opens his mouth to find that the taste is sweet like violence, the flavors of life running over his tongue, between his teeth, and out of the man on the table before him. And he dies, as the Medic takes his share.