Work Text:
“Worst patient story, go.”
Pharma rolled his optics — they’d officially run out of things to talk about.
Still, he supposed it beat out the alternative – staring at the wall in silence as they waited for another minor medical issue to pop up. In fact, if there’d been anything left to do at all in the Delphi Outpost, he’d have been reprimanding his two subordinates, First Aid and Ambulon, to get back to work.
Situated in the break room, First Aid and Ambulon were seated across from each other at the lone table while Pharma stood off from the group, arms crossed and glaring out in to the snowy hellscape that covered Messatine from the small, eye-height window. The weather had taken a turn for the worse last night and their light snow fall had erupted in to a blizzard.
“Worst patient…you mean like something specific or…?” Amublon asked, cradling a cube of energon between his hands. His paint was still chipped and flaking in places; he probably should have being using this time to fix that before the blue and purple paint became completely visible again.
“Worst patient, worst place you worked, whatever you think is worse.” First Aid responded with a shrug, leaning back in his own chair. Despite their fairly similar builds, First Aid was an ambulance while Ambulon was…not.
“Uh, let me think…” Amublon trailed off before abruptly exclaiming, “Oh wait, I know! Back when I was a Decepti-…”
Pharma had his back to the other two, but he could easily feel the optics that turned to him.
Ambulon, who’d been speaking quite loudly, suddenly lowered his volume, “Uh, back when I used to be a con, there was this one con, he fought to stay on the front lines so long, he never did much else. One day, he noticed his engine was running real quiet so he finally came to see the medics. He hadn’t kept up with maintenance at all and was using quick fixes and stuff and when we opened his oil filter, it was disgusting.”
“What was it?”
“It was like jelly, like it had turned solid! It was so nasty. We don’t even know how he was still functioning. Guy kept saying he was fine, and you know how some mechs never listen.”
The other two medics laughed but Pharma rolled his optics again. He didn’t really see any humor in that. It was just disgusting. It also didn’t really count as a “worst patient story” in his opinion, more of a gross medical story if that. That could happen to any mech who neglected proper hygiene, or even if someone had pranked him in to eating something he shouldn’t have.
“Okay, mine was this mech from when I went to Kemia. They were short-handed and asked if I’d help out. This mech had been doing some kind of construction and had gotten his arm stuck in a pipe, all the way up to the elbow joint. Now, instead of asking for help or going to the hospital, he finds a blade and starts trying to cut it off.” First Aid explained, mimicking the actions of the bot in the story as he went, mining the act of sawing with one hand across his opposite arm.
“Ugh, I know where this going…” Ambulon muttered with a grimace.
First Aid, undeterred, kept going, “So, he starts sawing away at the pipe only he underestimated the thickness of it or how sharp the blade was cause next thing he knows, he’s sprung a leak. He hit an energon line, not fatal, but he starts leaking buckets of energon all over the place. He ended up passing out over the knife, and some of his buddies found him and rushed him to the hospital. Man, that was a long day.”
Pharma rolled his optics again, because again, this wasn’t a worst patient story. These were just gross stories. It really made him wonder if these two had ever even had a difficult patient in their lives.
As for him, he’d been kicked, punched, and spit on. He’d had to tackle bots back down on to the slab whenever they came off their circuit booster high or overdoses of dampeners. He’d had to fend off combative patients who’d been told to leave the hospital and wouldn’t for whatever reason. And that had all happened when he was only a nurse.
Still, despite all of that, there was still one “patient” that stood out from the crowd.
“Aren’t you going to ask me?” Pharma asked, derma scowling as his helm remained turned to the window.
“Uh…sure, what’s yours Pharma?” Ambulon asked, voice uneasy. It was clear he was worried that he might be treading thin ice.
“Mine…is a triple whammy. Worst patient, worst place I’ve ever worked, and the worst story you can imagine.”
First and Ambulon shared a quick look as their CMO paused.
“The worst place I ever worked…I was stationed with a bunch of clowns who only wanted to goof off all day. They could have been talented, but they squandered it. I was left shouldering the burden all by my lonesome. Then, one day, a certain patient arrived. He’d been injured and all but demanded I fix him up. I obliged, repairing any lines I could and replacing any parts I had on hand. He didn’t thank me, in fact, he threatened me with violence.”
“Seriously?” Ambulon whispered, despite himself. It had just slipped out on accident, but Pharma paid him no mind and kept talking.
“He left, and I thought I’d seen the last of him. But then, a few chords later, he showed back up again, demanding I fix the same injuries all over again. He ordered to me work faster, to try harder. I could only do the best with what I had, which wasn’t good enough for him. And after that, like clockwork, he continually returned over and over again, threatening to hurt me or the facility if I didn’t treat him.”
Ambulon cut his optics over to First Aid who was listening intently if a bit nervously. Pharma had never really spoken in this tone before…it was a little scary. Plus, this patient he was talking about…it sounded an awful lot like a con but…Pharma hated Decepticons. Was this the reason why? Had a con forced him to perform specialized surgery?
“He was the worst kind of scum there is…nothing is ever good enough for him…” Pharma growled, blue hands tightening on his arms as he continued to stand there with them crossed.
“So…so how did you get out of it?” First Aid asked quietly.
I didn’t.
The response failed to leave his glossa as he bit down hard, forcing himself to focus on the pain rather than the urge to spill his tank to the two of them.
“It’s not important. Just hurry up and get back to work.” Pharma ordered as he left the wall he’d been standing against and headed for the door.
They didn’t need to know. He could solve this on his own. After all, Ratchet could have done it.