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“Everything okay?” Ratthi asks, shifting on the gurney to give himself a better view of Secunit's face. A chorus of monitors beep and trill with his movement, and Secunit's attention snaps back to him. It had been frowning at…well…everything…from the moment they arrived at the Medcenter, but the frown had only deepened when Ratthi was settled into this exam room to wait for assistance. He isn’t here for anything serious—a minor allergic reaction to a set of botany specimens—so he doubts it’s Secunit’s tendency to look irritated when it’s actually fretting like a mama hen. Normally, Ratthi would write that look off as its usual frustration with human fragility as a concept anyway, but there’s a little extra something in that scowl that he can’t quite identify.
“Yeah.” Secunit leans back in the nondescript corner guest chair it’s claimed. “It just isn’t what I thought medcenters were supposed to look like.”
Ratthi blinks. It takes him a minute to register that this probably would be the first real medcenter Secunit had set foot in. Station Medical was good for its size and the necessary limitations thereof, but it was nothing like a real hospital. And the odds of Secunit having visited any other medcenters prior to its independence were slim to nil. That explained the unfamiliarity. But not necessarily the expectations…
“What did you think they looked like?”
“Bigger, I guess. More glass and metal architecture. Less…beige.” Secunit’s eyes are still sweeping critically over the little room, examining the supply cabinets with their neatly typed and laminated labels, the sliding privacy shield with the scuffs of years of wear, and the broad display surface sitting ready for the staff to log in before the MedSystem could begin its analysis. Ratthi compares the lived-in practicality of the space with what Secunit had described and immediately grins as the dots connect.
“You were expecting Medcenter Argala ?”
“Not exactly Medcenter Argala ,” Secunit says, its voice just shy of stiff with the discomfort of being found out. “But…maybe a little more like it.”
Ratthi supposes that was a fair assumption. It did seem like every hospital in the media was a modern marvel of sleek, expensive opulence. Nothing was ever unsightly or out of place. The rooms were never cluttered with anything as unglamorous as labeled supply cabinets or privacy shields. Those places didn’t have to be functional. They just had to look impressive. But when it comes to reality, function takes precedence over appearance. And function is often a very, very clunky thing.
“Well, the good news is that this Medcenter has extremely high patient satisfaction scores,” Ratthi says, hoping to skim past any of the embarrassment that might be happening on account of Secunit’s crushed media hospital dreams. “And far fewer instances of bombs, fires, and alien super plagues than Medcenter Argala. I think I’m in good hands.”
Secunit huffs one of those short, sharp breaths that Ratthi has learned to mark as a laugh, and Ratthi grins again. Crisis averted.