Hey, Doc...

Posted on Thu Feb 4th, 2021 @ 4:27am by The Narrator & Karen Dawson MD

Mission: Six Days to Santo
Location: Santo - Caster Docks
Timeline: Day 23

Eric James, the chatty older gent who Karen had been lightly interrogating while playing chess, had offered up a few potential diversions and informational nuggets of varying interest. He'd muttered (under his breath) a good few ill words in Howson's direction when the man had strolled into the Grumpy Skunk earlier, and then he'd ranted about Santo's least loved black market item. Slaves.

Through the smoke and chaff of a lifetime of being aware but unable to prevent such illegal enterprise, Eric picked his battles. He'd thrown out something that lingered after the local law broke up the fight happening below them and dispersed the guilty and wounded.

"Course, every now and then they grab someone they can't easily throw back," he'd said. "Alliance fella been cooped up in a container down the Docks fer a few days now, too injured to sell, too dangerous to move. Reckon they're hoping he'll just up and die cos no one seems ready to fix him up..."

"So I what?' Karen asked dubiously. "Patch 'em up, only for him to be resold? Or stabilize him enough to set him free?"

"Whatever your conscience tells you to do," said Eric, his tone matter of fact even as he regarded his chess opponent. He shrugged. "I don't know the guy personally, but I also don't abide by keeping folks in storage lockers. Figure you're not like the rest of 'em back there," he added, nudging his head in the general direction of the previous bar fight.

"I'm not," Karen confirmed and walked toward the storage crate, pulled out her gun, and carefully scanned the area. "You got a vehicle so we can transport him to a more secure location?"

"It's clear," noted her companion, shaking his head at the gun. "You think I'd be down here if the slavers were gonna be around?" He produced a key to the slide and lock padlock on the outer door and frowned as he removed it. "Take a look at him first, mebbe."

A low groan emanated from the darkness beyond, and hands feebly raised to protect eyes from the inbound daylight as a slumped figure inside attempted to move.

Karen holstered her gun, then walked closer to the injured man with her medical messenger bag held in front of her.

"I'm a doctor. You can call me Karen," she began in a quiet tone. "Can you tell me how you got hurt?"

The man in the darkness shifted position and muffled a cry of pain by biting into his own jacket sleeve. Eric, at the door, knelt to pick up a camping lantern and slid it across the metallic flooring towards Karen. Light made the wounded man wince, but allowed the doc to see his bloody, pale face and dishevelled, dark stained uniform.

"Killed him..." mumbled the man in response to her question. "Jumped us."

Karen nodded pulled a dextrose solution from her bag, and hung it, then she began to put the line into the wounded man.

"You're safe now," Karen assured. "Once we get you stable, we'll get you out of this gorram hole."

As she said all this, the doctor did a visual scan. Contusions and deep abrasions were all over this man's body. Luckily the Core man's wounds clotted, so external bleeding wasn't an issue. Karen was a bit concerned about the contusions on the abdomen but that would have to wait.

There was no complaint as the IV went in, no attempt to protest or struggle, only a soft sucking in of breath and a slight shift in position.

"We're gonna move him?" Eric asked, sounding deeply concerned about this possibility but not actually arguing about it yet.

"Ge'me'outta'ere," whispered the wounded man, his voice so quiet only Karen could hear it. "Please..."

"Oh yeah," Karen firmly nodded and gestured for Eric to help her carry the man. "I'll give him enough creds to get off-world, but first we need to drop him off at the hospital."

She did not like the idea of bringing this Core man to the ship. There was no identity on him and given the crazy lady living on the ship, it was best to stabilize and then let the locals do the rest.

"This is a really, really bad idea..." Eric muttered, and he checked outside twice before moving to assist the doc, then hardcore winced in pained anticipation of death as their patient reacted to their attempt to pick him up.

That agonised howl sent ice into Eric's bonemarrow.

"Are you crazy?" He hissed at Karen. "We can't just take him to the hospital..." A sigh. Slavers were not the forgiving type and they had eyes and ears in all the wrong places. "Can't we just tell them where he is or something?"

"Slavers aren't going to try and recapture him once he's there," Karen reminded her companion. "I'll sedate him, and you have to carry him. I'll shoot anyone that tries to stop us."

"You underestimate them," muttered Eric, well aware of the nuances of danger on Santo even if she wasn't. "Plus, he's Alliance. He'll be shouting real loud. And I gotta live here," he added, scowling at Karen as he weighed up the rights and wrongs of his currently dumb feeling idea to bring the woman here in the first place.

"If you sedate him, plug the holes and all, I'll make an anonymous call," Eric reluctantly suggested. "Someone else can come find him. But you ain't getting far trying to shoot anyone who tries to stop us, doc. This ain't no backwoods border planet, you'll get us all killed or arrested."

"All the more reason to get him out of here," Karen spoke with annoyance while she began to bandage the wounds. "You call, cops will come. But before that, comms chatter will leak that they're coming. Which means the slavers move shop. I know how the underworld operates too... You wanted to do the right thing by getting him help. I'm asking you to be brave once more and get this man to a vehicle."

There was an audible heavy sigh as Eric scoped the landscape beyond the shipping container. He vanished for a short while, then, just as Karen might have figured he was long gone, the man ducked his head back inside the container and mustered up a fake confident smile.

"Found us a driver and a delivery truck," he told the doc, voice low and tone infused with urgency. "But we gotta move now. Right now."

Outside, parked as close as it could get, was a box van marked up with the local abattoir's logo, its engine still running. Eric lingered impatiently, waiting for permission to lift the wounded man.

Karen nodded, then picked up the drip and carried it while her patient was being lifted to the truck. Not that patching her crew did not mean anything, but Karen felt for the first time in months, that she had finally done some good in the 'verse.

From Eric's viewpoint, this kindly gesture was more worrying. Yes, they'd done what he considered to be a Good Deed, and he didn't regret that side of it. But... one more Alliance person out on the streets definitely came with a mixed blessing, and it wasn't as if he could stand up and say - hey, that was me! I saved him! - without making things way worse.

Still, as he drove the van, the doc sat with the patient in the back, Eric couldn't help thinking that she'd be long gone before any reprisals hit home.

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