Mikael Pacioli

July 21: St. Lawrence of Brindisi

“I see no good reason why we should keep feeding the little fucker.” Jerry Wolstone, the bespectacled man, snapped at the man seated in front of him. It was nearly midnight, and time was wasting before midnight struck and the 24-hour order on his acquisition became invalid. Then he’d have to go through the laborious paperwork process again, and if there was one thing Jerry Wolstone cared about eliminating, it was paperwork.

“There’s no evidence of self-harm or mental instability, he’s been warned innumerable times, we’ve put him through the most expensive therapy this Centre is capable of - there just isn’t more that we’re willing to do.”

The doctor sitting across from him, Demen, shook his head.

“I won’t sign off on it.” he said. “I told them when I took this job that I wouldn’t and I won’t. It’s wrong.”

Wolstone yanked his feet down from the desk and spun to face John Demen.

“What’s wrong is how this criminal little upstart is inciting all kinds of bullshit in my clinic and my CEC. If he were an officer, he’d be dead by now.”

“By gunshot, not...dismemberment.” Demen snapped back. “The answer is no.”

“The answer,” Wolstone snapped, “Is Fuck You.” he picked the form up off of his desk and threw it forward at Demen. “I’ll find another doctor.”

~:~

John Demen was furious, choleric with rage and sick with the thought of what this place was doing to them and to him and to his whole goddamn country.

Back to the East, he thought, that’s where I should go. Let the whole coast go to pot and head back to where things at least make a little sense. What’s out here for me, anyway? Just a bunch of gunslingers and butchers, and the wrong side of the ocean.

He passed the main door to the medical library.

And bullshit research, he added, funded by sick fucks who want me to prove that the best option for everybody is for them to have a permanent fucking plaything.

He passed the swinging entrance doors to the carriers’ walk-in clinic, and was almost hit in the face by a red-faced young visitor, obviously a recent change, who stuttered awkwardly, then raced past him into the exam areas.

And not a shot at reform in sight.

Demen made a left through the first set of secure doors into the psych unit; there was a shortcut through the juvenile psychology ward that would lead him to the back exit, closest to his parking lot.

Third time I’ve had to replace the battery since I’ve been out here, he suddenly remembered, and was even more annoyed. Fucking mechanic hacks.

He turned right, then left, then for some bizarre reason, went through the first set of doors rather than the second and found himself face to face with the door to the Final Unit.

Demen’s skin chilled, and he felt once again, more powerfully, that awful sense of sickness, that horror that reminded him that he was definitely in the wrong place, with the wrong people, doing something very, very wrong.

The door was red. This frightened him, for some reason - he wondered if that was its purpose: to frighten the carriers who walked (or were dragged) through this door, and no other, ever again. The thought brought a renewed wave of sickness.

Kill them all, he wished abruptly, fervently. Why make them suffer? Just kill them all.

This was what he had walked away from; this was what he had refused. He never, never, ever wanted to see those doors open under his hand. How could any doctor - hell, any man? Anyone with a heart and a brain and two good legs to keep them moving in the other direction should turn away from a scene like this.

And what was the law of his profession? First do no harm. And yet, somehow, this had come to be…this most abominable, most horrible, most disgusting of the human darknesses - here. In a place of healing; in the temples of the desperate and ill. It was wrong. It was so awfully, incredibly, devastatingly wrong that he felt paralyzed in place with the thought of it. How many had gone from here? Sons, brothers, friends…all sent away by the man in the fucking glasses whose name Demen could never remember. Forget what I said before, Demen decided, Let them all live. Kill that man.

A commotion sounded from the dim hallway to his left, bringing the good doctor out of his haze, and he turned in time to see a gurney round the corner; a carrier was strapped to it, sedated but half-awake and struggling. Demen saw the body coming towards him as if in a trance, and before he knew what he was doing or saying, he had stepped forward and set a hand upon the side of the bed, flicked the brake down to halt its progress. The young officer nurse looked up, surprised, at his former superior.

“Doctor Demen, I thought you’d rescinded your involvement in this case.”

Demen tilted his head, affected the same condescending air that the other doctors in his ward possessed.

“And I thought nurses had limited clearance. Do you know something I don’t?”

The nurse’s lips tightened ever so slightly, and his posture stiffened, but he stepped backward.

“No, sir.”

“Then if I have your approval, soldier, I’ll be completing this case before the day is out.”

Demen jerked the gurney slightly, just enough to throw the young man’s hand off of it, and the nurse took two steps away.

“Yes, sir.”

“In the meantime, report to the serology lab, would you? Doctor Ichor’s shorthanded.”

“Sir, yes, sir.” the nurse responded, turned, and was gone.

Demen looked down into the face of the patient on the table, who was still wriggling, and although his eyes were unfocused and hazy, appeared to be squinting at that unspeakably red door.

“Listen to me.” Demen began, and the patient moaned and tried again to resist. Demen trapped his face in both hands.

“Listen to me!” he repeated, more urgently, then leaned close. There were no cameras in these hallways; the CEC wanted no record of what they did here. But anyone may still be listening. Demen whispered,

“Say nothing if you want to live.”

The patient peered at him for a long moment, his breathing labored by his gag, his muscles weak with the drugs. Then he nodded, and was silent.

Demen wheeled him through the doors.

~:~