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Cuckoo Doctor Nelladahlia 'Nella' Asher

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Done for Shabazik's Shiks! contest in World of Aiers.


The important thing to understand about me is that I never wanted to become doctor in the first place. I wanted to become a pilot. That's because I wanted to see the universe outside our miserable little swamp ball.

In addition to wonderful mangrove swamps and quicksand wastes, New Kerr is a planet that has mastered railroading her citizens into neat little boxes for life. We begin our schooling at seven and when we are ten there is the first aptitude test that decides whether our schooling specializes in mathematics, languages or "softer" humanistic subjects. Two tests later - ages fourteen and sixteen - the state has decided what profession we will be educated for. This way they can monitor there will not be surplus of graduates, leading to unemployment.

Oh, no-one will force you to attend to any particular school, but no other institution would have you. Who would want a clearly sub-optimal pilot when your strengths lie in medical sciences? That I might have made however spectacular pilot is neither here nor there.

And yes, my parents were divorcing, but that really is nether here nor there. They had gotten along awfully for years and only stayed together for my sake - neither had bothered to ask my opinion about that.

"Why did you even marry dad?" I asked mother once after a particularly big row, I think I might have been eight or nine then. "You don't love each other. You don't even like each other!"

"Oh, dear," mother said and hugged me; she smelled a little like liquor "We were young and a young body makes its own demands. I couldn't have imagined letting a boy touch before he promised a marriage to me. And your dad was handsome and he made me really pretty speech about how he loved me and then asked if I loved him back. I just felt it would have been impolite to say no." The moral of the story: don't listen to the Sunday school teacher.

And then, when I had become adult, graduated and gotten a job, father finally had mercy on us all and fell in love with a beautiful undersecretary five years younger than mother. The divorce was in the process and as messy as can be without adding custody battle into the mix when some separatist faction tried to declare a continent independent on Red Agris. The distance between Red Agris and New Kerr is only about five light years so was it any surprise when some of the separatists, escaping the government forces and mercenaries, landed here? Our government barely had time to panic before the Cuckoos arrived hot in pursuit, turning the situation that much worse.

But life must go on and people will get into car crashes even if there is conflict - even more so in fact. I went to work as usual and my shift was only just beginning, I walked trough the lobby when heavily armed Shiks burst in and shouted for everyone to hit the ground. Being the good hostage that I am, I dropped down to the floor, face-down with my palms against the smooth tiles by my head. Being good lasted until someone did something stupid. I heard a gun firing and lifted my head. God be praised, I thought, just a warning shot, and the security guard who was presumably that stupid someone was in a head lock. But the children in the lobby started to cry and one even got up to run away. The Shik standing closest to the boy reached out almost lazily and grabbed him by the back of his shirt.

I jumped up and grabbed the hand holding the riffle in turn. It was like grabbing a steel band for all the difference I made.

"He's just a little kid, please don't hurt him!" I pleaded, wondering where his parents were and why weren't they doing anything. I found myself capable of looking past the muzzle of the gun to eye of the woman holding it and she looked, incredibly, equal amounts of embarrassed and insulted. Her  face was covered in blue and red spirals and complicated retro knotwork that went up the line of her jaws and curved around her temples.

"I wouldn't," she said and let the boy go. "You are a doctor, aren't you?" And that was how I found myself shuffled to the back of am armored vehicle along with three other doctors and seven nurses.

"Are we going to die?" Rosanna whispered, blinking away tears. She's an anesthesia nurse and I knew we would have to operate someone.

"No, they need us to treat their people," I comforted her and kept my hands on my lap to keep her from seeing how badly they were trembling. They wouldn't kill us, but I wasn't sure they would let us go; clones tend to have pragmatic view on human trafficking and slavery since they are owned themselves.

Their camp was an hour's drive away from the city and it was clear there had been a battle. My first patient was a man, incredibly enough, like the sole rooster in a flock of highly dangerous blonde hens. He had a bandage tied tight around his upper arm and beneath it there was a ragged cut across his biceps and triceps muscles. Some sort of injectable absorbant had quenched the bleeding, but there were gunshot wounds on his left side as well, miraculously these had missed his lung. They might have been cauterized by the shots themselves, but they were also filthy. There was a nasty, rosy blush already starting in the veins around them and I feared sepsis.

"Oh shit, please tell me you were clever enough to steal anti-inflammatories and antibiotics too," I whispered and forgot all about the guns. He was a patient and that was all that mattered. He had domino tiles tattooed on both cheeks, a six and one on the left, one and four on the right. "Rosanna, we need anesthetics!"

"Oh, poor boy," she said, but her voice still sounded rather dubious. "He's a clone too, isn't he, Nella?" But she knelt on the groung by my side and prepared the shot.

"Clones are people too," I told her a little sharply. Many people on New Kerr think clones don't have souls, but I could never figure out why not. Because they were human made? All humans are human made, we naturals just use wombs instead of tanks.

"Well, ar-aren't... you nice," he managed to breath and winked at me. "And lovely... too. Should get... hurt... more often. W-what's your name?" My cheeks were burning. It wasn't anything serious, I knew it even then, I just felt pathetically inhibited there next to him.

"My name is Nelladahlia Asher, please call me Nella or Doctor Asher. I would recommend otherwise, you are hardly any good for a woman in that condition," I said with all the sass and casuality I could muster. He let out a rattling laugh and I winced in pity.

"Nella-dahlia," he wheezed and my pity disappeared immediately.

"A traditional name here on New Kerr," I said tartly, and it is in a way. You see, it isn't Nelladahlia specifically, but combination names from the names of dead relatives are traditional. My maternal grandmother was Petronella, God rest her soul, and my father's aunt was named Dahlia, hence Nelladahlia. And I could have it worse; in High School I had a classmate named Belladorcas. Poor Bella, I wonder what became of her.

"Go ahead, sedate him," I told Rosanna, who made a little squaking sound and complied.

"I'm really sorry about this," the spiral-faced said and sat down. We were on a cluster of hills - firm ground - surrounded by swamp and her legs were muddy up to the knee. There was a twig in her hair.

"People injured are people injured. Please let me concentrate now, and next time pick a better place to get shot. You don't want to know what kind of germs swim in these waters," I said and picked the antiseptic.

So I treated Leo - that's his name, Leo Kilivir - and two other patients while my colleagues treated their comrades. I also found out that they weren't owned by anyone and even though they weren't abolitionists, precisely, that still gave me hope. And the very next day that idiot of a male decided he was too manly for painkillers because they "made his head fuzzy". I had slept on hard ground with nothing but a sleeping bag to soften it, my back was killing me and the stress of the day before just made me see red.

"Now you will shelve your delicate male ego and listen to your doctor," I growled at him; actually growled between my teeth and briefly wished I'd had a tooth brush with me the day before. "You can’t breathe properly without painkillers and not breathing properly can lead to pneumonia. Stop complaining and take your pills or I will stuff them down your throat by force." So much for my good bedside manner, but the Shiks only laughed in the golden and red light of the dawning new day.

"They make me feel like my head was stuffed full of gel," Leo complained and gave me a dark look beneath his brows, but he did take the pills.

"You have spirit," a strong alto said at my back. "We could use a woman like you, Doctor Asher." And when I turned I came face-to-face with Major Haarla.

She didn't look all that different from the other Shiks, of course, the same face, build and hair. The blue bars that reminded me of gene sequence art on her cheeks were the only visible difference. But there was presence to her, like the space itself dipped around and beneath her like mattress when something heavy was dropped on it, like she had more gravity than anyone else I had ever met. My mouth was suddenly dry like someone had stuffed it full of sand.

"T-thank you... I, I will think about it," I stuttered, glowing with relief because that meant we were given a choice. And the thing is, I thought about it, really thought.

Maybe I never had anything against the artificial humans because I recognized the similarities between their life and the way the government treated me. I never had much chance to influence my own fate, the path already decided by a test I took when I was too young to understand the way those scores would define me for life. I had always wanted to get off New Kerr, to see all the wonders Ots had to show and I knew that if I took this chance, if I chose to not stop at the horizon, it would be dangerous; the Cuckoos had only kidnapped us because their own medics had been killed in an ambush. I knew my mother wouldn't understand and neither would my father.

But I also knew that if I wasn't brave enough to take this chance, I would forever hate myself for it. I pity those who stop at the horizon because I might die one day, but we all will die one day anyway. So I left and the divorce really didn't have anything to do with it.
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larqven's avatar
Great entry!  I liked the optimized--but stifling--description the controlled society of New Kerr.