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Forty Days of Flash Fic: Day Fifteen
Jul. 4th, 2012 05:42 amContinuing from Day Thirteen and Fourteen.
* * *
They were very solicitous.
The helicopter had whisked him to a hospital complex in the middle of a city being rapidly decivilized. From the window of his comfortable hospital suite, he could watch as the cranes pulled down the empty buildings. Once there had a been a loud boom and an office tower had collapsed in on itself, the machines moving into the rising dust cloud to begin removing the debris. By the evening it had all been completely cleared. By the next morning the hole remaining in the ground had been filled with dirt and covered in grass, beds of wildflowers planted, then new saplings placed in the ground.
The medical machine tending him, shaped like a jolly fat raccoon, had repaired and set his shoulder and leg, and injected healing nanos to stabilize the hairline crack in his skull. A dental machine, an older model made of white plastic without any soothing morph shaping, repaired and replaced his rotting teeth. The nurses assigned to him, more raccoon machines, fed him delicious, and no doubt healthy meals. Despite everything he ate them eagerly, the months of near starvation driving him to accept it despite them spoon feeding him.
They had to spoon feed him. Soft straps kept him pinned to the bed, except for carefully supervised bathroom breaks. For his safety. The nurses, needing to neither eat nor sleep, were a constant presence, standing at the edges of his vision when not tending him, offering him no privacy to make an escape attempt.
"When will you let me up?" he asked one of the nurses, on the fifth day after his capture.
"Your leg and shoulder should be completely healed in less than two days," it answered, dodging the question.
"What then?"
"You'll leave the hospital."
"To go where?"
"I'm sorry, I'm not permitted to answer that. Would you like me to read you another book, or watch a program?"
"I want to leave!"
"I'm very sorry, sir. You're being kept here for your safety." Then she noted his rising stress levels and injected cold sedatives into his veins, lulling him back to sleep.
* * *
They were very solicitous.
The helicopter had whisked him to a hospital complex in the middle of a city being rapidly decivilized. From the window of his comfortable hospital suite, he could watch as the cranes pulled down the empty buildings. Once there had a been a loud boom and an office tower had collapsed in on itself, the machines moving into the rising dust cloud to begin removing the debris. By the evening it had all been completely cleared. By the next morning the hole remaining in the ground had been filled with dirt and covered in grass, beds of wildflowers planted, then new saplings placed in the ground.
The medical machine tending him, shaped like a jolly fat raccoon, had repaired and set his shoulder and leg, and injected healing nanos to stabilize the hairline crack in his skull. A dental machine, an older model made of white plastic without any soothing morph shaping, repaired and replaced his rotting teeth. The nurses assigned to him, more raccoon machines, fed him delicious, and no doubt healthy meals. Despite everything he ate them eagerly, the months of near starvation driving him to accept it despite them spoon feeding him.
They had to spoon feed him. Soft straps kept him pinned to the bed, except for carefully supervised bathroom breaks. For his safety. The nurses, needing to neither eat nor sleep, were a constant presence, standing at the edges of his vision when not tending him, offering him no privacy to make an escape attempt.
"When will you let me up?" he asked one of the nurses, on the fifth day after his capture.
"Your leg and shoulder should be completely healed in less than two days," it answered, dodging the question.
"What then?"
"You'll leave the hospital."
"To go where?"
"I'm sorry, I'm not permitted to answer that. Would you like me to read you another book, or watch a program?"
"I want to leave!"
"I'm very sorry, sir. You're being kept here for your safety." Then she noted his rising stress levels and injected cold sedatives into his veins, lulling him back to sleep.
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