Fic: Spin Recovery, Part Two
Nov. 6th, 2007 01:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jeriendhalRated PG-13 for discussion of drug usage and angst.
“That’s new,” Rufus muttered to himself, from his seat in the back of the skimmer. Not the large luxury model that his mother used when going out on business, but a smaller machine of a type favored by commoners that he’d borrowed from the manor’s general pool. Whitebrow had been mildly scandalized by the choice, until Rufus had explained his wish to keep a low profile.
“Pardon, milord?” Whitebrow asked from the driver’s seat, glancing backward briefly before returning his eyes to the road.. Rather than supervising the skimmer’s navigation computer he had actually taken the controls himself. Not so much out of feeling he should earn his keep, Rufus suspected, but more out of the very Vulpine cultural urge to maintain control over whatever piece of machinery he might be asked to drive, pilot, navigate or otherwise direct. He recalled from his own flight training during his years of compulsory service that pilots of long range craft such as atmospheric cargo ships or space haulers sometimes had to receive specific training on when not to fly their ships and let themselves trust their craft’s flight management software.
“New building, off to the left,” he said, glancing at what looked like an apartment complex that he didn’t remember from his last trip in town so many years ago. They were just entering the outskirts of Grassy Bank, the nearby town where many of House Brushtail’s tenants lived, which had originally hugged the titular river bank which had been used for commerce in the days prior to the Dominion. Like all such communities the lands and buildings were of course owned by House Brushtail, to be rented by members of Vulpine’s commoner class, non-nobles having no legal right to own land themselves. Most properties were under the aegis of his mother of course, but the revenue of a handful went directly to Bethany, as their mother’s heir.
Actually Rufus once had a few pieces of land whose rents were directed to his own accounts, but they had to have been stripped away during his years of self-imposed exile. He made a mental note to check on that later. The money from the sale of my fighter isn’t going to last forever. Even with free room and board I suppose I’m going to have to either ask Mother to arrange a stipend for me or just get a job to pay expenses. Well, maybe not a job. Aside from being damned near unemployable from his various medical difficulties, he couldn’t imagine his mother being pleased by the idea of a son of the House of Brushtail working in a commoner trade.
He set aside that worry to concentrate on the view of the town. Built to Vulpine tastes, it would have looked remarkably low slung to visiting aliens more used to soaring skyscrapers. None of the buildings in the town were over a five stories tall, save for the occasional decorative pillar, and most were clad in either warm brown brick facades or dignified marble or sandstone. Most were widely spaced, with significant green spaces between themselves and other buildings or the road. The uncrowded appearance was deceptive however. Almost all of the parks were dotted with light wells that fed natural sunlight down into the extensive underground complex that housed much of the town's shops and offices. The Vulpine weren't natural cave dwellers like the Creo, but they were willing go deep for the sake of preserving the natural environment above. Besides, it made the rents of the aboveground buildings all the more dear.
Whitebrow guided the skimmer down a ramp into an underground parking complex and set it into an empty parking space. He then opened the door for Rufus, then sat back in the driver's seat, fishing out an earbud from his pocket, apparently preparing to wait by listening to some music.
“You aren't going to come with me?” Rufus asked, somewhat surprised. Whitebrow was no fool, having probably guessed the reason why he had been assigned to Rufus as his driver.
“If you want me to I shall of course, Milord, but that clinic is only a couple of hundred meters away,” Whitebrow replied, leaning back in his seat and looking relaxed. “If it's all the same to you, I'd just as soon stay here.”
“Very well,” Rufus said. “And thank you, old man.” Whitebrow just nodded and closed his eyes, allowing Rufus to go on his way down into the atrium of the pedestrian mall/office complex that the garage was attached to. The clinic was one level down, marked by the traditional sillouette of a healer cradling the body of the ill and a sign that read “Grassy Bank Community Clinic.” Below that was a more discreet brass plaque which read, “Provided through the generous benevolence of the House of Brushtail.”
He stepped inside to find himself in a crowded waiting room. Vulpine of various ages and states of distress sat in comfortable chairs, looking alternatively tired, ill, or nervous. The walls were painted in soothing russet shades and posters lined the walls, most either warning visitors to make sure their shots were all up to date or offering help with other problems, some with comm codes beneath and notes that said “Discretion and anonymous aid is guaranteed.”
Discretion, right. He walked up to the receptionist's desk and was greeted with a polite, “May I help you, sir?” from the young vixen manning it. No automated secretarial systems for a House Brushtail facility, oh no.
“I have a 1400 hours appointment,” he told her, feeling his face grow hot under his fur. “I'm, ah, Mister Shorttail.” The addiction treatment section of the clinic allowed patients to register themselves under a pseudonym and “Shorttail” among the Vulpine was as common as a John Smith was among humans.
The receptionist didn’t even blink. “Of course, Mr. Shorttail.” She handed over a datapad and a stylus. “Please fill out this form while you wait as completely as you can. It’s secured and encrypted so it can only transmit to the clinic’s data system and the pad’s memory is wiped automatically after you sign off with your signature and thumbprint.”
Rufus thanked her and grabbed a seat, scanning over the requested fields. It asked for his real name and contact information first, with numerous assurances that such information was only for emergency assistance, ect. Entering the data proved frustrating at first, until he gave up on the blasted thing trying to read his shaky left handed scrawl and switched over to tapping on the virtual keyboard.
He had gone halfway through a disturbingly lengthy list of tick boxes under the question “Non-Prescription Drugs: Sampled, Not Currently Using” when he heard someone clear her voice near him. Looking up, he saw a vixen with dark brown fur and eyes, a sharp featured face and large ears, glaring down at him.
“Move your feet, if you don’t mind,” she said, “they’re in the way.” For emphasis she prodded his offending appendage with one of her crutches. They were necessary for her support, because most of her right leg from her footpad to halfway up her thigh was incased in a plastic splint. It looked shockingly withered, until Rufus realized that all of the fur had been shaved off, allowing stainless steel supporting pins to stick out of her scarred skin.
“My apologies,” he said, pulling his feet back from where he’d stretched them out on the carpet.
“Thank you,” she replied with exaggerated courtesy, limping over to a seat in the row across from him. She dropped down into it awkwardly, propping her crutches in the seat beside her, then crossed her arms over her chest and lowered her head, eyes closed.
Rufus went back to his form for a moment or two, but then looked up from it again to look at the vixen across from him. She was still in the same position as before, but now she was shivering slightly and breathing in and out with exaggerated care. “Excuse me, are you all right, madam?” he asked.
Not bothering to open her eyes and look at him, she merely growled, “If I was all right, would I be here?”
He mumbled an apology to her and finished filling out the datapad, then stood up and headed back to the receptionist’s desk to return it. By the time he got back to his seat the vixen with the broken leg had disappeared. She returned to the waiting room a few moments later, coming out of doors leading to the examination room, the distressed expression she’d held before having disappeared. Rufus watched her hobble out the doors again, wondering what procedure could have possibly have been done to her leg that would have taken such a short time. Not bone healing stimulation. That usually involved hours of patiently sitting in a chair, he remembered from a youthful accident that had involved a Terran apple tree and running from a very hungry grass chaser. Besides, it was usually only useful for clean breaks, nothing like the nasty compound fracture the vixen had apparently suffered.
“Mr. Shorttail?” an older male in a green medtech coat asked, walking up to him. “We’re ready for your examination now.”
Rufus followed him through the doors and into an examination room, where he was summarily stripped of his clothes, dressed in a blue hospital gown, and persuaded to provide samples of blood, piss and spittle. Then he was laid out on a pad to face a detailed body scan. He nodded politely as the medtech assured him that the scanner was the latest technology, provided through the generosity of Countess Brushtail, and that the vague feeling that his insides were being prodded by a ham fisted ghost rather the scanner’s gravitic resonance imager was perfectly normal.
Once that was done the medtech left him alone to dress again, returning to lead him into an office with dark paneled walls and comfortable leather chairs. Rufus had just enough time to start tapping his leg nervously when grey muzzled vixen entered, sitting down on the chair opposite him and glancing briefly at the datapad in her hand, no doubt with all of his vital statistics displayed for her.
“Welcome to the Grassy Bank Community Clinic, Mr. Shorttail,” the vixen greeted. “My name is Doctor Redfur and I’m going to be your primary counselor during your treatment program.”
“Hello, Doctor,” he said and wondered why his mouth had suddenly dried out.
“Now then, what brings you here and how we can we help you?”
He gestured towards the datapad, clearing his throat. “Don’t you know?”
“I read through your form while you were being scanned, Mr. Shorttail, but I’d also like to hear it in your words.”
“Well, yes, ah the first part should be obvious,” he said, reaching over to tap his empty shoulder socket. “I had… well, you couldn’t exactly call it an accident I suppose, since I did it deliberately, but I ended up with my arm jammed in a starship’s pressure door. As it was doing its best to close at the time, this was an argument I ended up losing.”
Doctor Redfur raised her eyebrows. “May I ask why you put your arm in the door?”
“Someone wanted it closed, I wanted it to stay open.”
“But you did, as you say, lose the argument.”
“Eventually, yes, but it stayed open long enough to satisfy me.” And if he thought about it for just a moment, he could replay every detail of the incident in his head, from the sharp wrenching pain as the door shoved and then stopped against the mangled remains of his hand, to the horrid creak as his forearm began to bend against the pressure, before it…
“Mr. Shorttail!”
“Hu?” Rufus blinked, to see Redfur staring at him in concern.
“You looked like you were somewhere else for a moment,” she said, then made a note on her datapad.
“Sorry, I was just thinking about it. Amazing how vivid the details can be, even weeks after the fact.”
“Indeed,” she said and made another note. “Speaking of details, you were a little vague in your description here as to how you were released from the door. The medical report from the scanner unit said there is evidence of massive burn trauma at the amputation site. Do you know why?”
“Oh, they had to cut me loose from the door, obviously.” He chuckled a little, as if having one’s arm mangled by a pressure door and then being amputated in the field was an everyday occurrence. “They used a plasma torch, which had the benefit of cauterizing the wound so I didn’t bleed to death immediately.” Which was a plausible enough theory. He didn’t even want to try to explain the bizarre circumstances of the strange alien boy he’d encountered, or his extraordinary abilities. Never mind the pack of identical twins he’d fallen in with.
Doctor Redfur made a hmm sort of sound and tapped in another note. “Well, from what I’m seeing here, as emergency amputations go it was done with relatively few complications. Though did you know you suffered a minor stroke when your heart stopped?”
“No, I didn’t!”
“There’s a bit of scarring around your heart, but not, I believe, enough to cause any further health worries. This is in comparison to your other concerns, you understand.”
“I think so, yes.”
Redfur put her pad down and gave him a long look. “Now, are there any other health problems you want to bring to my attention?”
“Ah…” He hesitated for a moment. I’m in the clinic, I’m going to have to keep coming here to deal with my arm, I don’t have to do anything about the damned Juno. I’m fine now. Mother won’t suspect a thing. He could almost believe the arguments in his mind, if it weren’t for the voice of Bethany that he had heard, when she was confronted with image of his brother.
Oh, Rufus, you look so much better..
Deal with it, old man, he told himself, or else betray your sister’s faith in you.
He took a deep breath and finally spoke. “I, um, have a problem. A drug problem.”
Redfur didn’t look particularly surprised, of course she’d already read his chart. “Go on.”
“I’m addicted to Juno, I couldn’t tell you what the proper chemical name for the vile stuff is.”
“I know what it is. How long have you been addicted?”
“Approximately five years. It started… I started on it… about five years after… I’d made a very bad decision.” He bit his lip, tasting copper. “A decision that cost a lot of innocent people their lives. Males, vixens and cubs.”
Doctor Redfur nodded, not judging from what he could see, but acknowledging his words. “Have you tried any other drugs?”
Rufus nodded. “I started just with alcohol. Then I tried THC, Burnout, Combine, a few psychedelic drugs. Juno and booze are what I stuck with though.”
“Approximately how many times per day did you indulge in Juno and alcohol?”
“Juno, perhaps twice a day when I could afford it. Alcohol almost nightly.” He cleared his throat, face reddening in shame. “Sometimes more often, during the day.” Say in the morning, before breakfast. And after breakfast. Brunch. Luncheon. Afternoon snack. Dinner. It had never been much, he thought. Perhaps just a swallow to keep going. Except when things got really bad of course. Or when he had money. Sometimes when he didn’t have money, though that tended to end in contusions when he was thrown out of the bar.
“All right,” she said, making more notes. “May I ask what prompted you to seek treatment? I assume it was after the incident that took you arm.”
“No, actually, it was a little bit before that,” Rufus said. “I, um, met a man, a fellow Vulpine, a pilot like myself. Actually, he was a lot like myself, almost a mirror image. Same sort of family background, same reasons for wanting to fly. Except that he managed to do it without making an utter hash out of his life and remaining true to his ideals. I looked at him, then I looked at myself in the mirror and I… I found I didn’t really care for who I saw looking back at me.” He paused for a moment to take in a breath, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. “After losing my arm… Well, I figured if I was going to get treated for that then I may as well get treated for the other, eh?”
“Well, we’re definitely going to want the one under control before we can consider any operation to add cybernetics to your body, Mr. Shorttail,” Redfur said. “How are you feeling right now, in terms of your addiction?”
“Er, I’ve been clean of Juno for nearly a fortnight. Not by choice, I should add.”
“And how does that make you feel?”
“Frankly… I think if you put a vial and injector in front of me, then told me if I took a hit the Holy Den Mother would in turn kill a kin goose chick, I’d send a donation to an animal shelter to make up for it later.” Last night’s good night sleep had been more a matter of exhaustion in the face of hysterical anticipation of his homecoming the day before, he now realized. Internally, down in his gut, he could still feel the horrible want in him, as reason put up a losing battle against his desires.
That actually made Redfur smile lightly. “You’re honest. That’s very important.”
He took a deep breath, trying to banish his craving for a time. “Thank you. All right, doctor, what do I have to do to rid myself of this damned addiction? What’s the cure?”
Redfur looked at him for a long moment, stylus tapping again her datapad. “Mr. Shorttail, you shouldn’t really think of things in terms of a ‘cure.’”
“What do you mean?” he demanded, his voice rising.
“You must understand, by your own admission you’ve been using Juno on a daily basis for around five years. That level of usage has a permanent effect on a patient’s brain chemistry, which I can see in the data from your scan. Your body, your brain’s neurotransmitters actually, want Juno in order to function in a manner they believe is correct. In cases like this it’s more realistic to think in terms of ‘addiction management’ rather than a cure.”
“So there’s no hope then?” he said, trying to keep his voice from turning into a desperate howl. Holy Den Mother, why did you speak of redemption if I’m so damned?
“I didn’t say that, Mr. Shorttail. It is possible to reduce, if not permanently erase, your dependence on the drug. The mere fact that you came here of your own will to seek help is an excellent first step.”
“But what am I supposed to do?”
“Well, for starters I’m going to give you a couple of prescriptions…” Redfur began.
Rufus gave her a pleading look. “Madame Physician, the absolute last thing I want is more drugs.”
She smiled again. “These are to help you with your Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.”
“I beg your pardon? Whatever do you mean?”
“Are you going to tell me that having one’s arm cut off in a not-accident wasn’t a traumatic and stressful experience?”
“Well, I suppose you’re right about that.”
“They’ll help you sleep better and moderate your reactions to stressful stimuli. Once I’ve had a chance to speak to you at length in your therapy session, I can fine tune the exact drugs and dosages you’ll need, but for now these will do in a general sense. Actually, going by the trigger event that sent you in using Juno in the first place, I suspect you’ve had PTSD for some time now.”
“Oh, well there’s a thought.” One he’d never really considered before, to be honest.
She tapped a few commands into her datapad and it extruded a secured prescription card. “Take this to your regular chemist and they should be able to fill it for you.”
“Thank you, Doctor Redfur,” Rufus said. He paused, tapping the card against his palm. “Is there anything else I should be doing?”
She looked at him thoughtfully. “In the evening, after a long and tiring day, is the time you’re going to be most vulnerable to the idea of giving in to your addictions. If you feel the urge, one thing you can do is take a hard look at yourself in the mirror and tell yourself , ‘I know what I wish to do, and I chose not to it.’”
“That’s all I should do?” Rufus asked.
“In the end, Mr. Shottail, that’s all you can do. The trick is making it a habit that is stronger than your addiction.”
Rufus looked away from her. “I don’t if I have that kind of strength any more.”
“Then let us help you find it, sir.”
He stood up and gave her a bow. “Yes, Madame Physician.”
TBC
* * *
Author Notes: Please forgive me Peta, for I am bullshitting massively in areas of drug treatment and drug addiction, given I don't have access to our g-chat transcripts at work.
The idea of the underground mall structure for a Vulpine city came from the idea of the Vulps keeping their metropolitian centers small in the appearance, so the building styles can match a stereotypical English township. I suspect it would look like the sort of place Prince Charles would feel comfortable in.
“That’s new,” Rufus muttered to himself, from his seat in the back of the skimmer. Not the large luxury model that his mother used when going out on business, but a smaller machine of a type favored by commoners that he’d borrowed from the manor’s general pool. Whitebrow had been mildly scandalized by the choice, until Rufus had explained his wish to keep a low profile.
“Pardon, milord?” Whitebrow asked from the driver’s seat, glancing backward briefly before returning his eyes to the road.. Rather than supervising the skimmer’s navigation computer he had actually taken the controls himself. Not so much out of feeling he should earn his keep, Rufus suspected, but more out of the very Vulpine cultural urge to maintain control over whatever piece of machinery he might be asked to drive, pilot, navigate or otherwise direct. He recalled from his own flight training during his years of compulsory service that pilots of long range craft such as atmospheric cargo ships or space haulers sometimes had to receive specific training on when not to fly their ships and let themselves trust their craft’s flight management software.
“New building, off to the left,” he said, glancing at what looked like an apartment complex that he didn’t remember from his last trip in town so many years ago. They were just entering the outskirts of Grassy Bank, the nearby town where many of House Brushtail’s tenants lived, which had originally hugged the titular river bank which had been used for commerce in the days prior to the Dominion. Like all such communities the lands and buildings were of course owned by House Brushtail, to be rented by members of Vulpine’s commoner class, non-nobles having no legal right to own land themselves. Most properties were under the aegis of his mother of course, but the revenue of a handful went directly to Bethany, as their mother’s heir.
Actually Rufus once had a few pieces of land whose rents were directed to his own accounts, but they had to have been stripped away during his years of self-imposed exile. He made a mental note to check on that later. The money from the sale of my fighter isn’t going to last forever. Even with free room and board I suppose I’m going to have to either ask Mother to arrange a stipend for me or just get a job to pay expenses. Well, maybe not a job. Aside from being damned near unemployable from his various medical difficulties, he couldn’t imagine his mother being pleased by the idea of a son of the House of Brushtail working in a commoner trade.
He set aside that worry to concentrate on the view of the town. Built to Vulpine tastes, it would have looked remarkably low slung to visiting aliens more used to soaring skyscrapers. None of the buildings in the town were over a five stories tall, save for the occasional decorative pillar, and most were clad in either warm brown brick facades or dignified marble or sandstone. Most were widely spaced, with significant green spaces between themselves and other buildings or the road. The uncrowded appearance was deceptive however. Almost all of the parks were dotted with light wells that fed natural sunlight down into the extensive underground complex that housed much of the town's shops and offices. The Vulpine weren't natural cave dwellers like the Creo, but they were willing go deep for the sake of preserving the natural environment above. Besides, it made the rents of the aboveground buildings all the more dear.
Whitebrow guided the skimmer down a ramp into an underground parking complex and set it into an empty parking space. He then opened the door for Rufus, then sat back in the driver's seat, fishing out an earbud from his pocket, apparently preparing to wait by listening to some music.
“You aren't going to come with me?” Rufus asked, somewhat surprised. Whitebrow was no fool, having probably guessed the reason why he had been assigned to Rufus as his driver.
“If you want me to I shall of course, Milord, but that clinic is only a couple of hundred meters away,” Whitebrow replied, leaning back in his seat and looking relaxed. “If it's all the same to you, I'd just as soon stay here.”
“Very well,” Rufus said. “And thank you, old man.” Whitebrow just nodded and closed his eyes, allowing Rufus to go on his way down into the atrium of the pedestrian mall/office complex that the garage was attached to. The clinic was one level down, marked by the traditional sillouette of a healer cradling the body of the ill and a sign that read “Grassy Bank Community Clinic.” Below that was a more discreet brass plaque which read, “Provided through the generous benevolence of the House of Brushtail.”
He stepped inside to find himself in a crowded waiting room. Vulpine of various ages and states of distress sat in comfortable chairs, looking alternatively tired, ill, or nervous. The walls were painted in soothing russet shades and posters lined the walls, most either warning visitors to make sure their shots were all up to date or offering help with other problems, some with comm codes beneath and notes that said “Discretion and anonymous aid is guaranteed.”
Discretion, right. He walked up to the receptionist's desk and was greeted with a polite, “May I help you, sir?” from the young vixen manning it. No automated secretarial systems for a House Brushtail facility, oh no.
“I have a 1400 hours appointment,” he told her, feeling his face grow hot under his fur. “I'm, ah, Mister Shorttail.” The addiction treatment section of the clinic allowed patients to register themselves under a pseudonym and “Shorttail” among the Vulpine was as common as a John Smith was among humans.
The receptionist didn’t even blink. “Of course, Mr. Shorttail.” She handed over a datapad and a stylus. “Please fill out this form while you wait as completely as you can. It’s secured and encrypted so it can only transmit to the clinic’s data system and the pad’s memory is wiped automatically after you sign off with your signature and thumbprint.”
Rufus thanked her and grabbed a seat, scanning over the requested fields. It asked for his real name and contact information first, with numerous assurances that such information was only for emergency assistance, ect. Entering the data proved frustrating at first, until he gave up on the blasted thing trying to read his shaky left handed scrawl and switched over to tapping on the virtual keyboard.
He had gone halfway through a disturbingly lengthy list of tick boxes under the question “Non-Prescription Drugs: Sampled, Not Currently Using” when he heard someone clear her voice near him. Looking up, he saw a vixen with dark brown fur and eyes, a sharp featured face and large ears, glaring down at him.
“Move your feet, if you don’t mind,” she said, “they’re in the way.” For emphasis she prodded his offending appendage with one of her crutches. They were necessary for her support, because most of her right leg from her footpad to halfway up her thigh was incased in a plastic splint. It looked shockingly withered, until Rufus realized that all of the fur had been shaved off, allowing stainless steel supporting pins to stick out of her scarred skin.
“My apologies,” he said, pulling his feet back from where he’d stretched them out on the carpet.
“Thank you,” she replied with exaggerated courtesy, limping over to a seat in the row across from him. She dropped down into it awkwardly, propping her crutches in the seat beside her, then crossed her arms over her chest and lowered her head, eyes closed.
Rufus went back to his form for a moment or two, but then looked up from it again to look at the vixen across from him. She was still in the same position as before, but now she was shivering slightly and breathing in and out with exaggerated care. “Excuse me, are you all right, madam?” he asked.
Not bothering to open her eyes and look at him, she merely growled, “If I was all right, would I be here?”
He mumbled an apology to her and finished filling out the datapad, then stood up and headed back to the receptionist’s desk to return it. By the time he got back to his seat the vixen with the broken leg had disappeared. She returned to the waiting room a few moments later, coming out of doors leading to the examination room, the distressed expression she’d held before having disappeared. Rufus watched her hobble out the doors again, wondering what procedure could have possibly have been done to her leg that would have taken such a short time. Not bone healing stimulation. That usually involved hours of patiently sitting in a chair, he remembered from a youthful accident that had involved a Terran apple tree and running from a very hungry grass chaser. Besides, it was usually only useful for clean breaks, nothing like the nasty compound fracture the vixen had apparently suffered.
“Mr. Shorttail?” an older male in a green medtech coat asked, walking up to him. “We’re ready for your examination now.”
Rufus followed him through the doors and into an examination room, where he was summarily stripped of his clothes, dressed in a blue hospital gown, and persuaded to provide samples of blood, piss and spittle. Then he was laid out on a pad to face a detailed body scan. He nodded politely as the medtech assured him that the scanner was the latest technology, provided through the generosity of Countess Brushtail, and that the vague feeling that his insides were being prodded by a ham fisted ghost rather the scanner’s gravitic resonance imager was perfectly normal.
Once that was done the medtech left him alone to dress again, returning to lead him into an office with dark paneled walls and comfortable leather chairs. Rufus had just enough time to start tapping his leg nervously when grey muzzled vixen entered, sitting down on the chair opposite him and glancing briefly at the datapad in her hand, no doubt with all of his vital statistics displayed for her.
“Welcome to the Grassy Bank Community Clinic, Mr. Shorttail,” the vixen greeted. “My name is Doctor Redfur and I’m going to be your primary counselor during your treatment program.”
“Hello, Doctor,” he said and wondered why his mouth had suddenly dried out.
“Now then, what brings you here and how we can we help you?”
He gestured towards the datapad, clearing his throat. “Don’t you know?”
“I read through your form while you were being scanned, Mr. Shorttail, but I’d also like to hear it in your words.”
“Well, yes, ah the first part should be obvious,” he said, reaching over to tap his empty shoulder socket. “I had… well, you couldn’t exactly call it an accident I suppose, since I did it deliberately, but I ended up with my arm jammed in a starship’s pressure door. As it was doing its best to close at the time, this was an argument I ended up losing.”
Doctor Redfur raised her eyebrows. “May I ask why you put your arm in the door?”
“Someone wanted it closed, I wanted it to stay open.”
“But you did, as you say, lose the argument.”
“Eventually, yes, but it stayed open long enough to satisfy me.” And if he thought about it for just a moment, he could replay every detail of the incident in his head, from the sharp wrenching pain as the door shoved and then stopped against the mangled remains of his hand, to the horrid creak as his forearm began to bend against the pressure, before it…
“Mr. Shorttail!”
“Hu?” Rufus blinked, to see Redfur staring at him in concern.
“You looked like you were somewhere else for a moment,” she said, then made a note on her datapad.
“Sorry, I was just thinking about it. Amazing how vivid the details can be, even weeks after the fact.”
“Indeed,” she said and made another note. “Speaking of details, you were a little vague in your description here as to how you were released from the door. The medical report from the scanner unit said there is evidence of massive burn trauma at the amputation site. Do you know why?”
“Oh, they had to cut me loose from the door, obviously.” He chuckled a little, as if having one’s arm mangled by a pressure door and then being amputated in the field was an everyday occurrence. “They used a plasma torch, which had the benefit of cauterizing the wound so I didn’t bleed to death immediately.” Which was a plausible enough theory. He didn’t even want to try to explain the bizarre circumstances of the strange alien boy he’d encountered, or his extraordinary abilities. Never mind the pack of identical twins he’d fallen in with.
Doctor Redfur made a hmm sort of sound and tapped in another note. “Well, from what I’m seeing here, as emergency amputations go it was done with relatively few complications. Though did you know you suffered a minor stroke when your heart stopped?”
“No, I didn’t!”
“There’s a bit of scarring around your heart, but not, I believe, enough to cause any further health worries. This is in comparison to your other concerns, you understand.”
“I think so, yes.”
Redfur put her pad down and gave him a long look. “Now, are there any other health problems you want to bring to my attention?”
“Ah…” He hesitated for a moment. I’m in the clinic, I’m going to have to keep coming here to deal with my arm, I don’t have to do anything about the damned Juno. I’m fine now. Mother won’t suspect a thing. He could almost believe the arguments in his mind, if it weren’t for the voice of Bethany that he had heard, when she was confronted with image of his brother.
Oh, Rufus, you look so much better..
Deal with it, old man, he told himself, or else betray your sister’s faith in you.
He took a deep breath and finally spoke. “I, um, have a problem. A drug problem.”
Redfur didn’t look particularly surprised, of course she’d already read his chart. “Go on.”
“I’m addicted to Juno, I couldn’t tell you what the proper chemical name for the vile stuff is.”
“I know what it is. How long have you been addicted?”
“Approximately five years. It started… I started on it… about five years after… I’d made a very bad decision.” He bit his lip, tasting copper. “A decision that cost a lot of innocent people their lives. Males, vixens and cubs.”
Doctor Redfur nodded, not judging from what he could see, but acknowledging his words. “Have you tried any other drugs?”
Rufus nodded. “I started just with alcohol. Then I tried THC, Burnout, Combine, a few psychedelic drugs. Juno and booze are what I stuck with though.”
“Approximately how many times per day did you indulge in Juno and alcohol?”
“Juno, perhaps twice a day when I could afford it. Alcohol almost nightly.” He cleared his throat, face reddening in shame. “Sometimes more often, during the day.” Say in the morning, before breakfast. And after breakfast. Brunch. Luncheon. Afternoon snack. Dinner. It had never been much, he thought. Perhaps just a swallow to keep going. Except when things got really bad of course. Or when he had money. Sometimes when he didn’t have money, though that tended to end in contusions when he was thrown out of the bar.
“All right,” she said, making more notes. “May I ask what prompted you to seek treatment? I assume it was after the incident that took you arm.”
“No, actually, it was a little bit before that,” Rufus said. “I, um, met a man, a fellow Vulpine, a pilot like myself. Actually, he was a lot like myself, almost a mirror image. Same sort of family background, same reasons for wanting to fly. Except that he managed to do it without making an utter hash out of his life and remaining true to his ideals. I looked at him, then I looked at myself in the mirror and I… I found I didn’t really care for who I saw looking back at me.” He paused for a moment to take in a breath, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. “After losing my arm… Well, I figured if I was going to get treated for that then I may as well get treated for the other, eh?”
“Well, we’re definitely going to want the one under control before we can consider any operation to add cybernetics to your body, Mr. Shorttail,” Redfur said. “How are you feeling right now, in terms of your addiction?”
“Er, I’ve been clean of Juno for nearly a fortnight. Not by choice, I should add.”
“And how does that make you feel?”
“Frankly… I think if you put a vial and injector in front of me, then told me if I took a hit the Holy Den Mother would in turn kill a kin goose chick, I’d send a donation to an animal shelter to make up for it later.” Last night’s good night sleep had been more a matter of exhaustion in the face of hysterical anticipation of his homecoming the day before, he now realized. Internally, down in his gut, he could still feel the horrible want in him, as reason put up a losing battle against his desires.
That actually made Redfur smile lightly. “You’re honest. That’s very important.”
He took a deep breath, trying to banish his craving for a time. “Thank you. All right, doctor, what do I have to do to rid myself of this damned addiction? What’s the cure?”
Redfur looked at him for a long moment, stylus tapping again her datapad. “Mr. Shorttail, you shouldn’t really think of things in terms of a ‘cure.’”
“What do you mean?” he demanded, his voice rising.
“You must understand, by your own admission you’ve been using Juno on a daily basis for around five years. That level of usage has a permanent effect on a patient’s brain chemistry, which I can see in the data from your scan. Your body, your brain’s neurotransmitters actually, want Juno in order to function in a manner they believe is correct. In cases like this it’s more realistic to think in terms of ‘addiction management’ rather than a cure.”
“So there’s no hope then?” he said, trying to keep his voice from turning into a desperate howl. Holy Den Mother, why did you speak of redemption if I’m so damned?
“I didn’t say that, Mr. Shorttail. It is possible to reduce, if not permanently erase, your dependence on the drug. The mere fact that you came here of your own will to seek help is an excellent first step.”
“But what am I supposed to do?”
“Well, for starters I’m going to give you a couple of prescriptions…” Redfur began.
Rufus gave her a pleading look. “Madame Physician, the absolute last thing I want is more drugs.”
She smiled again. “These are to help you with your Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.”
“I beg your pardon? Whatever do you mean?”
“Are you going to tell me that having one’s arm cut off in a not-accident wasn’t a traumatic and stressful experience?”
“Well, I suppose you’re right about that.”
“They’ll help you sleep better and moderate your reactions to stressful stimuli. Once I’ve had a chance to speak to you at length in your therapy session, I can fine tune the exact drugs and dosages you’ll need, but for now these will do in a general sense. Actually, going by the trigger event that sent you in using Juno in the first place, I suspect you’ve had PTSD for some time now.”
“Oh, well there’s a thought.” One he’d never really considered before, to be honest.
She tapped a few commands into her datapad and it extruded a secured prescription card. “Take this to your regular chemist and they should be able to fill it for you.”
“Thank you, Doctor Redfur,” Rufus said. He paused, tapping the card against his palm. “Is there anything else I should be doing?”
She looked at him thoughtfully. “In the evening, after a long and tiring day, is the time you’re going to be most vulnerable to the idea of giving in to your addictions. If you feel the urge, one thing you can do is take a hard look at yourself in the mirror and tell yourself , ‘I know what I wish to do, and I chose not to it.’”
“That’s all I should do?” Rufus asked.
“In the end, Mr. Shottail, that’s all you can do. The trick is making it a habit that is stronger than your addiction.”
Rufus looked away from her. “I don’t if I have that kind of strength any more.”
“Then let us help you find it, sir.”
He stood up and gave her a bow. “Yes, Madame Physician.”
TBC
* * *
Author Notes: Please forgive me Peta, for I am bullshitting massively in areas of drug treatment and drug addiction, given I don't have access to our g-chat transcripts at work.
The idea of the underground mall structure for a Vulpine city came from the idea of the Vulps keeping their metropolitian centers small in the appearance, so the building styles can match a stereotypical English township. I suspect it would look like the sort of place Prince Charles would feel comfortable in.
