Empyrean Iris Story Collection Vol. 2

ER

Dr. Krill was back on Earth. He had no idea why he always seemed to end up in this insane hellscape, but here he was.... again. only the other day he had been caught out in an electrical storm while trying to commute his way to work, which he hadn't particularly appreciated, especially not when massive balls of frozen ice came pelting from the sky with enough power to tear open skin.

Even the humans had been running for cover, and that was saying something.

He would very much have preferred a job where he wasn't in constant danger of getting murdered by the elements on a regular basis.

But this was earth, one day he could be enjoying the sun, the next he was risking heat death, the next he was almost blown away by the wind, and the day after that he was almost whisked away by minor flooding.

Of course, it was either walking to work or taking public transit which was probably even more dangerous considering that it had humans on board. Humans who were half asleep, humans who were strung out on drugs, humans with children, humans with dangerous pets. Then of course there were the more than mildly xenophobic humans, who were, somehow, under the impression that Krill was there to still earthling jobs, which was not the case at all considering that he had volunteered him time for free.

Krill had no need of monetary compensation, to him, the work was the reward.

He leaned something new every day.

And now, with his current stint working in a human hospital, he was becoming even more acquainted with humanity... not entirely sure if that was in a good way or not.

OF course, Krill more than missed the simple life aboard the harbinger where most humans were relatively educated and competent, where most stupid injuries came about by overly idiotic actions rather than ignorance – a point could be argued to which one of those things was worse, but, for the moment, Krill was under the impression that willful idiocy was still better than ignorance because at least they knew why they were stupid, and generally openly admitted it to krill whereas working with the general populace forced him to have to be patient and understanding towards people who just didn't know any better.

Apparently telling people they are stupid to their faces is seen as off-color in the human medical world even though that is probably exactly what some of the people needed to hear.

Again, he found himself wishing for the harbinger, and for the return of the captain – the biggest idiot of them all.

He idly wondered how he was doing on his little trip across the universe.

He wondered how Sunny was doing exploring the human world on her own two feet/

He wished he knew when they would be back together.

The UNSC had given them extended shore leave, but they had never specified how long it was going to be seeming to hint that it was contingent on how the captain felt. Well Krill was under the impression the captain needed to get his ass back here so krill would stop having to pull things out of people's butts.

Speaking of pulling things out of people's butts' he was on ER rotation today. He found that the ER could be the most interesting, or the most infuriating part of a hospital. Just the other day he had led the surgical team that reattached someone's arm, but then the day before that he had been in the ER to inform a woman that yes your shortness of breath likely comes from the run you just went on after years of never having exercised.

He took his clipboard and walked into the human waiting room.

He could write a paper on what sort of things it was important for a medical professional to keep in mind when treating humans. But here was an example of his typical day.