Practicing Medicine // Complete

Chapter Nine: The Blooper Reel

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STATUS

Battery Level: 9%

Wireless Signal: (?)

Operating Temperature: 93F

HEALTH

BP: 140/120

SPO2: 100%

Temp: 98.5F

RR: 16

HR: 140

TIME

Day: 26 SEP. 2279

Time: 0:32

CLIMATE

Current Temperature: 73 F

Atmospheric Pressure: 732 mm

Background Radiation: 0.232 RAD

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The spine is a fragile thing- funny, considering how much it's responsible for. Hit it just right, and you can take entire sections of someone's body out of commission, instantly and permanently. Even with wonder drugs like MED-X, it's incredibly difficult to repair, because of both its complexity and its fragility. Spinal injury can be caused by any sort of blunt-force trauma, and should always be suspected in the case of severe injuries caused by falling, dropped objects, or people getting hit super hard, even when they don't got any symptoms. Minor spinal damage can become serious if not properly managed.

And that's why I, the world class physician, decided to drag Tyrone up a set of stairs like I would a giant sack of tatos, grabbing him under the arms and hauling his ass into the hospital with Jas's help. I was honestly lucky that I hadn't busted up his entire spine, tugging him up the stairs like that.

How was I going to salvage this? I could try to lie and act like it wasn't my fault, but my reaction had probably sunk that ship already. And, even if I somehow tricked everyone else, I knew that I couldn't slip anything past Gram, and that he'd probably pull me aside for some sort of cynical, "I told you so," lecture, which I really wasn't in the mood for.

That ruled out lying for me, though I probably wouldn't have done it anyways. How could I tell the truth and not also destroy everyone's trust in me? Could I even do that? Come to think of it, maybe I didn't deserve to be trusted- I had just paralyzed a man by violently dragging him up a set of stairs in a state of paranoid stress, which was pretty bad as far as mistakes went!

The more I thought about it, the more awful it seemed- I'd let people down before, but I'd never let someone down so bad that they'd never be able to feel anything below their waist ever again. The Tandi situation made me reflect, but this was an objective mistake. And, when people make objective mistakes like this, its customary that they pay.

I guess that was the question now- there would be no salvaging the situation, so how was I going to pay for it?

"Well... I could try fixing it," I said, trying to ignore all the eyes on me. I tried to organize my thoughts.