Practicing Medicine // Complete

Chapter Thirteen: The Dia-Tribe

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STATUS

Battery Level: 99%

Wireless Signal: (?)

Operating Temperature: 92F

HEALTH

BP: 120/90

SPO2: 100%

Temp: 98.5F

RR: 12

HR: 70

TIME

Day: 29 SEP. 2279

Time: 12:24

CLIMATE

Current Temperature: 73F

Atmospheric Pressure: 761 mmHG

Background Radiation: 0.243 RAD

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As prophesied the night before, I woke up with an awful, pounding headache that permeated all of my senses; In fact, I was pretty sure that I could taste the pain. Or, maybe that was just backwash from all of the whiskey that I'd downed the night before. I'd probably be able to smell it, too, if I could smell. But, as I was rapidly coming to theorize, my sense of smell had probably been ruined after a large piece of glass bisected the bridge of my nose.

Actually, I was kind of glad that I couldn't smell. Last night's experiments had left the room covered in little splashes of blood, and there was at least one headless gecko corpse in the corner of the room. The bugs hadn't gotten to it yet, but it probably still would have smelled foul. When the stomach acids of a dead animal start eating away at their innards, lots of interesting smells are produced.

"God, what time is it?" I muttered, rolling over on my side and squinting at Savanna's sleeping bag- which was, of course, absent.

Immediately, the memories of the night before came flooding back in vivid detail. Mentats had that affect- all of the memories that you make while you're high on the things are incredibly sharp. Because of the other substances that I had mixed the Mentats with, however, this had the unfortunate side-effect of showing me a high-definition playback of all the dumb shit that I did and said while I was drunk, through the chilling lens of sobriety.

Hellish, right?

"I ain't never, ever, getting drunk again," I murmured to myself, sitting up and cracking my spine over my arm. Supposedly, that's not a healthy thing to do, but I had just slept on the floor. If I didn't pay such close attention to my posture, I'd probably be immobilized with pain from all of the floor-sleeping I'd been doing lately.

After that, I went about my morning routine much as I usually would. I hadn't taken any of my clothes off before I went to sleep the previous night, and I couldn't button my coat up if I wanted to seeing as how Ollie had ripped all the buttons off. There was a cracked mirror hanging up in front of the drug lab, and since I hadn't groomed myself in the past few days, I decided to take a look.

I wish I hadn't. I looked like I'd dragged my face through a rosebush. A couple of deep, red cuts, and lots of little scratches all over my face.

But that wasn't the worst part. My hair, which I usually kept styled in that nice way that actors from the 1950s had theirs, with the little swoosh in front, was just a terrible straw-colored mess. I'd subconsciously been keeping it out of my face, thankfully, but it was still just a spiky, frizzy mess starting around my eyebrows.