Formidable Occupation

Chapter Five

6

The smell of the room is sterile, and the look of the room is simple, just ordinary white walls, white ceilings, white light, and a strange poster of a cat. The look of the guy wearing a lab coat is not so confincing, he does not look like a serious doctor to me. His hair is messy, his chubby cheeks are studded with thick layer of beard, his glasses have his vaporizing sweat covering his vision. I know what kind of place is this. It’s an Independent Clinic. An Independent Clinic is a place that doctors whose grades aren’t good enough for big city hospitals make a living out of. They built this little emergency rooms in corners of ghettos and poorer parts of cities, for low cost not very quialified health care and emergency facilities for people who got shot in the street and will charge a whole bunch of your hard earned money. They basically would rush to every street shot person and take care of them with very limited facility, and when they wake up, they will charge a lot of money to them.

But it’s quite fortunate of me to be here, because in big hospitals, N.I.A can track us down, hack on our medical stuff and basically kill us from their keyboards. I don’t even know if this chick is still alive or not, I just hope so, I don’t know why I hope so, it’s just that the thought of her being alive somewhat brings me a resolution. As if with her being alive, it’s okay for me to be once a murderer in a regular basis, it’s weird.

I groan in pain as I create my first movement since I blacked out, my whole body feels like it had been hit by a truck. Maybe I did get hit by a truck, who knows what happened after I fainted.

“Can I get some morphin or something?” I speak in a very unfamiliar voice. I don’t sound like myself. I can talk like this only when I have a really sore throat, or in this case, had been shot.

“No, you had enough already, dude. We don’t serve suicide by overdose in here” the chub says. I’m not sure if he’s a doctor, he’s wearing the lab coat, so each way’s alright with me.

“Oh yeah, I’ll let you two have a talk, if you want some oxygen to have fun it’s right next to you.” He chuckles pointing at the blue oxygen tube next to me. I turn left to see the proof and he’s right, there it is. Maybe I’ll get high with it later. But right now every inch of my muscles feel like they’ve been glued together and everytime I move it’s like pulling super glue from your skin.

“Well… hey” I turn right, to the face I saw right before I ‘died’. I feel that same feeling right before I was about to shoot her in that alley, that hollowness in my chest, trying to crawl out and gouge the guilt out from my heart. Her face is scarred here and there, there’s a faint trail of nosebleed under her nostrils, but she smiles a little at me. Our beds are pretty close, I can see those wide eyes stare at me again. But she’s not staring at me that way again, not accusing or damning. Maybe pity.

She looks up at the flickering fluorescent light, and lets out a light sarcastic laugh. I’m not sure what it means but I know she’s not the happiest person in the world seeing a person who was about to kill her in a hospital bed, in the same condition as she is.

“Why… Why did you chase me down the street?” Her voice sounds weaker, raspy from the lack of liquid I’m experiencing as well. I’m not even sure either. If I had enough pity and moral, I wouldn’t chase her, I would let her go and run. I would run a thousand miles away. I would let go of my job even if I had to be killed. Now I have to live with the guilt, and there’s someone alive as a proof and witness of my immoral proffession.

“Did you see the person who shot us in that alley?” I answer her with that because I don’t know what to answer. I stare at the white light with her, there’s no more comfortable position than this one, facing up with my body straight like a dead log.

“Yeah, it was some guy in a van. Are you from the insurance?” Her answer ends with a question that I can’t help but say yes to. Her facial expression turns from pity to aggravated disgust, she hates my guts now, I know that.

“You killed so many people… You’re sick. And you were gonna kill me. Why? Why did you choose this forsaken job? It’s disgusting” I close my eyes and hope my mind can travel to space and time rather than listening to her rants on why I’m sick and disgusting, but I can’t, her voice can’t be muffled, and this guilt is crawling under my skin like trans-fat. Breathing feels heavy and moving my limbs is no option for me.

“It’s hard to find a job these days” I find these words coming out of my mouth with no trace of weakness, but with a strange proudness, proudness over murders? No, maybe I’m just trying to take the dominance in the room instinctively.

She lets out a chuckle, but I can tell she’s not amused.

“Burn in hell you murderer, I don’t believe in hell but you do, that cross tattoo, and in that hell you’ll burn like all your killer friends and your killer boss, and everyone in that god damn company, you-” I can’t listen to any of these no more so I get up to a sitting position to face her.

“Stop it. Shut the fuck up. You don’t know shit about me, you don’t know anything about what I do. And every single word comes out of your mouth, it makes me regret even more abut not killing you”

The room turns as silent as a grave, she shuts up, by fear. I don’t regret my words, maybe a little.

The chubby doctor guy bursts into the room at the least expected awkward moment, but I’m glad he’s here, I’m glad he breaks the mute silence.

“Who’s hungry?” He puts a tray of TV dinner on a table that can slide to where I can reach it without moving much. Food, good, but the look of it doesn’t stimulate any sort of desire to eat.

“Can I be moved to another room? I’m afraid he’s going to kill me” The girl struggles to gets up. I look down at my food to try to hold my temper, she knows exactly how to rub it on my face.

“Sure, have you guys know how you can pay for the expenses at this clinic?” I’m not sure I’ll be able to pay for this, or how she’d be able to pay for this. Maybe they’ll take a kidney or something to cover the bill.

“Yep” I nod to the guy and stuff my face with the meat thing on the tray, trying to cover my inability to lie under stress. I know that if a guy in a van had shot me and the girl, the van, to me, indicates N.I.A people. And when N.I.A back up people such as the van guy, kills us, that means the company is already desperate to wipe out our tracks of life.

Shortly, we’re fucked. Our credits had probably been frozed up, we’re probably had been proclaimed dead. This is what’s funny about today’s world, nothing can be possible without some papers saying it’s possible. Funny enough a piece of paper saying we are dead is more credible than we’re saying that we’re not dead.

If the clinic people find out I can’t pay, who knows what they’re gonna do. So here comes the tough part, I, or maybe, we have to run before they know we can’t pay.