Taipan // Doctor Strange

Chapter 1

The screams of pain emitting from the confines of the room on the other side of the wall was a bit much for the pale woman. Her usual ivory skin was a flushed red from the embarrassment of her mind being unable to handle the labor of her sister. Watching the sun glisten against the condensate droplets drying on the window, she longed to be outside. Everything was so simple outside.. not so complicated as bringing a human life into this world.

It must have been much easier, she thought, for her own mother to bring her twins into existence. Although, they were already existing before they left her womb, one could argue. Still, the woman had

The simple things had always drawn the woman around within the choices of her life. As though a path pre-made, never had she pushed herself into something so profound that she would feel uncomfortable. Religion was nonexistent, Tedx talks were minimalistic- even the books she read organized one's purpose of existence into the mere fragment of time (and that even sometimes being too much). Her thoughts were like a clean and fragile piece of glass, reflecting only what it's pointed at. Should it shatter, there was no hope of taping each shard into its previous space. There was no negativity in her past, just no complicated things in her future.

Her sister wailed for a seventh time, shaking the woman's chest as she felt bile rise in her throat. Her shoulders turned to leave. "Alaria?" her father called to her, already keenly watching her every aching movement. "Where you going?" he asked.

The whimsical air about him gave off the impression that he could not give a care in the world- that his wife had had three miscarriages, and now his only fertile daughter was undergoing a natural birth with a girl. "Out," The woman, Alaria, responded curtly. It was now that she took several quick steps to exit the small waiting room and enter the hall. Her feet carried her away, as well as the cries of pain from her ears. Tucking her henna hair behind, she briskly passed several nurses rushing through the corridor; there was a com with speakers set about that was requesting one doctor every minute. Her ears tried to pick up the sounds from each room she passed, sometimes catching a laugh or sob, depending on the patient within its bed. The temperature set goosebumps against her skin, she knew that it was because you could always quickly warm up a patient- cooling one down was a harder time.

Alaria's mind began to wander as she made her way across the different floors of the hospital, her hands tucked snuggly into her sweater pockets and her eyes wandering over each detail she could poses within the few seconds it was in front of her. It wasn't until a single cart rolled by- a conscious man dressed strangely, and a single nurse; running down the hall into the operating room at the end. "No." Alaria told herself, feeling a burning desire to proceed and watch through the clear glass. Gore had never bothered her, nor death. The simplistic lifestyle allowed a very restricted amount of care for people- it was a part of the issue she had with complex ideology. It wasn't that she did not like the idea of something beyond basic biology and physics, it was the fact that she was not able to conceptualize it on her own; she spent 40 extra hours a week in college with her tutors and teachers, only to pass with a C+ average.

And still, she found herself at the window, staring at the back of the nurse with reddish, short hair, and the lower half of a man with an oddly shaven face. Her shoulders moved as though she were talking- so the woman on the other side of the wall wondered why the two were having a conversation whilst he underwent surgery. She then noticed something even stranger, causing her eyebrows to furrow in puzzlement. The line to his heart rate was completely straight- running along the screen in a continuous flat. The nurse began to move quickly about the operating room, her hands fumbling for a long needle that disappeared in front of her as her back again turned to her observer. Alaria then felt as though she lost her mind- a blue orb appearing above the two of them; and then the man, only half, emerging transparently through that cubed orb, and looking down at his body and the girl.