The Lost Aria (Earth Song Book 3) Page 28

  The car alerted her as she entered the Tranquility traffic pattern. She coded for a direct approach to the city hospital and waited impatiently through the pain. Flying traffic was limited to two hundred KPH above the cities flight corridor, and one hundred below a thousand meters. The approach and landing was agonizingly slow. As the car came around for an approach on the garage the pain got worse again, reaching a level she didn't think was possible. Minu overrode the controls and altered the approach. Two flying transports blared their horns and were forced to dodge her as she came over the roof of the hospital, around the building, and landed just outside the emergency entrance crushing a couple of rose bushes.

  The landing was gentle, but even that slight bump made her scream in pain. Worse, she felt the uncontrollable urge to cough. She fought it as hard as she could as she fumbled with and eventually found the door control. As it swung outwards she lost her battle and a single wracking cough tore through her with ripping pain. Minu wiped moisture from her lips and her eyes went wide when she saw blood on her hand. The first feelings of panic hit her like a lightning bolt.

  “What the fuck do you think-” someone yelled at her through the open door, but he cut short when he saw her black Chosen uniform. “Oh, what is-” then he cut off again as she looked up at him with fear in her eyes, blood dripping down her chin and covering her hand. “Are you all right?”

  “Do I look all right?” she gasped. He turned and ran and she silently cursed her sarcastic attitude, how the hell was she going to get out and to the entrance? Every breath was agony now.

  Then the man was back, and with medical staff. There were three men and a woman, all in the red of hospital staff with a gurney in tow. The man who'd first come to her was leaning over and releasing her safety harness. “What's your name, Chosen?”

  “Minu Alma,” she said, feeling a gurgling in her lungs and fighting another cough.

  “Have you been shot? Tell me what's wrong.” As he leaned over her she saw a hospital name tag, then they began extracting her from the car and the pain attacked once more. Minu started to scream, and the darkness returned.

  Chapter 9

  December 16th, 521 AE

  Trauma Center. Mercy Hospital, Tranquility, Plateau Tribe, Bellatrix

  Minu fought her way up through the cotton stuffed fog, slowly making her way to the light above her. It seemed the harder she struggled the deeper and denser it became. Voices drifted in and out, some sounded concerned, others more businesslike. And through it all she felt pain, numbness, and anger.

  “I'm having trouble keeping her under,” someone said. Minu took the encouragement and clawed towards the light.

  “Watch the arm, watch the arm!” Someone cried out and she heard a crash. “Okay, I got it. Damn!”

  “She's almost conscious.”

  Another voice, this one calm and authoritative, spoke up. “Let her wake up.” In moments she was opening her eyes and blinking against the bright white light of an operating theater. “Do you know where you are?”

  “A hospital, obviously,” she said and coughed. At least there was no stab of pain with it now, in fact her whole lower body was numb and a screen blocked her view. “What are you doing to me?”

  “We had to open you up to find out what was causing the internal bleeding. We thought first you'd been shot, then maybe some sort of blunt force trauma.”

  “What was it, why was I bleeding inside?”

  “I've been ordered not to tell you.”

  “Excuse me?” She craned her head and saw that the man who'd first found her was the one speaking. He was older than she'd first thought and he now wore the typical hospital red scrubs and high tech Concordia made filter mask.

  “We notified your listed physician, Dr. Tasker, of what we found and we were ordered to wait for his arrival.”

  “I want to know what the fuck is going on.”

  “We can't violate your chief physician’s order.”

  “You can if he's not my physician. What's your name?”

  “Dr. Robinson. I'm a trauma doctor here and was just getting off when you almost landed on my head.”

  “Sorry about that. Dr. Robinson, I officially fire Dr. Tasker, and appoint you my physician.”

  “You shouldn't do this,” another doctor who'd arrived during the exchange said. “You are Chosen, and should be attended to by a Chosen physician.”

  “I'm having details on my condition hidden from me by my old doctor, that isn't what I'd call trust. Dr. Robinson, please inform me of my condition?”

  The other doctor scowled and left. Dr. Robinson moved closer so she could see him without having to crane her neck. “You were in a fight a short time ago?”

  “Fight? I train Chosen in hand-to-hand, but I haven't been in a fight.”

  “You took a blow to your abdomen, probably less than a week ago.”

  “Yeah, one of my students got lucky, but it wasn't that bad.” She chuckled remembering the sucker punch that Tanya managed to land. A forearm to her stomach, right near the pain.

  “The blow didn't directly cause the damage, this did.” He held up a little cylinder, about five centimeters long. It was silver in color, had a slight tinge of red from where blood clung to it, and a short hose ending in a needle from one side. “That impact dislodged this device that was implanted in your abdominal cavity, just below your 2nd anterior intercostal rib muscle. Once it was loose it started to move around, and eventually pulled out this catheter that was inserted into your interior gonadal vein. As the catheter was treated with an anti-coagulant material, the vein just kept on bleeding. Eventually, you would have died.”

  “How much longer?”

  “Probably less than two hours. The hole wasn't that big, but the bleeding was persistent. Then it looks like your coughing from the pressure caused it to perforate a lung. The pain from the hemorrhaging in your stomach must have been excruciating.”

  “It didn't feel good, that's for damned sure. What the hell does it do?”

  He looked at it, held in his surgical glove covered hand, and then at her. “So you don't know what this is?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Nor did you know it was implanted in you?”

  “Does it sound like I fucking knew it?”

  He took a deep breath before speaking. “It appears to have been inserted though that knife wound over your uterus when you were stitched up.”

  “Again, what the hell does it do?”

  “We found residue of progesterone and estrogen, common ingredients in birth control pills.”

  Minu looked at the little device, rather like an insulin pump she'd seen years ago in a class, an adaptation of a neutral Concordia technology for injecting steady rates of drugs. “Birth control?”

  “I would have to say yes.” She laid her head back and stared at the ceiling. “It isn't like any kind I've ever seen, though. We have a type of implant, but it is a soluble tablet inserted under the skin, maybe good for a year. This thing, based on the power cell it has, would probably work for five or six years.”

  “Would it delay my first period, if it were installed when I was real young?”

  “Quite possibly, yes. I would never do that with a young girl, it's always best to wait until puberty is well under way, or even over, before beginning a birth control regime.” He looked down at her abdomen, chewed his lower lip, and tossed the device in a specimen tray.

  “There's more?”

  “Yes. We had to go into you to figure this out. Being as you're a young, attractive and possibly sexually active woman we used a scope procedure, just a couple little slits below your bikini line that will be almost invisible when they heal.”

  She looked at her hand and thought about the growing collection of scars then laughed. “I appreciate the sentiment.”

  “Right. Well, we found this, removed it, and patched the vein in question. I looked around while I was in there to be sure there was no other damage. Had to drain almost t
hree units of blood.” He gestured for a nurse who brought over a small Concordia made video monitor.

  “Doc, I don't want to see home movies of my girl parts, especially from the inside.”

  “You need to see this one.” The video came alive with a somewhat blurry image from an endoscope camera. It was all red and gooey images of tissue and such, a lot of dripping blood. “Sorry for the quality, your abdominal cavity was a bloody mess. So, this is your gonadal vein.” It was a gray colored tube spurting blood. The image fast forwarded through the repair. “Okay, here are your reproductive organs, fallopian tube, one of your ovaries, quite healthy looking, and this is your uterus.”

  “Ugh, you have a point?”

  The screen split to another image, obviously another uterus. The two were quite different, and it was obvious the difference was in hers. “The damage was extreme, by the appearance of the repairs. That knife wound extended all the way back to your spine.” The camera moved again and she could see another vein, this one huge and pulsing, and what must be ribs. “The knife nearly severed your inferior vena cava. A miracle you didn't bleed to death in minutes. Add to that the damage to your spine,” he paused and used a little pointer to show where a white bone was missing a neat chip.

  “I was there, I know it was bad.” She thought about the images for another moment. “So I can't have babies?”

  “Correct. They tried hard to repair the damage, but the knife nearly cut your uterus in half. You must have been pretty young, because the scar tissue is massive. Between the birth control implant, and this damage, there is no doubt why you were late in starting estrus, as you mentioned. Whoever operated on you went out of their way to be sure you wouldn't know.”

  Minu let it sink in. It took a few minutes. There would be no more Alma family when she was gone. Mindy Harper's line was going to die. It was one more little debt she owed a certain Rusk. A single tear rolled down her cheek and she sighed. “So I'm all sewed up and good to go?”

  “Aside from the blood loss, you're in good shape. I need you to stay for a day to be sure the sutures hold and that your blood volume normalizes.”

  “Turn the field off?” she asked, referring to the hoverfield immobilizing her on the table. The doctor nodded and she shoved the privacy screen out of the way. Her crotch was modestly covered with a towel but her abdomen was naked. The knife wound was as light as ever, but the deeper damage rested in the back of her mind like never before. To the side were two new bandages, slightly bloody, the site where the scopes entered her body. She felt remarkably well, the only tubes still connecting her were the ones leading to an IV bag hanging next to her bed.

  “Get out of my way, now,” she heard a familiar authoritative voice outside and turned her head just in time to see Dr. Tasker enter. His sharp eyes took in the scene quickly. Minu's naked waist, the new bandages and exposed scar, the monitor showing the old damage to her spine, and the specimen tray holding the birth control device. The last thing he saw was the pure, dark, seething rage in Minu's eyes. “Now let me just say-”

  Luckily for Minu it was only two steps, because she almost fell when she slid off the table. Tasker's eyes got big as she came at him and he tried to back out. A nurse was just coming in behind him after failing to exclude the Chosen doctor from the theater and he backed into her with a bump. Minu managed the two steps with a visceral snarl of anger, and seized Tasker's throat with her right hand.

  The two crashed to the floor on the poor unfortunate nurse. He clawed desperately at her fingers as she consciously overrode the safeties and servos whined. His eyes bugged and his face started to turn purple. “You mother fucker!” she snarled in his face as she could hear ligaments starting to pop in his neck. She was bare seconds from snapping his spine when stab of pain hit her bottom and coldness flooded through her. She tried one last time to push the arm to finish exacting her revenge, but darkness won and she slumped onto the good doctor, her hand loosening. He cried out and gasped for breath, blood and spittle flying from his lips.

  “Sh-she tried to kill me,” he gurgled.

  Dr. Robinson looked down at him, the needle he'd used to knock her out held in one hand. “You are lucky I didn't let her finish the job,” he said simply and tossed the needle into the same bin that held the birth control pump. “It is to your benefit that I, at least, follow the Hippocratic Oath.” Tasker gurgled a curse then passed out. “Nurse, better intubate him, I think she crushed his wind pipe.”

  It was a sick irony that Tasker ended up only a few rooms down from Minu. When she woke up Dr. Robinson was there explaining to her that he was just down the hall, and no charges were going to be pressed. The latter surprised her as much as his proximity annoyed her. “Why didn't he press charges?”

  “Because I told him if he did I would bring an ethics complaint against him in Plateau, where he holds his license to practice medicine, and I'd demand that all gynecological records for every female Chosen be opened and reviewed by the same ethics board.”

  “Thanks, doc,” she said and managed a smile. “You're doing a lot to redeem your profession in my eyes.”

  “It shouldn't need redeeming,” he said, his mouth set in a thin line of anger, “what they did to you without your knowledge or consent in unconscionable. I only wish you hadn't tried to kill the bastard.”

  “Why?”

  “Because then I wouldn't have to trade away the threat of a complaint to keep you out of a trial.”

  “Might have been better not to have bothered.” He gave her a confused look so she proceeded. “I could have used what you did as evidence for my being cleared of charges. Justifiable homicide, from where I see it.”

  “I'm not sure the courts would agree, but perhaps. Do I have your promise not to kill him?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “While you are in this hospital?” she gave him a dirty look. “I like you Minu, I like you a lot. Don't disappoint me by doing something stupid in my wing.”

  “Fine, I promise.” He flashed her a smile of perfect teeth and dimples and she was compelled to return it, minus the dimples. “Can I get out of here now?”

  “In a few hours, we're just finishing up some tests.”

  She thanked him and he promised to see her before she left. After a bit a nurse brought her a lunch of the typical gelatin, crackers and sugar free soda which she ate grudgingly under her supervision. Then as the time of her release approached the door opened and there was Dr. Tasker.

  “Take one more step into this room and I'll twist your fucking head off,” she snarled. He froze in his tracks and sweat broke out on his face. He was dressed in street clothes but a support collar encircled his neck and she could see bruising climbing towards his head. “What do you want?”

  “A chance to explain myself, maybe to justify my actions.” His voice was gruff and he spoke with some difficulty.

  “Impossible.”

  “Minu, you have to understand-”

  “No, you have to understand,” she roared and sat up. He took a step back towards the hallway and a pair of nurses stopped to look in the room. “You weren't able to fix the damage that bastard Malovich did to me, yeah don't give me that look, we both know perfectly well that it wasn't a sharp branch like the reports said. I wondered for quite a while why the convenient lies; I can only assume it was to protect that little Rusk shit. So you couldn't fix me properly, but you managed to keep me alive. You slapped my uterus back together, stitched up my stomach, and stuck a damn machine inside me to make sure I couldn't get pregnant, because if I did it would end in disaster. Does that just about cover it?!”

  “Sort of.”

  “What more can you possibly offer to explain why you did this to me, then didn't even bother saying; oh, by the way, you can never have babies!” He looked at her then down at the floor. “How many other women in the Chosen have those hideous things inside them, quietly pumping birth control drugs into their systems?”

  “All the non-married ones,” he
admitted. “That is between the Chosen council and-”

  “You unspeakable son of a bitch,” she snarled and snatched up the tray. Her right hand crushed the metal plate and hurled it at Tasker. He made a squeaking noise and ran for it, the tray nearly taking out one of growing audience she'd collected before bouncing down the hall with a horrible racket. She pointed at one of the stunned nurses. “Get me out of here, right now, or so help me I'll start tearing out the walls!”

  Chapter 10

  December 24th, 521 AE

  Meeting Room #12, Chosen Headquarters, Steven's Pass, Bellatrix

  Minu sat on the comfortable couch and checked the time again. Fifteen minutes remained and she fidgeted nervously. She hadn't gone about this course of action brashly, instead agonizing over it for almost a week. The problem was that in two weeks she was due to rotate back to Herdhome, and she had plans before then. Big plans that necessitated her going forward with this little drama now.

  As she was about to check the time again the first of her visitors showed up. Naturally, it was Cherise.

  “What is going on?” she asked as Minu rose and embraced her friend. Since they were the only ones present, they shared a quick kiss too, forcing Minu to admit she missed their intimacy. In the last six months they'd only managed to meet a half dozen times, and just two of those resulted in any romantic encounters. At least each time they'd been able to work out together and Minu was beginning to work out the basics of a new fighting technique. Getting her ass kicked by the Tanam hadn't sat well with her. Humans were at too severe a disadvantage against many of the Concordian species which evolved from predators.

  “I'll tell everyone once they are here,” Minu explained, “it's simpler that way.”

  “Okay, whatever you say.” The small conference room she'd had a friend reserve for her quickly filled after that. By the appointed hour, there were twenty two female Chosen sitting in chairs, on couches, or standing and talking to each other. “I can't wait to find out now,” Cherise whispered to her when the last one came in.