Gabriel Daniels
Gabriel frowned under his white surgical mask as he stared down at his patient’s spine and carefully operated the clunky controls of the out-dated medical laser. He was in a small 6 by 6 foot sectioned off area of a storage room near the back of the Medical Office, the only thing separating his operating “room” from the shelves of drugs being a few curtains. As he worked efficiently as he could, he noticed the sirens and red lights. Never dreaming of stopping an operation until it was finished, he continued unaffected and after the siren stopped he put it out of his mind. The higher ups had said that a more permanent operating facility was being set up somewhere else in the facility, but that had been quite a while ago.
He should be sitting in a separate viewing room, looking at the site of incision through high-definition monitors from at least five different angles and operating with state of the art robotic medical technology. Right now all he had was a poor excuse for a sterile environment, a shoddy and decrepit looking surgical laser, a few flood lights, an IV drip, and an old EKG. Christ, not only did he not have any assistants, he had even used a scalpel for the initial incision. A fucking scalpel! He couldn’t even remember the last time he had even seen someone use a scalpel. Those cold hearted bastards were probably perfectly content with a success rate in the upper seventies, especially if it meant that they didn’t have to shell out the extra cash.
Most of what he saw was a sort of paralysis, something about what they were doing to these people messed with their nervous system and it always occurred in the same place near the top of the spinal column. The synapses that transmitted motor commands were overloaded in that area, which Gabriel treated by splicing in new connections around or through affected nervous tissue. Though it was not the most elegant way of fixing the problem, but he doubted that Cydren would be up for buying graft-able nervous tissue for their subjects. However, every once and a while they brought in some vegetable that Gabriel had no hope of treating with the available equipment. So every time one was brought in he cursed himself for his inability.
When he had finished the procedure and had made sure the patient was stabilized, he stood back, disposed of his gloves and mask, then removed his medical jacket. Looking down at the sleeping man, he wondered what good he was doing him. Sure, he had momentarily saved the man’s life, but only so that he could be carted back for more experiments. “What a weak piece of work am I.” he muttered to himself as he felt the creeping depression of his inability sink back in.
Instinctively his right hand went to his shirt pocket as he whipped out his Zippo, but he found nothing and sighed. That was right, he decided to leave his cigarettes outside. He could not allow himself, even in this shitty setup, to smoke in the same room as a patient. As he stuffed the lighter back into his pocket, he walked through the curtains and into the main room. As he made his way through the storage room he passed quite a few shelves. Boxes upon boxes of drugs littered the shelves and the room was kept a relatively cool temperature.
As Gabriel reached the door he found a box lying in the floor with the lid open and little bottles spread across the floor. It must have been knocked off when those grunts had wheeled in his patient. As he cleared up the mess he noticed the little bottles were labeled AP. “Apathy pills.” he muttered , he abandoned his attempt at civilized cleanup to simply throw the box out of the way. Gabriel loathed the little wonder drug, he would never let himself discard his humanity.
Stepping out into the main section of the Medical Office, Gabriel retrieved his pack of cigarettes from the small table that stood next to the entrance to the storage room. Taking one out, he stuffed the pack back into his button up shirt’s pocket and lit the cigarette he now held in his mouth. After taking a few breaths of the smoke he looked around the Office. Gabriel frowned. Usually there was at least one of the resident pharmacists or a researcher hanging out in here even on off hours, as a lounge full of grunts didn’t do much for them. However right now, something was wrong, from what he could tell the Office was empty except for himself.
Quickly remembering the red alert, he went over the events following it. As he put his lighter back into his pocket, he realized that there had not been a follow up statement. “Must’ve gone to see what the commotion was about.” he guessed as he sat down in a chair that stood with the table next to the door to the storage room. Resting his elbow in the small table, Gabriel calmly proceeded to finish his smoke break.