Chapter #3Ashley Armstrong, Assisting All by: Keroro04   "Ouch, ouch, ouch!"
"Hey, remember what I said, no moving while I'm stitching you back up! You're only going to hurt yourself!"
There were three unsaid rules in the business of capes. The first was that Atlantis was left to the Free Oceans organization of heroes when possible, as getting into Atlantean affairs as a foreign force was incredibly dangerous when they could raze the world with a single spell. The second rule was to keep the property damage to the minimum unless the world was at stake, so as to avoid the wrath of S.H.O.T.G.U.N and it's metahuman ally known as the Gavel. The third and most important one however was the most simple to understand out of all of them: never shoot the medic.
Now, there were plenty of medics out there in the world who catered to heroes. However, only one was willing to fix up absolutely anyone provided that they played nice and fair in the lab. That woman's name was Ashley Armstrong, an African-American woman grown from the Bronx who grew with only the best of intentions for humanity. 11 PhDs in the medical arts, as well as a 12th and 13th in the burgeoning field of metagenetcis meant that she was the best in her field in regards to understanding the body and health of a superhero, no matter where they were from.
Really, the only field she was missing was fixing them mechanical supers, but that's what capes like the Sonic Defender or tech organizations like Health-Tech were for. She was focused on fixing the problems with more fleshy heroes. Heroes such as Sugar Rush, who was having an arm reattached following a very, very painful battle with the villainess Moss. In that battle, she had gotten caught by a sap spill on the floor caused by a careless mistake, which gave the immortal woman ample time to unleash a man-eating flytrap to snap up the alien girl bit by bit.
If it wasn't for Celebrant showing up at the last moment, she would have been a goner. Thankfully, both she and the arm were recovered, and now it was being sewn back on, with the feelings coming back in just as she was nearing total completion of the stitching. It was an incredibly painful experience, but something that was entirely necessary if such a injury was going to heal fully. At the very least, Zoe thought as she was getting her arm back, she wasn't going to have to worry about giving away any information to her compared to other doctors.
"And... done! Now, I should warn you... no matter the species having an arm reattached is not an immediate fix. Those stitches will need time to settle and fuse with the skin before you can truly recover. Until then I'm going to have to request that you take a break from heroics. Maybe let any sidekick you have pick up the slack while you enjoy the finer things in life."
"But... I don't have a sidekick." Zoe admitted, as she nervously tapped her lap. "Not for lack of trying of course! It's just, besides maybe Celebrant and some of my villains there haven't really been any speedsters who've been able to keep up with me..."
"I mean, you don't need to have a sidekick who has the same set of powers as you do." Pulling out a photo, Ashley showed to Zoe the image of a previous set of patients, who were in for a kidney transplant. "A few years back I've treated the Centaur's own sidekick, the Green Knight. You see how different they are? One's a half-guy half-horse, the other's basically a human tree with wooden armor constantly surrounding her. They're quite a bit different, but they still work well together. That's what I mean. Now, what compliments your powers?"
Thinking about it, Zoe scratched her head at trying to think what complimented super speed. "Hmm... I guess maybe a wind-related power could compliment my abilities? As fast as I am, I can't exactly run through the air without some support like a jetpack."
"See, that's the spirit!" Cheering the speedster on, she'd push the Glucosan girl onto her feet as she dusted the operating table up. "Now, you got someone to at least drive you home? I'd be careful using your super speed while the stitches are yet to fuse. One wrong move and the sheer force could just undo them."
"Oh, don't worry! Coffin's supposed to pick me up out front! Soon as these stitches heal we're supposed to go to to Fiji for a vacation!"
"Fiji huh? Huh, that actually sou- and she's gone. Of course..."
In just a single blip of motion, Zoe vanished in an instantaneous blip leaving behind her payment in a pile on the operating table. Zoe was one of those more problematic patients, those who didn't even give that much care to their body after getting fixed up. They weren't particularly common, but when they did show up she often had to patch them up more than once before they actually got better.
Almost on cue, as she pocketed the cash she noticed a few drops of blood on some of the bills. These drops were obviously from the girl's recently attached arm, and were a sure sign that she was already straining it.
"Well... I guess I'll have to make sure some time's available for her tomorrow to come on in for ANOTHER stitching up... I swear, the Techno-Crat wasn't nearly this reckless about his health when I reattached his arm five years ago... woman's going to kill herself if she just keeps living life like that."
With her next scheduled appointment being in thirty minutes, Ashley sighed as she started putting away everything she had used. While she was certainly annoyed by these new reckless sorts of heroes, the reason she stuck around with this job was out of an empathy for life of all kinds. She originally worked for a government job within the US's Needle and Thread Institute, but when they had refused an operation for the previous Mist due to his refusal to give out their identity she quit her job and operated on him anyways.
Since then she operated independently as a doctor, having opened up a mobile clinic currently parked in Tampa Bay that travelled all across the United States to help anyone and everyone. And it wasn't just heroes either, as where other doctors working with capes specifically only healed the heroes, she had made big waves in the news when she had operated on Lambda, a Atlantean general and war criminal who had been knocked halfway across the battle against the Free Oceans hero known as Octave, fixing her shattered lungs and a broken spine with revolutionary surgical techniques.
It was her actions in fixing a well known villain that established the third unspoken rule about Capes, and from then on only the truly irredeemable sort of folks ever tried attacking her. She's been targeted before of course, once by the villain Spotlight disguising itself in a gambit to gain information and again by a particularly drunk Volcanus, who had nearly burned down her mobile clinic thinking he had been kidnapped. Each time though she got out fine, waited for them to either tire themselves out or otherwise beat themselves, and continued on to the next patient.
Checking her phone, Ashley made a note of her schedule once more and adjusted it for the incoming week to account for a predictable return of the hero Sugar Rush. She was a very busy woman, having never married or having any children. She was basically married to the job at this point, but at the very least it was a job that she enjoyed.
Still... she was working a bit too much recently. As she checked her schedule she noticed that she literally didn't have a day off for the next two weeks, meaning that she had to get up at 5 AM and start work from 7 until midnight for 14 days in a row. That was almost unsustainable, even for someone who really enjoyed coffee like herself. Taking a look at the schedule, she quickly trimmed off three days from the schedule, namely her upcoming weekend as well as next Wednesday.
"Let's see... I think that should be a good enough schedule. Now, about tonight..."
Pulling up the information on her remaining patients, she saw quite a few different profiles on her bracket tonight. She had some low-leveled vigilantes, a high profiled hero... as well as quite a few goons out there in that lobby, who were seeking various different kinds of treatments for various different ailments and injuries. It was going to be a long, long night for the woman, possibly to the extent that she may even be working past midnight depending on how it went.
At least, now that she had her workplace straightened out and readied, she was ready for the next one. Walking out into the lobby she'd press a button which rung out a noise across the lobby to gather everyone's attention. Once she had said attention, she'd pull out a small clipboard to check on her next patient's particular case, before calling out.
"Calling out for Number 14, we are ready for you in the operating room. I repeat, Number 14 we are ready for you in the operating room. Just come in calmly and we will get you looked over and treated so that you can get out of here as quickly as possible."
With that, she opened up the door for...   indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
| Members who added to this interactive story also contributed to these: |
<<-- Previous · Outline  · Recent Additions © Copyright 2024 Keroro04 (UN: keroro04 at Writing.Com). All rights reserved.
Keroro04 has granted Writing.Com, its affiliates and syndicates non-exclusive rights to display this work within this interactive story. Poster accepts all responsibility, legal and otherwise, for the content uploaded, submitted to and posted on Writing.Com. |
View Portfolio
Visit Notebook
Send Gift Points
Awards
Badges
Send Email
Community Newsfeed
General Discussion
Sponsored Items
Book of Trinkets
Static Items
Books
Groups
Interactive Stories
Audio
Campfire Creatives
Community Notes
Crossword Puzzles
Documents
Folders
Images
In & Outs
Madlibs
Photo Albums
Polls
Product Reviews
Quizzes
Survey Forms
Web Pages
Word Searches
More by this author