Multum in Parvo

The technician grimaced when he arrived at the scene, "what happened?" he asked an indolent shark standing in proximity. The Sharks had arrived with their sirens blaring substantially quicker than the Health Care technicians due to their budget increase back in 2501. The shark turned to the technician making his handcuffs swing from his navy safety garter; he replied meekly, "It was a freak incident that happened fortuitously, most likely due to the impact of the bomb." The technician clenched his nose until he placed his sheer breathing mask upon it while cursing the Bureau’s cheap budget. The putrid smell was intoxicating, a rouge fog that smell would follow him home years later.

The technician skirted the remaining bodies, presuming they were dead without inspection. As he walked around the right-wing of the school he complained to himself, "blood is pervasive in this plac..." He would stop short. Two figures slightly blurred by the nebulous haze sat still in the distance, one hunched over the other. The technician approached making light of his feet, pondering why the two had not been assisted.

The girl who was hunched over didn’t notice the approaching stranger until his hand laid on her shoulder. She jumped and retorted "Who are you!?" While she screamed he noticed pseudo permanent tears stain their way down her face. Her fractious skin crimson by the salty tears was a harsh contrast to her ivory complication.

Caught off guard, he was transfixed "uhh...," he stammered through his already prepared greeting, "I’m here to help… let me help your friend". Eyes focused on his official Health Care badge, she pounced clenching to his scrubs like a life rope. "Please! Please! Help my friend!" Shocked he stammered backwards dragging her knees across the pavement. He looked at the seemingly dead carcass on the wet pavement; it was a boy, presumably a student by his uniform. He lay with his eyes clenched shut, lips stretched tight, sleeve and collar blushed with red stains, his arm laid outstretched across a thick concrete slab. His hand touched on one side resting lifelessly on the pavement and his tricep on the opposing side of the slab, the center of his arm snapped backwards caressed the height of slab.

The technician awkwardly attempted to compose himself and replied, "I’ll take him to the Health Car, give me his name and the shark can bill his proper address."

"No, no you need to help him," she said.

"Ma’am, we have five or more Health Cars in the area, he has major blood lost. I cannot treat him myself without the proper tools, which are located at the Health Car."

"He’s an immigrant!" she screamed viciously, "he’ll be killed on sight! Because of that new shark system! I have tools at my home, my parents are technicians as well, and I have this!" She leveled a Health Care blood bag on her flattened palm with careful display.

"Excuse me" he said with persistence "Where would you have acquired Health Care tools from? I’ll inquire about the blood bag next."

"It doesn’t matter right now, please help us!" she cried desperately.

Despite the entire massacre and the hazy abyss of the blood fog, her face luminance through it in a celestial manner, this struck heavy on the Technician’s laminated heart. With a parturient heart, suppressing antecedent better judgment, contravening his civic duties to the Health Care department and State, he aided the wounded in the most unprofessional manner.

Several frantic dazed hours later, the victim’s wounds attended to by the adroit Technician and the depleted Health Care bag laid gracelessly limp over the rim of the trashcan. After giving another morphine dose, the technician emerged from the basement. The girl, sitting strenuously on her hands, twitched her lip whilst waiting for the Technician to speak.

"Well, he’s weak that bag isn’t enough, it’ll be months until he recovers even partially," he said grimly while averting his eyes from her, carefully plucking each of the elastic fingers of his gloves relieving his hand of the matted layers of sweat that had transpired.

"First of all, I need to know the name of the person I’ll be losing my job over," he said regrettably.

"His name is Cole," said the girl.

"…I meant you, Cole couldn’t talk, and you’re the one that made me come to this...," he said with a long pause as he glanced around the room. He studied the patches of exposed decaying floorboards, stripping wallpaper, and beneath his feet welts were created from his weight in the damp brown carpet he suspected was once a soft pink hue. "Place," he added politely.

"It’s Satine… Satine Morose, but call me Saltine," she said with an emphases on Saltine .

"Why Saltine?" he asked with half interest.

"I was named after an atheist Queen… I’d rather be named after a god fearing cracker" she said in a beguiling humor.

"Where are your parents?" he asked with authority.

"Out," she retorted.

"Why do you have all this medical equipment, again?" he asked with a softer tone.

"My parents… they use to be like you, with a badge and all that crap… can’t tell you anymore because frankly it’s none of your business," she said with youthful wit. "What’s your bitch name?" she said meaning insult. She was referring to the governmental program the State had instigated to hide the true identities of government officials and employees, in hopes it would cut down vigilante actions from citizens with personal vendettas against the State workers for enforcing ridiculous State tenets.

"I was born Ethan Logan but renamed" he gestured quotation marks with his index and middle fingers on both hands twice in a unexpected sarcastic response "my ’bitch’ name’s Victor Bell," he said proudly with a heroic tone, adjusting himself to a confident superhero stance with hands on his hips and his chest puffed out like a rooster. At last he removed his thin breathing mask while remarking, "Call me Mr. Bell."

Satine could tell with his face unveiled he was a handful of years older than her, with this in mind she found the thought of calling him anything with mister in it ludicrous. ".. Yeah okay Ethan," she said while rolling her eyes. His eyes were unnaturally blue, a soul freezing tone that was almost as white as his eyeball itself. Likely from the hazardous cheap chemicals the technicians are forced to use due to their cheap budget, it was notoriously known to discolor. Ethan sat on precariously on the edge of the dilapidated love seat next to Satine; he touched her shoulder with a benevolent caring hand, which she immediately retracted from with crude rejection.

"What happened?" he asked in almost a whisper.

Satine ran through the story, telling him selective details and accidently forgetting others, Ethan lived vicariously through the experience.

It started that morning; it was Citizen Day a day that sounded positive, but quite paradoxical. It was the last day of the six day week, Sunday had been eliminated due to lack of efficiency, the Sharks would be disbanded in families of six to tally and report a household’s citizen points to the Bureau. The required/recommended amount was twenty per household. Citizen points would be rewarded when you present your "Civic Duty" card at various neighborhood assemblies and required voluntary events. The government formed an unstable asymmetrical triangle, the top being the State, followed by the Bureau, and concluded by the Sharks. The State would deal with foreign policies such as the current international war and the simultaneous domestic war, directing the Bureau and sharks, constructing new laws, and assigning budgets to the various domestic sub-institutions such as the Health Care department. The Bureau handled the press, the sharks, and the sub-bureau of the census, which collected polls. The Sharks were the law enforcers of the land with the minutest meaning, most commonly sent on trivial duties such as tallying civic points on Citizen Day.

This posed a problem for the precocious Satine, due to her parents’ frequent absences she perpetually had to make up the total amount of citizen points herself, otherwise she’d be subject to fines, imprisonment, or unauthorized vigilante beatings from a shark drunk with feigned sense of power.

A blood assembly luckily occurred at her school, prior to her citizen point tally. It would award fifteen, a passable number for this month. Unfortunately Satine had a harsh cough that day, it would prevent her from donating since the Health Care’s budget was such an iota amount that blood testing was a retired routine. Satine conspired to covertly cough as if she were clearing her throat. She lingered at the unlit street-light awaiting Cole’s departure from his apartment complex. Air sat shallow in her lungs, deep breaths would create a tantrum of uncontrolled hacks.

"Hey Saltine," Cole said with grin.

"Hi", she replied with a drowsy melancholy.

"What’s with you?" he said noticing her hunch and baggy eyes.

"My own, once loved, mucus is slowly trying to suffocate me and I suspect it’s premeditated," she said jovially fake enthusiasm.

"I guess… you can’t give blood today then," he said regrettably.

"Like hell I can’t, my tainted blood is imperative to population control, my friend."

"How retarded, you might get a sick person sicker!" he exclaimed.

"How rude, I’m sure his or her family would have a dais prepared for me, for ridding them of a sick relative, it’s economically and emotionally warring," she replied.

Changing the subject "Poor Mr. Ross on his last whim with the student sexual harassment charges, he always has a despaired look on his face," he remarked.

"Kinda like ’water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink?" she asked sarcastically, referring to the large abundance of exposed youthful breasts mockingly staring at Mr. Ross each day, due to the lack of dress code enforcement.

"It’s better than Miss Mya’s face ’children children everywhere and not a one to beat’ plus she always looks like she’s constipated," Cole said while distorting his face mockingly. They both laughed and continued on their twenty minute walk to school.

Nutrition break finally arrived, Satine b-lined to the secondary storage unit off of the right-wing where the blood-drive was being held. She was promptly strapped down immediately poked with a needle. The machine swished her Health Care blood bag to and fro, that’s when Satine noticed the most insignificant detail on her bag. A mark in the shape of a pear, drawn in a pink highlighter used to mark the initials of the donor. She leaned forward to look past her machine at the two other participants neither of which had the same design as her. In her fastidious state of mind, this was pushed to the back of her head and quickly forgotten.

Afterwards, Satine waited for Cole at the right-wing exit door, as he approached his face contained an amalgam of rush and anticipated terror.

"I think there’s going to be a bombing!" he frantically squealed losing control of the pitch of his voice, "I overheard some blood technicians talking about it and I swear I saw the Health Care truck full of explosives!"

"What kind of explosives?" she inquired with a vast amount of interest.

"The hell should I know! Why the hell would that be the first thing you say!" he practically screamed.

"Calm down you trying to give me a headache?" she replied irritably.

"C’mon, C’mon!" he exclaimed while grabbing onto Satine’s petite arm and pulling her in an aimless direction across the vacant parking lot. A loud wall of thunder hit them both simultaneously, sound rung throughout their whole bodies and vibrated them, their feet lifted by the jolts several inches. Crudely Cole was knocked onto his back, his arm spread across a parking slab. Attempting to regain her balance Satine stumbled backwards inevitably gaining her footing on top of Cole’s forearm snapping it in the most unnatural way.

"That’s it," she said with a blank stare.

"So how did the remainder of the bodies get crushed?" asked Ethan.

"Presumably, the shock of the blast caused the mobile Health Care vehicle to lose control which caused it to topple. Taking out x amount of students with it, I saw it crash into the segregated E-I building."

"How did you acquire the blood bag?"

"I ran over to the toppled Health Care car and grabbed one," she said irritable emphasize.

Ethan stayed throughout the night, checking on Cole every half hour until he collapsed into a stiff somber of sleep. Morning awoke, Ethan and Satine descended into the basement.

"I really must stop associating with poor people, they’re such a burden," she said, searching Cole’s face for a reaction with a smile on hers. But there was none, his eyes remained delicately closed, his skin whiter than a dove’s feather, his silhouette blended finely with the ivory pillow on which he laid. Satine brushed his feathery ebony hair from his eyes with her backhand then she caressed his cheek. It was ephemeral, for she quickly withdrew without delay. A pregnant pause and she realized his immaculate face was lifeless. She looked at him with disbelief, never would his white lips speak to her again, and she would never hear his optimistic view to counter her pessimistic nature which had always kept her from becoming bitter. At this un-cued tears raced weightlessly down her already reddened face, uncontrollably they continued burning streams of fire down her sensitive skin. Her throat clenched a fist of rightful rage which strangled her from within. Breathing turned to desperate hiccups for air. Her body set ablaze as blood rushed to the surface.
Ethan instinctively caressed her achromatic skin which now blushed with anger and melancholy. This time it was welcomed, Satine whirled and trusted herself into Ethan’s caring embrace. She squeezed him with the intensity her throat was squeezing her, clawing into his back she muffled an inaudible cry, "Why! I made sure it was O Positive! We had the same blood ty…" a hiccup for air halted her desperate whine. Then she saw it, through wet eyelashes and screening tears, there in a trashcan carelessly discarded laid the depleted Health Care bag. A mark shaped in a pear drawn in a pink highlighter.