She rounded up her things and stuffed them into a stained white duffle bag. A thermometer, some bandages, one small tube of antiseptic cream, some thread, a needle, and a bottle of alcohol. She carefully folded her white uniform and placed it inside the bag as well. Zipping it all up, she slung it over her shoulder and stepped outside her apartment, then locked the door behind her.
The streets were crowded, like always, full of people darting around in rags, trying desperately to sell useless things like jewelry or perfumes or silk clothing. She shook her head to indicate she wasn’t interested each time someone stopped her. She hated the looks on their faces, because she knew no one would ever buy such unnecessary items.
Her eyes drifted upward, where the red sky loomed over her. Her mother used to talk about a sky that was blue, but it had been red for as long as she could remember. History said it changed colors two years before she was born, and so it was the sky she grew up under. Some would call it beautiful, as it cast the world in a rose-colored haze. But to her, it was like the world was coated in blood.
When she reached the clinic, she was met at the door by a girl in a nurse’s uniform. “You’re late, Rhoswen,” she said with hands on her hips.
Rhoswen pushed by her and dropped the duffle bag from her shoulder, flopping it onto a nearby cot. She unzipped it and pulled out her own uniform. “My alarm clock didn’t go off.”
The other girl stood leaning in the door way as Rhoswen stepped into an empty patient slot and slid the dirty curtain closed. “Terrian is gonna be pissed at you.”
Rhoswen emerged from behind the curtain in a white button-up shirt that was a little too tight and a skirt that was way too short. The white cotton fabric made her medium-toned skin look tan by comparison and contrasted sharply with her dark wavy hair. “He’ll get over it.”
“Yeah, as soon as he see’s you.”
Rhoswen laughed. “You’re jealous, Anna.”
“Because that perverted freak lets you get away with anything?”
“No, because I look better in the uniform.”
Both girl laughed as they laid out their supplies on rickety metal tables, organizing them neatly into categories according to how often they were used. The alcohol, thread, and needles were first in line, followed by bandages then ointments and creams.
The door leading to the main treatment room flung open and a man with shoulder-length pale blonde hair tied into a short ponytail walked in. He wore wide-rimmed glasses and a lab coat covered in blood stains. He looked angry as he approached the girls, glaring at Rhoswen, but suddenly froze when he rounded the metal tables and the full length of her came into view.
He smiled brightly, wrapping Rhoswen into a hug. “You wore it today!”
She pulled free and adjusted her ill-fitting clothes. “It’s the only uniform I had clean.”
“And it’s my favorite,” the man said. He looked over their supplies then held out a thick stack of papers. “Look at all this. These are all patients who left the clinic in the last month and haven’t returned for their checkups. Next week I’ll be making a lot of house calls.”
Both girls frowned, as they hated it when Terrian made house calls. He was the only doctor at the clinic, and they were the only nurses. Things were hectic enough with the three of them, but when he was gone, the clinic was thrown into absolute chaos.
“Anyway,” he spoke up, “we have a lot of patients waiting already. Let’s get to work! “
Rhoswen and Anna had no formal training, had not even finished high school, but they had both been living on the streets three years ago when Terrian approached them about working for him. He taught them the basics, and the rest they learned over time. In this city, injured people couldn’t be picky.
They wheeled their metal supply tables through the swinging doors into the main treatment area of the clinic. Cots were lined up in two rows, facing each other, for the entire length of the large room. There was only enough room for one person to walk between each cot, and all but a few were occupied. People were moaning, screaming, crying, or unconscious. Anyone not in mortal danger was sent home after being stitched or bandaged up.
Illnesses were not often treated, as serious diseases were most often fatal no matter what the doctor did, but injuries were extremely common. Blood dripped from nearly every cot in the room, and a few patients were bandaged to the point of looking like mummies. Rhoswen and Anna had both learned quickly to develop a strong stomach.
The girls were checking on a patient that had been brought in last night with a chopped off leg when Terrian came zooming past them, pushing a stretcher. “Emergency surgery!” he called, disappearing into the room Rhoswen had just changed in.
They dropped what they were doing and ran after him, then stopped dead in their tracks as soon as they were through the doors, staring at the figure on the stretcher.
”Doctor... that’s... one of them.”
The boy on the stretcher wore a black, ornate military uniform. It was comprised of black pants and a long black jacket with golden buttons up the front and gold-trimmed cuffs and collar. The uniform was instantly recognizable to every single person in the city, because only they wore them. His skin was pure white and his hair a jet-black mess scattered across his face.
Terrian was ripping that glorious black uniform from the boy’s motionless body. “I know what he is, Anna, but he’s still a patient. And right now, he’s dying unless we can stop the bleeding.”
Rhoswen and Anna hesitated just inside the door, looking at each other and then back to the boy. Anna shook her head. “I can’t... I can’t help him. Not after all they’ve done.”
Terrian stopped and looked at her. At first, they were sure he would scold her, but he merely sighed and nodded. “I understand. Go tend to the other patients.”
Rhoswen watched the other girl leave, then turned to Terrian. He looked at her with a pleading expression. “He’ll be dead within the hour if we don’t do anything, Rhoswen.”
She took a deep breath, then rushed over to Terrian’s side. He held out his hands while she poured alcohol over them, then rinsed her own. Looking down at the boy, he seemed fragile, vulnerable. Almost human. His torso was exposed, revealing a long, deep cut across his abdomen that was gushing out blood. Funny how his body was absolutely impeccable, toned to lean perfection and immaculately white, but marred by that huge red gash.
The cut was so long, and the bleeding so severe, that each of them began stitching on separate ends of the wound so that they would meet in the middle to tie things off. A sloppy job, yes, but the fastest route to closing the wound. The boy would heal faster than normal people, would probably be fine in a matter of hours, but only if they stopped the bleeding.
Once they were finished, Rhoswen again cleaned the wound and Terrian began bandaging the boy up. “Amazing, isn’t it?” he asked when he was done, “It won’t even leave a scar. Not on him.”
Rhoswen washed her hands in the nearby sink and thought of Anna. “It’s not fair.”
”Of course it’s not,” Terrian told her, wiping the blood from his hands on a stained towel, “You’d be a fool to ever assume it would be.”
Rhoswen dried her hands and walked again through the swinging doors. Anna was changing the bandages on a young girl’s arm, but looked up when Rhoswen approached. “How could you stand it? Helping that thing?”
”I didn’t enjoy it, okay? But he would’ve died. This is a clinic, Anna. We’re supposed to help dying people.”
Anna stood up and stepped away from the young girl’s bedside. “Yeah, people. Not them.”
”But he’s half human, isn’t he? Isn’t that enough?”
Anna snorted. “Was that enough to stop those creatures from barging into my house and slitting my mom’s throat? Was it enough to stop them from crushing my brother’s head under their boots? Was it enough to stop them from... from what they did to me?!”
Rhoswen went silent. She didn’t know what to say. She knew the half-breeds had killed most of Anna’s family, but she had yet to hear any details before now. Finally, she reached out and took the other girl’s hand. “I’m sorry, Anna. I’m really sorry.”
Anna pulled Rhoswen into a hug. “I know... I’m sorry I jumped down your throat. I just don’t want to see you be hurt by them too.”
”I don’t think he’s in a position to hurt anyone right now,” Rhoswen told her after they separated, “He’s not even conscious.”
Anna looked toward the swinging doors. “Be careful. Even when they look harmless, they’re still dangerous.”
Rhoswen nodded, and headed off to check on the other patients. The next few hours went by steadily but quickly, as she made her way around the room checking on people, giving out soup, changing bandages, and occasionally holding someone’s hand while Terrian performed some sort of painful procedure. Unfortunately, pain relievers were as rare and expensive as genuine jewels were in the olden days, when the sky was still blue. The only way to put a patient to sleep was to quite literally knock them out with a club, which was a last resort.
The clinic was dirty and crowded and in shambles. The people were desperate, demanding, and understandably irritable. But Rhoswen liked being there. She liked being with Anna and even Terrian, who could at least make her smile. She liked helping people who were suffering, because she enjoyed seeing a tiny flicker of hope in their eyes.
Because she could almost grasp a little bit of hope for herself.
The clinic was all she had after her parents had died. And everyday she dreaded returning to her tiny apartment where hope drained from every inch of her like red sun fading into black night. But at least she could always come back the next day, where she could laugh with Anna and everything else would fall away into dust.
It was almost time to go home, and all the patients had been taken care of. Anna left out the front door, not wanting to walk through the back room where she would have to see the lone patient on the stretcher.
Rhoswen waved to Terrian who was making one last run around the room to check everyone over, then walked into the back room. The boy was still unconscious and the rest of his clothes had been removed, a sheet draped over his body. She crept up to the stretcher and looked down, watching him breath. After feeling certain that he was indeed unconscious, she walked into the empty patient slot she had changed in earlier and pulled the curtain closed.
She couldn’t walk home in her uniform, as it was dangerous enough for a girl to be alone on the streets in the evenings, but wearing an outfit like that was just asking for trouble. She quickly pulled it off, then reached for her jeans. But before she could even unfold them, she heard the curtain suddenly fly open.
She whirled around in anger, certain that perverted Terrian would be standing there grinning like an idiot. But she was not met with the smiling doctor, but the cold, expressionless face of the now conscious boy. His eyes, one blue and the other lime-green (a trademark of the half-breeds), bore into her, unblinking.
He was completely naked, save for the bandage across his abdomen, and Rhoswen tried her best to keep her eyes on his face.
Don’t half-breeds have any modesty?
She suddenly realized that she was only in her underwear, and backed up until she bumped into a cot, holding her jeans in front of her. The boy’s eyes never left her, and her heart was pounding rapidly in her chest. She had never been face-to-face with a half-breed before, had never been unfortunate enough to cross paths with one directly. In general, if she saw one of them on the street, she went the opposite direction, or the long way around to avoid contact. No one dared look them in the eyes.
There was a pause, where both of them stared at each other for several moments, not moving. Then, in the blink of an eye, the boy had lunged forward and was inches away from her. Rhoswen jerked backward, inadvertently ramming herself into the cot where the metal collided with her bare back. She dropped to her knees, wincing.
When she looked back up, the half-breed was looming over her, and suddenly reached out one hand toward her. She had seen what the hands of half-breeds could do, had treated many a patient who had somehow ran into one of them. In fact, just today she had bandaged up a woman who’s left arm had been pulled right off, like the wings off a fly, by a half-breed.
Rhoswen curled into a defensive ball and screamed, her horrified voice ringing out through the clinic and undoubtedly to the buildings nearby.
This is it, I’m dead. I’m really, really dead.