Eli didn’t pay attention as they entered the hospital together. He couldn’t get what Amy had said out of his head. Why had she said that? Why had her looking down at him with that smile make him feel so warm? Eli didn’t understand. His thoughts continued to swirl as he walked past a “watch the the lip” sign that hung a few feet before the entryway. Eli continued not to pay attention as they walked through the door as his foot caught on the lip and Eli tripped. Eli fell forwards, the ground quickly approaching as he felt two warm hands as they wrapped around him, as he was left suspended in the air. Eli looked upwards to see Amy standing there once again as she looked down at him with that damn smile. Eli’s face burned with embarassment as he quickly covered his face with his hands. Eli tried desperately not to look at Amy right now.
“Eli you really should pay more attention to where you are going, did you not see the sign?”
Eli slowly spread his fingers slightly so that he could look at Amy. “Sorry, I was distracted.”
Amy’s face glowed as she smiled while looking down at Eli. “Oh and what could have you so distracted?”
“You know what you did. Why did you say that to me?”
A nurse walked past them as she helped a patient exit the building, a look of mild annoyance on her face “This is no time to flirt dies, you are blocking the entrance.”
Amy quickly scooped Eli into her arms and carried him towards the reception area. “Oops. Sorry miss.” Amy looked down at Eli with a huge grin on her face. “Shall we? Miss.”
Eli couldn’t even respond properly to Amy’s teasing. He just made small noises as she carried him to the reception. He was so embarrassed he couldn’t even look at Amy.
Registration only took 5 minutes for everything to be filled out and for the EMT to have left. They were quickly sat in the waiting room.
“Amy… Why did you say that to me? You know I’m a guy, why would you call me that? Do you know how embarrassing that is?”
“Sorry it’s a bad habit I’ve picked up from working with everyone from The Society.”
“How many people do you work with ask you to say that to them? Also what’s The Society? I’ve heard you mention it but I still don’t know what it is.”
“Do you remember in high school how there was a Queer Alliance group?”
“Queer Alliance? What’s that? Never heard of it.”
“Seriously? Well basically it’s a group that most schools have to create safe spaces for queer folks. Despite the anti-discrimination ws and the charter of queer rights, there are still some people here in Canada that are hateful pieces of shit. Then again, there are terrible people evewrywhere.”
“Sorry I avoided stuff like that back home, everytime something reted to the topic would come up in converstation my father would get really angry and start yelling and making accusations, something about alphabet soup, never understood that part. But I learned early on to just avoid the topic in general.”
“Holy shit, that’s aweful, I’m so sorry you had to deal with that but we are getting off topic. The Society is the school’s group for members of the LGBT community. I am on The Counsil of Queers as one of the organizers and a member of the governing body.”
“Please tell me that you didn’t actually name the governing body of The Society, The Council of Queers.”
“We did and it’s amazing. As for the good girl thing… well I work with alot of bottoms, it comes up more than you think. Again I do apologize for that, normally I only do that with people who ask.”
“Bottoms? You know what, I don’t want to know.”
“Seriously? You don’t even know that? How sheltered were you?”
“Trust me, I wasn’t sheltered.”
“Rivers, calling for one Eliott Rivers,” the nurse’s voice interrupted their conversation as Eli rose from his seat.
“Follow me.” The nurse led them through a series of winding corridors and up two flights of stairs before finally arriving at a brightly lit room. “a doctor will be by to see you shortly.”
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They waited in the waiting room for about 10 minutes, making idle chatter, when the doctor showed up. He was tall, wearing a b coat and casual attire, with warm brown eyes and slightly tossled brown hair.
“Hello there Elliot my name is Dr. Waltz welcome to the Xenos ward, normally you would be given a thorough check up in the ER to make sure everything was alright before sending you up here but being as you were walking on your own two feet they sent you to see me.”
Eli bristled slightly at the mention of his name. “um… doctor do you mind calling me Eli instead.”
“Of course Eli, we always adhere to preferred names, let me just make a note on your file and you won’t have to deal with that again. Now you’re here because you had your gene manifestation?”
“I don’t know, I hope not, but that is what I was told before I was carried out to the ambunce. I told amy that I was feeling fine but Amy wouldn’t listen to me, she just picked me up and carried me out to the ambunce.Thanks for that Amy but I could have just walked you know.”
Amy was leaned against the wall where Eli sat as she looked down at him. “What and let you try to get out of this, if I had put you down you would have either tried to barricade yourself in your room and pretend everything was fine or try to run off. Am I wrong?”
Eli could only look a way as he mumbled in response. “I would have gone eventually.”
“Yeah I’m sure you would have.”
The doctor finished typing on his computer and turned back around to face Eli. “Alright Eli, tell me what happened as well as any odd events that happened recently leading up to this morning.”
It took about 15 minutes for both Eli and Amy to give their sides of the story as they performed the standard procedures for a doctor’s check up, as they measured Eli’s weight, heart rate, and height. The doctor left and returned a few minutes ter with a manil folder and was wearing a frown as he sat down heavily in the chair in front of Eli.
“Alright Eli I pulled your file from the universal database and it says here that you haven’t gone to a doctors appointment since you were 9.”
Around 40 years ago, the government took over the healthcare system and made it a federal problem, creating the Unified Healthcare Database. This system allowed any hospital or practice in Canada to pull a patient’s medical records while also cutting out a lot of unnecessary bureaucracy. It proved instrumental in helping refugees during and after America went to war with itself, tearing the country apart. Afterwards, the US was a broken country. Most of it joined Canada as the government had fallen apart and was only helping themselves.
Funnelling as many funds and resources as they could into their own pockets. What was left of the US ended up being divided between two countries: the United States of America, which was made up of New York and the states surrounding the Great Lakes region, and the United Imperial States of America, which was everything east of Okhoma and Texas. Everything in between was destroyed and torn up during the war. Most of it was still unusable nd, even with powered individuals like druids and dryads helping out. Nowadays, it is a contested territory and minor skirmishes still occur occasionally. Everything to the west was absorbed into Canada and Mexico. Canada now reaches as far south as Wyoming, and Mexico extends as far north as Utah.
“Yeah, that sounds about right my father hated to visit the doctors office, said it was a waste of time for me to go, wouldn’t even take me to the hospital when I lost my eye during the school incident. He just picked me up from school that day, screamed at me all the way home for crying before getting some healer friend of his to make sure it didn’t get infected. He said if I acted more like a real man the event wouldn’t have happened despite me being the one who got injured.”
The doctor sat there in silence as he stared at Eli, a look of disbelief on his face. “Do you mind if I ask how the incident occured at school, it’s nowhere in your charter and if it was on file we could get you the support you need.”
Eli looked up at the doctor “There’s not much to tell, we had a mixed gym css and were pying football that day, for some reason the ball was handed off to me and I tried to run it down the field, I shouldn’t have done that as the second I had the ball I could feel his eyes on me. I ran down the field as fast as I could before he talked me at the knee’s, as I fell to the ground I could feel my knee give out with a pop, my leg has never been the same since.”
The doctor looked at Eli with concern. “Who is he in this scenario? And how did you lose your eye in this series of events?”
Eli looked at the doctor as his eyes seemed to gze over “My high school bully did it but I don’t hold it against him. My eye was damaged in the school incident.”
The doctor had a shocked look on his face at this point “Eli could you eborate further than that?”
Once again Eli’s eyes seemed to gze over as he repeated “My high school bully did it but I don’t hold it against him. My eye was damaged in the school incident.”
The doctor quickly smade notes on his computer, concern was written on his face before he looked back at Eli. “I’m so sorry that you had to go through that, to think not only did he put you in danger by not taking you to a hospital but he even had a healer see you and refused to have the eye remade, it’s not even that expensive of an undertaking, while access to a healer is still considered a private business the government has a program to help offset the cost of such treatments. As for your leg that is a retively inexpensive procedure that could have you walking normally within an hour.”
Eli could only stare at the doctor, he felt numb, as he slumped back into the chair. Tears streamed down his face. Amy quickly wrapped her arms around him again while he cried. “It’s okay Eli, you are going to be alright, he’s not here, he can’t hurt you anymore, not while you’re here. I will NOT let him.”
“I don’t know what to say, my father told me that we couldn’t afford to get my eye fixed so it had to be removed, I have had to live without vision in my left eye since I was 15, I didn’t even get a gss eye, I had to save up for over a year and buy it myself, my father insisted that I should wear an eyepatch instead, said that maybe it would make me more manly. As for my leg, I have had to use a cane since the incident but everytime I get one they would throw it out, my father cimed it was a show of weakness, my mother never said anything.”
Amy gently rocked Eli back and forth in her arms while looking at the doctor. “How much would it cost to get Eli a new eye anyway.”
The doctor looked over to Amy. “I mean I would hold off on that until we figure out what his power is but afterwards only two to three thousand and the government will subsidize upwards of 75 percent of the cost dependent on income.”
It took Amy a few moments to calm Eli down before Eli looked at the doctor. “So how do you test what my power is if it even was a gene manifestation?”
“Oh it was definitely a gene manifestation, the symptoms and description match with a lot of Xenos’s stories that are on record. As for how long, while the UHD has worked wonders for speeding up the process for getting the best care possible as fast as we can, there are still gene manifestations happening every day but it should still only take about a month at the test, we will do a simple blood test and karyotype to confirm if you’re Xenos gene did in fact manifest which is very likely. As for powers that one’s easy, if you don’t already know how to use them then they haven’t manifested fully yet. Powers come with the instinctive knowledge on how to use them, like how we instinctively breathe, for you it seems that your powers are currently tent but they should emerge over the next month or so. That should be all for now, we just need to schedule you an appointment to get your blood drawn, which will only take a moment, and then you will be free to go.”
“Alright, thank you doctor. Oh we will need a note as we are missing css right now.” Amy said as she held Eli in her amrs.
With a slight chuckle, the doctor began to take supplies out of his drawer. “Of course.”
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By the time Eli got home for the day after all the stress from this morning and school, he had only missed one css, thankfully. Eli just wanted to fall asleep. At least he only had the dickbag professor on Mondays and Tuesdays. After dropping his stuff off at the foot of his bed, Eli could not help but lie down and attempt to rex.
Eli had just dozed off when there was a light knock on his door. He could only roll over to face the door. “Come in.”
With that, the door slowly swung inwards, revealing Amy with a sad expression. “Hey Eli. Sorry to bother you.”
“Hey Amy, sorry, was just trying to rex ended up dozing off.”
“Don’t worry about it, I’m sorry about this morning.” Amy was looking down at floor, a stark contrast to her normally happy attitude
“What do you mean, what happened this morning wasn’t your fault.” Eli quickly climbed out of bed before he walked over to her. He was not sure if it was okay to touch Amy, so he refrained.
“It was though, i told you that it was more likely for your Xenos gene to manifest I knew it and stayed anyway, you almost died Eli and it’s all my fault.” At this point, tears flowed freely down Amy’s face as she stood in the doorway.
“Listen, Amy, you are the nicest person I’ve ever met. You have done more for me in the st two days than my father has done in years.”
“You know that’s not saying alot.” Amy had a slight smile on her face.
Eli reached for Amy’s hand before stopping short “Amy i have known you for two days and in those two days you have shown yourself to be an amazing and caring person, it’s not your fault that my Xenos gene manifested. It’s mine, I knew it was a risk staying but i didn’t want to force you to move out. That would’ve been just too rude, it was just dumb bad luck. As for the almost dying part, meh, I’m not too bothered by it, I’m alive aren’t I? Besides you were there and helped me out, you shouldn’t be apologizing to me, I should be on my knees thanking you right now, not once but twice in the st two days did i have terrible nightmares that you helped me with, so thank you Amy, you’re the best roommate i could’ve asked for.”
Amy had a big smile before turning around to leave. “Alright, get some sleep now, and no more nightmares you hear me.”
“I make no promises.”
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It was 2 a.m., according to the microwave in the kitchen. Eli sat at the table in the dark, as he drummed his fingers on the table over and over again. He’d been here since Amy had gone to bed over four hours ago, ‘only five more hours to go,’ Eli thought as he continued to drum on the table. He would have pyed on his phone, but the battery didn’t hold a charge too well, and if he used it too much, it wouldn’t st for the day tomorrow. Eli was lost in his thoughts when he heard a creaking noise. Turning around in his seat, Eli saw Amy standing in her pink pyjamas, which did little to hide things in her concubus form. Slowly, she lumbered into the bathroom without seeming to notice Eli. Eli went back to drumming his fingers in the dark.
