mericlecure (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mericlecure) wrote2011-10-04 04:56 pm
mericlecure) wrote2011-10-04 04:56 pm
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(no subject)
When thinking about my coerced surgeon character in the works for ![[insanejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/ij-userinfo.gif)
corsair's group psl (invitation is open to anyone reading this!), I remembered that I had written a doctor character before! Who, coincidentally enough, also seemed to be a reluctant in his current role as healer.
Background: In the game, the characters basically had 'dreams' that glimpsed into what was going on in the outside world (their current world was, unbeknownst to them, a shared dream). The dreams didn't always deal with the characters' real-world selves, either -- they also focused on conflicts going on throughout the world completely separative of the real-world counterparts' lives.
Basically, this was a great opportunity to write one-shot characters and viewpoints, and to play with different styles of writing in-game. Both dreams below have the same focus -- a doctor surrounded by the sick in a third-world country amid an epidemic -- but the first is from his point of view and the second is the point of view of a distant, omniscient observer.
better places to be
Why didn’t they just die?
He wasn’t supposed to be here, doing this. He wasn’t even trained to do this. Yes, he was a doctor. Yes, he worked in a hospital. But he didn’t actually work with the sick. Not this kind of sick. He didn’t work with the bleeding and leakage and the hacking coughs that he could almost feel covering him and -- oh god the puss. This wasn’t his kind of shit. He wasn’t this kind of doctor. And he sure as hell wasn’ a specialist. There had been no desire to continue on so far. He had the job, it paid well, he had weekends, and he had the car he had always wanted; and anything serious was handed off and to a specialist.
But right now there weren’t any kind of specialists. There weren’t any other doctors. Not here, not now. Just him. Being here, doing something he was not trained to do and, honestly?, he didn’t even remember volunteering for it. Actually, he was pretty damn certain he hadn’t. He had been trying to get out. Leave this place, head back home. Leave this diseased petri dish for someone else because it wasn’t like there was something he could even do. But then somebody found him, and had offered him up, and there had been pleading and some general consensus that never seemed to consider that he would really much rather be home. It wasn’t his problem; it shouldn’t have to be his problem. He couldn’t do anything, Nobody could. And he had a home and a house and his car and a place that wasn’t overrun with disease and needy people too stupid to realize when things were useless.
He walked around, stepping over bodies that hacked and sputtered and could just feel somebody’s saliva land on his shoe. There was no cure, the ‘medicine’ did jack shit, and they were all dying. But none of them were dead, and he was still here, administering.
Why didn’t they just die already.
crackling
An upbeat sort of jazz crackled through a radio, fighting through the sputtering and hacking coming from the floor. There weren't any beds. Just bodies. And blankets enough to cover up the most grotesque -- any attempt to provide warmth was agreed a futile one. Room was scarce, with all sick and little dying, that those seeming closest to death -- enough to rationalize the conscience of their undertakers -- were taken out back and thrown onto pyres, sounds of pained gasps and cries agreed upon to be the crackling of wood. Space was made, and then taken up, and space was made again. The procession of it now gone from ghastly to routine. A doctor, young and embittered, tip-toed amongst them, barely looking at the bodies -- for bodies they were to his mind, not more -- only touching enough to stick needles into arms before wiping them from his hands onto a makeshift coat and moving on. Avoiding gazes, avoiding contact, avoiding sounds. There was a debate, one finally settled when somebody's hands opened a window. Burned flesh now wafted in, carried from the pyres, competing with the stench of fluids and disease, overtaking it.
And, from somewhere in the room, the jazz crackled louder.
corsair's group psl (invitation is open to anyone reading this!), I remembered that I had written a doctor character before! Who, coincidentally enough, also seemed to be a reluctant in his current role as healer.Background: In the game, the characters basically had 'dreams' that glimpsed into what was going on in the outside world (their current world was, unbeknownst to them, a shared dream). The dreams didn't always deal with the characters' real-world selves, either -- they also focused on conflicts going on throughout the world completely separative of the real-world counterparts' lives.
Basically, this was a great opportunity to write one-shot characters and viewpoints, and to play with different styles of writing in-game. Both dreams below have the same focus -- a doctor surrounded by the sick in a third-world country amid an epidemic -- but the first is from his point of view and the second is the point of view of a distant, omniscient observer.
better places to be
Why didn’t they just die?
He wasn’t supposed to be here, doing this. He wasn’t even trained to do this. Yes, he was a doctor. Yes, he worked in a hospital. But he didn’t actually work with the sick. Not this kind of sick. He didn’t work with the bleeding and leakage and the hacking coughs that he could almost feel covering him and -- oh god the puss. This wasn’t his kind of shit. He wasn’t this kind of doctor. And he sure as hell wasn’ a specialist. There had been no desire to continue on so far. He had the job, it paid well, he had weekends, and he had the car he had always wanted; and anything serious was handed off and to a specialist.
But right now there weren’t any kind of specialists. There weren’t any other doctors. Not here, not now. Just him. Being here, doing something he was not trained to do and, honestly?, he didn’t even remember volunteering for it. Actually, he was pretty damn certain he hadn’t. He had been trying to get out. Leave this place, head back home. Leave this diseased petri dish for someone else because it wasn’t like there was something he could even do. But then somebody found him, and had offered him up, and there had been pleading and some general consensus that never seemed to consider that he would really much rather be home. It wasn’t his problem; it shouldn’t have to be his problem. He couldn’t do anything, Nobody could. And he had a home and a house and his car and a place that wasn’t overrun with disease and needy people too stupid to realize when things were useless.
He walked around, stepping over bodies that hacked and sputtered and could just feel somebody’s saliva land on his shoe. There was no cure, the ‘medicine’ did jack shit, and they were all dying. But none of them were dead, and he was still here, administering.
Why didn’t they just die already.
crackling
An upbeat sort of jazz crackled through a radio, fighting through the sputtering and hacking coming from the floor. There weren't any beds. Just bodies. And blankets enough to cover up the most grotesque -- any attempt to provide warmth was agreed a futile one. Room was scarce, with all sick and little dying, that those seeming closest to death -- enough to rationalize the conscience of their undertakers -- were taken out back and thrown onto pyres, sounds of pained gasps and cries agreed upon to be the crackling of wood. Space was made, and then taken up, and space was made again. The procession of it now gone from ghastly to routine. A doctor, young and embittered, tip-toed amongst them, barely looking at the bodies -- for bodies they were to his mind, not more -- only touching enough to stick needles into arms before wiping them from his hands onto a makeshift coat and moving on. Avoiding gazes, avoiding contact, avoiding sounds. There was a debate, one finally settled when somebody's hands opened a window. Burned flesh now wafted in, carried from the pyres, competing with the stench of fluids and disease, overtaking it.
And, from somewhere in the room, the jazz crackled louder.
no subject
b) The crackling jazz imagery is lovely, lovely, horribly lovely.