With the Best Intentions

This is my entry into Finish the Story Contest held within the @bananafish realms. There is still time to join in and write your own ending.

I'm so, so, so happy this has continued after several week of hiatus, as it is one of the things I look forward to and one of the things that keeps me coming back to steemit week after week.

"A double toast! At your brilliant timing, for the second damn time."

The nurse spoke turning his gaze to the parking lot, beyond the window whose bars, swallowed by rust, had lost all their decorative hypocrisy. His cheerful lashing tone clashed with the fixture of his gaze elsewhere.

The lump of words channelled along the patient's Eustachian tubes like a sticky egg liqueur, while the neodymium lamp commented on the phrase with a quick moth’s flicker.

Through the steel bar on the side of the bed, her bleary, half-closed eyes returned to her the image of a lanky shape exiting the bedroom.

She wondered why she had only been noticed now, only now despite the endless carousel of drowsiness in which she had fallen for eons. A never-ending display of Chinese lamps, swarming with the nightmares of a painting by Bosch.

The impetus of thirst coagulated in a guttural moan, insufficient to make the sarcastic human crane turn back towards her.

The sound she emitted reminded her of a documentary with a koala, forced to walk on hot coals during a forest fire. It was something she had seen with Lucian that last night spent together before she left in secret heading to the clinic.

I had to fix it for us, Lucian. For once only, maybe the right one. And instead, look where I fucking got myself.

A sudden laugh tried to make its way. The spasms brought to her mind the horrible awareness of those tubes that, like worms, were violating her body. She had not noticed but two figures were now observing her from the edge of the bed.

"Rise and shine, Ms. White. You had a car accident just a mile away from the clinic. Fortunately, on his way back home after the shift, Valery noticed the wheels of your vehicle in the ditch along the avenue. We had to operate you urgently, a lung had collapsed and we had to contain internal haemorrhage in the abdominal cavity. It was not easy but someone up there decided that your day had not yet arrived. "

As he spoke, the doctor's eyes stared at her in dullness and, at the same time, darting with curiosity.

She would have said that some of her saviour’s facial muscles - not all the necessary ones - were struggling to reproduce a slow smile. The attendant loomed from behind the doctor's silhouette, tilting his head silently to one side.

For God’s sake, tear all this stuff away and just give me a damn glass of water. Then I'll pay you what I owe you and leave.

She would have shouted at them, but the only breath filtering from her broken mouth didn't even sound like a koala moan anymore.

"Yes, I understand the curiosity, Ms. White." The doctor's eyes now reminded her of those of an abyssal fish.

"You have crossed the border and turned to us to participate in the pharmacological trials and, may I add, further to helping medical progress, you have also come because we pay fairly well."

A wet and repeated slap against the floor, in a point her eyes couldn’t reach, seemed to smear those statements along the washed-out walls. Through scarcely oiled winches, the human crane behind the doctor leaned forward in her direction.

"Well, Ms. White, notwithstanding the circumstance, you will be pleased to know that we have decided to still include you in the program. You will earn your fair compensation, after all."

Perhaps because of the narcotics, the doctor's face kept changing as if his features were playing hide and seek in the blind corners of her perception. A sound came from a low point close to the bed, similar to a badly restrained gurgle, while the doctor quietly turned away.

"You will have your money, despite your unfortunate condition or, perhaps, thanks to it," he said in a last laconic murmur.

"We are in the last phase of this pharmacological trial, doctor," said the nurse.

"Excellent. Continue. Have the report to me on my desk by tomorrow morning. I've got a date to improve my golf swing if you know what I mean," the doctor said, nudging the nurse in the chest with his elbow.

Valery let out a jackal's chuckle. I wish you were a broke as fuck like me, he thought. "It will be done."

"I'm counting on you. If we don't get further funding, we'll be with the old folks flipping burgers in MacDonalds for the rest of our lives."

The beat of a tapping spoon was in concert with the clock's ticking. Behrooz, or Buzz Kill as he had come to be known, used to be a talented drummer back in his day; now the curse of time gnawed at him like rust confiscating the aging bars.

"The immunomodulator seems to be causing adverse side effects, Nurse Valery," said a researcher speaking more to himself rather than to the nurse.

The rhythmic beat of a spoon held the nurse's attention as if a fat kid had a chocolate bar being waved in front of him while standing outside the owner's shop. He peered back out the window, the cage he had come to know as home, and saw the milky way reflecting down.

I wish upon a star... his thoughts left him.

The researchers continued to scribble down what they witnessed happening around the room in their notebooks. Time seemed to go by at the pace of a snail climbing Mount Everest in the dead of winter. One researcher even set down her pen and pad to check her phone, probably some boy she was interested in by the wry smile that formed across her lips.

The nurse snapped back to the room and attempted to feed the patient. Her idiosyncrasy lip-smacking, developed from the days of her childhood, tested the nerves of the nurse. "Stop doing that and open wide, Ms. White."

Protesting, the patient said through a clinched jaw, "You told me Lucian would be here to visit today."

The drugs she was on produced effects similar to LSD. Ms. White envisioned cacti springing up from the pads of paper the researches held in their hands.

The researches only took note of the things that their employers wanted to hear like, this drug helps constipation, got rid of red bumps, eradicated breathing issues, etc.

The other, more unpleasant, effects, vomiting, swelling over the dependent parts of the body, loss of appetite, altered kidney functions that lead to comas, etc., were to be left out of the reports - not good for business if everyone knows about your dirty laundry.

Valery was nearing the end of his rope. Sanity threatened to cut the last thread. Chop-chop.

I've got to hold on. They're depending on me.

The nurse let his eyes trek around the desolate filled room.

Bon Le Sueur picked at the food stuck in her teeth with a hairbrush.

Nonggorr, who shaved her head with a butter knife, sat in a chair rocking back and forth, the colorless tone of the chair leaped out and criticized the nurse's eyes.

Lars stroked the peeling wall with his veiny blue, wrinkly old hand, proclaiming that a poltergeist was coming for him.

The nurse wanted that to be true.

"We've got all that we need," said a female researcher. "Everything checks out and it looks like we'll be able to get this drug approved."

It was not her decision to make, but, after having done it for so long, Valery knew the procedure well enough to know that she was probably correct.

The nurse did the rest of the paperwork and left the report on the doctor's desk for him to sign off on the results of the trials.

Weeks later, approved by the FDA, the drug hit the shelves.

The nurse, waiting for Patty to awake after having crashed in the same ditch they always do, stood gazing out the rusty barred window toward the parking lot, a reminder to him that in order to get what one wants, it takes sacrifices - even if they screw with one's moral compass. After all, he had daughters to house, clothe, and feed.

This is a touching subject for me. I grew up with a mother on all sorts of crap that is supposedly meant to cure people. Instead, most of it is shit meant to keep you sick but healthy enough to keep you coming back for more. Hey, big pharma needs to rape, pillage, and plunder or they wouldn't be in the business of making money, after all.

I enjoyed this prompt though. I feel like I was able to write the way I had intended it to come out this time around. Thanks for stopping by.

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