Chapter Text
Part Two (Cont’d)
Natasha wiped the sweat from her brow with the back of her hand as she took a step back from her patient.
It wasn’t an entirely sanitary procedure. But then, very little about the impromptu emergency surgery she had just performed had been.
The unconscious Nimbosian man lay on what passed for a surgical table in a side room of Arcadia Falls’s infirmary. The table was a tired metal construct which to her medical eye looked like it had arrived here from the last century. It was in keeping with the rest of the equipment she had been forced to improvise with during the procedure. Old school instruments and tools, dubious sanitation, and not a functioning tricorder to be found anywhere in the dilapidated building.
But despite everything, as she surveyed her patient through the ever-present heat of the room, she felt a sense of satisfaction that her Hippocratic Oath was safe for another day.
Using a combination of emergency field training techniques, vague memories of a series of lectures on historical medicine she had attended at the Academy, and a fair share of improvisation, she had managed to clean, cauterise and stitch up the ugly knife wound in the man’s stomach.
And, after arriving at the infirmary, she had also managed to find some assistance.
“Well I’ll be,” a voice next to her piped up, “I’ve never seen anything like that.”
Natasha turned and smiled at the source of the voice. “Yeah. He’ll need monitoring for any signs of infection, but I think our patient’s gonna make it.”
She had met Kitaxis as soon as she had unceremoniously barged into the infirmary carrying the injured man, and from what she’d been able to ascertain during their moments of conversation during the procedure, she comprised the entire medical staff of Arcadia Falls.
She was a stout woman, a species that Natasha wasn’t entirely familiar with. She had curiously feline features, not unlike a Caitian, but with bare skin instead of fur. She was also in possession of not one, but two cleavages, which even in her modest nurse’s outfit was proving more of a curiosity to Natasha than she’d probably have liked it to be.
But while there were plenty of physical differences between them, there was something far greater that they had in common. Something that all medical professionals had across the galaxy, regardless of the facilities they worked in, from human to Nimbosian to Romulan to Breen. A determination to help people.
It wasn’t a trait that was necessarily common across all life forms without a medical background. In fact, the gruff Nimbosian who had reluctantly helped Natasha carry the injured man to the infirmary had then disappeared almost immediately. Natasha had a sneaking suspicion he had simply walked back to the saloon across the street, as if the desperate race to save the other man’s life had just been a fleeting annoyance that had kept him from his next round at the bar.
But while he had made himself scarce, Kitaxis had stayed by Natasha’s side throughout the entire operation, fetching her tools and equipment as she had called for it. Or at least, the closest approximation to whatever she had asked for that was available inside the threadbare medical cabinets of this particular facility.
As Natasha moved over to the rudimentary sink and cleaning facilities located in the corner of the room to clean herself up as best she could, Kitaxis moved over to the injured man’s side and checked his vital signs.
“You know,” she nodded in response to Natasha’s comment, “I really think he is gonna be alright, isn’t he?”
“You sound surprised,” Natasha replied good-naturedly, as she thoroughly scrubbed the blood from her hands.
There was a pause. She looked over at the other woman, who wasn’t smiling. Instead, she was looking down at their patient with sad regret. “Lotta folks come into the infirmary like this,” she lamented, “Usually all I can do is just try to make them as comfortable as possible.”
Natasha finished scrubbing her hands and dried them on a nearby towel, feeling the gnawing sense of guilt that persisted inside her approaching critical levels. “What about the other staff? Doctors? Surgeons?”
“Hasn’t been a doctor in Arcadia Falls in all the time I’ve been here,” she explained, “When me and my husband came to town, the infirmary had been closed for months. I’ve done what I can to get the place up and running, but I’m not a doctor.”
“What about your husband?”
At this, Kitaxis allowed herself a slight smile. “Bri’tor runs the saloon across the street. Truth is, that’s where too many of my patients come from.”
Natasha finished drying her hands and stepped back over to the table as Kitaxis continued with a slightly more lamenting tone.
“I know a few things about medicine, but not enough. Not much I can do for gunshots, or mining accidents, or wounds like that. Maybe if Bri’tor’s business brought in more money, we could afford more equipment, or to bring in a doctor from Paradise City…”
The ball of guilt in Natasha’s stomach started to ache.
“But,” Kitaxis concluded with a shrug as she started to clear away the tools from next to the operating table, “I guess towns like this don’t get doctors.”
Natasha heard herself sigh audibly. In her mind, the reason that they had travelled to Arcadia Falls had now been almost completely forgotten. All that remained was a palpable need to help.
She stepped up to the other woman and smiled. “Well,” she offered, “You’ve got one now. Any more patients around here?”
Kitaxis looked up at the soft features of the human woman with a look of surprise. Like Natasha’s comment was the last thing she had been expecting.
Kindness, after all, was in short supply in Arcadia Falls.
* * * * *
“Really, you’re too kind.”
Jirel watched as the glass on the table in front of him was topped up again from the dirty brown bottle in Bri’tor’s shaking hand.
He wasn’t entirely sure what he had been expecting when Toxis had so dramatically walked into the bar. A gunfight, a bar brawl, or even a good old fashioned duel out in the street. Instead, the grizzled man had apparently decided to add them to his bar tab.
Jirel and Klath sat on one side of one of the Bar of Plenty’s larger wooden tables, with Toxis on the other, flanked by his goons who had been introduced as D’Ronn and Sa’Loq. Jirel was slightly embarrassed to admit that he couldn’t remember which was which. Partly because the two bald Nimbosian goons looked very similar. But also partly because Jirel’s head was starting to feel a little foggy from the shots of burning Nimbosian liquor that they had already shared.
And they kept on coming. Courtesy of the meanest outlaw in Prosperity County.
“Nonsense,” Toxis drawled with a grin, accepting his own refill from Bri’tor, “Kindness is nothing to do with it. If me and my boys can’t make a couple of off-worlders feel welcome in our humble town, then what the hell is this planet coming to, right, bartender?”
Toxis went to pat Bri’tor on the shoulder, only for the shorter Nimbosian to duck out of the way instinctively with a flinch, eliciting a chuckle from Toxis.
“Don’t mind him,” he continued, “He’s been on edge ever since me and my boys had to teach his brother a little lesson. Ain’t that right?”
Bri’tor gently set the bottle down on the table and took a step back, summoning up as much defiance as he could despite the fear he felt inside. “Can’t teach lessons to a dead man, Toxis.”
Toxis’s expression hardened slightly for a moment, before his face creased back into a smile and he let out another cruel chuckle, backed up by equally mocking noises from D’Ronn and Sa’Loq.
“Well now,” Toxis said through the chuckling, “I guess that’s true, isn’t it.”
He and his comrades laughed a bit louder as they looked back over at Klath and Jirel. Neither of them felt like joining in.
“I…don’t get it,” Jirel managed.
To Jirel’s side, Klath remained silent, the Klingon’s focus entirely on assessing the men in front of him from a battle perspective.
Klath’s own liquor glass remained untouched. He knew that this wasn’t the sort of situation where he should be impairing his senses in any way. He also knew he would already be at a disadvantage in any fight. These men were used to Nimbosian weapons. He wasn’t.
The chuckling continued for a moment, even as Bri’tor took the chance to quickly retreat back to the bar area, before Toxis’s weathered features hardened into a more adversarial glare. “I can see you’re not in the mood for pleasantries, strangers. Your choice.”
Jirel shifted awkwardly in his seat, suddenly feeling the two rows of spots down his face starting to itch, as they tended to do whenever he felt nervous. For all the the free liquor and the apparent friendliness so far, he didn’t need to have Klath’s sense of danger to detect the menacing undercurrent in just about every one of Toxis’s comments.
“Still,” Toxis continued, idly chewing his tobacco as he spoke, “I gotta say, off-worlder. It’s a pretty brave man that comes riding into Arcadia Falls to see me.”
He paused for a moment to send a thick chunk of tobacco arcing down onto the floor, landing inches away from Jirel’s boot where it poked out from the side of the table.
“Pretty brave, or pretty stupid. Which is it?”
“I’ve been called both,” Jirel offered with as casual a shrug as he could muster, “But we’re not here to fight. Just to talk.”
Toxis chewed thoughtfully for a few moments as he stared across at the Trill.
Jirel felt a bead of sweat passing down his back and licked his lips. He considered scratching his increasingly itchy spots, but reasoned that it was probably best not to make any sudden movements for the moment.
In his peripheral vision, he saw Klath tense up a little more as the silence continued. And although he couldn’t tell for sure, the Trill felt as if the entire bar had fallen silent again, with everyone in there focused on Toxis as he chewed over both his tobacco and Jirel’s comment.
Eventually, the outlaw leaned forwards and nodded. “Ok then,” he motioned, “So talk.”
Jirel licked his lips again, idly wondering exactly when this little adventure stopped feeling quite so much like fun.
“Um, well,” he began, keeping his tone as friendly as possible, “We’re here to smooth things over, y’know? I understand that you and our friend have had a little difference of opinion over his ranch, but I think we can sort this all out.”
Toxis’s face betrayed a flicker of something that Jirel couldn’t quite place. “My ranch, you mean?” he offered by means of a correction, “My ranch that your little hobgoblin friend is squatting in.”
“Come on now,” Jirel replied a little more boldly, feeling as though he was making progress, “We’re all adults here, Toxis. And we know that Zesh won that place fair and square.”
Toxis’s face creased into a tight, thin smile. A second chunk of dirty tobacco joined the first on the ground.
“Fair and square doesn’t mean much in Prosperity County, off-worlder. Guess it’s the way we’re all brought up. When there’s as little to fight over as there is down here, folks’ll fight over what there is stronger than anywhere else in the galaxy.”
For reasons that Jirel didn’t want to dwell on, part of him thought about Natasha, and her guilt trips from earlier.
“So,” Toxis continued, “While I can respect the stones on you folks for coming all this way to help out your little friend, I’m afraid that I can’t respect much more than that.”
“We are prepared to resist you,” Klath grunted, still struggling with the concept of subtlety.
Toxis sized the Klingon up with the look of a man who definitely didn’t mind a fight. “I don’t doubt it,” he replied, “But I’m gonna get my ranch.”
“Hey,” Jirel persisted, “I’m sure we can all—”
He was interrupted by a curious chirping noise from a tiny old-fashioned communicator located on Sa’Loq’s belt. Or possibly on D’Ronn’s belt, Jirel still wasn’t clear.
Without even looking over to D’Ronn (or Sa’Loq), Toxis leaned back in his seat with a sudden look of contentment on his face. As if he already knew what the message was going to be. Like he’d been waiting for it. All this time.
Despite the fact that he was still suffering in the intense Nimbosian afternoon heat, seemingly being exacerbated by the fiery alcohol he’d been imbibing, Jirel felt a chill pass down his spine. His spots itched with a burning intensity.
“Or,” Toxis said darkly, “Maybe I’ve already got it.”