Part 06 – The Problems of Socialized Medicine

Day 2

I had passed through the light, entering what I thought to be my resting place. Heaven. Valhalla. Elysium. For however long mankind has thought of spirituality and the divine, there had been a place like this in their memory. I smiled to myself, opening my eyes to see what the halls of my ancestors looked like…

…Rust, grime, and annoying mint green. The tiling was in poor taste, as were the terrible green walls. My head rolled to one side, before I realized I was lying in a bed again! Wincing in preparation for another lengthy tutorial on how to get out of bed, I found little to bother me, as I sat up. I was alive, and this was the 4th and Jita hospital.

I was back on Jita Avenue.

**** it to hell. I could hear the yelling outside, the shouting of marketers, and the occasional suicide bomber blasting himself to hell, while a compatriot looted the remains of victims. My mind wandered a little, and I tried to hop off the bed.

Big mistake.

I fell face first, and growled out in pain. I tried to get up again, before falling face first embarrassingly at the feet of a nurse. “Help!” I cried out in panic. “I seem to have forgotten how to… walk.” She laughed a little. “That’s what you get for only having the ‘Alpha’ health plan.” She murmured, before walking off.

Before I could let out any quizzical query, shocked scream or pained profanities, she fled the scene, leaving me to help myself upon the floor of the hospital room. There seemed to be only one thing to do to get myself out of this situation.

I sat there. And thought very, very hard about how to walk. Somewhere in my mind, I was thankful I wasn’t particularly charismatic, and instead had superb eyesight and memory. I figured it’d take no later than 47 minutes, 20 seconds to remember how to walk in a basic fashion, with additional expenditures of time thereafter to increase my walking speed ten percent. I was set.

47 minutes and 21 seconds later, I got up and stretched. It was good to be mobile once more. Of course, I then took the time to begin thinking very, very hard on another topic I wanted to get good at in the near future.

With bravado and a bold step, I walked out of my personal bed stall only to find dozens more like it, liked up in a row! What kind of horror show was this? Did these many people suffer near-death, only to be brought here and hospitalized in such a miserable state? I walked through the ranks, moving for the doorway.

To my left and right, people were in worse condition than me. Some who had forgotten nearly everything, and still charged $1024 for the ‘privilege’ of being left to rot. By the door, I stopped before the stall of a young woman, crying. My heart ached.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. “You were nearly killed too?” I tried to ask, easing in to see if I could calm her down. She still shook terribly and covered her extremely small chest. She looked to me with tear-filled eyes. She just managed a barely manageable whisper of a word.

“...Implants...”

That’s when I realized the fillings in my teeth were missing too.

I apologized sheepishly, and fled this awful place, making sure to grab an application for ‘Medical Plan Epsilon’, a program that would ensure I did not get amnesia the next time this happened. I fled then, with my life was saved for now… but for how much longer would that last? I would find out soon enough…

(To be continued…)