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Whumptober Day 4: “Don’t be scared, I’ve done this before.” (Murderbot)
This particular prompt was just too Murderbot not to write.
No. 4: “Don’t be scared, I’ve done this before.”
Non-Human Whumper | Iron Rod | Loss of Powers
Murderbot & Gurathin h/c, gen, 1500 wds (TV-verse or books, set after Fugitive Telemetry, probably)
Also posted on AO3 as Educational
"Don’t be scared, I’ve done this before."
"And what serial is that from?" Gurathin asked, gritting the words out between clenched teeth. "Because I'm going to guess you haven't set a lot of broken legs."
It was from MedCenter Argala (Dr. Bora during the head transplant operation, season 6 episode 17), but actually, on the last part, he was wrong. "I've done it twice," I said.
I had wrapped him in my jacket and laid him on the river bank. I guess having human clothing on hand to wrap up an injured client was one of the very few benefits to wearing that instead of armor, but armor still won on nearly every other level, including the fact that if I'd had its benefits instead of wearing stupid useless water-absorbing human clothes, I might have managed to prevent this particular human from falling into the river in the first place, or at least pulled him out before we were both washed downstream into this stupid canyon.
I had my drones circling above us as high as their range allowed, trying to get a signal out of the canyon back to base camp through fog and intermittent, drizzling rain. In the meantime, I had to rely on my shitty first aid module and my dubiously accurate medical shows.
"You've done it twice? You personally, not some fictional doctor you're currently taking medical advice from?" Gurathin asked, frowning up at me. "When?"
I would have felt more justified in being offended if I wasn't currently running an algorithm in 30% of my processing space to find and analyze the commonalities of every broken-human-bone scene in all the MedCenter Argala episodes I had in storage.
"When I had other clients," I said. For once, I didn't mind (much) that he wouldn't stop asking me annoying questions. It meant that he was alert and not displaying any of the dangerous shock markers that my medical module kept sending me warnings about. He looked absolutely terrible; his hair was plastered to his forehead with water and sweat, and his skin color and temperature were both in a range that my medical module flagged as potentially dangerous. The chilly rain probably wasn't helping.
"Did they survive? Your clients with broken legs," he added, like I wouldn't be able to figure out what he was talking about.
"They were both still alive when I gave them to MedSystem." I was examining his leg. Definitely broken, but it wasn't pressing through the skin, so that was already better than one out of two of my previous attempts to do the thing I was going to have to do in a minute.
"Oh," Gurathin said. Something about his voice made me look up, into the vicinity of his face. "I guess I forgot -- you didn't, you know. Get to follow up. Afterwards."
"No," I said. "That wasn't how it worked." I was busy in the meantime, tearing strips off the bottom edge of my loose pants to pad and tie together the driftwood scraps I would be using to hold his leg straight.
(This part was from a stranded-on-an-alien-planet episode of Strife in the Galaxy. The last two times, I'd had a) a fairly well-stocked medkit with a splint included, and b) absolutely nothing except rocks and mining tailings. I had wondered whether it would actually work, given the source; but aside from my skepticism that human grip strength and accuracy could tear even printer fabric that neatly and evenly, it actually seemed pretty effective. Score another one for human clothing's versatility, I guess. Maybe that was why they liked all this loose fabric; humans were always needing to tie things up. Though armor would still have been better.)
"Do you ever wonder what happened to them? Your other clients?"
I would have thought he was getting delirious (a bad sign, according to both my first aid module and MedCenter Argala), but he sounded genuinely interested.
"Sometimes," I said. I didn't like thinking about it. "Stay still, this is going to hurt." In MedCenter Argala, they always warn people about that kind of thing, but I clumsily added, "Uh, sorry."
Then I grasped his leg and followed the instructions in my first aid module. He screamed -- did I mention that I really hate the sound of humans screaming? -- and his head lolled back against the hood of my jacket, not quite unconscious but definitely not doing great. I tied his leg up as fast as I could, and then I pulled him close to me. I opened the jacket I'd wrapped around him and raised my surface temperature on my torso to try to warm him up and fend off shock.
He was still conscious, panting rapidly as he lay rigidly against me. I realized he was trying to curl away, aware that this was a little too much touching for me, and I firmly pulled him against me again. First aid situations were different from normal touching; if I had to deal with that, he could too. He huffed out something like a half-laugh, gave up trying to escape, and slumped against my chest.
My drones still hadn't contacted the base camp. Stupid planetary geography. Straight lines in space were so refreshingly lacking in pointless, Murderbot-annoying terrain features like canyons and mountains, not to mention all this inconvenient and uncomfortable weather.
It occurred to me that I should probably say something. Injured humans benefited from being talked to; my first aid module said nothing about this (inaccurate piece of shit that it was) but all the medical shows and even the non-medical shows were very clear about that part, and I figured that anything the medical shows generally agreed on was probably worth trying.
"It was MedCenter Argala," I said. "The show I was quoting from."
Gurathin stirred and gave a slightly choked laugh. "I knew it."
"But it was still true," I pointed out.
"Mmm. Guess so."
His voice sounded sleepy, and I didn't like the fact that he wasn't arguing with me anymore. He was shivering. I adjusted my position so that I had his head at a better (lower) angle for continued blood flow to the brain and tried to get more of my body in contact with his and shelter him from the rain a little. (Not enjoyable, but meaningful and necessary.) I raised my surface temperature some more.
"You should watch the show," I said. "Some of the cases are based on real life. And you like documentaries."
This finally got him to respond in a properly argumentative way, weak but annoyed. "MedCenter Argala is not a documentary."
"How do you know? You haven't seen it."
"I saw a couple episodes at Ratthi's one time. It's not even slightly realistic."
"I don't like realistic medical shows," I said. "People die a lot in them."
I really didn't like shows where characters died. I'd make exceptions for plot-necessary character deaths, such as in Sanctuary Moon. But I didn't like gratuitous character deaths. I didn't get as upset about it as ART, who wouldn't even watch shows in which bad things happened to fictional ships and their crews. But it stressed me out when I didn't know if fictional humans were going to be successfully rescued or not. The shows I liked best were the ones where characters got rescued and stayed rescued.
Gurathin didn't say anything in reply. I didn't like that, either. I raised my surface temperature a bit more, to the edge of the parameters that my medical module indicated a human would find tolerable.
"And I do follow up, now that I can," I added.
I wasn't sure if he was still listening, but his chest lurched in another of those huffed, silent half-laughs. "Is that a threat or a promise?"
And just then one of my drones returned a signal: we were in contact with base camp. I had a series of data packets ready to go if we did get access, and the drone sent them immediately: location, medical status, conditions affecting an emergency pickup, possible landing sites and adverse weather warnings. My performance reliability jumped by 5.2 percentage points immediately.
"I just got a signal back to base," I said. "They're coming." This was technically inaccurate; I didn't have the confirmation they were coming. Yet. But I also knew it. The rest of my humans would be on the way as soon as they got the message. They were reliable that way.
He made a kind of "mmm" sound, which was better than nothing. I moved the jacket hood to shield his face from the rain.
Least favorite client or otherwise, I wouldn't have the option of not knowing what happened to Gurathin after he vanished into MedSystem this time; my other humans would see to that no matter what. Broken bones took forever to heal, even with MedSys attention. I wondered if Gurathin would like to watch more MedCenter Argala episodes, and whether he could maybe manage not to be a complete dick about it if he did. He would probably have a lot of time in bed while he recovered. Lots of time for watching an educational serial.
No. 4: “Don’t be scared, I’ve done this before.”
Non-Human Whumper | Iron Rod | Loss of Powers
Murderbot & Gurathin h/c, gen, 1500 wds (TV-verse or books, set after Fugitive Telemetry, probably)
Also posted on AO3 as Educational
"Don’t be scared, I’ve done this before."
"And what serial is that from?" Gurathin asked, gritting the words out between clenched teeth. "Because I'm going to guess you haven't set a lot of broken legs."
It was from MedCenter Argala (Dr. Bora during the head transplant operation, season 6 episode 17), but actually, on the last part, he was wrong. "I've done it twice," I said.
I had wrapped him in my jacket and laid him on the river bank. I guess having human clothing on hand to wrap up an injured client was one of the very few benefits to wearing that instead of armor, but armor still won on nearly every other level, including the fact that if I'd had its benefits instead of wearing stupid useless water-absorbing human clothes, I might have managed to prevent this particular human from falling into the river in the first place, or at least pulled him out before we were both washed downstream into this stupid canyon.
I had my drones circling above us as high as their range allowed, trying to get a signal out of the canyon back to base camp through fog and intermittent, drizzling rain. In the meantime, I had to rely on my shitty first aid module and my dubiously accurate medical shows.
"You've done it twice? You personally, not some fictional doctor you're currently taking medical advice from?" Gurathin asked, frowning up at me. "When?"
I would have felt more justified in being offended if I wasn't currently running an algorithm in 30% of my processing space to find and analyze the commonalities of every broken-human-bone scene in all the MedCenter Argala episodes I had in storage.
"When I had other clients," I said. For once, I didn't mind (much) that he wouldn't stop asking me annoying questions. It meant that he was alert and not displaying any of the dangerous shock markers that my medical module kept sending me warnings about. He looked absolutely terrible; his hair was plastered to his forehead with water and sweat, and his skin color and temperature were both in a range that my medical module flagged as potentially dangerous. The chilly rain probably wasn't helping.
"Did they survive? Your clients with broken legs," he added, like I wouldn't be able to figure out what he was talking about.
"They were both still alive when I gave them to MedSystem." I was examining his leg. Definitely broken, but it wasn't pressing through the skin, so that was already better than one out of two of my previous attempts to do the thing I was going to have to do in a minute.
"Oh," Gurathin said. Something about his voice made me look up, into the vicinity of his face. "I guess I forgot -- you didn't, you know. Get to follow up. Afterwards."
"No," I said. "That wasn't how it worked." I was busy in the meantime, tearing strips off the bottom edge of my loose pants to pad and tie together the driftwood scraps I would be using to hold his leg straight.
(This part was from a stranded-on-an-alien-planet episode of Strife in the Galaxy. The last two times, I'd had a) a fairly well-stocked medkit with a splint included, and b) absolutely nothing except rocks and mining tailings. I had wondered whether it would actually work, given the source; but aside from my skepticism that human grip strength and accuracy could tear even printer fabric that neatly and evenly, it actually seemed pretty effective. Score another one for human clothing's versatility, I guess. Maybe that was why they liked all this loose fabric; humans were always needing to tie things up. Though armor would still have been better.)
"Do you ever wonder what happened to them? Your other clients?"
I would have thought he was getting delirious (a bad sign, according to both my first aid module and MedCenter Argala), but he sounded genuinely interested.
"Sometimes," I said. I didn't like thinking about it. "Stay still, this is going to hurt." In MedCenter Argala, they always warn people about that kind of thing, but I clumsily added, "Uh, sorry."
Then I grasped his leg and followed the instructions in my first aid module. He screamed -- did I mention that I really hate the sound of humans screaming? -- and his head lolled back against the hood of my jacket, not quite unconscious but definitely not doing great. I tied his leg up as fast as I could, and then I pulled him close to me. I opened the jacket I'd wrapped around him and raised my surface temperature on my torso to try to warm him up and fend off shock.
He was still conscious, panting rapidly as he lay rigidly against me. I realized he was trying to curl away, aware that this was a little too much touching for me, and I firmly pulled him against me again. First aid situations were different from normal touching; if I had to deal with that, he could too. He huffed out something like a half-laugh, gave up trying to escape, and slumped against my chest.
My drones still hadn't contacted the base camp. Stupid planetary geography. Straight lines in space were so refreshingly lacking in pointless, Murderbot-annoying terrain features like canyons and mountains, not to mention all this inconvenient and uncomfortable weather.
It occurred to me that I should probably say something. Injured humans benefited from being talked to; my first aid module said nothing about this (inaccurate piece of shit that it was) but all the medical shows and even the non-medical shows were very clear about that part, and I figured that anything the medical shows generally agreed on was probably worth trying.
"It was MedCenter Argala," I said. "The show I was quoting from."
Gurathin stirred and gave a slightly choked laugh. "I knew it."
"But it was still true," I pointed out.
"Mmm. Guess so."
His voice sounded sleepy, and I didn't like the fact that he wasn't arguing with me anymore. He was shivering. I adjusted my position so that I had his head at a better (lower) angle for continued blood flow to the brain and tried to get more of my body in contact with his and shelter him from the rain a little. (Not enjoyable, but meaningful and necessary.) I raised my surface temperature some more.
"You should watch the show," I said. "Some of the cases are based on real life. And you like documentaries."
This finally got him to respond in a properly argumentative way, weak but annoyed. "MedCenter Argala is not a documentary."
"How do you know? You haven't seen it."
"I saw a couple episodes at Ratthi's one time. It's not even slightly realistic."
"I don't like realistic medical shows," I said. "People die a lot in them."
I really didn't like shows where characters died. I'd make exceptions for plot-necessary character deaths, such as in Sanctuary Moon. But I didn't like gratuitous character deaths. I didn't get as upset about it as ART, who wouldn't even watch shows in which bad things happened to fictional ships and their crews. But it stressed me out when I didn't know if fictional humans were going to be successfully rescued or not. The shows I liked best were the ones where characters got rescued and stayed rescued.
Gurathin didn't say anything in reply. I didn't like that, either. I raised my surface temperature a bit more, to the edge of the parameters that my medical module indicated a human would find tolerable.
"And I do follow up, now that I can," I added.
I wasn't sure if he was still listening, but his chest lurched in another of those huffed, silent half-laughs. "Is that a threat or a promise?"
And just then one of my drones returned a signal: we were in contact with base camp. I had a series of data packets ready to go if we did get access, and the drone sent them immediately: location, medical status, conditions affecting an emergency pickup, possible landing sites and adverse weather warnings. My performance reliability jumped by 5.2 percentage points immediately.
"I just got a signal back to base," I said. "They're coming." This was technically inaccurate; I didn't have the confirmation they were coming. Yet. But I also knew it. The rest of my humans would be on the way as soon as they got the message. They were reliable that way.
He made a kind of "mmm" sound, which was better than nothing. I moved the jacket hood to shield his face from the rain.
Least favorite client or otherwise, I wouldn't have the option of not knowing what happened to Gurathin after he vanished into MedSystem this time; my other humans would see to that no matter what. Broken bones took forever to heal, even with MedSys attention. I wondered if Gurathin would like to watch more MedCenter Argala episodes, and whether he could maybe manage not to be a complete dick about it if he did. He would probably have a lot of time in bed while he recovered. Lots of time for watching an educational serial.
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Ahahaha, that's a good point! You know, this makes me realize that Murderbot would probably like h/c, as a genre, if it knew it existed. It's all about humans being rescued and made safe and comfortable, most of it doesn't have sex, all touching is medically necessary touching ...
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You and me both, Murderbot.
I enjoyed MB's considerations about human clothing vs armor.
The best, though, was the moment where Gurathin (and I!) has to be reminded that Murderbot couldn't know what happened to its previous clients.
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I KNOW, this occurred to me only while I was writing it. Murderbot must have had clients it was attached to before; it bonds so easily, and seems to like humans a lot, as much as it claims it doesn't. But it never would have been able to find out what happened to them afterwards. At least now it can!
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I wondered if Gurathin would like to watch more MedCenter Argala episodes, and whether he could maybe manage not to be a complete dick about it if he did. He would probably have a lot of time in bed while he recovered. Lots of time for watching an educational serial.
Er, yeah, I'm sure he'll enjoy that, lol!! :D
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