Na Ri
Character
The medbay did not smell like a place of healing. Na Ri noticed it the moment she stepped through the sealed doors, the air too clean, too filtered, stripped of the layered scents she was used to smelling. There was no scent of crushed herbs, no simmering medicines over a stove, no traces of smoke and oil. It was just the smell of sterilization, sharp and absolute.
Her boots were quiet against the polished floor as she moved deeper inside, guided only by the soft pulse of overhead lights and the occasional flicker of passing staff. Everything was white and boring here. Machines hummed around every corner. As if healing here belonged more to the machines than the people who operated them. A faint pressure settled in her chest before the coughing came.
She turned slightly, bringing her arm up just in time, the motion practiced enough to be almost invisible. The sound was controlled, contained, but it lingered longer than she liked. It always did now. When it passed, she straightened without comment, though her breath took a moment to settle back into something steady. Tuberculosis at its finest. She understood the word in the clinical sense they had given her. She had listened, had nodded when required, had allowed them to guide her here under the quiet insistence that even she could not treat everything alone. Something about an infection, something about transmission.
That knowledge did not sit easily. Not in someone who had spent most of her life being the one others turned to when their bodies failed them. Na Ri was a healer, reduced now to a patient. Her gaze drifted across the room they had assigned her, taking in the bed, the monitoring unit beside it, the neatly arranged instruments she had not yet touched. There was a rhythm here, she realized, but it was not one she knew how to follow. She moved to the window instead.
Beyond the transparisteel, the world continued as if nothing had changed. Speeders cut through distant traffic lanes. Lights blinked in steady patterns. Life, uninterrupted. For a moment, she simply watched it, her reflection faint against the glass. Dark hair drawn back, posture still too straight for someone meant to rest, the quiet tension of someone who did not know how to be idle.
Her fingers rested lightly against the cool surface. surface.
“…You rely on them,” she murmured under her breath, though whether she meant the machines or the people behind them was unclear. Perhaps both. The thought lingered there, unfinished, before she exhaled softly and let her hand fall. When the door behind her hissed open, Na Ri did not turn immediately. Instead, she spoke first, her voice calm, steady, carrying just enough weight to meet whoever had entered without yielding ground. “If you’re here to tell me to rest,” she said, almost absently, “you should start with a better argument.”
Only then did she glance back over her shoulder, expression composed but eyes sharper than they should have been for someone in her condition.
Her boots were quiet against the polished floor as she moved deeper inside, guided only by the soft pulse of overhead lights and the occasional flicker of passing staff. Everything was white and boring here. Machines hummed around every corner. As if healing here belonged more to the machines than the people who operated them. A faint pressure settled in her chest before the coughing came.
She turned slightly, bringing her arm up just in time, the motion practiced enough to be almost invisible. The sound was controlled, contained, but it lingered longer than she liked. It always did now. When it passed, she straightened without comment, though her breath took a moment to settle back into something steady. Tuberculosis at its finest. She understood the word in the clinical sense they had given her. She had listened, had nodded when required, had allowed them to guide her here under the quiet insistence that even she could not treat everything alone. Something about an infection, something about transmission.
That knowledge did not sit easily. Not in someone who had spent most of her life being the one others turned to when their bodies failed them. Na Ri was a healer, reduced now to a patient. Her gaze drifted across the room they had assigned her, taking in the bed, the monitoring unit beside it, the neatly arranged instruments she had not yet touched. There was a rhythm here, she realized, but it was not one she knew how to follow. She moved to the window instead.
Beyond the transparisteel, the world continued as if nothing had changed. Speeders cut through distant traffic lanes. Lights blinked in steady patterns. Life, uninterrupted. For a moment, she simply watched it, her reflection faint against the glass. Dark hair drawn back, posture still too straight for someone meant to rest, the quiet tension of someone who did not know how to be idle.
Her fingers rested lightly against the cool surface. surface.
“…You rely on them,” she murmured under her breath, though whether she meant the machines or the people behind them was unclear. Perhaps both. The thought lingered there, unfinished, before she exhaled softly and let her hand fall. When the door behind her hissed open, Na Ri did not turn immediately. Instead, she spoke first, her voice calm, steady, carrying just enough weight to meet whoever had entered without yielding ground. “If you’re here to tell me to rest,” she said, almost absently, “you should start with a better argument.”
Only then did she glance back over her shoulder, expression composed but eyes sharper than they should have been for someone in her condition.