Private Aegrescit Medendo

[Smeg]

SMEG'Z KLINIK

The words were spray-painted above the door in dripping red Aurebesh.

If one looked closely enough, behind the questionable spelling expected of the education received in Coruscant's filthy underbelly, they would have found a different sign. The last tenant's old neon tubing, something about dentistry. Very occasionally, the old sign found a flicker of a will to live and attempted to blush an electric blue before dying swiftly. A little pizzazz. Some razzle dazzle that brought the whole thing together into a perfectly questionable package. Lower down, at the precise height of an anthropomorphic rodent, was a painted smiley face and a red cross, although red was no longer the correct colour; it was more of a rusted brown. Nothing that couldn't be touched up later.

"Iz not lookingz gud," Doctor Smeg said forlornly, standing on a stool in front of a sink in his surgery as he washed his paws. The water dribbling out of the tap was a concerning shade of brown, but the Skraal didn't notice; he was too busy being fastidious about hand washing. That was a big part of what being a doctor was about, after all; he knew because he had seen it, and he also knew because he was, of course, a doctor. "Smeg'z feshinal 'pinion iz dat da foot haz to go."

The Abyssin in the dentist's doctor's chair, Boluk, blinked slowly with his single eye and then grunted. It seemed agreeable, which was appreciated; Smeg found that his patients faced with amputation often wanted a second opinion. However, since second opinions tended to cost a not-insignificant amount of credits, usually they had to accept the first. Well, that or pay for an alternative treatment, which cost at least two sandwiches and a pastry.

Apparently, the hulking cyclops had gone over his ankle on uneven ground outside LAST RESOR, an unsavoury cantina and had experienced a not-insignificant amount of pain, and also something had popped. Popping sounds were never good. Bodies were not meant to pop. Of course, ever the good doctor, Smeg had listened and triaged appropriately.

The entire foot and the ankle would have to go.

Boluk had, as any respectable patient should, paid upfront with one small loaf and a jogan fruit. It may have been a factor in getting him seen to first, and leaving the bleeding, fading Gamorrean with a hunk of rebar through his shoulder slumped over in the waiting room. As a doctor, Smeg understood that sleep was restorative, so he had made the professional decision to see to the Abyssin first. The fact that the Gamorrean had only brought nutriment paste as payment was also considered.

The Skraal hopped off of his stool and approached the chair, his very official doctor's coat trailing behind him for a good few feet. The glow panel overhead dimmed for a second, and the extractor fan, which provided much-needed struggling ambience, choked for a second before continuing its rattling song.

"Haz you gotz any questionz?" Doctor Smeg asked, his pink tail (which protruded from a purposely made hole in the coat) reaching up to the instrument tray to grab the Numbspray while his rodent paws clasped together.

"Nah. All good, doctor, go fer it," Boluk replied in his heavy accent, his three-fingered hands laced together and lying across his belly, entirely at ease with the procedure. Smeg's black, beady eyes practically gleamed as the word 'doctor' was growled from green lips.

"Anyfing you iz 'lergic to?"

Important to ask, you know.

"Nope."

"Eggzellent!" Smeg announced as his tail passed the Numbspray to his paw and the extremely liberal application of local anaesthetic began. As an experienced doctor, Smeg didn't need to measure precise amounts. A master chef knew exactly how much spice to add to the stew, as did he know the exact amount of Numbspray to use. Which was lots. After some time, and a good amount of pinching to check how much feeling the Abyssin had, he was ready to begin.

The Skraal hopped up onto the chair, climbing onto Boluk and using his tail to trade the spray for the tourniquet, which Smeg promptly placed in his mouth while he rolled up Boluk's shoes with his hands, and his tail swung the overhead lamp around for better light.

Outside, in the waiting room separated only by a curtain, the rebar-penetrated Gamorrean who sat in a chair ripped out of public transport remained slumped forward. The room was still for a moment. The heavy smell of antiseptic lingered, drifting amongst the many, many posters of teeth on the wall. Pictures of good teeth. Pictures of bad teeth. Pictures of gleaming, smiling teeth owned by a cast of diverse faces. Teeth as far as the eye could see. Teeth for days. All basked in the pink and cyan neon lights from the noodle stall across the narrow backstreet.

Then a great, heavy snore ripped out of the large pig.

He was fine. Smeg knew he would be. Smeg was a great doctor.

 

[Pax Velloran]

Smeg'z Klinik | Coruscant, Lower Levels

Slums | Smeg

Coruscant had a way of making everything look temporary beneath the upper levels.

Buildings lasted centuries. Families lasted less. Businesses changed names whenever the debts became inconvenient, signs were painted over instead of removed, and entire lives disappeared beneath layers of neon, grime, and somebody else's advertisements. The deeper one went, the more the city seemed content to let the past remain visible around the edges.

Pax stopped beneath a red sign that had apparently been applied with considerably more enthusiasm than precision.

SMEG'Z KLINIK.

Behind it, half-obscured by paint and years of neglect, an older arrangement of tubing occasionally threatened to illuminate something about dentistry. One letter managed a weak blue flicker before surrendering again. Pax looked from the sign to the entrance.

"Yeah, this tracks."

Three days earlier, Corven Daal had sent him a message containing eight words.

Found something strange. You still paying for manifests?

Pax had answered nine minutes later. He hadn't heard from Daal since.

That alone wouldn't ordinarily have warranted the trip. Daal was a freight tallyman who picked up contracts wherever somebody needed cargo counted without asking too many questions about what was inside it. He drank too much, gambled badly, and occasionally disappeared for stretches when one habit caught up with the other. Pax had used him perhaps half a dozen times over the past year, usually for the sort of information that mattered only when you knew what to look for.

Container numbers, dock schedules, changes in declared tonnage. Nothing remarkable on its own.

Which was why Daal calling something strange had caught his attention.

Pax had spent the better part of the afternoon tracing the man's movements backward through the district. His last confirmed shift ended shortly before midnight. A cantina account placed him at LAST RESOR forty minutes later, and the bartender remembered him primarily because Daal had left without paying for his second drink. Someone else remembered an argument outside. A third person remembered blood, although whether it belonged to Daal depended entirely on which version of the story Pax was currently hearing.

The reliable portion ended there. The rest pointed down an alley toward a doctor.

Calling the alley narrow would have been charitable. Two buildings leaned toward one another overhead as if conspiring to eliminate what little sky the lower levels had been allotted. Pipes sweated against stained ferrocrete. A noodle stall opposite the clinic flooded everything nearby in pink and cyan, lending the standing water along the curb a color it had almost certainly not possessed naturally.

Pax had already spoken to the woman working the stall. She remembered Daal. Not his name, but the coat. Gray. Long, cheap, one sleeve repaired near the cuff with thread several shades too light for the fabric. He had crossed the alley bleeding from somewhere beneath it. That had been enough.

Pax pushed open the clinic door.

The clinic made no effort to reassure anyone who stepped inside. The furniture looked collected rather than purchased, old fixtures had been left wherever removing them seemed more trouble than it was worth, and the dim lighting gave the room the worn-out look of a place that had changed hands more than once. Somewhere beyond the curtain, metal scraped softly against metal.

Pax let the door settle shut behind him. Appearances aside, the place had at least managed to remain in business.

A Gamorrean sat slumped forward in one of the mismatched chairs with a length of rebar protruding through his shoulder. Pax stopped just inside the doorway. The Gamorrean snored. Beyond the curtain, metal shifted and voices murmured low enough that he couldn't make out the words. Pax watched the sleeping patient for another moment, then stepped around him and moved farther into the clinic.

There was no receptionist, no intake terminal, and no obvious indication that anyone here kept records worth asking for. The remains of a security camera hung above the door, its lens dark beneath a layer of dust. A narrow counter occupied one side of the room, though whatever administrative purpose it served appeared to be largely theoretical.

Daal had come here. Pax was reasonably certain of that now. What happened afterward remained considerably less clear.

He wandered toward the far end of the waiting room without touching anything, taking stock of what had accumulated there. Empty packaging had been shoved beneath a cabinet. A cracked walking aid leaned against the wall. Someone had abandoned one boot. There were three magazines on a low table, all old enough that the political figures on their covers had probably died before Pax was born.

Then he saw the coat.

It had been pushed beneath the last chair in the row, partially hidden behind a waste bin. Gray fabric showed beneath the seat, wrinkled and darkened in places where something had dried into it. Pax crouched. The left cuff had been repaired with tan thread.

For the first time since entering the clinic, his attention stopped wandering.

He pulled the coat free carefully and laid it across the empty chair. There wasn't enough blood to suggest Daal had died in it. That meant very little, but it was something. One pocket contained nothing. The second produced a cheap metal lighter that worked on the fourth attempt. The inside breast pocket gave him a folded piece of flimsi. Pax opened it.

It was a laundry receipt.

He stared at it for several seconds. Two shirts. One pair of trousers. Cleaning and minor repair. Thirty-two credits. Paid in advance. There were few things less interesting than another man's laundry.

Pax read it again.

The collection stamp was from a shop six levels above them. Daal had dropped the clothing off four days ago, before sending Pax the message. The receipt gave him seven days to collect it before storage fees began accumulating. Nothing unusual. He turned the flimsi over. There was a locker number handwritten across the back.

C-418.

Pax's expression changed slightly. Most people would have written a locker number into their datapad. Daal barely trusted datapads with restaurant menus. The tallyman had once explained, at considerable length and with questionable technical accuracy, that anything stored on a network eventually belonged to whoever wanted it badly enough. Instead he wrote things down.

Pax folded the receipt along its original crease and slipped it into his own coat. The lighter followed. He left the rest where he'd found it. C-418 could belong to a transit station, a freight terminal, or any one of the storage facilities scattered through the district. It might even be meaningless, something Daal had written down weeks earlier and forgotten, but it was more than Pax had possessed ten minutes ago.

From behind the curtain came another metallic sound. Pax glanced toward it. He could leave now. The coat established that Daal had reached the clinic. The receipt provided something to investigate afterward. Whatever information the proprietor possessed would make the evening easier, but it was no longer necessary. That made the conversation considerably more appealing.

Pax crossed back toward the counter and placed three credit chips beside a cracked, dulled jar. A loaf and a piece of fruit had been left beside it. It was probably too much for a question and considerably too little for surgery. He considered the edibles on the counter again. Then, reaching into his pocket, deposited a small packet of circus peanuts.

"Doctor?"

He didn't raise his voice much. Pax settled against the edge of the counter, one hand resting loosely inside the pocket of his coat while the other turned the dead laundry receipt over beneath his thumb.

"Whenever you finish saving whoever's back there, I'd like to ask about the man who owned this coat."

// END RECORD