The nurse approached us and asked, "Are any of you stationed aboard the Gidoru?"
"Yeah," Ramos said. "All three of us."
"Why do you ask?" I asked, and my eyes automatically began scanning the woman for weapons.
"Our records state that one of our patients, Aiko Yoshida, is stationed aboard that ship. I was just wondering if you three gentlemen were here to see her," the nurse said.
Of course Aiko would be treated here. This was the closest hospital to the spaceport, so anyone injured in space would logically be transferred to this medical facility.
"Right," I said, rising quickly to my feet. "We'll go to see her immediately."
Cpt. Singh cleared his throat before saying, "Before you go, you'll probably need these." He reached into his accordion folder and produced two cards marked with the symbol of Zeon. "These are military debit cards. Each one holds one thousand dollars, and the pin number on each is 1111. This should be enough to keep you liquid until you're able to replace the items you lost when the Nordhausen was destroyed. Just make sure to get in touch with the spaceport and tell us where you're staying once you're settled in."
Dollars, huh? I didn't expect Zeon to use such a mundane currency. They were probably Federation or Zeon dollars and not the US dollars I was used to, anyway.
"Thank you, sir," Ramos said.
"Are we officially on shore leave?" I asked. "How long do we have until we should return to base?"
"Yeah, consider this the beginning of your shore leave. The Gidoru will probably stay docked in Zum City for quite a while. As long as we can reach you easily, you won't have to return to base for several weeks."
"Hell yeah," Ramos said. "I need a damn break."
"We were only deployed for a few weeks," I said, reminding him that we were still early in the war.
"And those weeks were not fun," Ramos said.
With a smile, Singh said, "Get out of here before you say something that I have to report to internal affairs."
Led by the nurse, Ramos and I traveled deeper into the hospital. The hospital was clearly made for military personnel, and it was already filling with injured soldiers from the Battle of Loum.
The thought of freedom from the regimentation of life aboard a warship filled me with both terror and jubilation. I had a long list of things I wanted to do that couldn't be done on the Gidoru, and a few of those things didn't even involve the war. On the other hand, I had no idea how to exist in the Earth Sphere outside of the military. Would someone notice that I didn't belong? Would I have to sit in silence and actually consider my place in that universe?
Not yet, at least. I still had to check on Aiko and Vultee before I could leave the hospital. Ramos and I were escorted to Aiko's room, where she lay unconscious, strapped to a slowly-beeping heart monitor. There were several other patients in the room, and they were all separated by nothing but thick blue drapes. Aiko's heart was beating at 45 beats per minute, and a doctor in a bloodstained lab coat was treating another patient on the other side of the room.
She looked almost peaceful in her sleep. If not for the thick gauze running up the remaining flesh of her left arm, there wouldn't have been any evidence of Aiko's injury.
I wanted to do something to help her, but there was nothing I could do at that moment. There was no act of violence I could commit that would allow her to heal faster. Driven forward by that festering feeling of uselessness, I walked up to Aiko's bed and grabbed the medical records hanging from its foot. Without hesitation, I began flipping through the pages contained therein.
MEDICAL RECORD SUMMARY
Last Name: Yoshida
First Name: Aiko
Address: 177 Marcenas Blvd, Aft District, Zum City
Date of Birth: March 14, 0057
Gender: Female
Height: 157 cm
Weight: 56 kg redo
Allergies: Lactose
Current Medications: Citalopram, 20 mg/day
Past Medical History and Illnesses
Pneumonia, Recurring Headaches, Mental Illness, Amputations, Anemia
The medical history summary was little more than a form-fillable document that contained a long forty-item illness checklist at the end. Most of the summary was written in black ink, but two small notes were written in blue ink: the word "redo" next to weight and the X next to "Amputations" on the checklist.
That was just the page at the top of Aiko's medical history. I could have flipped to the next page and gained more information, but the old black X next to "Mental Illness" gave me pause. I was delving into information I shouldn't see. There was little information in the medical history pertaining to Aiko's current injuries and a lot of information that was meant to be kept private.
"Hey," the doctor on the other side of the room said languidly. "That chart is for medical personnel only." The bloodstained doctor clearly didn't particularly care that I was reading the chart. He sounded like he was repeating a legal disclaimer for the tenth time that day. This was a Zeon military hospital, after all, and the organization seemed to have little interest in following the rules.
"Right, sorry," I said, suddenly snapping out of my thoughtless reverie and returning the medical record to its spot at the foot of Aiko's bed.
Ramos and I sat on two nearby chairs, and Aiko continued to sleep in silence.