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By the time Cogwheel made it home from her duty shift, it was closer to dawn than midnight. She'd logged another shift and a half in overtime when one of her patients had gone into sudden spark failure, and although that episode had had a happy ending, it was one that involved the rewriting of a great deal of paperwork.
She could have written a novel for about the same amount of effort, she thought as she let herself into her Upper Iacon apartment. Digging her datapads out of her subspace, she left them on the countertop by the door and headed for her berthroom. It was dark, the windows still blacked out from when she'd left before dawn the previous day, but darkness was no stranger to an Arachnicon. Recharge beckoned.
She'd just lain down and shuttered her aching optics when her comms went off.
Could she get away with ignoring the call? Probably not.
She checked the signature.
:: Primus damn it, Ratchet, I'm trying to sleep. ::
His reply sounded apologetic, but not nearly enough for her sleep-deprived sensibilities. :: I know, I know; I would have tried earlier, but you were still on the clock. I just need a favour, just a quick chat. ::
:: I'll give you five minutes :: she grumbled. Ratchet was a dear friend of hers, a classmate from her medical studies, but aft o'clock in the morning strained even the tightest of bonds.
:: Thank you! :: There was a rush of air over the line; it sounded like he'd sighed. :: Have you got any time off in the next couple of weeks? I need a little help with my... project. ::
:: Which project? :: Even as she'd said it, recollection crept back to her. :: The charity cases? ::
:: That's them. :: Ratchet paused between sentences, the silence that followed one of a mech plotting how best to present his case.
It was Cogwheel that had pushed him to come up with the idea, something she often rued but had never quite had reason to regret. Ratchet had come out the other side of a Senatorial Advisory office with a taste for public health work and a significant block of free time. After watching the boredom wind him tighter than a minicon's pistons for a couple of weeks, she had convinced him that he needed a hobby.
Ratchet being the mech he was, he'd disappeared for a few orn, then come back with the papers for a vacant office lot in the Undercity and a plan to save the world.
Losing patience for the waiting game, Cogwheel asked, :: Is the clinic failing? ::
::On the contrary, it's doing extremely well :: said Ratchet. :: Too well, in fact. ::
:: I thought there was no such thing in charity :: said Cogwheel.
Ratchet laughed. It hadn't been that funny, but knowing him, he was running on as little sleep as her.
:: At the rate we're filling appointments, I'll be booked out for the next vorn and a half. I just don't have enough hands. So I wondered, who do I know with a basic understanding of general medical practice and a surfeit of hands? ::
:: I'm much more qualified than that and you know it :: she returned, mock-scolding. :: Why don't you hire someone to pick up the slack? ::
:: That's the plan, but if I'm going to pay them a wage I need more certifications on my charity registration. I'm working on that, and I'm looking for someone willing to work among the lower castes, but the public hospital system eats up the majority of graduates that actually care about people worse off than them. ::
That was true, although the situation wasn't quite as black and white as he made it sound. Medical training had always been expensive, and there were fewer government grants available to students in the medical castes these days. Graduates came out of their certification exams with black holes of debt, unless their clade owned a private hospital or some such venture. Under such pressures, it was no wonder so many of them turned to well-paid private gigs and rich sponsors.
Cogwheel sighed through her cheek vents. :: How long are we talking, and what sort of work have you got? ::
:: Even a shift or two once a chord would be immensely helpful. :: Ratchet went quiet; she guessed he was checking his notes. :: I have several advanced cases of bacterial rust and ventilation system infections that will likely require surgical excision, broken struts and joint mechanisms, hydraulic malfunctions, far too many mecha with general starvation issues, and a whole ward full of the victims of violent crime. That's not to mention less severe cases I've had to send home because we just don't have the room, and mecha with programming issues I don't have a medical programmer for. I sent in a request for a services and resources expansion along with the employment certification, but I have yet to hear back from the Charities Office. ::
Arachnicons were a minority among Cybertronians. Cogwheel had been created in the mountains east of Protihex, where the geography of the living planet was too fractious for ordinary Cybertronians to inhabit. She had grown up surrounded by injury and death. For a compassionate young thing, a career in medicine had naturally followed. She had won scholarships to study in Crystal City, the Empire's jewel of learning, and paid off her student debt with a prestigious placement at the Moons of Mercy hospital, among Iacon's upper city elite.
Ratchet had beaten her to the charity hospital game, but she still had ambitions of her own. East Protihex and the rural poor of the Mitteous Plateau called.
:: All right :: she said. :: I have two orns off next chord. I plan to sleep in until midday, but after that, I'll see what I can do. ::
:: Thank you! :: said Ratchet, the words coming out in a rush. :: I appreciate it. Sleep well! ::
He ended the call.
Cogwheel turned over and buried her face in her pillow. No doubt he'd be rushing around for a few hours yet, but she, for one, intended to make good use of the night.
Within five minutes, she'd fallen asleep.
***
Her first day off dawned bright and clear, the distant autumn sun rising over Iacon's Observatory district just as she woke. It was close enough to midday that she did not try to fit in another joor's sleep, instead rising and drinking a leisurely breakfast on the balcony outside her living room. It was the sort of day she'd usually spend in a city park or out on the plains, soaking up the sunlight amid nature, but such was her luck.
Instead, she gathered her portable medical kit, a handful of empty memory drives and a datapad adaptor, and left the sunlight to the upper city.
Ratchet met her at the Level 16 Metro station. He had two other mecha with him, both red and white with the cross of the Imperial Medical Council painted on their shoulders. He introduced both as nurses, then led them out into the undercity's main thoroughfare. They crossed the district border into Low Iacon, Cogwheel riding on the bed of the larger nurse's altmode, and arrived at the clinic half an hour later.
The first thing she noticed was the line of mecha waiting outside the front door. There were not only individuals waiting for treatment. Whole families clustered around their sick and injured members, mecha of all ages and frame types—and all optics focused unerringly on the approaching medics.
Unfazed by the attention, Ratchet headed straight for the group at the head of the line. Quiet greetings came his way. The mecha that spoke wore many expressions, but there were recurring themes: visible scars, dim optics, permanent creases in the facial discs. Things that were not quite injury or illness; simply an inevitable reality of living in the lower castes. Cogwheel almost felt as though she was back in the Mitteous Plateau.
As the clinic opened, Ratchet gave her a tour of the facilities, pointing out equipment, retrieving things from storage as they went. Then she settled herself into the surgery wing, and reviewed the list of patients.
Triage gave her the name and ID number of the most urgent case. Bulkhead, a demolitions labourer, was presenting with a severe infection inside the core armour, courtesy of a long-standing ventilation systems defect and an overworked public hospital system which hadn't taken his self-reported fatigue and overheating issues seriously.
Cogwheel invited him in.
Her first impression was green. And a great deal of it; Bulkhead stood almost twice her height and probably five times as wide. It was a good frame for a labourer, but as a patient—hm.
“Morning,” he said, understandable caution not quite suppressing a straightforward good nature. Blue optics took in her extra arms and segmented body, with none of the disdain she often received from higher-caste mecha. “You a friend of Ratchet's?”
“You could say that,” replied Cogwheel. “We had a few classes together in the Academy. He's somewhat high-energy for my tastes, but he has a good spark.”
Bulkhead grinned. He sat his massive frame on the medical berth with exaggerated care. “I think we all know that. How do you want me, doc?”
Raising a brow at the nickname, Cogwheel scrolled through her datapad, browsing the treatment plan Ratchet had put together. There were a couple of points on which she disagreed, highlighting for later discussion, but the initial operation was straightforward enough.
“Stay where you are for the moment. In treating core infections, we don't put the patient under anaesthesia unless we absolutely have to. Without layers of protective armour, one has to be careful with potential corrosives around the spark.”
She enlarged the image file which depicted a mass scan of the infection, and passed the datapad to Bulkhead. “Today, I want to get as much of that out of you as possible, and replace the lower vent filter case that caused all this. You'll be awake throughout the surgery, but you'll have a painkiller chip. If you feel anything other than a dull ache, I need you to tell me immediately. Do you understand?”
“As much as I oughta.” Bulkhead had looked surprised to be given the datapad. He hesitated a moment, then pushed it back into her hands as though it was red-hot. “Corrosives?”
She smiled, and clasped her three sets of hands in front of her thorax. “Yes, but it is standard procedure. We want to get rid of any remaining pockets of infection with extreme prejudice. First, we need to remove the debris from your internal cavity; then, we scour the remainder with a hard acid, and follow that up with a neutralising agent. Fortunately, the infection has not reached your spark cavity, meaning that we can do both parts right here.”
“I don't think I understood most of that, but that's nothing new,” said Bulkhead. “I just want my life back.”
Cogwheel met his optics. There was hope in his voice, and more in his expression. He'd been failed once already by the medical profession, but still he trusted her to deliver that hope.
“I will do my utmost to give it to you,” she said. “Shall we begin?”
***
Two hours later, the theatre floor was covered in dead protomass and bacterial product, and Bulkhead was a mech with a new lease on life.
Cogwheel sent every bit of portable equipment in the room through the autoclave, took a shower in medical grade sanitiser, hosed down the theatre, and went back for another shower afterward. Then she found Ratchet in the reception room.
“I hate treating internal infections.”
Ratchet made a sympathetic noise deep in his chest. “I know.”
“I want to kick that mech's personnel manager on the aft.”
“Good luck with that.”
“Seriously, the amount of slag that came out of his core was unbelievable. He must have been walking around with it for centuries. I'm surprised he still had room for his processor! Speaking of which, he's going to need a berth overnight—there was moisture everywhere, some of it infectious. I had to leave the internal core locks open and install a drain, and I'm not sending him back to an apartment with a permanent lake in the basement in that state; it's asking for an electrical fault.”
Ratchet swore gently. “Put him in the waiting room for now,” he said, peering out the door and into the crowd that waited for treatment. “Get yourself some energon, give him some if he feels up to it. I have a hauler with a broken femoral strut and big brothers willing to carry him home; we'll get him repaired and send him along, and then we'll have a berth the appropriate size.”
“You'll need my help and one of the nurses for a femoral replacement,” Cogwheel observed. “There's a cranial trauma on my list that I want to treat first, but I'll have time afterwards. Reshuffle the schedule, and it'll work.”
“I hope so,” muttered Ratchet. He dragged a new window out from behind the workspace on his datapad, then connected a wrist cable to the adaptor and opened the clinic records database. “I wish we had a clerk. I'm wasting time on this.”
Cogwheel slumped into a corner and closed all eight optics. “What about that archivist friend of yours?”
“Orion?” Ratchet looked up, his optics widening. “He's not a friend, he's a patient, and he works overtime as it is.”
“So ask him when you have the dispensation to hire paid employees. And he's a little bit more than a patient, you have to admit.”
Ratchet grumped at the observation, but tellingly did not argue. “All right. If nothing else, he might be willing to train a successor. It'd be good to have these mecha being greeted by someone who grew up in the same place. A lot of them don't trust the medical castes.”
With good reason, thought Cogwheel.
She pried herself out of the corner, and headed for the energon dispenser. “There you go. I'm off to do brain surgery; ping me when you've got the femoral replacement set up.”
He waved a hand in her general direction. “Thank you. For helping out, I mean.”
She didn't answer, but it occurred to her that Bulkhead had said word for word the same thing. She had not agreed to help because of the gratitude, yet there was something about the sparkfelt thanks that resonated. Her spark warmed; new energy gave a bounce to her step.
It was going to be a long day—but this was exactly what she had signed up for.