Adriana
In the Emergency Department, the air smelled of ozone and burnt wire, the ubiquitous antiseptic smell of commercial cleaners and bleach wipes, all mingling with the arrival of blood and sick and the grime of the streets.
Exhaust from the ambulances and alcohol from some of the patients, and the familiar interior smell of her PPE.
It was an electric smell. A dangerous, intoxicating stink that meant things were moving at eighty miles an hour and if she didn’t move at eighty-one, someone died.
She hated it.
She hated the smell, hated the slowness of this place.
She hated how the clinic staff — Shileen, in particular — looked at her when she gave an instruction, as if she were asking the goblin to go work on the plumbing or to change the oil in every car in the parking lot, and not reasonable, clear expectations, like taking patient vitals without the task necessitating conversation.
The whole staff was like that. Every interaction was plodding, laced with endless niceties that had nothing to do with the patient’s reason for coming in, slowing down the schedule for everyone.
She had watched a middle-aged satyr chattering away with the receptionist as they’d checked in, discussing some children’s summer program at the community center.
Then, once the satyr’s name was called, they’d stopped midway across the room, asking a troll who’d just come in about their knee replacement, the conversation transferring to Shileen as they moved into the interior hallway to be weighed, stretching as vitals were recorded, putting the appointment six minutes behind before a single thing had been entered on the chart for her to work with.
No one here moved with the hyper-focused, military precision she had spent years drilling into her own bones. They shuffled. They murmured about how a gnoll named Dr. Grigor used to do things before he retired to a beach down south, when the old clinic closed.
And the worst of it — they looked at her like she was the strange one, a dangerous scavenger that had slipped its cage and settled in their breakroom.
Adriana didn’t know what else to do. She’d been there for a full month, and things weren’t any different than they’d been her first week.
She was as methodical and efficient as she’d always been, giving the staff plenty of time to acclimate to what was evidently a hitherto unknown pace, driving a sense of urgency in every patient interaction, but it didn’t seem to make a bit of difference.
Her nose twitched at the smell of something sweet as she entered the clinic that day, noting the already nearly full waiting area — homemade muffins.
In the city, such a gift would have gone directly into the trash behind a closed door.
Not to cause offense, but for safety reasons, given the risk of accepting food from an unknown and potentially unstable source.
Here, though, in this town that looked like it had wandered off a movie set, the muffins sat on the counter, the basket already half-empty.
Adriana had watched movies featuring towns like this, keeping them on as background noise in the scant hours she was home — small town romances and murder mysteries set against a backdrop of cozy B never had been.
Being invited over for sangria and gossip shouldn’t have felt as thrilling or as exciting as being included in the coffee shop chatter, but there was nothing she could do about that.
“They’re all very good-looking, but Trapp is the most handsome.”
“Nope. Disagree,” Avrille cut in, drinking deeply from her oversized wineglass before continuing.
“Trapp is technically the hottest one, but he’s too nice.
I like the mean one. He looks like he could split you in two.
It’s very unfair that invitations to his parties are so hard to get.
I’ve been trying for years! My neighbor gets an invite, but he’s never once taken me, that goaty asshole. ”
“You actually have to be able to run at those things, you know. I don’t think they’d let you just lie there with your legs open.”
“Well, now he’s getting married, so at this rate I’ll never find out!”
Both women hunched, lost in laughter again. Adriana had no idea who or what they were talking about, deciding that draining her glass would save her from feeling like the odd one out.
“Whatever, it’s nice finally having a handsome young mayor and not someone older than my grandfather. Okay, Adriana, clarify for us how you know Trapp? I couldn’t make heads or tails of what I heard at the coffee shop.”