Doctor Juice

Previously: Batya takes her sister to Dr. Karl Manz, who goes to work on Mina’s shot-up knee with zero help from his useless homemade robot. Bat then proceeds to feel bad about once again bringing calamity upon the fam.

— 52 —

The lab is mostly dark except for the orange glow of an electric heater, mostly quiet except for a scratchy recording of a shanty coming from Champ’s rusted head. Batya is huddled over the dentist’s chair, helping Mina drink some sort of violet fluid from a volumetric flask. 

“Your knee-ball hurt?” Bat asks.

“No,” Mina says. “Actually, I think it hurts really bad, but this doctor juice makes me not care.”

“Yeah he drugged me too, it was nice.”

“Where is he?”

Bat points at a cot in the corner where Dr. Manz is asleep, cigarette dangling from his lips, syringe clutched in his gloved hand.

“You don’t recognize him?” Mina says.

Bat squints. “Should I?”

“He won the surgery fight. Margaret’s leaning on him to come work for us.”

“Oh right. She wore that puke dress.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Mina says, craning her neck to look at her knee, swathed in a bloody dish towel, three steel rods sticking out at skewed angles. “He happen to mention if I’ll be able to walk again? Just curious.”

Bat gently brushes a sweaty curlicue of hair from her sister’s forehead. “He said you’ll walk. But it’ll be a funny walk.”

Mina rests the flask on her chest, controls her breathing. “There goes my dream of being a ballerina.”

“Stop it,” Bat says. “I’ll get you a cool cane, the kind with a sword in it.”

“Thanks.” Mina cries a dry, silent cry that makes Bat want to collapse into herself and crumble into sand. Then there’s a shrill clanking noise, then Champ slowly stomps toward them to see what’s up.

“Mina, I am so—”

“Yeah you’re so. I just wish you’d gotten something out of that money. I wish you were out there making tacos, doing whatever—”

“Mulitas.”

“…doing whatever it is that’ll allegedly make you happy.”

“What I wanted was no more this,” Bat says, gesturing at the knee, the lab, the world.

“Yeah, well, grow up.”

The sand burns, melts, turns to glass, shatters.

“What happened with that fop?” Mina asks.

Bat’s grateful to turn her thoughts to Vinnie Vinegar, to give them a target. “Lammed it like the chicken he is. I’ll track him down tonight, settle up, don’t worry.”

“My opinion, you table that and focus on the Gorgon job. You obviously need the cash. Good news is you won’t have to split it with me.”

Bat lets out a long low groan. “I don’t want to do it by myself. I don’t know if I can do it by myself.”

“What are you going to do, carry me onto that ship, push me around in a wheelbarrow?”

“Whole point was to show your boss what a good team we are.”

“I think my days in the field might be over, Little Batya. Maybe my days, period, if I can’t earn anymore.”

“Your days ain’t going nowhere,” Bat says.

Champ finally arrives next to Bat, puts its heavy copper arm on her shoulder. “Going / nowhere!” it cries.

+++

This has been Chapter 52 of Chokeville, a novel by Josh Fireland. Chapter 53 will ship out on September 19th.