Blood Bourbon

Improvements

Ryker

"Where did you get this file?" The doctor who was head of the research and treatment of cancers division in Knight Corp, and luckily in New Orleans, looked up from the folder he had just put in her hands.

"Does it matter?" Ryker met her hard gaze for a moment, before sighing softly under her hardened glare. "I stole it. Borrowed it. It's all digital anyways, that's just a print off of the file I was able to hack, does it not have enough information?"

She glanced back down at the folder and began reading through it despite murmuring in objection to his methods. "We generally take official referrals, or patient requests only."

"Yeah, but the health care system, they make money keeping patients. They're bleeding this family dry. And I didn't want... to offer any promises, in case..." Ryker shrugged, shifting on his feet and glancing at the clock on the wall. He skipped out of half a day of training to do this. Though it was a low structure kind of day, with everyone scattering to do their own thing, he was risking an argument with his boss for being here. And considering his luck, he was sure to get into trouble over this somehow.

"It's a really malignant and aggressive form... god, they've really strained that child to his limits." The doctor frowned and moved to her desk, flipping through the folder and starting to type on her computer.

"Ah. Shit."

She looked up at him for a moment, then back down to the computer with a frown. "Maybe. I mean, our treatments are a lot less strain on the body, so even if... no... There." She spun her monitor around and tapped a screen that contained a bunch of charts and dots.

As he looked at it, he realized it was two similar charts comparing something, looking nearly identical, though he had no idea what.

Ryker shook his head slowly, brows raising. "What?"

"We have a match for bone marrow, at least. And we have far more effective means of getting his immune system working well before the transfer." She wasn't looking at him, merely flipping through the folder, engrossed in whatever she was reading.

"So..." Ryker understood only about one percent of what she was saying. When he was a human, leukemia wasn't a thing. Kids starved and died. They got consumption, they got pneumonia, they froze to death in groups of three or four, huddled in alleys and on street corners in the winter. Cancer was the least of their worries.

Ryker had left those memories behind when he left his fear of mortality upon waking up as a vampire. But they were his only reference to what could kill a child.

She blinked up at him, as if surprised he was still there. "I will start the work-up on this immediately. We'll have someone from Knight Corp approach the father and have the child transferred here. We'll have to move before they start this next round of chemo... he'd be lucky to survive Christmas if we left him any longer."

Ryker offered a stiff smile, nodding and turning to walk out of the room.

"Ryker."

He turned back to look at the doctor, shoving his hands in his pockets. "Yeah?"

"Great catch on this. It's still too early to tell, but you quite possibly saved a life." She offered him a smile, before turning back and continuing to type away at the computer.

Ryker tilted his head to the side, watching her for a moment, wrestling with... something. He didn't know what it was, he supposed he could feel good about what he had done, but he didn't even know why he had done it. What difference did it make in his life, that this kid survived? People died every day, what was one life ?