Chapter Text
Nim was pretty nervous about this new job opportunity. He desperately wanted to work in the medical field, yes, but not be like, a doctor or whatever. He was too slight to be a doctor and he hated confrontation. Giving people bad news? That'd be even worse.
Well, this new job seemed... interesting? He'd seen the listing posted on the bulletin board of the bakery his family went to every couple of days. It'd gotten buried under some other local ads, and that seemed pretty purposeful?
Nim skimmed through the ad. Something about a live-in aid for some people who couldn't really take care of themselves reliably? It paid alright, all things considered, and they were looking for people like him: people who were needing experience in the nursing field to pursue higher ranks of the medical field. All the local hospitals and care centers were full of nursing students, Nim hadn't been able to find an opening in almost a year. Even Hospital Alpha was full, and that place was huge!
He turned the ad over before folding it up and placing it in the bag with the bread he'd originally came to the bakery to get, then headed out. When he got home, he showed his moms and talked about the opportunity to them, and both of them agreed it'd be worth checking out. They were both a bit iffy about sending him away for a live-in situation, but Nim chocked that up to them just not used to him not being around.
So, he got right to packing! He packed light, only really taking the essentials, and managed to get out of the apartment and on the subway without too much crying from his little siblings and moms. They waved him a sad farewell on the station platform, and none of Nim saying that he'd be back to visit whenever he could made them any less sad looking. Almost immediately his moms were texting him, wishing him good luck, and that made him feel a little less sad.
---
Well, the place was... not as big as Nim thought it'd be. After he got approved to go through the perimeter wall by the security staff (more soldiers, as per usual), the whole thing consisted of maybe one large building smack in the very middle of the dome. It was a 3-story and rather spread out, sure, but it was still just one building.
What really got Nim was the amount of work whoever fixed this place up put into the dome's environment and light. All domes had an artificial sun, sure, but this one felt different. Honestly, it felt to Nim like that one time his family had gone up to the surface for one of his little sibling's school field trips. It was actually pleasant.
When he got inside the main building, there was... nobody there at the front desk. He looked around the entrance in confusion before he heard some footsteps and someone muttering to themselves. He didn't catch most of it but they sounded frustrated.
"...Another door, great! Just what I needed to deal with right now, another broken- Oh shi...oot. Hey, you're new here?" She came to a stop in the entrance of one of the halls leading off from the entryway, and was staring at Nim with a bit of embarrassment. She wore a high-visibility vest and had a tool belt around her waist, but Nim couldn't help but notice her pale-green skin.
"You. New here? Yes?" She asked again.
"Oh! Um. Yeah, sorry!" Nim snapped out of his daze and gave a small nod before digging the job ad out from his duffle and reaching over to hand it to her. "I um, saw your ad? It didn't really say exactly what I'd be doing but that you were looking for nursing students?" She took the ad from him and gave it a puzzled look before murmuring, confused, "I dont remember putting ads out on bulletins..." She swore under her breath again before motioning for Nim to follow her, which he did.
"Right. So. First off, my name's Chikata. I run maintenance and security in this dome, but Im not the boss of this place. That honor goes to Cottie, she's not here right now but you'll meet her eventually." Chikata motioned to a photo of someone on the wall of the hall, probably a photo of Cottie, before adding, "If her name sounds familiar to you, she's General Paro's daughter." That explained why she sounded and looked familiar, then.
"She's not here?" Nim asked as Chikata showed him one of the facility's common areas. She just nodded and said, "She's a freelance physician, ink specialist or whatever. She's got a lot of medical expertise. I think she's in Splatsville right now? Anyways." She turned to him and said, "Pretty much what this job en tales is you're helping someone else take care of themselves. Helping them eat, stay clean, entertained, that sort of stuff. If you've ever been to one of those mental wards or retirement facilities, it's like that. Real easy stuff honestly."
"The patients here are different from the one's you'd see elsewhere. I'm sure you've noticed the way I look?" Nim didn't want to comment on that, but he nodded sheepishly. Chikata just chuckled and said kindly, "Well, all the patients here look like me. Green skin, weird eyes, and really, really dangerous ink. I'm telling you this right now: Do not touch our ink." That sounded ominous. She shouldered open a locked door and waved him through into a dimmed room with a wall of screens, security feeds it looked like. "My office," She clarified, "Spend most of my time in here. Anyways!"
She grabbed at a tablet, similar to the ones Nim had seen some of the
O
ctarian elites in the army use, and turned it on. She flipped through some stuff on it before handing it to him suddenly, so suddenly he almost dropped it. She didn't comment on that, just said, with what sounded to Nim like a bit of melancholy, "Read through that for a bit, then tell me if you still want the job or not." She threw herself into the chair behind the control panel for the screens before motioning to another chair for Nim to sit in, which he did. She went to work flipping through the feeds, looking pretty tired.
The thing she'd given him to read was something on Sanitization and how it affected the body... written by Cottie. As he looked through the file, Nim noticed with some discomfort that Chikata had left out a lot of the stuff regarding the patients here. Mostly how they were practically zombies, and that their ink was so dangerous that just letting it sit on your skin for a few seconds was enough to tint it green permanently.
"Do uh... the patients here..." Chikata glanced at him from the corner of her eye, and he cleared his throat before continuing, "Do they regularly get hurt or something?" She turned back to her work and said, "Not usually, but they're not exactly fully aware of themselves either. One of them keeps putting holes in things and cuts up her hands as a result." She turned the chair to face him and added, "You wouldn't be expected to patch up any wounds or interact with the ink in any way, you'd just need to let me know about anything and I'll take care of it."
"But the ink-"
"Doesn't affect people like me." Chikata gestured to herself and added, "I wont go into the nitty-gritty, but people like me who've already been sanitized in some way aren’t affected by the sanitized ink. Cottie's not affected either, since she was sanitized too, so she handles most of the injuries here when she is here."
Nim nodded and handed the tablet back to her and murmured, "I mean... I'm still interested in the job, I was just a little worried about.... that." Chikata nodded in understanding and said, a little less sadly than she had before, "Well, great! Good, even. People get scared off when they read about the ink. There's just one tiiiiny issue..." She put the tablet back on the table and murmured, "We uh... only have one Sanitized in need of a caretaker right now. She's not the most agreeable either."
"Most agreeable?" Nim couldn't help but tilt his head in confusion as Chikata talked. She just nodded and said, troubled, "That one I'd mentioned earlier, the one who likes putting holes in things. Cottie says her sanitization was... different from the rest of us, but never went into the details of it." She tapped her desk with a pen for a bit before saying, with faux cheerfulness, "You're more than welcome to just stay here in the building and get paid to help out the other caretakers with their charges, though! We're... kinda desperate for good caretakers honestly, people don't stick around for very long once they get their college credits or whatever it is they came here for." She seemed anxious about the whole thing.
"Actually, I think I'll give the one you were talking about a try," Nim said after a few moments of silence. Chikata just sort of stared at him like he'd suddenly spoken fluent
s
almonid before asking, "Are you absolutely 100% sure?" He nodded and, after a few more uncomfortable moments, she got up and walked over to a counter on another wall lined with equipment. She gestured for him to join her and she waved a small device in the air and said, "Gotta make your keycard, it'll give you access to most of the building."
"Most?"
"Cottie keeps all the dangerous stuff in her own personal labs here. Sanitized ink samples, mostly, but the Kamabo archives are off limits to anyone but her and the Generals." Chikata did some tapping on a computer-like device after plugging in the thing she'd waved earlier and, after a couple of minutes and very angry-sounding groaning noises from the machine that got it a pensive look from Chikata, it spat out a plastic card with Nim's name on it and a barcode. She reached into a drawer and dug out a card holder and lanyard, dusted them off, then handed them to Nim before saying, "Don't let your charge get ahold of this, okay? The Sanitized have access to the entire first and second floors, but they're not allowed in the staff quarters on the third for the staff's safety." Nim took the card and looped it over his head, and it rested on his chest.
The machine made a loud popping noise as they left the room, and Chikata grumbled about it most of the way to wherever she was leading him. Guess that happened a lot.
---
"THAT'S who you're putting me in charge of?!" Nim was astounded, shocked even. Chikata just gave him a bored look and said, again, "Yeah, that's who you're taking care of."
She was HUGE, almost 7ft tall and broad-shouldered and angry-looking... or maybe that was just her face? Either way, she towered over Nim and he wasn't even in the same room as her yet. Chikata had pointed out his charge from a distance, saying it was better for him to be introduced this way. "She's had four other caretakers before you," She'd said, looking at Nim seriously now, "And she's scared all of them off with her aggressiveness. I'm warning you right now, Nim," She pointed to his new charge and said plainly, "If she ever gets aggressive with you, back off and leave. There's no shame in it, nobody would be upset with you for it. She's a tough one, and your safety is more important to me."
Nim just nodded nervously and asked quietly, "What do you mean by scared them off?"
"She attacked them." Before Nim could even process that she added, "Didn't seriously hurt them mind you, but two of them ended up going to Hospital Alpha for treatment and the other two walked off the job after she threw them against the walls." Chikata crossed her arms and muttered troubledly, "She's fine with the other Sanitized, gets alone with them all well enough, but she takes issue with the caretakers and none of us are really sure why. Like I said, if you back off she'll leave you alone, or should. How good are you at running?"
Nim really didn't like that... but he also really needed this job. He just gave her a weak thumbs up and she gestured for him to follow her, which he did once his legs stopped feeling like they were glued to the floor.
"7564," Chikata was talking to the giant and gestured to Nim, "Nim here is going to be assisting you for a while." 7564 wouldn't even look at him, but Nim heard the low rumble of a growl deep in her chest. She was staring outside to the dome's courtyard which surrounded the building, and Chikata just sighed. She pulled Nim aside, rough enough that he stumbled, and whispered to him, "Don’t take her moods to heart, alright? She's always grumpy." She then turned back to 7564 and said with forced cheerfulness that was clear to Nim, "Alrighty girlfriend, I'm gonna show your new friend to his room and he'll be back to uh... do stuff with you afterwards!" She tugged Nim's arm again and practically dragged him out of the room.
"Cod that could've gone a lot worse..." Chikata ran a hand down her face, displacing her safety glasses. "Nim, I'll be honest with you, 7564 isn't my favorite Sanitized here. She keeps breaking doors and making my job miserable." Nim just nodded, still a bit numb with shock, and followed Chikata as she lead him up the flights of stairs to the staff quarters on the third floor. She waved a greeting to the two soldiers there doing security, and walked him through how to use his keycard to open the door. The soldiers were nice enough, they usually were in Nim's experience, and next thing he knew Chikata was showing him his new living space.
The room was... nice? Bigger than his room back home at least. It even came fully-furnished with a full bed, sofa and chairs in the living room area, a round table with two chairs, a couple empty bookshelves, and even his own kitchenette. "It's identical to the rooms the Sanitized have," Chikata was explaining as she showed him around, "Cottie thought that it'd help them recover faster if this place felt less like a hospital and more like a... really weirdly laid-out apartment complex."
Right now, she was showing him the bathroom and it's separated shower area. It even had a bathtub! "Yeah, bathtub too. Cool right?" Chikata chuckled and added, "Glad they're putting these things in the new housing they're making for common folk like us, way more comfortable than those old mist showers that spray you in the face huh?" As they both went back to the main room, Nim looked around and asked, "So I really do get to live here then?" Chikata nodded and said matter-of-factly, "Yeah, the costs of which are already factored into your pay and all that. It's not much, I promise, just enough to keep this place operating."
"You can decorate the place however you want too, even your door," She was saying as Nim unpacked, "Not a lot of the caretakers do but I like to encourage it. Same goes for your charge's room actually," He perked up at that and she went on, "It's actually really encouraged for the caretakers, like you, to engage in play with your charge, like coloring or making music and that sorta stuff."
"So... finding things they enjoy doing?" Nim asked, and Chikata nodded and snapped her fingers. "Correct! They might not be all there mentally, but it's good to get them thinking about stuff. Before I regained my autonomy, I liked to write! Wasn't legible mind you, but it was something." She tapped her chin for a bit before saying, troubled, "I'm not 100% certain as to what 7564 enjoys doing, though... none of her previous caretakers were able to engage her in play. They'd always say she'd walk off on them after a little while." He didn't know what to do with that information.
Guess his job would be harder than he thought.