The Supernatural Clinic - first night on call!

I’m bored and avoiding studying again, so here have another half-baked idea for a text adventure. 

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Kepler was sleeping in his apartment upstairs. Kepler was sleeping upstairs. Kepler was sleeping. Kepler was. That’s what Liza repeated to herself as she sat in a padded office chair behind the front desk, practicing her reassuring smile in case someone walked through the front door of the Clinic. If she got in over her head with a patient, all she had to do was call his name and he’d be there to help. 

But Liza didn’t want to wake him. Even though the title of Dr. Lemmon was giving her a mega-dose of imposter syndrome - especially since she’d never actually received her medical degree - she was determined to prove her independence. you’ve seen patients before… she reassured herself. sure, it’s been a while, you’re a little rusty… but how much worse can this be?

She took a deep breath, even though since the accident last year she’d never really needed to, and looked around the waiting room. Her desk was in the center, against the back wall. The other three walls were occupied by several rows of fold-out chairs. She’d never once seen them all full, though she’d heard business was a bit more brisk in the daytime, and she found herself idly wondering why the Clinic even needed that many. 

The front curtains were drawn, but she could see the faint glimmer of a streetlight through the cracks, and imagine the darkness beyond. The Clinic was located at the outskirts of the City, right before the tall old buildings gave way to parking lots and suburbs. The best location if one wanted to have their finger on the pulse of urban life, and yet still remain unnoticed. 

Liza sighed and looked down at the book she was reading, a trite supernatural romance that the daytime secretary had left behind, and then back up at the room in front of her. She wasn’t quite that bored yet. 

Just as she was wondering how she would spend the rest of her night on call if no one actually showed up to the Clinic, she heard the faint shuffle of footsteps outside. She braced herself, throwing on the smile like a tattered cloak over her insecurities, but then realized the patient was still quite a distance away. She was still taking her time in getting used to the razor-sharp acuity of her senses.

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What should the great and totally legitimate Doctor Lemmon do to prepare for the new patient? And who should the patient be? (name a supernatural creature with an interesting complaint lol)

A Banshee with loss of voice, A Skeleton with a broken arm and a Ghost that can't phase throught stuff enter in a clinic, but who's going first?

Liza furrowed her brow, listening harder. It sounded like not just a single patient, but two sets of feet shuffling steadily toward the door of the clinic. She cleared her throat and swept up all the various piles of paper on the desk into neat little piles, then sat expectantly awaiting the patients' entrance.

The woman came first. She knocked on the door, then seemed to rethink her strategy and hesitantly pulled it open. She looked to be in her mid-20’s, but was dressed in black tights and a hot pink t-shirt as if she’d never outgrown her middle school emo phase. Liza had just begun to greet her when the door swung open again before it was even fully shut , and a literal skeleton walked through the door.

Liza’s brain nearly shut down for a second. Sure, she’d known about the existence of the supernatural for a couple of months now, but this was a new one. Was it animated by a spirit? Summoned through some kind of dark magic? Either way, it was very tall and rather, er, bony-looking. One of its arms was cradling the other, which seemed to be skewed at a bad angle. Upon closer inspection, it was completely severed at the radius and hanging on by the barest shred of the ulna.

“Hello, welcome to the Clinic,” Liza managed to say. “If you could all take a seat in the waiting room, I’ll be bringing you back shortly.”

Then there was a bang against the wall. Liza flinched at the suddenness of it, especially because she had not heard anyone or anything else coming. She strode decisively out from behind the desk and toward the door, opening it in the hopes of taking a look.

Outside on the curb, there stood a rather sheepish-looking young man who was rubbing his head as if it hurt. Which it clearly did not, because the man was a ghost. He was faintly translucent, but aside from that, the dead giveaway was that his throat was slit from ear to ear. Liza winced at the gore, but the wound did not appear to actively be bleeding. Kepler did say something about some ghosts retaining copies of the injuries that killed them…

“Are you here for that?” Liza asked, motioning to the neck wound.

The ghost seemed insulted, shocked that she had even mentioned it. “That’s a bit rude, don’t you think? No, I’m hear because I can’t just walk through walls like I used to. Smack right into them every time I try!”

With that, he breezed past Liza and into the interior of the clinic.

Her head was spinning. What had made her think she was ready for this? The night had gone from zero to busy in an instant, and there were now three patients awaiting her care. Which one should she attend to first?

>Attend the half-emo girl first.

>Half-emo girl first.