"Mrs Metokur, I think you should sit down," advised the consultant.
He was a hospital veteran, who lost a single hair on his head every time he gave a cancer diagnosis. If the patient was a child, then he lost five hairs. If the patient was a pedophile or a broney he grew five new hairs. As most of his patients were decent, non-degenerates, by this stage, he was almost completely bald.
Jade Fox obediently took a seat on the nearest chair. She rearranged the pleats of her skirt, made from quotes from the 4chan /pol/ board, that she had embroidered onto fabric and then hand-stitched together.
"Give it to me straight doc," she said. "It's AIDS cancer isn't it?"
The doctor swallowed his Gummy bear. He never liked to deliver a bad prognosis with one in his mouth, as he felt that doing so sullied the brand.
"I'm afraid that it's cancer AIDS."
Jade Fox felt the energy drain from her combo bar. If Jiren the Grey chose this moment to attack, she would be unable to fight him by leaping into the air at a seventy-degree angle and engaging in tit-for-tat martial arts.
Across the room, Mr Metokur cut an impassive and enigmatic figure from inside an opaque cloud of Camel cigarette smoke. That morning, five medical interns had entered the roiling fog to perform tests. Only two had managed to find their way out again. One had reemerged sporting nasty a bite, that he claimed he had received either from a lion, or from some kind of sandy-coloured, maned wolf, as yet unknown to science.
A tiny hair follicle loosened itself from the consultant's head, catching the strip lighting as it drifted slowly towards the floor like an Autumn leaf.
