REO Medical Company is an emergency center with government shares, established long ago, operating in Night City since before 2020.
However, after losing the competition to the Trauma Team, it has gotten worse over the years. They even sold their early hospital in the municipal center to the Trauma Team, let alone their corporate square.
The entire company relocated to Haywood, where a six-story building was converted into their new hospital. Even a broken ship has three pounds of nails; at least it still appears somewhat decent from the outside, not as dirty and messy as those underground medical clinics.
But who is cleaner than whom?
The hospital basement is brightly lit, with spacious rooms and wide corridors. However, because it stores a large amount of prosthetics requiring low-temperature preservation, cold storage was built, making the air very chilly. Coupled with the plain concrete floor, it felt cold.
Some prosthetics here are meant for patient emergencies, while some are not.
The elevator doors opened, and a woman in a yellow jacket briskly walked out, holding a cart with two cardboard boxes stacked on top.
The guard, who was supposed to watch over the prosthetics storage, saw the visitor and said with a smile, "Gloria, it’s almost quitting time; you’re here to check supplies again. You’ve been diligent lately."
Then he placed his hand on the door-opening button.
"A few batches of prosthetics have expired, and I need to apply for disposal. I’m here to move them out."
Gloria put away the tiredness on her face, returned with a smile, and discreetly flicked a small chip through the window with her fingertip. The security caught the chip and pressed the button without asking a word.
"Thank you for your hard work."
The secondary storage door slowly opened.
As Gloria said, the prosthetics here were basically just a signed paper away from being scrapped.
But without a signature, it’s still not signed. Moving them violates hospital regulations.
But if you don’t tell, I don’t tell, who would care about a bunch of scrap metal?
Gloria entered the secondary storage, and a smell of rust hit her face.
The prosthetics here were piled haphazardly, stacked year after year. What remained were things like prosthetic eyes, limbs, and spines, mechanical prosthetics from who knows which era. Biomechanical organs, which sell better, couldn’t last this long.
She walked to a shelf holding a batch of severely damaged prosthetics, leisurely picked a few sturdy industrial prosthetics, and began dismantling motors inside using a surgical drill and cutter.
Gloria has worked in this hospital for nearly twenty years. She started as an emergency worker here when she was 17, and she’s still an emergency worker now.
Years of emergency work experience had made her skills not much different from an attending physician. She could perform many surgeries, and the success rate wasn’t low, but without money to establish connections, how could she get a lucrative position?
So she could only use this way, which even she felt ashamed of, to pay for David’s tuition.
After dismantling twenty motors, filling two large cardboard boxes, Gloria prepared to push the cart, take the elevator, and load the car from the back door to go home.
The guard and Gloria were old acquaintances. He could always get some benefits from the emergency workers, so he didn’t care about these things.
What Gloria didn’t expect was running into an unexpected figure blocking the door as she turned to leave.
A pair of eyes with external prosthetic eye plugins looked down at Gloria through red-tinted glass.
"No wonder I saw you sneaking down to the basement these past two days. Turns out you were stealing hospital property. You’ve got quite the guts."
Upon seeing the person’s face, Gloria frowned.
The new prosthetic doctor of the emergency center’s third department. The previous doctor was killed by a patient’s family after threatening the patient, unrelated to Gloria, who belonged to the seventh department.
Wolseck didn’t hide his intentions and directly lifted the cardboard box cover, showing disdain after seeing a pile of prosthetic drive motors inside.
He thought this female emergency worker had hidden something valuable in the underground storage.
Turns out it’s just this?
"Let me tell you, do you know what happens if you’re caught stealing company property? Fired, or having your prosthetics dismantled and being thrown out like some FW?"
Gloria gritted her teeth, took a few steps back, intending to put everything back, but Wolseck spoke again,
"Isn’t it true that the people who want these things are the Vortex Gang, right? After all, no one else would want this trash."
He appeared very knowledgeable about this.
"If the Vortex Gang finds out you didn’t bring them what they wanted, you’d be in trouble, wouldn’t you?"
His three fingers unconsciously rubbed together in front of both of them.
"....." Gloria took a deep breath, showing a reluctant expression, took out a money chip from her waist bag, and handed it over.
Wolseck wasn’t afraid of Gloria doing anything here; he was a prosthetic doctor, and in a hospital at that.
The amount was not insignificant.
Satisfied, Wolseck closed the box lid back for her, putting on a friendly smile,
"Don’t misunderstand, I was just worried if you forgot something. All set now; Nurse Gloria, you may leave."
Gloria couldn’t be bothered to say another word to this greedy and self-righteous guy, directly pushing past him, leaving with the cart through the elevator.