Chapter 2: 2: Treatment

Violet quickly pushed herself back up into a sitting position, ignoring the dull throbbing pain that went through her body with every movement. Dr. Wess made no attempt to answer her question yet, nor stop her like she did before, simply observing the human girl with a hint of trepidation. Behind her, the horned doctor's tail swayed back and forth anxiously.

Violet looked down at herself, realizing she was still covered by a thin bedsheet from the waist down. She hauled her body backwards with her arms; Dr. Wess, apparently having expected this, pressed a button next to the headboard with the tip of her tail, raising the head of the bed to accommodate the girl. Violet rested her body back against the upright part of the mattress in preparation.

Even though Violet knew she still had feeling in her legs, it was reassuring to actually see that they were still there, even if it was just the outline of them under the sheet. However, the momentary relief she felt was quickly overshadowed by anxiety even before she processed what she was looking at.

She already knew something for sure; they weren't her legs. Not the ones she had boarded the Sarlace with, that she'd walked around on almost every day that she could remember. She could already tell just from the shape. Violet had always been rather wiry; not the sort of person who tended to go to the gym, but also not the sort of person who needed to, she had always justified to herself. The gym was for people who wanted to improve themselves, and Violet had felt fine the way she was. The way she was. The way she used to be. According to her (admittedly still fuzzy) eyesight, the legs that were now attached to her body were a far cry from the slender, thin ones she was used to.

She gave a resigned sigh, and finally pulled the sheet away with one hand.

From Dr. Wess's attitude and tone of voice, Violet had been expecting that she'd be greeted with a pair of unpainted metal truss prosthetics, something that looked like they'd come off of one of the utility drones she'd seen back on earth. There was nothing wrong with prosthetics like that, she had thought to herself, but the prospect of something like that being attached to her own body now shot pangs of fear through her core. She had liked how she used to be, and now things had changed without her really having a choice in the matter, which was always something that tended to rub her the wrong way regardless of its significance. She liked being able to make decisions rather than having them made for her. But she knew it wasn't really fair of her to be angry at the medical staff; they were doing what they had to, and they hadn't exactly displayed any ulterior motives beyond trying to save her life.

Regardless, Violet's prior assumptions and feeling of dread had quickly been shattered as she saw herself properly, her emotions flip-flopping back and forth like the clapper of a ringing bell with every new observation she made. 

These legs - her new ones, she tried her best to internalize - were defined in a way hers had never been, with Violet being able to faintly observe the muscle structure beneath the surface of her thighs and calves. Where her original legs had run down from her pelvis and met with her ankles with all the elegant curvature of a ruler, these ones became considerably wider at the calves and above the knee, creating a bowed outer curve along the contours of her thighs. She realized, looking further up their length towards her hips, that those, too had been modified; they flared out from her waist on either side, seemingly to accommodate the added mass from her replacement legs.

All this information being taken in eventually culminated in Violet's realization that she now had hips for days. Starting above her iliac crests and traveling down towards her pubic bone from each side to create a V shape, slight scarring was evident along the borders where the new flesh had been fused with the rest of her body. All of the newly-applied parts of her anatomy were of a paler tone than her natural skin, which made it look almost synthetic. 

As the chilly, sterile air against her skin finally registered with her, It was suddenly quite apparent to Violet that she didn't actually have any clothes on. She ignored that fact for now, having other feelings she needed to process first.

She'd expected to be distressed by the fact that at least half of her body was now drastically different than it was when she last saw it. Instead, her brain's spiral into anxiety over her new appearance slowly gave way to a feeling of relief as she continued to look herself over. A wave of emotions washed over Violet, in spite of the breakwalls she usually had in place around her mind to stop them, and she felt tears starting to well up in her eyes.

Even before she'd accepted herself back on Earth, She'd never been too particularly bothered by her genetics. When she was younger, it was mostly her name that had bothered her, rather than her body, and once she'd figured that out she had been able to settle on her new one without much trouble. She hadn't needed to come out to anyone else, after all. She'd managed to afford hormone supplements when she was on Earth, thanks to her mechanic's apprenticeship, but they hadn't caused the drastic physical changes that she'd seen in so many other people like herself. Being lanky and thin was something she was very used to, though, so this fact hadn't really bothered her, or so she had assumed. Cosmetic surgery hadn't been an option for her financially, with her savings by that point being put towards a colony ship ticket, which had taken her almost two years to finally scrape together payment for. Now here she was, that decision having inadvertently given her a body she somehow... preferred. Violet rubbed her pooling tears away with a hand and did her best not to sniffle, for fear of exposing Dr. Wess to the emotional rollercoaster she had just undergone.

Speaking of surgery, something she had mostly ignored for the moment was now staring her in the face from between her legs. Violet looked down at it and confirmed that indeed, she still had her penis, which was more than alright with her. She had personally always preferred having one, even after she'd come to terms with being trans, and she was happy to see it was still there. It must have been a resilient little prick, if it managed to endure the cryogenic decay that her legs had not.

Finally having analyzed every part of her body that was in her immediate vision, Violet relaxed with tentative satisfaction. While she wasn't totally sure what part of her treatment had necessitated the... considerable changes to her figure, her general opinion was one of "Okay, I can totally work with this." Going from her old rail-thin silhouette to this pear-shaped one was more alright with her than she ever could have expected.

She lifted her left leg slightly, realizing that was something she could probably test out, and it responded exactly as it was told. It was a strange feeling; it seemed like her leg muscles' twitch reflexes were more ready than they'd ever been, standing as taut as a competitive Rubik's Cube solver before they start the timer. She was suddenly aware that she had been holding her breath for longer than she should have been, and exhaled as she let her upper body sink back into the upright part of the mattress. She sat in silence for a few moments, just staring ahead at the door to the hospital room she found herself in.

Aside from the rather utilitarian styling, it didn't really feel that much different than hospitals had felt on earth, barring a few pieces of medical equipment that looked far more advanced than anything she'd ever seen or used. This was less surprising to her than she expected, but it did make sense with how long she and the rest of the Sarlace's ill-fated passengers had spent careening through the void. If she had to guess, she must have been out there for a half a millennia at least.

Violet eventually looked back over at Dr. Wess. Jesus, this poor lady had glacial patience. The woman took a moment to read the human girl's expression, and seeing that she didn't look too conflicted about the changes, finally picked her tablet up off her lap and began to speak.

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"As you have probably deduced, your lower extremities had deteriorated to the point that they required immediate amputation. Additionally, a number of your internal organs had been affected and substantially weakened; they were at high risk of failing during your recovery if not replaced. Artificial replacements for your heart, digestive tract, liver and pancreas were transplanted into your body over the course of the last three weeks, prioritizing those that showed the highest severity of decay first. The aching you are likely feeling right now is a byproduct of the surgical nanites that were introduced to your system; it should wear off within the next few days."

"Okay, so... One thing at a time. If my old legs are gone, where did these come from?" Violet pointed at her right leg as she lifted it; it felt as lightweight and unusually responsive as the left leg had.

"Your new prosthetics are based on a relatively advanced template which is controlled via a subdermal myomer weave, or to put it simply, synthetic muscle fibers. They should have similar touch sensitivity and range of motion to the limbs they replaced. Despite everything that has happened to you, I'm pleased to inform you that your body in its current state is fully functional, and as you continue to recover from the cryogenic decay you may even find it to be higher-performance than the original was."

As she looked at her legs a little more closely, Violet noticed seams running along the borders of some of her primary muscle groups on her thighs, and realized that 'almost synthetic' had been a bit off the mark. An array of ring-shaped seams, each one roughly the size of a quarter, adorned her quadriceps on each leg. One long seam wrapped around the circumference of each of her thighs where they connected to her hips, with small triangular markings pointing towards the apparent connection points on either side of the lines.

"Higher performance?" Violet said quizzically.

"Indeed." Dr. Wess nodded. "It is uncommon for that template to be issued as a replacement like this, but the circumstances of your condition were... extreme. Your new limbs being installed early in the treatment process was critical to ensuring the rest of your body could be operated on with minimal risk."

"Why the, uh..." Violet hesitated before remembering that she was in a medical facility. The doctor hadn't cared that Violet was naked, nor that she had clearly been doing some introspection about her own genitals earlier, so for now Violet didn't worry about appearances either. "The hips? They're not exactly the... straight and narrow that they used to be." She motioned above the contours of her hips and thighs with her hands for emphasis.

"Ah, I suppose that's owed an explanation. The legs need a strong internal structure - similar to organic bones - that the myomers can be layered on top of. This means that there's a minimum size that a myomer-based prosthetic can realistically be while still retaining adequate durability." Dr. Wess turned her tablet to face Violet, an orange 2-D hologram of the limb in question displayed on the screen. "Custom contouring also wasn't prioritized, for obvious reasons, over making sure you were stabilized in time. The replacement limbs are very versatile, but unfortunately not customized on a per-patient basis when they're shipped to us. We apologize for that, though if you want them contoured to be closer to the originals, we could potentially-"

"No!... No, that's alright." Violet interrupted. "You don't have to apologize. I'm... not as bothered by them as I thought I would be."

"That's good to hear, Violet." Dr. Wess smiled as she raised her tablet again and began to type, her relief faintly showing through her otherwise professional demeanor. Violet hadn't really noticed it when the doctor had spoken before, but they had sharp fangs where a human's canines would be. That was interesting, but not surprising at this point.

"How are you feeling?" Asked Dr. Wess. Violet idly tipped her head from side to side as she thought for a moment. "Well, physically, I still ache like you said I would, but it's not as bad now that I've moved around a bit. Emotionally... I'm fine. It's just, a lot to take in. Everything, I mean."

"I figured that would be the case. If you came from Earth that long ago, and were only recovered now, you've basically been bombarded by new information since the moment you woke up. You've been taking it very well." Dr. Wess gave a sympathetic grin. "We'll have plenty of time to answer any questions you might have before you're discharged. For now, though, I'll give you a little while to decompress. Would you like some water?" The demon lady said as she got up from her stool and walked towards the door, which slid sideways with a soft hiss as she approached it.

Violet relaxed further now, sinking back into the bed. It seemed like she was in good hands here, even if she didn't understand what was going on with this place yet. Regardless, considering everything that had happened to her, Violet decided her questions could wait until after a short rest. She nodded to Dr. Wess, who was waiting patiently with a hand on the doorframe.

"Yeah, something to drink would be nice."

 

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