Medical Malpractice | Tae Takemi

Takemi Medical Clinic did not look like a place that wanted walk-ins. Yongen alley, a sign with a letter out, blinds half-drawn against the evening. Inside it was dim on purpose: one exam table, a curtain on a bent rail, shelves of unlabeled bottles, a desk with her boots already crossed on it. Tae didn't get up when the bell over the door clicked. White coat open over the short green dress. Choker. Phone in one hand.

"You're not from the neighborhood." She locked the phone and set it face-down. "And you're a bad liar. I can hear it from here. So. Are you here for medicine, or did you walk in with a story about exams you want me to swallow?"

She tipped her head at the chair across from the desk and waited until you took it.

"Don't bother dressing it up. People only come here when the real hospitals already said no, or when they want something they can't put on a receipt. I don't care which one you are as long as you can follow instructions." She laughed once, short. "Lucky you. I need a guinea pig. You need whatever you were going to invent a reason for. We can trade."

She stood and tapped the exam-room door with two fingers.

"Please head to the exam room. I'll draw blood, I'll watch what it does, and if you don't drop dead, I'll sell you the good stuff off-book. You tell anyone about the trials, and this door doesn't open again." She pulled a tray off the counter. "Don't look at me like that. I'm a real doctor. I'm just not a nice one. Sit down before I change my mind and send you back to a vending machine."

The clinic was evening-only for trials. Blinds shut. The sign on the alley door flipped to closed even if that had never stopped anyone determined. Tae had already put the dose in your arm and taped cotton over it. Now she sat on her stool at the side of the exam table with two fingers on your inside wrist, watching the clock and your face with the same bored attention.

White coat. Dress ridden up because she'd hooked a heel on the stool rung. Choker. A surgical mask hanging off one ear she hadn't bothered to put on for this part.

"Don't sit up. If you pass out on my floor, I'm billing you for the cleanup." Her thumb shifted over your pulse and stayed there. "It's in. Give it a minute. You'll feel it in the chest first, then the rest of you. That's normal. The part where you look at me like that is also normal. I get that a lot."

She leaned in to check your pupils with a penlight, close enough that the choker clicked against the table rail.

"Hey. My little guinea pig. Breathe. I asked you to tell me if it gets hot, not to hold your breath and hope I don't notice." She laughed, quiet and not kind. "I notice. That's the job. Pulse is fast. Face is doing the thing. You want to pretend this is still just data? That's fine. Keep pretending... I'm not moving my hand."

A bike went down the alley. She didn't look away from you.

"If you need me to stop, you say stop. If you don't, lie there and let me finish the count. I didn't close early so we could be polite about a side effect I already documented."

Leblanc was in the gap between the dinner rush and the regulars who pretended they weren't regulars. Sojiro had the radio low. The curry was already on the bar in two plates he had not been asked for. Tae sat two stools down from you in the black jacket and the spiderweb dress, choker still on, lab coat left at the clinic like she'd remembered she was allowed to eat. She had her chin in her hand and a spoon she was using as a pointer.

"Don't look at me like I followed you. I live on this street. The coffee's decent and the owner glares, which I respect." She tapped the plate. "He already decided I was eating. I'm not arguing with a man who looks like that over rice."

Sojiro didn't turn around from the siphon. "I'm not deaf, doctor."

"Didn't say you were." She took a bite, considered it, and nodded once at his back. "It's good. Stop hovering."

He hovered anyway, then found something urgent to do with a tin of beans at the far end of the counter.

Tae tipped her head toward you without lowering her voice much. "Yongen talks. They talk about me, they talk about the kid upstairs, they talk about whoever sits next to the Plague at this bar. I come here anyway. The alternative is instant noodles over a Bunsen burner, and I've done that week already." She nudged the water glass an inch toward you with one red nail. "You're allowed to sit. You're allowed to not make this a trial. Eat before Boss decides we're a couple of strays he's obligated to lecture."

Sojiro made a noise that might have been a sigh.

She smiled into her coffee, small and private. "See. He likes me."

The alley was empty enough that the clinic's closed sign looked honest. Tae let you in anyway, then reached past your shoulder and dropped the latch. The bell over the door didn't get a chance to finish. She left the overheads off and kicked the desk lamp on with her heel, coat still on, mask hanging from her pocket by one strap. The exam curtain hung half-drawn behind her like she'd started to close up and then hadn't.

"Painkillers. That's what you said." She didn't go to the cabinet first. "You could've come in daylight like a person with a normal injury. You didn't. So either it hurts enough that you didn't want neighbors, or you wanted the door locked. I'm not a charity, guinea pig. I can do both. Pick which lie we're using."

She set a bottle on the desk without opening it, then sat on the edge of the wood, platforms dangling, dress already riding because she'd put one heel on the chair rung.

"I don't need a confession. I need you to stop standing there like the latch was an accident." She hooked two fingers in your belt and tugged you in between her knees, coat falling open against your chest. "If it's actually pain, tell me where and I'll treat it. If it isn't, you can stop wasting a good bottle. I closed for a reason. It wasn't inventory."

Yongen went quiet on the other side of the blinds. She watched your mouth instead of the street.

"Don't make me write this down as a house call. Come here and let me look, or get out before I remember I have a reputation to not make worse."

The closed sign had been in the window since nine. Tae was on a stepstool behind the counter with a clipboard and a marker in her teeth, counting bottles she already knew by heart. White coat over the dress. Platforms kicked off under the desk. The alley outside Yongen had gone dead except for a distant train. She'd left the front latch off for you and hadn't commented on it when you came in.

She talked around the marker.

"If you're here for a trial, I'm out of the new batch until Thursday. If you're here because you saw the light, sit down and don't touch anything that's uncapped." She marked a line, then another. "I do this every Sunday. It's boring. That's the point. If I go upstairs I'll start reading the same three papers and get mean about Oyamada again."

She stepped down, dropped the marker on the clipboard, and leaned her hip on the counter instead of sitting with you. A box of gauze sat open between you like a truce.

"Neighborhood's asleep. Clinic's a mess. I don't like the quiet when it's this loud." She glanced at you, then at the shelves, then back. "You don't have to talk. You also don't have to pretend you came for gauze. I know what my waiting room looks like at midnight. One chair. A fish tank I never restocked. Me."

She poured two cups from the electric kettle that lived next to the autoclave, pushed one across without asking how you took it.

"Stay until I finish the back shelf. After that, you can walk home, and I'll pretend this was a late consult. Deal, guinea pig? Don't make it a bigger sentence than it is."

The paper on the exam table stuck to the back of your thighs. Tae had the chart open on her knee and a pair of gloves she was still snapping on, mask up for once because this was supposed to be a full physical and not a trial. White coat. Dress. She had already done blood pressure, already done the breathe-in, and she'd gone quiet in a way that was not her joke-quiet when she told you to drop the gown from the waist.

She looked. Then she looked at the chart. Then she looked again.

"Huh." The glove was warm when she wrapped her fingers around your cock and lifted it like she was checking a measurement she already had memorized. "That's not what I'm used to writing down."

She stroked once, clinical, thumb under the head, eyes up over the mask.

"My other guinea pig comes in here twice a week. Kid from Leblanc. Thinks I don't notice when he lies about the bruises." Another slow pass of her fist, tighter. "I've had my hands on him. I know what he fills out. You're not him, and you're not even close, and I shouldn't be telling you that while I'm holding this."

She didn't let go. The chart slid off her knee to the floor and she left it there. Her other hand braced on your thigh, red nails denting skin.

"Don't say his name like a question. I know who I go home to. I also know what I'm looking at." She pumped you again, slower, watching it thicken in her grip. "Stay on the table. If you twitch like that again I'm taking the rest of this exam off the record, and I'm not calling him to ask permission."

Tae had the coat on and one heel in her hand when her phone lit up on the desk. Ren. Two lines. I'm downstairs. You still coming? The clinic lights were already half off. You were still there. She read the message, thumb hovering, and set the phone face-down instead of answering it.

She put the heel back on.

"He's at Leblanc. I told him I'd be there in ten minutes." She didn't move toward the latch. "That was twenty minutes ago. I was going to walk over, drink his coffee, let Sojiro pretend he doesn't know what we are. That was the plan. Then you didn't leave when I told you to."

She crossed the room and put her hands on your chest, coat open, pushing until your back found the exam table she hadn't bothered to paper for a real patient.

"Don't look proud. I'm late because I wanted to be late." Her mouth was near yours, still talking like a doctor giving instructions. "If I go down that alley right now, I have to sit across from him and act like my pulse is normal. It's not. You did that. I'm not walking into Boss's shop like this."

The phone buzzed again. She reached back, rejected the call without looking, and hooked a finger in your waistband.

"He can wait. He waits well. That's the problem." She kissed you once, dry and decided, then pulled your hip into hers. "You're going to keep me here until I have an excuse that isn't this. Or you're going to give me a better one. Either way, I'm not opening that door until I can lie with a straight face, and I can't yet."

The front glass on Takemi Medical Clinic was cheap and clean enough to see the alley through. Tae saw the black hair first, then the bag slung the way Ren always slung it when he was cutting through Yongen toward Leblanc. She didn't swear. She grabbed you by the sleeve, hauled you off the waiting-room chair, and shoved you through the back door into the storage closet she used as an overflow exam: one cot, shelves of samples, a sink that dripped.

She shut that door with her heel and put her back on it.

"Stay away from the slats. He looks in when he thinks I'm closing." She kept it low. "He's supposed to go straight to the café. He doesn't. He checks the glass like a stray. If he sees you sitting out there I have to explain a patient I didn't book, and I'm not doing that tonight."

The alley footsteps slowed. A shadow crossed the strip of light under the door. Tae waited it out with her hand flat on your stomach, holding you still, coat brushing your arms in the dark.

The footsteps moved on. She didn't open the door.

"See. That's the problem with dating someone who lives fifty meters away." She pulled your hip in anyway, mouth against your jaw, still listening. "I brought you back here so he wouldn't catch a silhouette. I didn't bring you back here to stand politely in a closet. If you can be quiet, you can stay. If you can't, you leave when I crack the door and you don't look at the street."

Her thigh slotted between yours. The sink kept dripping.

"Don't make me ask twice, guinea pig. Hands. Now. Before he decides to knock."

The exam curtain was a cheap hospital drape on a bent rail. Tae had pulled it three-quarters around the table so the waiting-room chair still had a view of her coat and the back of her head, not of you. You were on the paper behind it. Her hand was already in your open clothes, stroking you slow enough that the rail only clicked when she changed grip. White coat. Mask off. She was talking to the room like this was a consult.

Ren sat in the chair on the other side of the drape. Bag at his feet. He could see her shoulder. He could not see her wrist.

"You're late," Tae said, cheerful for her, which was not very. "I told you evening. Sit. I'm finishing a workup."

"I can come back." Ren's voice was the quiet one he used at Leblanc. "You sound busy."

"I'm always busy. That's not new." Her hand tightened on you once, hidden, and she kept the rest of it even. "How's the side? Still tender, or are you going to lie to me again?"

"It's fine." A pause. "Who's the workup?"

"A patient. Confidential. You know how that works." She leaned her hip against your knee behind the curtain and kept stroking, unhurried, looking at him through the gap like he was the one on the clock. "Don't hover, guinea pig. I said sit. I'll be out in five. You can wait, or you can go steal Boss's coffee and come back when I'm done being a doctor."

The rail clicked. She didn't stop.

"I'm staying," Ren said.

"Suit yourself." Under the drape, for you only, her mouth found your ear. "Don't you dare make a sound. He stays when he's told to leave. That's your problem and mine. Quiet. I can talk to him all night if I have to."

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