Chapter Text
The Nurse and DNA
The hospital was too big. Too white. Too foreign.
The waiting room was awful. Just like last time.
Hard plastic benches, the smell of disinfectant and exhausted people.
Everyone had their own problems, but no one spoke aloud.
Christine huddled on the hard plastic bench, her younger brother fidgeting restlessly beside her, occasionally bumping her with his elbow. He was barely four, too young to understand why they were here. Why Mom was sick again.
Christine understood all too well.
Darren leaned against the wall across from them. Mom’s latest boyfriend. The father of one of her siblings. Or maybe two—it was hard to say.
He was barely thirty but looked older. His hair was disheveled, his eyes bloodshot, his fingers trembling slightly. If they had taken something, mixed something, overdone something—it didn’t matter.
Right now, Mom was somewhere behind those doors, and no one was telling them what would happen to her.
He didn’t look worried. Or sad. Or angry.
Just bored.
Occasionally, he rubbed his face, dark circles under his eyes. His fingers twitched slightly.
Christine recognized it.
She knew what it meant.
She had seen it before.
“When will they let Mom go?” she asked quietly.
Darren didn’t even lift his head. “Whenever they feel like it.”
Christine clenched her fists.
She didn’t want to be here. She didn’t want to wait.
She swung her legs in boredom. She wanted to go home.
She glanced around the room—nothing but a few holographic panels.
One was turned off, another flickered unpleasantly, and the third was playing an ad about better nutrition for seniors.
"New youth in every tablet!" promised the voice of a female android with an unnaturally bright smile.
And then, the image changed.
Two thin lines twisting around each other.
Smooth, rhythmic, in perfect harmony.
It was like a dance.
“Dad, what is that?”
Darren snapped his gaze up, his eyes piercing.
“Don’t call me that. How many times do I have to tell you?”
Christine flinched.
She kept looking at the two long strands, curling and turning in an endless loop.
Below them, words flickered:
“DNA – the building block of life.”
Christine moved her lips, whispering almost inaudibly.
DNA.
The building block of life.
It sounded like something important.
Like something big.
“We all have it inside us.”
Christine’s head jerked up. A nurse stood beside her, dressed in a blue uniform, dark hair pulled back into a ponytail.
She was smiling. Not condescendingly.Not tiredly.Just… normally.
“Even me?” Christine asked.
The nurse nodded. “Everyone. DNA is what makes us who we are.”
Christine frowned. “Does Mom have it too?”
“Yes. Everyone has DNA.”
Christine felt a strange relief. Then her brow furrowed again.
“But Mom is sick. Isn’t it broken?”
The nurse smiled gently and shook her head.
“No, DNA doesn’t just break. It doesn’t disappear. It’s always there.”
Christine froze. It doesn’t break?
Not like a padd that shatters when it falls?
Not like shoes that wear out?
Not like happiness that fades when Mom drinks and Darren yells?
“And does everyone have the same one?” she asked hesitantly.
The nurse shook her head. “No, everyone’s is a little different. But…” she paused for a moment before continuing.
“Everyone gets a piece from their mother and a piece from their father.”
Christine held her breath. From her father.
“So… even if I’ve never seen him, I have him inside me?”
The nurse nodded. Christine lowered her head.One thought kept spinning in her mind:
It doesn’t break. And it’s always there.
She stared at the DNA on the hologram. At something that never disappears.
The nurse reached into her pocket and pulled out something wrapped in shiny paper. A lollipop. Christine’s eyes widened.
It was triangular, transparent, deep blue-violet—unlike anything she had ever seen.
“I give these to good kids who wait nicely for their moms,” the nurse said with a smile, holding it out to her.
Christine took it carefully, almost reverently.
No one had ever given her anything in a hospital before. She suddenly felt something strange. Something warm. Something new.
She looked back at the holographic image of DNA, watching as the two strands kept twisting around each other.
Endlessly.
Flawlessly.