Day One: Fresh Start
All he could smell was death.
From the moment he stepped out of the car, he could smell it. The stale, almost sweet stench of decaying bodies. They were probably underground, from what he could infer from the soft overtones of soil and cedar wood, but it bothered him nonetheless. He felt like there was a type of filthiness on the air, coating his airway with the writhing stench. By the time he got his bags out of the trunk of his car, he was cursing his hypersensitive sense of smell. Stupid, stupid, he scowled, roughly pulling the heavy bags up off of the ground and trudging angrily toward the door. The smell bothered him. It reminded him of things he didn't want to be reminded of.
He flicked on the light in his new apartment and was greeted by sterile white walls and grey anti-static floors like that found in the many hospitals of the city. There was one square deep-set window on the north wall, and straight ahead from the door was a small kitchen. There were some simple outdated appliances laying on the counters of the kitchen with their cords wrapped around them. The place hadn't been touched in months, but it seemed to be immaculate. Perhaps staying here wouldn't be such a problem, after all.
He dropped his luggage to the floor with a hard thud. He wasn't too concerned about anything that was in them. He'd left all of his equipment at home, save for the few things he had in the small backpack slung over his shoulder. The bedroom was to the far right of the living-room-slash-entryway area. It was small, but it would do. It was the only part of the apartment that had carpeting, and Alexander frowned at this. It was the same sterile white as the walls, but there were track marks that led from the bed to the bathroom, and to the door. He would have to fix that soon enough. The bed itself was barely that. There was no bed frame or box springs, just a mattress laying on the floor. This, he didn't mind so much. He gingerly set his equipment on the bedside table, then flopped onto the bed. It felt nice to actually lay down after the past twelve hours of driving. The death-stench wasn't quite as apparent from inside the apartment. That was something he could get along with.
His job started at seven in the morning, two days from now. He had gotten a full-time job in the emergency room at a hospital down the road. He usually didn't like working with people, but hopefully this job would get him over his antisocial habits. This particular hospital was the one where most of the critical patients and victims of violence ended up. There wasn't so much of the usual, "I have a bellyache, gimme pain meds" bullshit here as there was in other hospitals. Granted, it wasn't the prettiest thing to look at, but the care was exceptional. It didn't really matter that it looked like an awful clinic from the 80's, as long as the care wasn't as primitive as the architecture and colour schemes, he didn't mind.
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