The long hard road ahead barely made it to her....she was bleeding out and had not gone any farther than beneath a trashy cliff.

Upon passing out there, she had been greeted by a doctor...the same one she had not seen in five years. She was seventeen now, and the doctor had said he wanted to adopt her, years ago. Now she was inside a building, and now, she guessed, he had gotten his wish.

"Why me bring....'rrr," she spoke.

He stirred tea in a pot next to her, and then fed her a spoonful after blowing it off. She downed it and moaned for more. He grinned as he told her not to choke, blew it off, and gave her more.

She already knew her plan. She would use her bottlecaps to purchase a custom leg. She would have to stay with him until he made it, but until he did, she was sure he would not mind...she just wondered, "Sir, how did you know I was still out there?" Pain choked her last two words into a tiny squeak.

He infused a syringe with more painkiller, and then with it infused her blood. "

"I knew you were still out there. I saw you sometimes, passing by. I tried to, anyway. It wasn't easy for me to visit; and if it went out of my way, I didn't come. But today I saw you, and I just knew you needed me. I sat out and watched you, and wondered if you were safe to come by. I knew you had been on hard times and could have possibly ended me right there for my stuff..." He pressed a cold rag to her head after retracting it from purified water.

"Why would you think I'd do that, sir?" He checked her pulse and looked at her with mahogany eyes, his coffee hair not yet frizzy from the carrying and caring and maybe even worrying he had done.

"Because there are people that do that. These hard times gets someone like that."

As he wrote down on a clipboard, on perfectly good looking paper, how well Sanya looked, she guessed, she now had to ask. He had everything a nomad could have possibly wanted. This water was pure because she could smell the freshness. "Doc...why do you have all these things?"

The doctor sat next to her knee. "Because I need it to help the common public -"

"But you aren't so common." The word put a thought in her head.

"Uh." The doctor monitored her, she could guess pale, appearance with his eyes. "N-no, I'm not."

"How?" Sanya rose and squeezed his sleeves. Her pulse sped.

"B-because I...'m, I came...look, it's a long story." He took her hands off him and scooted himself up even more, approaching a more relaxed countenance. "So I come from a city. It's named Megaton."

"Megaton?!" Her eyes lit up, and her mouth twisted into a snarl...lip-biting and everything.

"Yes. There, there's supplies that I can use. Caravan traders. Markets. And robots. There's things....that..." he cut off, holding his shoulders and chinning his face away.

"DOC!" She said, globes of clear filling her eyes. "Why didn't you tell me?"

He moved his glasses from his face to the torn, PreWar quilt covering her. "I wanted to see...something I've never seen."

She pressed her hands into her face and cried.

The light filtering through the windows was extremely calming to the scene, however, since it was a change: for her, to have a filter of blinds for light and for him, to have someone else to share the intimacy of light with...with someone else other than a patient.

"I've lived in turmoil," shook her voice, "and only once did you ever try to help me."

The man sat in silence before saying one thing. "I commend you. I hope you don't mind your late arrival."

"Hm?" She raised her head, bulbous eyes looking at him fully, now.

"You're here in Megaton."

"Really?"

"Yes. I decided to carry you here, myself...then, when I was unafraid, strapped you unconscious to my saddle. I was happy when you made it here, unfallen and unscathed. I told you, there are people out here..." he began to unpack one of his bags near the bed. "Welcome home. I hope you feel better. I won't charge you caps, yet."

It felt weird. She wanted to get mad that he had never paid attention enough to let her out of that lifestyle until now. Now she was hurt and unable to turn back. But she didn't even know what a city was. Her mom had told her it was safe here, well there, at the swamp. And she had always obeyed. There was other things her mom told her that she would obey.

The man started filling his space back up. "What are those things?" She mumbled, feeding herself again eventually via the spoon the doctor had settled down.

"Trinkets for sale....I don't just sell medicine y'know, and neither do I bring all of it with me." He opened a drawer he had not touched. Oddly-machinated tools sat in there. "Stimpacks, Buffout, even stuff that isn't supposed to be there. But don't go telling all of Megaton I'm its drug supplier. I only give them the medicine."

He meant drugs. "So you take the drugs yourself?"

The doctor jumped, as if she was not to know what drugs were and it surprised him. "No. I actually don't. My clients sometimes have special needs. I help them survive."

"Of course you don't mean how you drugged me up," Sanya began moving her knee...or once again, what was left of it, because it was only instinct when she tried to sit up.

The doctor rolled up his moon-white sleeves: the moon wa s sometimes yellow and that described his sleeves perfectly. "That, my dear, is none of your business."