The silence returned, thicker now that the glowing words had faded.
Harold sat on the stone bed, staring at the wall as if the system might blink back to life at any moment.
But nothing came.
No new instructions, no soothing assurances, no more practice projections.
He was alone.
"Just like that, huh?" Harold muttered. "Hold my hand for five minutes, then shove me out of the nest."
His voice echoed dully against the stone.
The enormity of it pressed down on him.
He had wanted to be a doctor for decades, yes—but how was he supposed to learn here?
No books.
No patients.
No sterile tools or sanitized rooms.
Just him, an alien world, and a handful of glowing words that had already gone quiet.
He rubbed his temples.
"Trial and error, they said. Sure. But what am I supposed to use?"
The thought burned in his mind.
He had watched doctors his entire life—watched them with instruments, gauze, sutures.
But Harold Greene, hospital janitor, had never once held any of those tools in real life.
Even if he had the skills, he had nothing to work with.
"Tools," he whispered. "I need tools."
The moment the word crossed his mind, something prickled at his palm.
He flinched, opening his hand.
There, resting against his fair skin, was a needle threaded with a thin, fraying string.
It shimmered faintly before settling into reality.
A rusty needle.
The thread stiff, discolored.
Harold blinked, then let out a sharp laugh.
"Well. That's one way to answer me."
His pulse quickened.
He thought of another word, carefully this time. Debridement.
With a faint shimmer, a pair of tweezers appeared in his other hand.
He stared at them, and his stomach twisted.
The metal was corroded, pitted with rust.
"Good God," he muttered. "If I used these on someone, I'd kill them with infection before I ever saved them."
The realization was sobering.
He tried again, thinking of Dressing.
In the air before him materialized a roll of bandages—yellowed, visibly soiled.
He recoiled, the smell faint but sour, like mold.
For a moment, Harold sat frozen.
Then, slowly, a grin spread across his face.
"So that's the catch. You'll give me the tools, but you won't make it easy."
The system hadn't lied.
No shortcuts.
No miracles.
He had what he had—a set of crude, dangerous instruments.
And if he wanted better, he would have to earn them, through hard work, and grit earning experience and leveling up his skills.
"Figures," Harold said, shaking his head. "My whole life has been the hard way. Why stop now?"
He went to set the tools on the desk, the needle clinking faintly against stone, but then it shimmered again before disappearing into the air.
Panicing a little he tried to call it forth again like before and the needle reappeared in his hand, but try to put it down or thing about putting it away and poof it would disappear again.
His thoughts spun.
What now?
He couldn't exactly march out into the alien world and announce he was open for business.
He had no real knowledge.
If a sentient being came to him with an injury, odds were he'd do more harm than good.
That thought gnawed at him.
He had dreamed for so long of saving lives.
The idea of botching someone's care through ignorance made bile rise in his throat.
"I need practice," he said aloud, pacing the small room. "Not on people. Not yet. Something else. Something I can learn on without risking a life."
His gaze slid back toward the narrow window slit.
Beyond it lay the fungal landscape, pulsing with bioluminescent veins, alive in ways he didn't understand.
There had to be creatures out there.
Insects.
Animals.
Something with flesh and blood.
Something he could test himself against.
The thought chilled him, but it also filled him with a grim determination.
He had cleaned up after surgeries for thirty years.
He had disposed of bloodied gauze, scrubbed down gurneys, and swept away the remnants of pain and triumph alike.
He had always been on the outside of medicine, watching, yearning.
Now he had been given the chance to step inside—but only if he was willing to get his hands dirty.
"Alright," Harold said firmly. "I'll find something. A beast, a pest, whatever this world throws at me. I'll practice on that before I touch a person."
His voice trembled as he said it, but he meant it.
He gathered the tools again, forcing himself to hold the rusty tweezers despite the revulsion that crawled through him.
They were heavy, crude, a far cry from the gleaming stainless steel instruments he had once admired from afar.
But they were his now.
The first stepping stones.
The system did not respond.
No congratulatory chime, no guiding words.
It had left him to wrestle with the reality on his own. And maybe that was the point.
Harold sat on the bed, clutching the needle and tweezers.
For a long time, he said nothing, only staring at his hands. Finally, he whispered to the silence:
"I wanted to be a doctor. Doctors don't get to choose the perfect circumstances. They work with what they have."
The words steadied him.
His pulse slowed.
His mind sharpened.
He sent the tools provided back to where they came from.
He stood, moving to the window, and stared again at the alien world outside.
The massive fungal towers loomed in the distance, their glow casting eerie shadows across the landscape.
Somewhere out there, life moved.
Somewhere out there was his first lesson, his first guinia pig if you will.
"I'll learn," Harold said, more firmly this time. "Even if it kills me."
He turned back to the empty room, already planning.
He would leave tomorrow.
He would search for something living, something small enough to risk on, but real enough to teach him.
He would bleed and sweat and fail if he had to.
And when the time came to face real patients—human or otherwise—he would be ready.
For the first time in years, Harold Greene felt the faintest spark of purpose warming his chest.
Rusty tools, soiled bandages, no knowledge but his own persistence.
It wasn't much.
But it was enough to begin.
He lay back on the stone bed, clutching the needle tight in his fist, and whispered one last promise into the dark:
"I won't waste this."
The room remained silent, but in the quiet, Harold thought he could almost feel the system watching.