“I’m addicted to love,” said the junkie.

 

“You should have chosen heroin instead,” said Mandy through the clinic’s glass door.

 

The neon glow of the junkie's veins pulsed pink. Blue neon lined his eyes, blurring them. His suit was saturated with nano grease, a symptom of withdrawal. The junky went to speak, but purple blazed through his teeth with electronic reverberation.

 

“Listen to me,” said Mandy, “We don’t have memory slides here. The neural net recovery unit opens at seven and—“

 

”I’m not here for a fix,” reverberated the junkie.

 

Mandy tore her stare from the glooping pink ooze coming from the port behind his ear and down to the blood darkening his suit.

 

”If you hurt yourself intentionally so you can get in here—“ began Mandy.

 

Although the glow of the junkie's veins pulsed along his skull and behind his eyes, he stood with his shoulders back and adjusted his bloodied sleeves. His white eyes scanned Mandy’s scrubs.

 

“Nurse Mandy, is it? You can call me John. I’ve been stabbed. I need your help.”

 

”We can’t treat junkies for their issues. Hospital policy. You should know that.”

 

”I do, Nurse Mandy. I know that a hospital treats a person for their issues. I’m not just a junkie.”

 

“You’re right. You’re also a criminal.”

 

John’s neon light pulsed, filling the dank ER ramp with pink. John’s eyes searched her again. He pointed at her hand.

 

“Was the divorce finalised? Or are you just recently separated?”

 

Mandy hid her ringless ring finger in a fist. But the pang of her cheating husband stopped her from another strong response.

 

John continued. “It feels like you’ve been ripped open. Doesn’t it? Like you’re bleeding somewhere in your chest. There’s no blood, but pain all the same.”

 

Tears welled in her as the stare of the junkie in the dark intensified.

 

“That’s something entirely different,” Mandy finally said. “My feelings of love are real. Yours is just overloaded data. All of that ‘high’ you get is just made up by injecting it into the side of your infected head.”

 

”What was his name, Mandy?” asked John.

 

The stillness of the junkie's soft pink expression looked strange to Mandy, especially for someone on the edge of death.

 

“His name was Liam,” said Mandy.

 

“Did you love him?” John asked.

 

”Not any more.”

 

”That must have hurt, to lose that love.”

 

”Yeah… Still does.”

 

”Prove it.”

 

Nurse Mandy pounded her fists on the glass door. “I don’t have anything to prove to you, firefly.”

 

”Yet I have something to prove to you,” said John. “I know you have to follow the law, but I’m still human, despite my unfortunate chosen augmentation. I’m asking for medical assistance. I’m not trying to trick you.”

 

”You’ll say anything to get some of the supplement slides," said Mandy, stepping away from the glass. "Especially if you’re addicted to old net emotion memories. I can’t trust you.”

 

“You can’t trust a man dying from love?” John asked.

 

Nurse Mandy shook her head to rid herself of her ex-husband's memory. She saw parts of him in John. He had always been steady under pressure, but this man dripping pink and purple ooze from his veins had a different level of poise.

 

“I’ll consider helping you if you tell me this: Who stabbed you and why?”

 

John’s facial expression changed, and then he looked over his shoulder.

 

“I have a love disk, grade 5, that I carry in my head. I wasn’t supposed to inject it, but I couldn't help it.”

 

John reached behind his bloodied ear and produced the small CDR. It glowed so very pinkly that Mandy could barely look at it. John inserted it again and then took a deep breath as a neon surged through his veins.

 

“So you are a thief, then,” she said.

 

“I bought it fair and square. But the dealers are pissed because it's worth a lot more.”

 

” What's on it?”

 

John hesitated. Neon blue started to drip from his eyes.

 

“Just as you have lost your ex-partner, so have I. I lost someone I loved. And this memory fragment in my head has so much that I can apply to her. I miss her. And I can’t help but add more slides.”

 

”You’re bastardising her memory by mixing it with other people,” said Mandy.

 

“You’re right,” said John. “But grief cannot be a crime. I suffer from loss that I can’t let go of. But I don’t want to die.”

 

John opened his coat to show the red blood on the side of his stomach.

 

“Please. All I’m asking for is to get stitched up. I promise I won’t even mention memory slides. Just please, help me.”

 

Mandy was torn between her oath to help and the law, but made her decision. She hit the button on the glass door, and it slid open.

 

“I’m going to catch hell from my supervisor for this,” she said. “But don’t make me handcuff you to the bed. And you’re not getting any memory slides. Don’t even ask. Clear?”

 

”Crystal,” said John.

 

Mandy led John to a hospital bed, where he began to disrobe.

 

“I’m sorry for your loss. Your relationship, I mean.”

 

Mandy took a deep breath but had no words.

 

“We have more in common than you think,” said John. He fell into bed and closed his eyes. “Thank you for helping me,” he said as Mandy left.

 

Out of all the junkies that Mandy had to deal with, this was the only person who had kept their cool and, somehow, through all that pain, was still cordial. It made her skin crawl in ways she couldn’t explain.

 

She marked his chart with ‘DNR’ and crossed off organ donor, then left, knowing he wouldn’t last the day.