O.S.

"No, you're not listening," Dr. Clementine had lost all patience, perhaps it was easier to do over the phone, but he did feel that the woman sobbing at him at the other end of the line was irretrievably stupid, hence his need to take control of the situation, "Your husband died because he'd routinely failed to update his firmware, we offer a reasonably priced firmware service at the clinic, or, as we always remind our customers, you can update at home if you connect to your wifi."

She blubbered something incomprehensible, then hung up, which was exactly as he had hoped, and, to be honest, he had half a mind just to put the phone down on her anyway.

He had two more calls to make before lunch, the first was to order his lunch, which he'd been daydreaming about during the preceding call, which is why he'd mispronounced the words 'heart bypass' as 'ham bypass' and 'insurance' as 'insandwich', she hadn't noticed, she was too busy crying.

The second call was to a notoriously difficult patient, Mr. Groan, who needed a new artificial rib cage.

"But why?" Groan bloated, "I feel like I only got it put in last month."

"It was three years ago," the good doctor corrected him, satisfied to be so readily armed with the facts.

"There's nothing wrong with it though, I'm in no pain..."

"But it's out of date, it's an old model, the CentriCage has moved on at least four generations since then, honestly it's embarrassing to think about you walking around with that old thing in there, not to mention dangerous."

"Dangerous? What do you mean?"

"Oh, those old models, liable to lock up after a few years, in some cases constricting upon the lungs..."

"Well, why the bloody hell did you put the thing in if that was the case?"

"State of the art at the time Mr. Groan, we wouldn't mess you around there, but all things have a life span, products need to be renewed."

"But I'm in good health, I've had my eyes, my brain, my heart since I was born, and they haven't failed me."

"Yet," added Dr. Clementine with a pleasingly theatrical air of menace. "Have you looked into our ocular replacement options, or our brain failsafes, guaranteed to extend functionality in the event of stroke, and we have a very good deal on artificial hearts at the moment, the PumpPerfect series comes with glowing customer testimonials..."

"No, I don't want you to replace anything else, I wish I had just torn up those gift tokens my son got me and never bought the pesky ribs in the first place. Now if you don't mind..."

"Mr. Groan, I do mind, I care very greatly about my patients and I must stress that the warranty on your ribs expires in two days and, you know how it is with these things, it'll be three days and that's when they malfunction."

"Malfunction?! They're ribs, not a bloody car engine, what could possibly... No, don't tell me, I don't want to know."

"A lot of people take something like their ribs for granted, they're surprisingly complex, you'd be impressed by the amount of research and development that goes into our upgrades, they're government approved and better than the real thing for a reason."

"How much?" there was a wearied, battled tone, very different to the strident Groan of earlier.
Clementine honestly hadn't anticipated this and stammered whilst he scrabbled for the appropriate paperwork.

"As an existing customer you do get a discounted price for upgrading, so, for the latest model it'd be £12,000 plus surgical fees, which we can discuss in more detail at your examination."

"But... That's a fortune... What about another model, not the latest one..."

"Oh, I'm legally unable to retail anything other than the most up to date..."

"Fine," Groan sighed.

Dr. Clementine smiled, impressed with himself, and heard the reassuring sound of the delivery drone dropping his ham sandwich off at reception.

Pay-Per-View

It's Friday, almost five, you clocked out of work in your head sometime just after lunch, a cheese and pickle baguette from the supermarket, some crisps you picked up to just try and fill the hole, a smoothie, a coffee, and a chocolate bar, you've gotta treat yourself, haven't you, and now you're listlessly scouring the internet for some form of distraction, because nobody can see your monitor, nobody knows whether you're actually doing any work or not, and - most likely - they're not doing any work either, so wouldn't grass you up if they saw you window shopping the internet for fear of retribution, I mean, who knows what you know about them.

There. Your eyes are drawn to an advert in the bottom right corner of a social media site, its dark black background giving way to a well lit photograph of a thin, emaciated body, translucent flesh bathed in an amber light that moves to teal, perhaps - you think - suggesting the passage from health to death, and you look into their eyes, cartoonishly weak and sunken, thick dark outline, might just be make-up to make the show look more attractive, they always dress up this premium stuff.

You check the listing, they're going in for an operation at 8pm, good slot, wonder who the surgeon is, hope it's Clementine, he knows how to work the insides for the camera, likes to step back, give you a moment to savour it, really drink up what's working on their innards, makes you itchy, like it's happening to you too, and he makes little observations, quips, you've got a t-shirt at home with "I've never seen that INSIDE a person before!" written on it, that was a funny one, just a stomach tightening but there was a miniature toy horse drifting around in there, maybe it had been there for years or maybe they just swallowed it for the broadcast, funny shit though, made you spit out your beer.

So, you think, looks like a last ditch operation, it's this one and then they're fucked, it's always nice booking a subscription to the post-op deterioration, and you get offered a cheaper rate if you watch to the end of the surgery, but this looks like a premium gig, might be costly and there's always a bunch of cheap streams of similar stuff, might not be as well produced but, y'know, ticks the boxes, right? Though that brain surgery you paid to watch last month, the stupid doctor kept moving right in front of the shot and nobody seemed to be monitoring the feed or the chat room, you were all-capsing your frustration, shit, everyone was and nobody did a damn thing. Still, was only a couple of quid, you pay for bronze you get bronze.

You click on the advert, proceed to the payment page and weigh it up, £70 for the night, that includes any pre and post operation stuff, broadcast beginning at 6pm, maybe you can convince some friends to come round and watch with you, split the cost or they can bring the beers, seems a bit cheeky charging so much if this might be their last operation, I mean, it's not like they're going to need the money to pay for future operations, right? In a way it feels more worthwhile to you to go and fund the smaller, grubbier streams because then at least you're helping them financially to go ahead and get more of the care they need, although they can always go to a bargain basement backstreet place, and you can watch pre-recorded uploads of that at Surgery Store, though there's something a bit tingly about watching it live.

Fuck it, you fill in your details, you pay for the night's stream and you resolve to yourself that you'll subscribe to the post-op stuff as well, because, chances are with this kind of condition they're not going to make it, and you've never watched anyone die on the stream before, that'd be something, and it's kind of nice to think that whatever comforts they might have, a nice bed and the like, they've got that thanks to your subscription fees, like you're looking out for them a bit.

It's pretty much half five now, might as well shut down and head home, get some snacks and text some people, your computer fades to black and you stand up, there's a pain in your stomach, but you don't want to think about it, this job doesn't pay so well and there's no health insurance, surgery costs are always rising, and you really don't want to have people watching some quack cut you up online, it's probably nothing, you'd know if it was something right, probably something you ate, that baguette seemed a bit stale, you hope it's just indigestion.

You hope it's just indigestion.