Colliding Lives

Myla Embri rubbed her forehead and sighed. She was tired and she didn’t really feel like talking to anyone anymore. She looked out the window at the tropical jungle that was out there. She thought it beautiful but another exhaustion. The jungle constantly wanted to take back what they had cleared out and made a home in.

It wasn’t a very large town. She said town and not city because things were spaced out and they had a population of two thousand in this particular population center. With how aggressive the jungle was, you couldn’t even see the areas where they had housing set up around the city or town as they called it.

If you looked at it from above it looked like a large pocket of buildings and then lines that connected four smaller circular cleared areas around that, almost like the five of diamonds card.

Myla was a doctor here, pediatrics was her specialty first but she had doubled in inhuman anatomy as well. Wasn’t like they had a huge number of doctors with the lower population number. She and Carl had moved here for a new start.

It was rough for a while and Myla had left him for a bit prior to here. That in and of itself was a long and complicated story. It wasn’t like she had anywhere else to go. Seriously they had been together for seven years now, but he didn’t really want to get married.

Truthfully it hadn’t really bothered her all that much at first. She just needed to be with someone that loved her and cared for her. The ring just told others, she didn’t care, but sometimes she just wanted to strangle him. Was it really that hard to give something that said you were more? It felt like he didn't want to say they were official.

Carl could be so condescending and some days she had to remind herself why she was with him, but that was getting better as well. Probably because they had both been working overtime as of late and that kind of kept them from overloading on the other.

Carl said she was the problem now. That she had this standard that she wanted him to be and expected it of him when perfection wasn’t him. Which personally she thought was a load of crap.

First of all, she wasn't asking for perfection. Second, she was an empath thank you very much. She knew if she was pushing a person too much. She could read moods and even calm or anger with a thought.

That was another reason they moved too. Myla was a rare human psychic and people liked to take advantage of it. If one didn’t know, she could pretty much tell if they were lying depending on how they were feeling.

Regardless, she was standing here looking at the jungle enjoying her break alone at the moment. Lost in her own thoughts and what was bothering her. She didn’t want to talk with others, and her good friend Kate would just talk her ear off.

She loved her to death, but seriously sometimes you just wanted silence. She’d met Kate when she moved here two years ago, the two of them hit it off well. They had similar beliefs and felt like they had been friends forever. Myla looked down at her phone as a few memos came in about a couple of sicknesses on the rise. Tropical planet, go figure right?

The planet was warm, didn’t normally get below seventy degrees Fahrenheit and that was cold when it did. Mostly it stayed near eighty-eight where they were, but travel five hours south and it was a balmy ninety-five to a hundred in most places. Humidity was the killer.

“Myla there you are.” Came a voice as an older man stopped in the doorway. He was wearing a white doctor's coat. He was a bit more old-fashioned. Most here did wear a kind of hospital get-up, but he was always wearing something crisp and white, his pants also black. Always wore pants no matter if he was on duty or not.

“I’m on break,” Myla said. Guess she wasn't going to get to finish was she?

“Oh, well care to come back early? We have a Simi child who came in with a nasty rash and fever. Think she fell into a Giosa plant,” Simon said. She sighed, that was a very toxic plant.

“Guess I have to, who else can do it properly?” She asked with a smile, her deep blue eyes were nearly violet. Her skin was a very light tan, and only because she lived here or she was sure she’d be as white as a ghost.

Her hair was a caramel color and she was on the taller side. Simon on the other hand had greying brown hair and lighter blue eyes. Myla wished others would learn more about the different species that lived here so she wasn't the only doctor requested by other species. Her competency was now well known among the nonhuman community. That she was willing to fit in their customs and beliefs while actually understanding their physiologies.

“Well we could do it, but they asked for you. Apparently having a good rep with inhuman is better,” he said with a smile and she moved forward.

“Maybe we should get a doctor or two that isn’t human,” she commented and he shrugged. Didn't seem like he was going to take the suggestion seriously. Myla wanted to shake her head.

“Harder to find, we are the more prevalent species. For the most part,” he said and that couldn’t be disagreed with. Their technology had gained ground fast and now they were colonizing on other planets and had found a great many species besides their own. A good amount were just as intelligent as they were.

Here on this planet, they had maybe four different species of humanoid beings. Seventy-five percent of the population was human. The thing about being human though, seemed others like to take from them.

Something about human DNA was very moldable for other species or they liked to eat you. That was a problem too, but here they didn’t have the problem. Most of the time, most of the species here were calm and nonviolent. Well, there were prejudices of course. A few other species were mixed in but four types were the main ones.

“Ortego was learning, isn’t he up to par yet?” Myla asked.

“They wanted you,” Simon said not seeming to care and she sighed. Probably because she didn’t look down on others as less. Tended to happen a lot, and it wasn’t always humans looking down, but humans were the main reason a good number of them were here because their societies lacked the ability or rather technology. There were five other species in the universe that they knew of that were as, if not more, technologically advanced as humans.

Don’t think the rest were dumb or given the short end of the stick. Some might not have technology but they could do things that were beyond the ability of humans. Some had talents you’d rather not come across, some were stronger and faster. Evolution had taken a lot of twists and turns out here in the universe and species that had longer time to develop were kind of scary.

Depending on who and what you were, most that came here had left their home worlds because they needed a place to start over. Made her feel better, Myla wasn’t the only one struggling.

“Well, at least I feel loved,” Myla said and he smiled as he handed her the file he had and she looked it over. Her mind was on other things, and she really needed to talk with Carl.

It was great they moved someplace new, but she still didn’t feel closer to him. They had stopped their progress. He wasn’t being controlling or manipulative like before, for the most part. Still, they needed to work on themselves before they went back to their old ways.

Carl wasn’t abusive to her, and never laid a hand on her. She just turned thirty and frankly, she was just too tired to start over. Myla wasn’t looking, she had no need to look. She didn’t care to be disappointed again.

She was fine with Carl, sort of, yeah maybe there was something better and she was settling. She never complained to anyone else, because she knew it was her own fault if she wasn’t happy. No need to bitch to another about it.

“Room six,” Simon told her. She nodded and moved down the hall. Their building was two stories, not huge, but outfitted for the surgeries and whatnot that they would have to perform from time to time.

Anything that might be a special case would more than likely have to go off-site to get treatment. Still, they were rather up-to-date and not lacking. They were smaller, so their budget was better. Didn’t have but a few thousand to look out for in this settlement.

“Oh uh, Mirshi was in earlier. Asked for you, says the problem won’t go away,” Myla told Simon remembering a different patient and walking backward with a smile. He rolled his eyes.

“You and I both know he is a hypochondriac and it’s never going to go away.” Myla laughed and turned moving to room six. She knocked and then went in.

She smiled at the three that were sitting there, and they were taller slender people with rather dark skin, and light brown hair that was tight to their heads. Even the females, which was the small child and her mother.

The man she figured was the father. Their eyes were a copper color and had slits for pupils. A typical Simi look. Myla just moved forward to do her job. Not so hard when you were working with calm species. If Myla only knew it wasn't going to stay that way forever.