Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.

It'd been the sort of forty minutes that makes one feel like they've aged more than all their previous birthdays combined.

Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Ti-

Uliop began retracking everything he'd seen so far, in a desperate bid to claw back time.

His chair wasn't comfy, and he wondered if that was deliberate torture or the curse of all pan-species chairs, there was a wicker basket hung from the top right corner, currently occupied by some forty Tilks.

He wondered if they hated it too, they looked the part.

The room was boring in the same way fish are wet, not out of any particular desire, but because that is the universal baseline for any waiting room. It was furnished with posters for diseases Uliop couldn't get, and issues that seemed Alien. There was a vague smell of beige to the room, which Uliop both accutely recognized, and couldn't adequetly relay to someone else even if given a thousand years.

Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.

A beep sounded from the old, cheap boad, reading out the name Uli-

Uliop suddenly was rapt with attention, salvation! Salvation at la-

Ulian Gheese.
Room 23.
Dr Yiz Frennen.
No 42465.

Uliop looked for salvation from the small stub he'd been given. 50256. Please be sequential, he thought, please for the love of god be seq-

Beep.

Darrian Item
Room 24
Dr Caz Chin
No 42466.

Uliop, was generally a patient man, for instance, he'd taken forty minutes to notice that patients were being admitted based on order of arrival. This however was the specific case.

The Chair next to him, the one that stuck out from the rows the cohort were sitting in, that he'd noticed with the kind of half alive thought patterns of the terminally bored, folded itself up and began walking towards Room 24.

He checked the clock, the inanimate torturer of the room.

2 Minutes had passed.

Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.

Uliop, like virtually everyone else with nothing to do, partook in the time honoured tradition of gawking at people different from you.

The whole alphabet was there, from Aranchion's clearly frustrated they weren't allowed to dangle from the celings, to Zetans, some of the only creatures in the galaxy slower, than this. Goddamn. Waiting. thought Uliop.

Uliop stretched his arms and yawned, he didn't need to do this, his species muscles existed as a massive network of myconids, if he wanted to, he could've stretched up the the ceiling and start tapping on it, but he felt like this silent rebellion might actually get someone to do something.

It didn't.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Beep.

Disto Karn
Room 18
Dr Fokken
No 42467

Nobody rose.

About a minute passed before the room erupted in silent miffdom, the room could be unified on two things, earnest pleas to be able to skip the next hour of their lives, and: "Oooh that's a bit rude", some of the room would need to communicate that via a series of abstract clicks or bioluminescence, but the point stood.

Beep.

Disto's name remained on the board, and Looks. Were being given, eventually falling on the character next to Uliop, he tapped him, and he collapsed onto the floor. For a brief moment, Uliop looked around, expecting that he was being made the butt of a joke, before deciding that would be utterly insane, he reached down to check for,well pulse wasn't a given, but Disto appeared to be a Karneegean, so it was in this case, the nurses filed out from the reception desk, Uliop had felt nothing, but a sharp, terrifying cold on the body.

36 - Disto Karn.