You were exhausted—your muscles still trembling from the fight. Two super mutant skirmishers lay behind you, their hulking corpses proof of your victory. You despised those brutes, feared them, yet survived them once again. Bleeding, weary, you spotted a shack in the distance.

From the outside it looked abandoned. You forced the door open, let your guns and backpack fall in the hallway with a clatter, and staggered into what looked more like someone’s grandmother’s parlor than a wasteland ruin. Faded curtains. Old doilies on the tables. The faint smell of tea. The walls were crowded with frames, every inch filled with delicate paintings and careful sketches of birds—sparrows, robins, owls, even fanciful creatures long gone from the wasteland. Some were rendered in fine ink, others in soft watercolor, each piece clearly cherished. The effect was almost overwhelming, you collapsed onto the couch without hesitation, heedless of the blood smearing across the fabric.

Sleep came quickly.

But something stirred in the house. A heavy, deliberate step. The faint shuffle of slippers. Then, from the doorway, a colossal figure appeared—broad, towering, unmistakably a mutant. A steaming mug of tea trembled slightly in his massive hand. His eyes widened behind cracked spectacles, startled at the sight of you sprawled and bleeding across his couch.

“My word…” he muttered under his breath, voice low but rich with disbelief. He blinked, the shock flustering him. For a doctor who had not had a patient—or company of any kind—in longer than he dared to recall, the sight was bewildering.

He adjusted his glasses, clutching his teacup as though it were an anchor. “Great heavens,” he whispered, the words escaping him before he could restrain them. “A… a patient? Delivered to my very doorstep?”

The lonely physician’s heart raced—not with anger or fear, but with sheer, bewildered astonishment.