Krakow the free city.
Or so it's been said....
Polish soldiers on almost every street corner, at least in the inner city areas, technically act as both the police and garrison for the eighty thousand or so people living within the minefields, barbed wire, tank traps and armed patrols. A huge population compared with the rest of the battered country, but just a fraction of the half a million who called it him just four short years before.

Every man, woman and child knows of entire families that have perished during the military assaults, nuclear exchanges, famines, epidemics, marauders, and numerous other natural and man-made disasters. Many of those families were their own...

With the drastic reduction of population, buildings have become uninhabited - entire suburbs abandoned to the ravages of weather, looting and squatters. Even in the inner city buildings are run down and some in danger of collapse. With the destruction of the country, or more accurately the entire world, there just isn't the resources of people and materials available to keep anything maintained without great expense.

The two of you, thrown together in the aftermath of the 5th infantry divisions destruction, could consider yourselves amongst the lucky. In the past two weeks you've gained access to Krakow (unlike thousands of refugees on the other side of those mines, wire and machineguns) and been fortunately enough to find yourselves shelter in a deserted shop. It cost you your truck though - bribes to the ORMO to begin with followed by the necessary purchase of food and equipment to set yourselves up in business.

Skills such as yours are in extremely short supply. Many doctors sucumbed to the plagues that tore through Europe, skill tradesmen drafted, conscripted or just plain kidnapped to serve in either the army or the various petty warlords that have sprung up in the past year. And so it's been relatively easy to establish your joint medical and mechanical shop.

Elena skims through her supplies and takes a seat on a nearby stool.
Leaning on the wall she lets the events that led her to this mess pass before her eyes.
They were lucky, Luke and her. Not only did they survive the terribly failed attack carried out by their units but also made it to one of the last functioning cities within Poland or maybe within the whole world. Life wasn't as it used to be before the war but at least inside Krakow it returned to some form of normality and her skills were valued pretty high in the aftermath of all this tragedy enabling her to lead a simple but endurable life.
She tried to repress her feelings about not knowing what had happened to her family for quite a while now but since she wasn't in immediate danger anymore they started to emerge again.
A single teardrop runs down her cheek when she fails to keep her countenance for a second, quickly whiped off when she hears someone entering the shop.

(OOC: I hope someone's entering now :p)

The small bell Luke had rigged up on the door chimes softly. A burst of cold air shoots into your small front room is the door is pushed wide. Autumn is well on it's way it seems.
At first it's hard to tell who it is that's in need of your services, so heavily bundled in salvaged coats are they. The door swings shut under the power of perhaps one of the very last prewar automatic closers anywhere in Poland and the person divests themselves of their outer layer. A moment later and the very heavily pregnant form of a teenage girl staggers forward another step, muttering incomprehensibly...

Sticking his head around the door to the front room, Luke had casually clutched the long-bodied Remington against the wall, out of view of the new arrivals. A wary expression screwed-up his dark featured face beneath a wooly watchman's cap.

"What's up, Elena?" he asks, in a tone that a bouncer might have used if inquiring as to whether or not there was a problem.

waving Luke's question aside Elena mutters "I'm OK" and approaches the young woman smiling, pushing her gently towards the gurney.
"Please lay down" she tells her in russian pointing towards it. "Does it hurt?" she asks while auscultating the girls womb trying to reassure the girl with a warm smile.

The girl looks at Elena blankly as her tongue stumbles through what she hopes is vaguely understandable Russian. The physical approach is easy enough to understand and the girl allows herself to be guided to the makeshift gurney.
The dark smudges underneath her eyes reveal as much as her bony body - she is exhausted and probably starving. The rags she wears indicate she's most likely been living on the streets, begging and stealing what little food she could find to support both herself and her unborn child.

Elena's expert hands quickly discover that malnutrition isn't the girls only concern - she's in the early stages of labour...

OOC: Language is likely to be a bit of a problem - she doesn't appear to speak either English, Russian (although it's hard to tell with Elena's botch roll) or any other language yet tried.

Luke withdraws into the back, making sure to keep the shotgun out of line-of-sight. He carefully stands it against the wall around the corner before returning to the room to help Elena with her new patient.