Red X: Jean-Paul and Candace

[x-cynosure.livejournal.com]

Candace attends to one more patient before leaving the wreck.



The last of the patients were being seen to, most of them stragglers who had wandered away from the crash site and been rounded up by the mutant squad. They were disoriented, shocky, and somewhat dehydrated, but with no serious injuries, thank God. They'd be out of here soon.

Candace noted a familiar profile out of the corner of her eye and glanced up to see the man who'd been acting as an airlift earlier standing at her side.

"I was hoping I would find you before you cleared out." He had a hand to his left bicep and looked, more than anything, embarrassed to be standing there.

The weary exhaustion on her face resolved itself into something that might have resembled amusement, although it was hard to tell as her medic gears started to turn again. "What did you do?" she asked without judgement, the straightforward, matter-of-fact tone back in her voice. "Here. Sit." She indicated the back of the firetruck they were standing next to.

He obeyed without a murmur, removing his hand to reveal a shallow gash running up the outside of his arm, the bloodstain hidden against the dark sleeve of his shirt. "One of the patients had a tussle with the EMTs back in the wreck. They were both about to fall over onto a sharp edge of the car. I got between them in time to get them righted, but the medic was heavier than he looked. I caught the corner of it." He shrugged. "I am up to date on my tetanus boosters, but if I do not get this looked at, I will wind up being lectured and possibly tossed into a lake. And as you are one of the medics unafraid of mutie cooties..." He trailed off with a sour little smile.

She rolled her eyes as she took his arm in her gloved hands, turning it gently to get a better look at the laceration. "Sorry about that. Some of the guys are idiots." She let go of his arm long enough to dig through her depleted supplies. "Do you mind if I cut the sleeve off, or at least cut it more so that I can clean it up?"

"Whatever you need. I do not wear anything to a...a rescue that I would mind losing." He watched impassively as she cut away the sleeve. "And most people are idiots. That is what makes meeting the few who are not so refreshing, regardless of circumstance." A pause. "I did not get your name during any of this."

"If there's one thing you learn in this job, it's that we all have the capacity to be idiots." She poured a measure of saline on the ground, then over the wound. "Underwood." She dabbed at his arm gently with a piece of gauze. "Candace. And if I'm not mistaken, you're Jean-Paul Beaubier." She shrugged at his slight grimace, the detached professionalism still present in her voice. "Grew up in a ski town in the Poconos. Got my start in the ski patrol, actually."

Jean-Paul's expression smoothed out a bit; the grimace hadn't had anything to do with sting of antiseptic. "I think your life may have taken a more predictable path. I got my start chopping vegetables in my father's kitchen."

"Oh yeah?" she asked, sparing him a glance as she turned to grab a clean, dry piece of gauze. "How'd you get into skiing?"

"He was concerned that I would be a teenage shut-in, so he made a point of getting me out of the house once a week. Skiing was the thing that stuck. After that, he had a hard time getting me back into the house before summer." These conversations were no longer odd, but they still felt incomplete, as if he had somehow skipped over telling important details, but it didn't matter, as the other party already knew them, at least in broad strokes. "And you. How did you end up not an idiot and still in New York?"

Candace smirked at that, taping the gauze down firmly. "I don't know that I'd say I ended up not an idiot, but thank you anyway." She shrugged. "Girl meets girl, girl falls in love, girl moves upstate. Girl finds out the girl she uprooted her life for isn't that into her." She glanced at him, mouth quirked in a wry grin. "Still think I'm not an idiot?"

It was impossible not to answer that grin in kind. "No, even if you were, you're not the biggest idiot in that story, and even if you were, you would not be the biggest idiot on this truck. Either way, you are still looking good from where I am sitting."

She laughed at that. "I should try and look at things from your perspective then, because it was pretty dumb from over here." Candace smoothed the tape down, then stepped back. "That should about do it, then, unless you know of anyone else who needs saving."

Jean-Paul glanced down at the dressing, resisting the automatic urge to pick at it. "So long as I can assure him that I have had it looked at, Nathan should let me live. Merci."

"No problem." She looked him in the eye. "Thanks for your help tonight. I don't want to think about what we would've done if we'd had to get those people out on our own." She smirked. "I owe you a beer."

"You are the one who kept them in one piece." A short laugh. "But if you insist...Harry's Hideaway in Westchester. I am usually there on Monday nights getting my ass kicked at pool."

She nodded. "I'll look you up some time."