Log: Dr. Marcel and Laurie

[x-wallflower-.livejournal.com]

Laurie goes to find Dr. Marcel, the talk turns in a direction she hadn't been expecting, but is grateful for all the same.



Laurie fidgeted slightly with the shirt that clearly marked her as a Red-X volunteer, hoping it wasn't too wrinkled from being in her suitcase. The flight over with Crystal had gone well at least, and she'd been able to get more then enough sleep in order to be fresh for duty.
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"Dr. Marcel?" she called, knocking on the door of one of the treatment rooms.

She'd been told he would be here somewhere by one of the seemingly perpetually busy nurses at the front desk. She hadn't been terribly surprised by the air of organized rush, in a place where active mines still pocked the countryside you could almost guarantee there'd be incoming casualties.

The French doctor appeared after a few moments, a smile crossing his bearded face. "Mlle. Collins!" he cried heartily. "It is good to see you! Did you have the pleasant trip?"

Laurie grinned back, cheered by the doctor's enthusiastic greeting. "Very pleasant, even for economy class travel. We managed to get a seat near the doors, so we had a little more leg room then normal. How have you been?"

"I have been well." He gestured with the hand holding his cane. "It is good to be back in the saddle, as it were. And you? How is the arm?" He gestured at the arm that had been sliced up by Yvette a year before. "I trust it healed without difficulty?"

Laurie looked down at her arm, covered in the long sleeves of the Red-X shirt. It had indeed healed without difficulty, if not without emotional pain. She really needed to start spending a little more time with Yvette now that they were in the same place again. She'd left things for way too long, and even though they'd mostly been able to forgive each other, things hadn't been well with them for some time.

"It healed well, thanks to the fact that I had an excellent doctor." Laurie replied, smile still firmly in place despite that somewhat sad turn of her inner thoughts. "So, what exactly have you been doing here, doctor? Forge was saying something about checking out the new prosthetic techniques?"

"Come, sit down, have some coffee. We can talk shop as we have a break, oui?" The French doctor ushered her inside the treatment room and to a seat. From the pocket of his lab coat, he pulled a small Thermos. "French coffee," he explained. "My one small luxury. My wife sends me parcels of it, I think to remind me of what I am missing." When he opened the cap, the rich smell of very good coffee filled the room, increasing as he poured it into two small plastic cups. "The cups do not do it justice, I am afraid, but we must make do." Handing her one, he took a seat himself, lowering himself stiffly into the chair. "Oof. These old bones are not getting any younger," he said with a grimace, and then sipped his coffee. "So, to business, then. You want to know about our operation here?"

Laurie breathed in the smell of the coffee as she held her cup in both hands, glancing at the doctor over it's rim as she took a sip. She wasn't much of a coffee fan but she could appreciate a good cup of strong caffeine as much as the next person.

"Old schmold," Laurie said finally with a grin. "And yes please, it looks very efficient from what I've seen so far. Did you have many problems getting it all set up?"

"Well, we are fairly small - too small, really, given the demand. Most of our work is in rehabiltation - fitting of prosthetics, surgery to address any issues coming from a badly-healed wound, teaching people how to manage the loss of a limb..." Marcel made another expressive gesture with his free hand. "Fortunately, since the landmine clearing teams started their work, the number of new cases has reduced, but we still get far too many. Especially given the lack of funding. The government supports us in words, but there is not the money to spare from rebuilding the country as a whole."

"Do you get many donations?" Laurie asked, curious.

While she knew people were often generous given the chance, most of the time that went toward the immediate concerns of a disaster. Long term situations, like the aftermath of a conflict could be overlooked even by the most generous of people.

"Medicans sans Frontiers is a very popular organisation, but we are also a very wide-spread one. Unfortunately there are many places across the globe that need our services, many more urgently. That is why this publicity stunt, if you will. With the Red X involved, we hope that it will draw attention back to the plight of these people, and encourage donations. Not to mention the large amount of good you all can do while you are here."

"I'm just glad we could help, Dr. Marcel," Laurie replied sincerely. "It's a little more clear cut then the last relief attempt in a foreign country I was involved in."

He raised one greying, bushy eyebrow. "You were with the group that was caught up in Sri Lanka?" he asked, not without a degree of compassion. It was a hard situation for someone so young.

Laurie nodded her head, unable to answer right away as she swallowed the immediate need to diverge the conversation to some other topic. She hadn't really talked about Sri Lanka much, and still had trouble thinking of it at times.

"It was difficult, I'd never been in a situation like that where we couldn't save everyone. People were angry when we turned the away and I can't say I blamed them."

He made a sympathetic sort of noise and nodded, sipping his coffee. "I knew some fellow doctors who were in Rawanda," he replied. "I similar sort of situation. It is a very hard situation for someone who has devoted themselves to others to have to make such choices but sometimes such situations are bigger than us." He looked at her keenly. "In this kind of calling, it is something we learn to... well, not accept, because there is no accepting such a thing, but to learn to deal with it. It is hard, and sometimes takes many years. Some people do not at all."

"I had to take a break from my studies," Laurie admitted wryly. She wasn't sure but she didn't think Dr. Marcel would condemn her for needing time to think. "It's been a bit of a year, and there just wasn't any way I could continue with it all. But I still want to be a doctor, even so. It...I don't know, it feels more like a calling then a career sometimes. I think maybe you have to feel a need to do it, even when it gets horrific, otherwise you'd go insane trying to do all the work to really be good at it."

"You're absolutely right - it is more of a calling than a career, at least the type of medicine you seem to be looking at. And it takes not only dedication, but the ability to know when you have surpassed your limits, and to allow yourself to recover." Marcel smiled gently. "Sometimes that is more difficult to learn than organic chemistry."

"Does it get easier to know?" Laurie asked, leaning forward slightly in a completely unconscious gesture. Now that she'd begun, it seemed like she had so many questions, it was difficult to know where to start.

"Eventually. When you're as old as I am and it starts getting difficult to get out of bed?" he suggested with a chuckle. "When you are young, you believe you can change the world if you simply work hard enough. And it does take hard work, but it also takes smart work. Pick your battles. Know your resources and your limits. Learn to accept that there are some things you cannot do alone, not matter how much you know or how powerful you are as a person." He tapped the side of his nose. "And when you are my age, you can sit here, telling the young man or woman the very same thing."

"Good advice, now I just have to convince myself to follow it," Laurie said with a grin. "Now, enough about me, I'm meant to be here to help you. Is there anywhere in particular you need me to help most? I'd really like to get a look at some of the procedures you're using to help people get used to their prosthetics if possible, but I don't want to make anyone feel uncomfortable if they'd rather not have someone peeking in on them."

"Ah, the young, always so keen to get to work." Marcel finished his coffee and set the cup down. "Very well, let's put you to work, Mlle. Collins. I will give you the tour of our little facility, and then I will leave you in the very capable hands of our head nurse and she will assign you to any number of very useful tasks." Leaning on his cane, he pushed himself up from the chair with a small noise of effort, and made a small bow to Laurie. "Shall we?"

Laurie stood, placing her own finished cup of coffee on the good doctor's desk and nodded. "We shall. Lead on, Mac Duff."