Jean and Artie (Backdated)

[x-jeangrey.livejournal.com]

Artie comes to get medical attention after being beaten up by Matt. He and Jean have a short talk.



Artie had tried to hold off on seeing Jean again. (Once in 24 hours was usually enough. Especially as she'd given them all a thorough once over when they got back.) He'd put ice on everything and, okay, sure, his forehead had bled like crazy for a while but it had stopped in the end. Ultimately, though, it was the fact that his ribs ached, a lot, that drove him down to the medlab. Just in case. He'd broken other bones but never his ribs and holy shit, this hurt and he didn't know if this was as bad as it got with bruising or not.

"Hey, Jean..." he said, letting the text float in the air inside the room as he knocked on the door.

Jean had been busy trying to help wrangle parents during most of the general problems that occurred on the journals, so while she finally managed to read them, it had only been a few minutes before during the start of her shift.

She sensed the pain radiating from Artie first before the saw him, and turned in her chair, immediately standing up.

"What happened?"

It was easy to guess, the question was who? He had a large list of enemies, currently.

He shrugged and winced. "I got punched in the face a lot?"

"I can see that," Jean said, motioning for him to follow her into the exam room section of the medlab.

"Who hit you?" she said. Despite what he said, despite what he did, he was still a patient and still her student.

"Please have a seat on the table and take your shirt off."

Artie would have shrugged if moving his upper body hadn't hurt so much. "does it matter?" Yeah, he was going to admit that he was so fucking tiny and with such useless powers that he could get the crap kicked out of him by the blind guy. He wriggled out of his shirt, taking small, shallow breaths and sat down on the table.

"It does to me," she said, getting a quick glance of the affected area. He was already starting to bruise.

"I don't condone violence here, regardless of how or why."

She stepped back, walking over to an equipment station nearby.

"Are you having any trouble breathing?"

"Fine, it was Matt. He's an asswipe and he started it, too. And yeah, it hurts when I breathe. Right there," Artie said, pointing to a spot on his side.

Jean wheeled out some equipment. Matt. She wasn't terribly surprised. His previous propensity for violence, coupled with what Artie had said to everyone probably set him off.

"I want you to lie on your stomach. It'll help with the breathing. It's going to hurt but I need to check and see if you may have fractured a rib," she said.

"We're going to need to do an ultrasound and draw some blood. And no cursing."

He complied with her. The ultrasound hurt. A lot and, as always, it was very hard to avoid even silent internal swearing around a telepath. ...ow.

Pulling the ultrasound probe away, Jean cleaned it with a wipe, then wiped away the excess gel on Artie's skin

"I'm sorry, we're not done. That was just to make sure you didn't puncture anything with the bone. I actually have to check with my hands for the fractures. This is going hurt, I'm sorry. I can give some pain medication to help for later, though," she said.

She fell silent a moment. "Are you ready? I can get you something to bite down on."

She took no pleasure in seeing Artie in pain, even though she wished he hadn't done what he did. Emotions often blurred one's perceptions of what was right to say and what was wrong to the point of blindness. She was no stranger to that, having been guilty so many times before. She sympathized in a way but she still did not cheer him on or agree that that was the way to go.

Artie swore silently as Jean poked and prodded him and contented himself with imagining Matt getting beaten with sticks. He didn't care that Jean could probably hear him. When she finally finished, he asked "so, how bad is it? it freaking hurts."

Jean slipped off her gloves. "I have good news and bad news. The good news is you'll live, the bad news is you have small fracture on one of your ribs. I'm going to give you some medication to help with the pain," she said.

"Please try not to put yourself in any more situations where someone wants to beat the crap out of you for at least the next month. You can sit up now."

Fractured ribs? He was going to fucking shank Matt. The asshole. "Okay, so, can I have my drugs now?" Artie asked, and then took a couple of slow, careful breaths as he pulled his shirt back on.

"I'll grab them for you. Don't take too much and try not to lift anything heavy. If your breathing worsens suddenly come to me right away," Jean said as she tossed the gloves in the trash.

Picking up her pen, she wrote something on her clipboard to put in his medical file. Everyone had one, and each injury or medical situation was carefully written down.

She glanced up at him.

"There are a lot of people who care about you. I know you don't think that now, and I know you're angry at the world right now...But we do," she said, putting her pen behind her ear.

"I'll be right back with the medication."

If you really cared, you wouldn't have died at Alkalai Lake. But he didn't say that. "Thanks. I know." Artie didn't shrug, but only because that would have hurt too much.

If I hadn't died, you wouldn't be here. Her response was soft,solemn, apologetic nonetheless.

Sorry. He was subdued as he thought it back at her, aware that he was kind of screwing things up today.

A couple of minutes passed and Jean returned with a couple of bottles of medication.

"Here you go. The instructions are on the bottle. Take it easy," she said, setting them on the table.

"Thanks. I'll let you know if it gets worse, okay?" Artie slid off the table and stood to leave. "Bye."

Jean nodded. "Okay," she said.

She glanced down, attention drawn to one of the pictures in Artie's file from the first time he'd arrived. He had been so small he was barely able to reach the kitchen counter. She smiled faintly at the memory, then looked back up.

"Bye."