Log: David North & Laurie

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Laurie spends time helping North after his overdose.



Laurie was quiet as she sat beside North, outwardly reading a book, but also surreptitiously keeping an eye on how he was handling withdrawal. She'd talked to Jean about it when he'd first come in, noting that while she couldn't make herself into another addiction for him, she could at least make it slightly less taxing on his body to get over his current addiction.

The man was fiddling around with his iPad, trying to get it to stop directions when he turned it to read the document the ‘wrong’ side up, which really was the right side up. Finally he gave up and dropped it to his lap with a frustrated huff, shooting an email off to Doug – the fifth that hour – asking the younger man how to work the damned thing. Apple products. He never really understood them.

“Miss Collins, are you a fan of Steve Job’s ridiculously pretty but apparently not idiot proof gadgets?”

"I'm sorry to say that I'm more an Android kind of girl, Mr North," Laurie replied, glancing up from the book she'd been reading. It was one of the ones Kyle had suggested, and she had to admit that she was enjoying it quite a bit. "Apple is a little too hipster chic for me."

If it was a little hipster chic for her, then what was it to him? The German man resisted the urge to grumble, knowing from past experience how irksome a grumpy patient could be. Blanking the screen of the device, he shifted so he could look at Laurie without developing a crick on his neck, ignoring the way his aching body protested at the movement. “Would you explain to me how your power works?”

David was bored, but he was also honestly curious. And he was too aware of his body to not know that it had somehow started to wind down slightly from his withdrawal symptoms.

"It would take a great deal of time, possibly with the inclusion of charts and maybe some physical demonstrations to adequately explain," Laurie replied, marking the place in her book for later as she turned her full attention on David North. "A simplistic explanation is that my body releases pheromones that trick your body into believing certain triggers have been tripped and thus releasing the subsequent hormones in reaction to those triggers."

“And can control what hormones to trigger?”

"Yes," Laurie replied, pushing her chair around to face him more head on, hopefully making it easier for him to see her as well. "I don't have any actual insight into your body. No psychic x-ray, or whatever people would call it, so I can't always be one hundred percent sure but that's what training is for. We've found that there's only a few mutant abilities that react strangely with my power. Mostly it's people like Cammie, or Kyle, although there's always room to learn more. Genosha changed things though, I have to relearn things I already thought I'd learnt, it's difficult to know anything right now."

“That’s interesting,” the man replied, a thoughtful frown accompanying his headtilt as he regarded the young woman. It would be useful if he could trigger his adrenal gland without medicating himself. David tried to recall the file that he must have read on her once upon a time. But then gave it up when his aching head protested. “How do you control that? Thorough knowledge on the human body system?”

"Instinct, mostly. A lot of trial and error to figure out what I can and can't do. A lot of knowledge of the endocrine system as well," Laurie explained, giving him a thoughtful look as she tried to think about what it was she did, and what it felt like when she was doing it. "When I first manifested, I couldn't control it, or turn it off and the hormones only reflected whatever emotion I was feeling at the time. Now, I can turn it off, mostly. It never effected me though, I don't feel what I'm doing to other people. It's more just thinking about what I want to happen and then putting myself into a state of mind where I can sort of push."

“How do you relearn instinct?” Was the next question, the topic having clearly piqued the precognitive’s interest.

"Very slowly, and with a lot of practice and reward," Laurie replied, grinning at him. "Surely you've heard of Pavlov?"

“How could I not?” David chuckled, having been subject to the practical application the Russian man’s theories more than once. As had most people in life. “I see and concede your point.”

"So, would you like me to bring you some books next time?" Laurie asked after a moment of silence, glancing down to her own and the bookmark she'd left in it to keep her place. It wasn't that she didn't want to talk to David North, it was simply that she'd been in the middle of reading a particularly tense moment and she wanted to know what happened next. "I can offer young adult and adult fantasy or science fiction, or if your reading goes more in that direction, biographies or history novels. I've also got a variety of maths, science or medical text books but I doubt you'd find those very light reading."

The only kind of leisure reading David had been doing for most of his life was only done when he had assumed certain kinds of covers. “Actually, I would be interested to take a look at some of your easier medical textbooks. When you have the time to bring them down.” He glanced back down when his Blackberry screen lit up, and saw that the one-man IT department from his workplace had replied. “Please, don’t let this old man keep you from your reading.”

"I'll bring you some of my beginning biology text books down when I come back tomorrow," Laurie replied, opening her book back up. She wasn't going to protest North's offer to go back to her reading, she'd never been someone who minded silences, even when there were people in the room.