xp_logs | Sooraya and Cecilia: Volunteering at the food pantry

Sooraya and Cecilia volunteer at the food pantry.

"Can you hand me some of those packages of tomato sauce?" Sooraya looked up from the bags of pasta she was dividing over several boxes. "With the pasta and the sauce they at least have the start of a meal..."

"Oh, sure." Cecilia stared at the cardboard boxes in front of her. "Let me see..." She began pushing aside containers of dry goods until she managed to liberate two jars of pasta sauce from underneath a can of nuts and a deceptively heavy bag of rice. "Here." She turned, passing them to Sooraya. "I'm sure there's more somewhere."

"That would be good. Because all I can find here is..." Sooraya held up a glass jar and frowned at the label. "... Chicken Tonight. And I have about a dozen more of those. Though I guess they are not supplying the chicken to go with it. Wait..." She ducked under the table and pulled up another box. "Four more jars of pasta sauce."

"I feel like Chicken Tonight," Cecilia softly sang, as she turned to hand two more jars of sauce to her friend. "Oh God," she grimaced, "that dated me, didn't it?"

"I have seen that one on Youtube, so..." Sooraya glanced at her mischievously while dividing the sauce jars and grinned. "You know what is really missing though? That little dance they all do when they get their Chicken Tonight. Especially with their arms. Happen to know that by any chance as well?"

Cecilia laughed. "Don't push it, kid. Respect your elders and all that."

"Hmm, you'd have to show me your grey hairs first." Sooraya made a bit of a show of checking Cece's hair. "But what do we do with this Chicken Tonight? What would it taste good with if there is no chicken? Rice and veggies? Hmmm..."

"Noodles, probably," Cecilia pointed out. "And, I dunno, mushrooms or something. There are chicken-y vegetables. Zucchini, or something."

"Noodles we don't really have... I'll just divide them..." Sooraya started putting one of them in each box. "So what have you been up to lately? Lots to do in the medlab?"

"I guess? Feels like we've got more people around than we've ever had. Or maybe they're just more complicated." She shrugged as she picked two cans of olives out of a nearby box. "I dunno. Keeps me busy."

"Might be that everything is just much more complicated. People and things that happen to them." Sooraya commented. "Have you heard back from Honduras lately? From Dr. Dueñas maybe?"

"A little," Cecilia nodded. "She's doing okay, but she... well, we didn't make things easier for her for a while." She stared at the olives before turning and placing them in different containers. "Fortunately for her, I guess, Honduras's security officials have moved onto bigger problems now. The drug trade goes on, the bribes continue."

"Mixed blessings at best, I think. Is the Rave at least of the street though, even if not the all the other drugs? I would like to think we at least did some good in that area." Sooraya turned to some boxes of pancake flour and started to divide these of the different crates.

"How much good could we really do?" Cecilia shrugged, not bothering to turn to look at Sooraya. She'd made her ambivalence clear months ago, and even with the way things had played out — her role included — she couldn't help but stick with it. "We got bad men off the streets. They needed to be stopped. That much, we achieved."

"It's something at least." Sooraya paused her packing for a moment. "Too bad most of what we can do is 'something at least' at the moment. Just like this." She gestured at the boxes they were packing.

Cecilia felt guilty — she hadn't been trying to make everything seem so futile. "It's a start," she shrugged, turning to offer a small smile. "If Charles would have us know anything, it's that everything we do is part of a larger system. Applies to this and that."

"I know the professor is right, but sometimes it's hard to believe in people and to trust them. Sometimes it feels like nothing seems to change." Sooraya mused cynically. "Still, we have to keep trying."

"You have to celebrate the small victories," Cecilia replied. "That's — I mean, that's what he and Scott and whoever else told me when I was starting to figure my powers out. It's hard to deal with, sometimes, but then, like, I'm used to being able to cut somebody open and fix them. It's pretty gratifying, when it works."

Sooraya shook her head. "My work always has been about slow progress and celebrating the small victories. The small differences to a person... the small changes you managed to make. You'd guess I'd be used to it by now. Maybe I'd like something like cutting someone open and fixing someone at once sometimes."

"But those are small changes too, in a way. I mean, you can remove one person's tumors, but you can't get rid of cancer, you know?"

"I see what you mean." Sooraya nodded. "I'd still like to be able to fix someone at once though..."

"It has its benefits," Cecilia admitted with a small smile. "But the risks are..." She shrugged. Cecilia was always the kind of surgeon who preferred not to dwell too much on the unintended consequences of surgery. "Well, you know."

"I know... I know all too well."