Quentin, Cecilia, and Clarice, Saturday
Jan. 6th, 2018 12:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xp_erverse posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
xp_logsQuentin has a problem of a personal nature and does nothing to endear himself to his caretakers.
A loud belch accompanied the ding of the elevator when the doors opened to the infirmary. Quentin stepped out—shambled was more like it—and scanned the hallway for the closest open office. If he still had telepathy then he could have seen who the lucky medical professional was before he stumbled across their threshold. He probably would have turned around. But he made too grand an entrance to run away from, so he was stuck with Doctor Reyes.
"It hurts when I pee." That was one way to say hello, how are you.
"That's a problem." Cecilia didn't stop typing as she looked up from her computer to acknowledge Quentin's presence for the briefest of seconds. She finished making a few more notes on another person's chart before pushing her stool away and standing. "Do you have any reason to believe you've been exposed to a sexually transmitted infection?" It was overly formal, considering it was an obvious question with an obvious answer. She nodded to an empty chair and turned around to grab a pair of gloves.
Quentin plopped down onto the seat, and gripped the arms so he wouldn't fall over in a drunken heap. "I have a lot of reasons, I just don't know their names. One of them was probably Chad. There's always a Chad. Or a Brent. What a bunch of dumb names."
"You're drunk," Cecilia said, more an observation than a reproach of any kind. She suppressed her instinct to look at her watch, lest Quentin think of it as a judgment. As if they weren't already on thin enough ice. "Chads and Brents can usually afford condoms. Truvada's not protecting you against everything."
"I'm not putting that poison in my body," Quentin responded, scrunching his face at the mere suggestion of administering any pharmaceuticals. "Look, sometimes the club's dark and you can't see if he's got protection. Things happen. No big deal. Pregnancy is the worst STD and I don't gotta worry about that. So feh."
"You shouldn't be having unprotected sex," Cecilia said flatly. "It's not just AIDS, which is no joke, advances in medicine or not. Syphilis is back, thanks to the heroin resurgence. Chlamydia's not much fun." She moved toward Quentin with a bottle of water she'd grabbed from the fridge. "Here."
Quentin waved away the water, stood up, stumbled, and began pacing around the room, his nerves forbidding him from remaining still for more than a couple seconds. "Look, just give me something now or I'll kill myself again and make another new AIDS-free body. Don't make a big deal out of this dumb shit."
"I need you to pee in a cup," Cecilia crossed her arms, "so we can find out what you've contracted in this world of yours where you can cheat death once and somehow manage to do it over and over again." She watched him with a cool detachment that didn't betray the anger that Quentin always seemed to provoke her. "Then I need to look at your genitals to figure out if there's anything else going on down there you haven't noticed because you're clearly under the influence of something, and if you agree to an HIV test — which you clearly should — I need to take blood. Which is what any doctor you go to about this is going to tell you. So sit down."
"Girl, I didn't know you're into water sports. Now you're speakin' my language." He laughed at her unimpressed expression and ran a hand along the wall as he moseyed back her way. "Do all those degrees, like, suck the life out of you? Don't be so serious all the time. God. Fuckin' smile for once."
"Excuse you." Cecilia's brow furrowed. "I take my job seriously, because I'm a professional who spent a lot of years training to get where she did. Which was not, by the way, an STD test for someone whose response to an existential crisis is excessive drinking and dangerous sexual behavior that puts his partners at risk."
That made Quentin stop midstep, like someone pressed the pause button on him. He stood there, frozen, Cecilia's final few words battling through his inebriation to be understood and accepted. They repeated in his head over and over again. Puts his partners at risk. Puts his partners at risk. Puts his partners at risk. Not Quentin himself. She accused him of endangering other people. "I-I'm not that selfish," he protested.
"I'm sure you're not." She wasn't entirely, but recent events were at least pushing the needle in Quentin's favor, and so she did her best to sound reassuring. "You sacrificed yourself for someone else, which is more noble or admirable than — well, it's pretty noble and admirable. But not everyone has access to superior medical care and nine lives — and even you can't be sure that you've got more than two."
It look for a moment like Quentin would relent, accept the advice, and be a good patient. Instead, his expression darkened, the cosmic remote control pressing play to resume everything as exactly before the pause. He sneered. "If they can't be 'sponsible for themselves then I can't be for 'em. Just take my pee and give me the pills so I can go."
"Are you —" Cecilia let out an exasperated sigh that was just shy of being unprofessional. "Let me finish doing my due diligence. You are running the risk of contracting a terrible illness, and it's naive and foolish to think getting a second chance at life gives you a guarantee for a third. And some part of you knows that." A beat before she pulled her phone out. "Let me get my phlebotomist." She scrolled before dashing out a text.
Where are you? I need you to get urine and blood samples from a fairly uncooperative patient for an STD panel.
"Here," Clarice called from her office, striding over instead of texting back. "What's....oh. You," she leaned against the doorway, phone in hand. "On a scale of minor annoyance to restraints, how uncooperative?" She asked, gleefully. She liked uncooperative when they were Quentin. He was fun.
“The sample’s not going to be the problem. The lecture on sexual heath that comes with it is proving to be a problem.”
Quentin poked at the red sharps disposal box and scoffed. "Skip the lecture. I'm not gonna remember it when I sober up, anyway. If I sober up," he amended, mentally running through his plans for the rest of the day.
"Ah," Clarice nodded knowingly. "No problem, I got just the thing!" she teleported away, returning a minute or so later, "Clearly, if you can't use it responsibly, then you shouldn't be using it," she explained, holding up a sealed package labeled 'CB6000.'
"I don't want to know how you got that so quickly," Quentin said, turning up his nose at Clarice's gift. "At least it's new and you're not offering something second-hand. Not into that whole chastity kink, anyway. Now can you ladies please stop this whatever it is and just be good little doctors and take my blood and look at my dick?"
"Clarice'll take it from here." Cecilia looked up from a chart where she was scribbling notes. "You should abstain from sexual conduct until we know what you've got. Not that—" She paused, looked as if she was about to say something more, and just shrugged. "And use protection next time." She glanced at Clarice. "You good?"
Sighing, Clarice pointed to a padded exam table, "Clothes off," she instructed, tugging the privacy curtain and gloving up after she set out what she needed, "But seriously, fucking yourself up is one messed up thing, fucking others over for no reason than your own self-hatred? Not on. I get you probably don't want to see someone about it either, but....you gotta find a way to handle your shit."
"Did I ask for your opinion?" Quentin was already in his briefs by the time he asked his rhetorical question. He took those off, too, and carefully folded them before turning back to Clarice so she could examine him. "Unless you've suddeny manifested reality warping as a secondary mutation and can alter just -- everything -- keep it to yourself. And if that is your power then I have, like, a whole list of requests."
"Please," Clarice rolled her eyes, snapping on a pair of gloves, "don't delude yourself into thinking that you're the only one that has gone through crap. Everyone gets hurt. It's how you deal with it that sets you apart," as she spoke, she examined him as quickly and clinically as possible, "You gotta go pee in a cup and I'll get you some prescriptions once the results come back. Maybe an hour?" Likely less.
"What's the verdict? It's not going to fall off, right?" Quentin took the cup and examined it suspiciously. "I never realized how gross this actually is," he mused, tracing a finger down the volume marks. "It's pee. You have a gross job."
"Pee's not as bad as other stuff," Clarice shrugged, pointing towards the bathroom door. "Go fill it. And I wear gloves. But it's good to know that's not a kink for you."
Quentin obediently marched — or wobbled, more accurately — to the bathroom, past the privacy curtain without any concern for passersby who might catch a glimpse. When he returned a couple minutes later, the cup was filled well past the suggested fill line. "Fuckin' broke the seal," he lamented, handing it to Clarice.
"Better that than being backed up," Clarice took the specimen jar in a gloved hand and set it on the tray before stripping the gloves off, tossing them and then tossing Quentin the hand-sanitizer. "So. Gimme an hour or so, I'll get you your results. In the mean time, you should go make cookies. Preferably snickerdoodle."
"I only have cannabutter. I can't believe you, a medical professional, are encouraging me to get even higher." Quentin tssked and shook his head as he got dressed again. "You hear this?" he called to Cecilia. "Shameful behavior by your staff. You should fire her."
"Yeah? Well, you should wear condoms and avoid being part of a public health crisis," the doctor called back. "But I guess advice isn't worth much around here, is it?"
A loud belch accompanied the ding of the elevator when the doors opened to the infirmary. Quentin stepped out—shambled was more like it—and scanned the hallway for the closest open office. If he still had telepathy then he could have seen who the lucky medical professional was before he stumbled across their threshold. He probably would have turned around. But he made too grand an entrance to run away from, so he was stuck with Doctor Reyes.
"It hurts when I pee." That was one way to say hello, how are you.
"That's a problem." Cecilia didn't stop typing as she looked up from her computer to acknowledge Quentin's presence for the briefest of seconds. She finished making a few more notes on another person's chart before pushing her stool away and standing. "Do you have any reason to believe you've been exposed to a sexually transmitted infection?" It was overly formal, considering it was an obvious question with an obvious answer. She nodded to an empty chair and turned around to grab a pair of gloves.
Quentin plopped down onto the seat, and gripped the arms so he wouldn't fall over in a drunken heap. "I have a lot of reasons, I just don't know their names. One of them was probably Chad. There's always a Chad. Or a Brent. What a bunch of dumb names."
"You're drunk," Cecilia said, more an observation than a reproach of any kind. She suppressed her instinct to look at her watch, lest Quentin think of it as a judgment. As if they weren't already on thin enough ice. "Chads and Brents can usually afford condoms. Truvada's not protecting you against everything."
"I'm not putting that poison in my body," Quentin responded, scrunching his face at the mere suggestion of administering any pharmaceuticals. "Look, sometimes the club's dark and you can't see if he's got protection. Things happen. No big deal. Pregnancy is the worst STD and I don't gotta worry about that. So feh."
"You shouldn't be having unprotected sex," Cecilia said flatly. "It's not just AIDS, which is no joke, advances in medicine or not. Syphilis is back, thanks to the heroin resurgence. Chlamydia's not much fun." She moved toward Quentin with a bottle of water she'd grabbed from the fridge. "Here."
Quentin waved away the water, stood up, stumbled, and began pacing around the room, his nerves forbidding him from remaining still for more than a couple seconds. "Look, just give me something now or I'll kill myself again and make another new AIDS-free body. Don't make a big deal out of this dumb shit."
"I need you to pee in a cup," Cecilia crossed her arms, "so we can find out what you've contracted in this world of yours where you can cheat death once and somehow manage to do it over and over again." She watched him with a cool detachment that didn't betray the anger that Quentin always seemed to provoke her. "Then I need to look at your genitals to figure out if there's anything else going on down there you haven't noticed because you're clearly under the influence of something, and if you agree to an HIV test — which you clearly should — I need to take blood. Which is what any doctor you go to about this is going to tell you. So sit down."
"Girl, I didn't know you're into water sports. Now you're speakin' my language." He laughed at her unimpressed expression and ran a hand along the wall as he moseyed back her way. "Do all those degrees, like, suck the life out of you? Don't be so serious all the time. God. Fuckin' smile for once."
"Excuse you." Cecilia's brow furrowed. "I take my job seriously, because I'm a professional who spent a lot of years training to get where she did. Which was not, by the way, an STD test for someone whose response to an existential crisis is excessive drinking and dangerous sexual behavior that puts his partners at risk."
That made Quentin stop midstep, like someone pressed the pause button on him. He stood there, frozen, Cecilia's final few words battling through his inebriation to be understood and accepted. They repeated in his head over and over again. Puts his partners at risk. Puts his partners at risk. Puts his partners at risk. Not Quentin himself. She accused him of endangering other people. "I-I'm not that selfish," he protested.
"I'm sure you're not." She wasn't entirely, but recent events were at least pushing the needle in Quentin's favor, and so she did her best to sound reassuring. "You sacrificed yourself for someone else, which is more noble or admirable than — well, it's pretty noble and admirable. But not everyone has access to superior medical care and nine lives — and even you can't be sure that you've got more than two."
It look for a moment like Quentin would relent, accept the advice, and be a good patient. Instead, his expression darkened, the cosmic remote control pressing play to resume everything as exactly before the pause. He sneered. "If they can't be 'sponsible for themselves then I can't be for 'em. Just take my pee and give me the pills so I can go."
"Are you —" Cecilia let out an exasperated sigh that was just shy of being unprofessional. "Let me finish doing my due diligence. You are running the risk of contracting a terrible illness, and it's naive and foolish to think getting a second chance at life gives you a guarantee for a third. And some part of you knows that." A beat before she pulled her phone out. "Let me get my phlebotomist." She scrolled before dashing out a text.
Where are you? I need you to get urine and blood samples from a fairly uncooperative patient for an STD panel.
"Here," Clarice called from her office, striding over instead of texting back. "What's....oh. You," she leaned against the doorway, phone in hand. "On a scale of minor annoyance to restraints, how uncooperative?" She asked, gleefully. She liked uncooperative when they were Quentin. He was fun.
“The sample’s not going to be the problem. The lecture on sexual heath that comes with it is proving to be a problem.”
Quentin poked at the red sharps disposal box and scoffed. "Skip the lecture. I'm not gonna remember it when I sober up, anyway. If I sober up," he amended, mentally running through his plans for the rest of the day.
"Ah," Clarice nodded knowingly. "No problem, I got just the thing!" she teleported away, returning a minute or so later, "Clearly, if you can't use it responsibly, then you shouldn't be using it," she explained, holding up a sealed package labeled 'CB6000.'
"I don't want to know how you got that so quickly," Quentin said, turning up his nose at Clarice's gift. "At least it's new and you're not offering something second-hand. Not into that whole chastity kink, anyway. Now can you ladies please stop this whatever it is and just be good little doctors and take my blood and look at my dick?"
"Clarice'll take it from here." Cecilia looked up from a chart where she was scribbling notes. "You should abstain from sexual conduct until we know what you've got. Not that—" She paused, looked as if she was about to say something more, and just shrugged. "And use protection next time." She glanced at Clarice. "You good?"
Sighing, Clarice pointed to a padded exam table, "Clothes off," she instructed, tugging the privacy curtain and gloving up after she set out what she needed, "But seriously, fucking yourself up is one messed up thing, fucking others over for no reason than your own self-hatred? Not on. I get you probably don't want to see someone about it either, but....you gotta find a way to handle your shit."
"Did I ask for your opinion?" Quentin was already in his briefs by the time he asked his rhetorical question. He took those off, too, and carefully folded them before turning back to Clarice so she could examine him. "Unless you've suddeny manifested reality warping as a secondary mutation and can alter just -- everything -- keep it to yourself. And if that is your power then I have, like, a whole list of requests."
"Please," Clarice rolled her eyes, snapping on a pair of gloves, "don't delude yourself into thinking that you're the only one that has gone through crap. Everyone gets hurt. It's how you deal with it that sets you apart," as she spoke, she examined him as quickly and clinically as possible, "You gotta go pee in a cup and I'll get you some prescriptions once the results come back. Maybe an hour?" Likely less.
"What's the verdict? It's not going to fall off, right?" Quentin took the cup and examined it suspiciously. "I never realized how gross this actually is," he mused, tracing a finger down the volume marks. "It's pee. You have a gross job."
"Pee's not as bad as other stuff," Clarice shrugged, pointing towards the bathroom door. "Go fill it. And I wear gloves. But it's good to know that's not a kink for you."
Quentin obediently marched — or wobbled, more accurately — to the bathroom, past the privacy curtain without any concern for passersby who might catch a glimpse. When he returned a couple minutes later, the cup was filled well past the suggested fill line. "Fuckin' broke the seal," he lamented, handing it to Clarice.
"Better that than being backed up," Clarice took the specimen jar in a gloved hand and set it on the tray before stripping the gloves off, tossing them and then tossing Quentin the hand-sanitizer. "So. Gimme an hour or so, I'll get you your results. In the mean time, you should go make cookies. Preferably snickerdoodle."
"I only have cannabutter. I can't believe you, a medical professional, are encouraging me to get even higher." Quentin tssked and shook his head as he got dressed again. "You hear this?" he called to Cecilia. "Shameful behavior by your staff. You should fire her."
"Yeah? Well, you should wear condoms and avoid being part of a public health crisis," the doctor called back. "But I guess advice isn't worth much around here, is it?"
