Quentin and Cecilia | Friday Afternoon
Jul. 19th, 2019 11:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsQuentin needs some assistance and is forced to ask... Cecilia.
The administrative drudgery was what Cecilia hated most about having a senior position in the medlab. The tasks piled up quickly, email after email, inventory after inventory. Dealing with these chores often took hours (whether that was because of the labor involved or the reluctance with which Cecilia carried them out was hard to say), and those hours, Cecilia always felt, would be better utilized doctoring. Surely, she'd think, she could miss an order deadline or ignore some paperwork.
Then she'd remember that the consequences of a supply shortage or a poorly planned schedule could quite literally be life-and-death. And that thought would lead to Catholic guilt, which always sent her to her office on days that would almost always be better spent doing just about anything else.
This particular day, the culprit was a backlog of old patient records on which she'd written notes in penmanship so cryptic that she was having a tough time figuring out how to decode them. And when she did, she then had to contend with a bizarrely intricate computer coding system that — well, the whole thing felt remarkably Herculean for how secretarial it purported to be.
She might come to regret her fatigue toward this menial work; Quentin was on his way down to the medlab. Not with another case of venereal disease, at least, but he wore a similar expression of pain and dismay. He went to the first occupied room he saw, which fortunately for Cecilia, was hers. "Yo, Doc. Where's Jean?" he asked, casting his mind about to find her.
This was not the distraction Cecilia had been looking for, that was for sure, but even talking to Quentin was more appealing than the task at hand. She was glad, at the very least, that she'd been told — well, warned, really — that his telepathy was back. There was no point in a facade of civility if she was mentally screaming her disdain at him. "She's out. Somewhere in South America doing something with the Underground," she said, placing her pen on top of an open chart before looking at him. "I'm sure you can email her. Or beam thoughts into her brain."
"I could." He actually could not at this stage of his recovery, but whatever. The least he could do was tell there was no other medical professional around. "Ugh, look. It literally physically pains me to ask, but I need your help. A friend needs your help, rather. Person with whom I'm acquainted," he corrected himself.
"How flattering. What kind of acquainted?" The question left Cecilia's mouth before she'd really processed it, and she regretted it. But given that the last time she'd really spoken with Quentin, he'd been drunkenly asking her for help with a venereal disease, she didn't think it was that out of the question. "Never mind. Doesn't matter. What kind of help?"
"He's dying. He needs surgery or he won't make it, and there's not a single qualified doctor in the city who'll agree to help him." His face darkened, and an empty coffee mug on her desk started to shake before he took a deep breath and exhaled, regaining a hold over his TK. "Because he's a mutant. He was jumped and beaten and those flatscans won't do shit. They did just enough that he didn't bleed to death in the waiting room. They're saying it's 'cuz he doesn't have insurance, but I know better. I'd force them myself, but I still can't do that yet. Plus I could accidentally give them an aneurysm in the middle of surgery."
"Jesus Christ." Cecilia sat up a little straighter, her mind whirring. "That's absurd. Not only is that absurd discrimination, it's fucking illegal. They're patient dumping." Which was grounds for a lawsuit, no doubt, but it wouldn't help Quentin's friend. But then could she? "I'm assuming he's in no condition to be moved here. I mean, he needs surgery, we're not really." So, what options did that leave? It wasn't like she could storm into a hospital, one where presumably she had no privileges, and demand—
Well, she was going to try. "Okay," she said. It was only as she stood that she realized one of her fists had been clenched. "Fuck it, okay. I'm a surgeon. Someone needs surgery. Let's go."
His gaze moved from her face to her fists and back again. Her resolve brought a grin to his face, though it could be mistaken for a predator's teeth-baring threat. "Good. Let's show these flatscans how to be human."
The administrative drudgery was what Cecilia hated most about having a senior position in the medlab. The tasks piled up quickly, email after email, inventory after inventory. Dealing with these chores often took hours (whether that was because of the labor involved or the reluctance with which Cecilia carried them out was hard to say), and those hours, Cecilia always felt, would be better utilized doctoring. Surely, she'd think, she could miss an order deadline or ignore some paperwork.
Then she'd remember that the consequences of a supply shortage or a poorly planned schedule could quite literally be life-and-death. And that thought would lead to Catholic guilt, which always sent her to her office on days that would almost always be better spent doing just about anything else.
This particular day, the culprit was a backlog of old patient records on which she'd written notes in penmanship so cryptic that she was having a tough time figuring out how to decode them. And when she did, she then had to contend with a bizarrely intricate computer coding system that — well, the whole thing felt remarkably Herculean for how secretarial it purported to be.
She might come to regret her fatigue toward this menial work; Quentin was on his way down to the medlab. Not with another case of venereal disease, at least, but he wore a similar expression of pain and dismay. He went to the first occupied room he saw, which fortunately for Cecilia, was hers. "Yo, Doc. Where's Jean?" he asked, casting his mind about to find her.
This was not the distraction Cecilia had been looking for, that was for sure, but even talking to Quentin was more appealing than the task at hand. She was glad, at the very least, that she'd been told — well, warned, really — that his telepathy was back. There was no point in a facade of civility if she was mentally screaming her disdain at him. "She's out. Somewhere in South America doing something with the Underground," she said, placing her pen on top of an open chart before looking at him. "I'm sure you can email her. Or beam thoughts into her brain."
"I could." He actually could not at this stage of his recovery, but whatever. The least he could do was tell there was no other medical professional around. "Ugh, look. It literally physically pains me to ask, but I need your help. A friend needs your help, rather. Person with whom I'm acquainted," he corrected himself.
"How flattering. What kind of acquainted?" The question left Cecilia's mouth before she'd really processed it, and she regretted it. But given that the last time she'd really spoken with Quentin, he'd been drunkenly asking her for help with a venereal disease, she didn't think it was that out of the question. "Never mind. Doesn't matter. What kind of help?"
"He's dying. He needs surgery or he won't make it, and there's not a single qualified doctor in the city who'll agree to help him." His face darkened, and an empty coffee mug on her desk started to shake before he took a deep breath and exhaled, regaining a hold over his TK. "Because he's a mutant. He was jumped and beaten and those flatscans won't do shit. They did just enough that he didn't bleed to death in the waiting room. They're saying it's 'cuz he doesn't have insurance, but I know better. I'd force them myself, but I still can't do that yet. Plus I could accidentally give them an aneurysm in the middle of surgery."
"Jesus Christ." Cecilia sat up a little straighter, her mind whirring. "That's absurd. Not only is that absurd discrimination, it's fucking illegal. They're patient dumping." Which was grounds for a lawsuit, no doubt, but it wouldn't help Quentin's friend. But then could she? "I'm assuming he's in no condition to be moved here. I mean, he needs surgery, we're not really." So, what options did that leave? It wasn't like she could storm into a hospital, one where presumably she had no privileges, and demand—
Well, she was going to try. "Okay," she said. It was only as she stood that she realized one of her fists had been clenched. "Fuck it, okay. I'm a surgeon. Someone needs surgery. Let's go."
His gaze moved from her face to her fists and back again. Her resolve brought a grin to his face, though it could be mistaken for a predator's teeth-baring threat. "Good. Let's show these flatscans how to be human."
