Madelyn, Jubilee - Early Tuesday morning

[x-madelyn.livejournal.com]

Following Jubilee's adventures in sleep deprivation and subsequent drugging, Madelyn has that promised chat with her when she wakes up. There's not actually that much shouting.



Madelyn's first instinct had been to arrange some kind of obnoxious wake up for Jubilee. Something involving loud noises, possibly bright lights and someone being obnoxiously cheerful at her. But she was, she reminded herself, a professional, even if it didn't seem like it lately, and there were limits. And Jubilee must have had a legitimate reason to drive herself to the point of exhaustion. Probably. Almost certainly. So, at the first signs of Jubilee waking up from the drug-induced coma Madelyn had put her into with no small amount of satisfaction, the doctor went to her room to check on her. She picked up the chart from the end of the bed, noted down the time, and looked over the top of her glasses at the girl as her eyelids fluttered.

She had a headache, this was the first thing Jubilee realised when she felt consciousness returning. A headache, and a mouth that tasted and felt like she'd been licking a wet dog for about a week.

"Gwhah." she mumbled before opening her eyes and focussing blearily on the person at the end of the bed. "What the hell hit me?"

"Nothing more than your own stupidity this time, I'm afraid," Madelyn said. Okay, possibly a bit more snippy than she'd intended - she'd been planning to start with "how do you feel?" and work her way up to "stupid" from there. But Jubilee had added to her already-high stress levels, and it had been a very long day. "How do you feel? There's water on the table next to you, if you need it. Sedatives tend to leave you with a bad case of cotton mouth, I'm afraid."

Jubilee nodded, reaching over to grab the pitcher of water and sloshing some into the glass provided. She took her time drinking, having noted Madelyn's tone. She was beginning to remember things that were not particularly awe inspiring in the maturity level arena. Having drank for as long as she could without appearing like she was avoiding a potentially messy conversation she placed her glass carefully on the table.

"How long I been asleep?" she asked.

"Most of yesterday and all of last night," Madelyn said, pinching the bridge of her nose. She had to push the glasses to the top of her head to do it, and when she was done she left them perched up there, forgetting their existence. She was so tired... definitely time for a vacation. "You went a little loopy on the journals, and Ali and Kurt took it upon themselves to track you down and bring you here. Ali found you first." She managed to keep the anger and frustration out of her tone, drawing upon all of her emergency room experience, but she couldn't summon any more than a flat, tired tone. "She brought you down here and I gave you a shot to make you sleep. And here we are."

"Crap. Um, how loopy is loopy? Are we talkin' the seeing purple hippos kind of loopy or the hanging out on the Flight deck dressed like the Phantom of the Opera kind of loopy? Cause, Dude, I think I remember goin' looking for a cape and that can't be good," she replied, wincing slightly.

"More babbling about llamas and clowns and then playing hide and seek with everyone who decided to be concerned for your welfare and get you some medical attention. Plus something about nightmares and that being the reason for not sleeping for four days. It was all highly entertaining, or would have been, if you hadn't scared the crap out of us." Madelyn put the chart back, and folded her arms across her chest. "You've just woken up so I won't lecture you, but you should know. I'm Not Pleased with you right now, Jubilation."

Jubilee pulled the pillows up closer to her back so she'd have something to lean on. She was still pretty damn tired but from Madelyn's tone and the fact that she'd used Jubilee's full name, the doctor deserved something of an explanation.

"How much do you know about those doomsday files of Scott's?" she asked simply.

"Enough to know they were part of the reason why he ended up having to be sedated. And that Alison's read them as well," Madelyn said. "Not much more than that - I'm medical, not team, and I'm not in on that particular loop. But..." she added, before Jubilee could say anything else. "Even if I had read them end to end and knew exactly what doomsday scenarios Scott had planned for the place, that's still no excuse for not telling someone you couldn't sleep."

She shook her head. "I could sleep. Just kept waking up is all. Enough so that even the sleep I was gettin', wasn't doing any good. By about day four of that, I tried caffeine to keep awake. When that didn't work, I realised I still had some of the sleeping pills Samson had given me before. Thought maybe with them I could sleep and not dream at all. Um, guess caffeine and sleeping pills was a pretty bad move."

"To put it mildly, yes." Madelyn came around the end of the bed, perched on the edge. She seemed to have slumped, somehow. "My turn to ask a question, I think." When Jubilee nodded, she went on: "I know a lot of you kids have issues with hospitals and doctors, and god knows enough of you have spent more than your fair share of time in this place, but when did I become the enemy?" Her tone was level, not accusing, but for a moment the doctor's masque broke and the human being looked out, worried and concerned and not a little hurt.

Jubilee blinked for a second, and then looked shocked and not a little dismayed. "Dude, no. You ain't the enemy, least not to me. Just, well, you guys were lookin' after 'Yana and she needed you all more then I did. I thought I could take care of it myself. I mean, it was just dreams, right? Didn't want to take up time when something more important could be happenin'."

"By driving yourself to the point where it became necessary to bring you in at the end of my night shift? To stop me going to bed for another few hours while I doped you up and ran the tests needed to make sure your brain chemistry wasn't completely screwed up? Because that's what you were risking, carrying on like that. Not to mention taking drugs without supervision, drugs that were months old as well." Madelyn caught herself, softened her tone. The girl had just woken up, and had Issues besides. "Jubilee, you are important. You, yourself. All of you kids are. And just because we're busy with one patient doesn't mean we're too busy for you to drop one of us an email and say 'hey, I'm having problems'. It's what I'm here for, it's what Leonard is here for, and it's what the Professor is here for. I know we haven't done a good job of keeping you kids safe in the past, but that doesn't mean we _can't_. God, half the incidents in the past six months could have been prevented if someone had just said, just once, 'guys, a little help?'."

Jubilee smiled, shaking her head. "You're right. I should have asked. I'm learnin' though. Sure you ain't gonna get upset if I'm traipsing through here at odd hours of the night? I don't seem to be able to do the crisis thing in the day for some reason. As for keepin' us safe. You guys are doin' the best job you know how to. Just cause I have issues with feeling safe anywhere, doesn't mean it's something any of you are doin' wrong. Compared to other places, this is probably the safest I've felt anywhere."

"Emergency rooms don't have issues with people turning up in the middle of the night - think of us like that. There's a reason why we have pagers and the like. Besides, with Illyana down here, one of us has to be on duty twenty-four/seven." Madelyn smiled a little wryly. "And you're not the only one who has nocturnal crises. Three AM seems to be the time of preference."

"What about visits of a social nature? Haven't seen you 'round so much lately, Doc." she replied after a moment, adjusting to the thought of having someone to actually call on. It was a surprising revelation, even if in theory she'd known the teachers would help her before. Being told ‘though, was something entirely different to knowing. Jubilee hoped she wouldn't disappoint Madelyn. "And how is 'Yana? Since Kitty's around I didn't want to add myself to the general population down here but I've been worried about her."

"I'm always up for visits of any kind - I won't lie to you, it has been busy down here since we're short-handed with Hank away, so I might be a bit flustered sometimes. But I never say no to company, especially when I'm on the night shift.. It gets a bit lonely down here of a night." At the mention of Kitty's name, Madelyn smiled a little more naturally. "Except for Kitty - you're right, she's been down here pretty much constantly. And Illyana's doing much better - well enough to make our lives hell, actually. She's not one of the most patient patients in the world." She tilted her head at Jubilee. "Would you like to see her once you've showered and eaten? We've got everything down here you need, and you can save me from eating all the donuts again."

Jubilee's smile was like a sunny day. "That'd be great, Mads. I been wantin' to check in on her for ages, make sure she's doin' alright. She counts, ya know? And I never say no to donuts. You got the ones with the green sprinkles at all?"

"The radioactive ones? Sure - no-one likes those, so they're always the last to go." Madelyn stood, giving Jubilee a much happier look. "I'll just get you some of the standard Xavier sweats to change into when you're done cleaning up, and then you're good to go. We can talk more over breakfast." She began heading out the door, then paused. "Although you might want to join my Health and Well being class. It's got all sorts of helpful hints about eating and sleeping and all those other things your body insists on doing to function."

"If you can figure out a way I can work it around all the other classes I have, I'm all for it, Doc. Oh! Did Alison tell you I'm doin' Tai Chi with her now? She's a total task master too, 4 hours of breathin' and no talking. I thought I was gonna go spare." Jubilee replied, slipping out of the bed. She wriggled her toes on the cold floor, making a face.

Madelyn couldn't help grinning at that. "I'd heard about your meditation session. That's what you get for crossing the Devil Woman," she told the girl, bending and retrieving a pair of generic hospital slippers from the locker next to the bed. "Get those on and head for the shower. I'll leave you a change of clothes by the door."

Jubilee grinned unrepentantly and sliding her feet into the slippers, headed for the showers. "That's alright, it was fun after I got used to the not talkin'. Just don't tell her, hey? Would completely ruin my rep."