The Hospital

[rainbowmods]

The hospital is sterile and sprawling, its hallways and patient rooms painted a glaring white. The floor is made of something hard and shining, and the lights are that peculiar kind of flourescent that makes everyone look ill.

The first floor consists of the lobby (painted a sickly green), an emergency room, and several surgery suites, all stocked with cutting-edge, even futuristic, technology and supplies. There is a cafeteria, though the buffet line is empty; the only consumables seem to be stocked in a line of vending machines along one wall. There are no stairs, only elevators, to the upper floors, which all consist of patient rooms: made beds, glazed windows, dying flowers, and the hard plastic orange chairs that are a constant in hospitals.

The whole building smells like antiseptic and death.


((Please mark your healthcare professionals as such, and enjoy!))

Comments

Re: Professional: Ahava Jackson

[isana]

"Six siblings! Allow me to be jealous. I had a dear sister, once, may she rest in peace. We were lucky enough to rarely fight, though. Do you know, I can't have strawberry jam and scones without thinking of her."

The ale had loosened his tongue. He was getting old.

He nodded at the doctor's mention of universes. "That sounds about right. This isn't the first time I've left, either. I have to say I prefer the last place I was to this by a great deal. Much more pleasant."

Re: Professional: Ahava Jackson

[bookblather]

"You wouldn't be jealous if you'd had six siblings," Ahava said, dryly. "I mean, Duncan I liked but the rest of them just kept happening. You'd wake up one morning and have two more brothers all of a sudden." Well, okay, that had only happened the once, but Brendan and Kyle had been a rude enough surprise that it had stuck. And this man... yeah, he really reminded her of Brendan.

"Hospitals don't tend to be a very pleasant place," she agreed. "It's why I haven't worked in one since my residency. This is going to hurt." She swabbed clean water over the wound on his face.

Re: Professional: Ahava Jackson

[isana]

Robin chuckled. "Ah, perhaps not. Interesting world you have, where brothers and sisters appear in a twinkling. I suppose things would have been chaotic, all the same."

He winced a little, when the doctor dabbed at his face, but really, he'd had worse. He'd been a pirate captain, damn it. A scratch was nothing.

"What's a residency?" he asked, to try and distract from the pain.

Re: Professional: Ahava Jackson

[bookblather]

"We're adopted," Ahava said. "It's not that weird."

The wound was smaller than it looked, a cut down over his cheek. "Missed the eye," she said. "And you won't need stitches. A residency is four years of training that every doctor has to go through after they've gotten their MD. It's hands-on training, making sure you won't freeze up or accidentally kill someone. That kind of thing."

Re: Professional: Ahava Jackson

[isana]

Oh, that made sense. "I know someone who was also adopted," Robin replied. "He had six sisters. Don't know what they made of him appearing all of a sudden, but he was only an infant when he joined them."

He caught a glance of himself in the mirror and nodded. No stitches probably meant no scars, not that he was that vain. "Four years of hands-on training, after an...em-dee, you said? What's that, if you don't mind me asking?"

Re: Professional: Ahava Jackson

[bookblather]

"If they were anything like me, they just rolled their eyes and said, Another one and eventually realized they wouldn't give him up for anything." The gauze was coming away clean now but for a stripe of blood where the cut was. Time for the antibacterials. "Brace yourself again. This will hurt more."

She put the ointment on a swab and applied it to his face, talking to distract him. "An MD is short for a degree called Doctor of Medicine. It means that I passed medical school. Right now I'm a practicing psychiatrist; I perform therapy and proscribe medications and medical tests as needed."

Re: Professional: Ahava Jackson

[isana]

"Hmmm. I suppose they wouldn't." It had been years since Saith had left home, that much Robin did know. Whether or not he still kept in touch with his sisters was anyone's guess, although by now some of them had to realize he was the queen's consort.

Whatever she put on him this time felt like liquor. "You sure that's not a good vintage you're wasting on me, doctor?" he asked. "That does burn quite powerfully, you know."

"But what is a psychiatrist? And therapy? I daresay you sound much like the physicians I see in my own world."

Re: Professional: Ahava Jackson

[bookblather]

"It's antibiotic ointment," Ahava told him. "Wine has some of the same properties, and a lot of people used it before we developed this nifty ointments, but what I'm putting on your face now is much more effective." She finished swabbing it, patted Robin's head absently, and went for the gauze again.

Much like his physicians? Ahava had to smile. "Not so much, no. Psychiatrists... we work with people who have mental illnesses, problems with their brain that aren't physical. Well, most of the people I see have a chemical imbalance in their brain which is physical-- but that doesn't matter. Therapy is a variety of ways we use to help people with those illnesses. Like the way you work a healing limb, to make it stronger."

Re: Professional: Ahava Jackson

[isana]

Ah, the petting. He did have that effect on women, still. Perhaps he wasn't growing so old after all.

"Sicknesses of the mind, you say? Like an imbalance of their humors, then? And you can strengthen those humors or rebalance them to make them stronger? Is that what you do?"

Re: Professional: Ahava Jackson

[bookblather]

"Um," she said, and to buy herself some time, pressed a pad of gauze to his face. "Hold that. We're going to apply pressure to stop the bleeding. Uh, no, no, it doesn't have anything to do with humors."

Nothing had anything to do with humors, really, but Ahava wasn't going to start a medical revolution somewhere/somewhen she knew nothing about.

"It's... it's your mind lying to you. Telling you things that aren't true or real. Therapy helps you see the lies."

Re: Professional: Ahava Jackson

[isana]

All right, yes, holding bandages to his face sounded familiar, at least.

"Ah, true. The mind can be a powerful thing. So what do you do during this therapy, then, that helps you see these lies?"

Re: Professional: Ahava Jackson

[bookblather]

"Talk, mostly," Ahava said, leaning back against the table. "Try to find out what lies the brain is telling, find ways to refute them. Sometimes medication can help. Sometimes there's something physically wrong, and fixing that fixes the mind too." She shrugged. "There's no one way to fix everything. Just like there's no one way to fix all the body's problems."

Re: Professional: Ahava Jackson

[isana]

Robin didn't quite understand what this doctor meant by talking to pick out the lies, but he decided to keep quiet. She'd been kind enough to tend to his wounds, and it didn't seem wise to offend her.

"I suppose, then, that there's no fountain of youth, nor any panacea that would cure all ills, then," he said. "A pity."

Re: Professional: Ahava Jackson

[bookblather]

"Very much so," Ahava said, and smiled at him. "I wouldn't even mind being put out of work if it showed up. I could always go find a nice man to marry and have some babies."

Which was not at all what her parents had said to her, any of the four (she counted Dennis now), but her whole hometown certainly thought it. Even some of her professors, which was just gross.

Re: Professional: Ahava Jackson

[isana]

"Oh, you haven't found anyone yet?" Robin asked. "Pardon my asking, but it seems like a woman such as yourself would have already found someone to marry. Or would you have to give up your occupation to do so?"

Re: Professional: Ahava Jackson

[bookblather]

"Hah," Ahava said, and then continued, "Not likely. I mean, half the people in my hometown would say that I should, but there's really no way in hell that's going to happen, let's face it."

She thought about the rest of it, then said, "I'm flattered, I think, but no, I haven't found anymore. Not looking right now either-- my best friend is going through a divorce and I've gotta be there for him." Especially since he might be getting divorced because of her. Not that Duncan would ever say as much.

Re: Professional: Ahava Jackson

[isana]

"That's a shame," Robin replied. "Nobody worthy of you, I suppose, not that I blame you." A lot of men didn't know how to treat women properly where he'd come from; it wouldn't have been much of a surprise if someone like the doctor completely confounded them.

"Oh, no! Your friend's wife--has she left him?"

Re: Professional: Ahava Jackson

[bookblather]

"You're sweet," Ahava said, genuinely touched, and patted his shoulder. "Thank you. And yeah... sort of anyway. They just grew apart, I think. Better for them to split." And better for Safiya too: neither one of them wanted her to be hurt the way she would be if they stayed together. "Still rough on everyone thought."

Re: Professional: Ahava Jackson

[isana]

"Ah, that is a shame," said Robin. "At least they were brave enough to separate. Most of us stay in loveless marriages for the sake of appearances."

Re: Professional: Ahava Jackson

[bookblather]

"Something like that," she said, and shrugged. "I know I'm his best friend and I'm supposed to think she's a bitch, especially since she asked for the divorce, but I actually think it was very brave of her. Especially since they agreed there wouldn't be any custody fights. Half and half, straight down the middle."

Re: Professional: Ahava Jackson

[isana]

"I suppose sometimes couples will grow apart," said Robin. "It's one reason I've never gotten married, myself."

Re: Professional: Ahava Jackson

[bookblather]

Ahava raised her eyebrows. "One of? Take the gauze off, let's see if your face is done bleeding."

Re: Professional: Ahava Jackson

[isana]

"Oh, I don't know how it's really done where you're from," said Robin, "but when one gets married, they're supposed to stay together, forever, and in my case I can't, really. I admire the ones who can, of course, but it's not in my personal nature. And not in that of my lady friend's, either, so I think we're well matched, there."

He took off the gauze. Only a faint red streak remained.

Re: Professional: Ahava Jackson

[bookblather]

"Okay, I can tape that up now," Ahava said. "You can just toss the gauze. And yeah, I get that. Commitment's not for everybody. Some people just hang out in long-term relationships, you know? And there's the whole friends with benefits thing."

Much like Robin, it sounded like. "So you got your own lady friend?"

Re: Professional: Ahava Jackson

[isana]

"I suppose some people are perfectly content in marriages, but I don't think it would suit my lifestyle. Or did, but even with my current arrangement it wouldn't have worked well for us. My lady friend likes to travel, and it would be criminal of me to keep her caged in a castle, no matter how large and spacious."

He smiled at the doctor. "We've been together for a long time, but the idea of marriage isn't for us, it seems."