Where have I heard it before? Who: Radek What: Tracing back to the source... When: Present Where: Southwest Medical Urgent Care Centre Ratings: PG
"Yes, yes, please take this to the pharmacy and collect the medicine, and remember, you must have it every day, and finish the course." Radek punched the Enter key to print the matching paperwork for the patient to collect their antibiotics and picked up the soon-ejected sheet from the printer, checking it over and handing it to the woman whose son was sitting on her lap, head resting against her shoulder.
"You will do this?" he asked the young boy with a mock frown, but his voice soft. "You want to grow up to be a strong jedi warrior, don't you?" he added, the child's t-shirt and the plastic action figure he clutched to his chest having indicated the child's favourite subject. The boy nodded his head, eyes moving from Radek's face down to the figurine which he had shown Radek earlier when the man was checking the boy's ears. Fortunately there were no foreign objects shoved deep inside the ear canal, but there was definitely an infection raging away causing the excruciating pain and eventual rupture of the ear drum. "This medicine will help you fight those dastardly bugs that made your ear hurt," he added reassuringly, giving the boys hair a light ruffle.
The mother stood, thanked him and shifted her son to her hip, making her way from the consulting room with her bag swinging from her elbow, where it had slid.
With a sigh Radek took off his glasses and squeezed the bridge of his nose, before replacing the eyewear and making his way out of the room to the reception counter outside.
"You've done it!" the nurse said, spinning around to indicate the nearly empty waiting room. The only patient still remaining was waiting for the treatment room, so their cast could be replaced.
He had been called in urgently, three of the six doctors at the centre having had to either call in sick or rush out to deal with an emergency house call, leaving a waiting room full of urgent-care patients starting to overflow. The other three doctors had been struggling and had asked the nurses to see if they could get any of the locums in to help out. Radek had agreed to come in, even at such short notice.
"We did it!" he replied, realising that the extended hand was meant to be clapped, and his hand almost meeting it square on during her next rotation on the chair. She laughed, and handed him his coffee, not exactly hot, but welcome anyway. As he sipped he looked over the folders on the desk, making sure there was nothing he'd missed, flicking some open, then stacking them to one side, ready to be returned to the filing system.
"Any amazing plans we managed to interrupt?" the nurse asked him, her chair now stationary as she checked over the screen of the computer in front of her.
"No, no, the petroglyphs will still be there tomorrow," he told her, "and I am also studying some artefacts I collected the other day," he continued, recalling the journey he'd experienced to get those items home.
"You really dig all that old stuff, don't you Doc?" she grinned, head tilted to one side as she looked up at him. They had all had bets on what his background was, all the nurses at the centre, and one had confirmed that his accent was Czech, and he was originally from Prague.
"We can learn much from history," he replied with a knowing smile, taking another sip from his coffee mug. "It's important to remember that if we learn from the errors of our ancestors past we are less likely to repeat the same mistakes in our present!"
"Did you ever think of becoming an archaeologist? Or a philosopher?" she asked, "you seem to really like studying it, the old stuff and history and all."
He smiled again, nodding a little. "Ahh, perhaps I was already one of these, in a past life!" he replied with a wink, and returned to the consulting room to finish up for the day. One thing he did want to get done was his research into the Latin he'd heard James use, because one things was for certain, it was definitely from his 'ancient history', and Radek was close to tracing back to where he'd heard it used before.