Iris Dickinson (Formerly Iris Phillips McConnell) (telekeneticspaz) wrote in btvsal, @ 2009-12-10 13:19:00 |
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Current location: | Chloe's Sugar Shack |
Current mood: | content |
Entry tags: | carly mcdonald, iris dickinson-lewis, place: la |
Coffee Time
Who: Iris and Carly
Where: Chloe's Sugar Shack
When: Monday, Dec. 7
After a 24 hour shift at LAGH, the main thought going through Carly McDonald's head as she sipped a huuuuuge cup of coffee? Thank the LORD Chloe was enough of a maniac to import coffee from like, a zillion different countries. Always something new to try. The young doctor might not be the sugar fiend Chloe was, Carly DID think of coffee as pretty much her life's blood. Especially with the way she frequently worked? She looooooooved her coffee. Still in her scrubs and white jacket, her hair in a ponytail and her eyes tired but still full of life, she chugged the coffee as quickly as she could without burning herself.
Iris was out a little later than usual tonight. She worked late at the bookstore where she spent a good deal of her time, and wanted to pick up some coffee for her and Jeremy before she headed home. She was feeling a little tired, and figured that she could use a little caffeinated pick me up. She walked into the coffee shop and stood in line for some drinks.
As Carly started to set the half-empty cup on the table, it slipped from her hand and spilled allll over the table. She hopped up quickly, so as not to get it on her clothing. And she swore. "Oh..... oh.... SUGARS!" Ok, so for her? That was swearing.
Iris had just gotten her own coffees when she heard the other woman...well, it resembled cursing, she supposed, if it was her grandmother doing it. With a slight grin, she grabbed a stack of napkins and went over to her table, trying to help mop up some of the mess.
Carly just kind of stood there, wanting to stoop down to sop it up, but just aching too much to go through with it. "Oh... I'm so sorry..." she mumbled to the other woman, a tinge of embarrassment to her voice.
"It's not a big deal," Iris said, taking a quick peak up at the other woman while trying to clean up. Wearing scrubs, looked tired and worn out, and a little frazzled? Either a doctor or nurse who had just spent a little too long at the hospital. So, Iris had no problem helping out.
"No, really. Thank you. I think if I tried to do it... I'd fall on my butt and be asleep before I realized how bad it hurt and I'm kinda not shutting up again and I'm sorry for that so... yeah." She blinked and blushed, realizing she was doing it again.
Iris giggled a little. "Really, don't worry about it. It's OK. I'm sure that you're very tired. Did you work a long shift?" She asked, throwing away the soiled napkins and grabbing some others to keep wiping up with.
"Twenty-four lonnnnng hours, yes." She sighed and smiled, still looking adorably sweet despite the tiredness. "I'm Carly. Thanks for cleaning up after me."
Iris wiped her hands on her jeans and smiled at Carly. "I'm Iris. Trust me when I say that it wasn't a big deal. So, are you a doctor?" Best to assume the better.
"I am. I used to be a doctor for the military, but now I work at LA General." Sounded normal enough, right? 'Military' didn't give TOO much away. Only thing that seemed odd, really, was her age, given all that experience. Luckily, that was just being brilliant. Nothing supernatural (imagine that!) about that.
"Oh wow, that's impressive," Iris said to her. She hadn't realized just how much this woman had done in her life. She seemed young, but she could just look young, or be a genius or something. Could be anything.
"I guess I was kinda a nerd growing up." Cuz, you know. Like she wasn't one NOW. Right. She was just a PRETTY nerd. That's all. "Was already in med school at sixteen."
"Wow, really?" That was insane. It had taken Iris until she was twenty-two just to get out of regular college, and this girl was already in med school when she was sixteen?
"I was kinda a female Doogie Howser. Except way less popular and probably far dorkier." Wait. What? "I mean, I just have no social skills. Talk to me long enough an invariably the topic will shift to some sort of surgical procedure I did that day."
Iris smiled. "I use to do that a lot, too, except it had more to do with what history book I read that day," she pointed out to the other woman. She had just gotten more practice talking to people, she supposed.
"I love history... I just crap out at remembering much about it. It's like my brain just shuts off when it's not getting all medical with it. Not like gettin' jiggy with it though. Because I think that has something to do with dancing, which I also can't do and I need to shut up now." Which she did, sitting down with a light blush.
Iris somehow managed not to burst out laughing. This girl was unintentionally hilarious, but Iris herself could be that way sometimes, so she understood. "Do you mind if I join you for a moment?" she asked.
Blinking, Carly actually took a moment to have to process the request. Usually, people didn't really find her as amusing as they did annoying. "Oh! Of... of course. Please."
Iris's smile widened and she sat down. "So, I take it that you enjoy your work, if you're willing to work such long shifts."
"Well, I do love my job... but more than anything, I feel a responsibility to those I can help, to do just that because what if I'm the only person who can help them but instead of helping them I'm at home doing something lame like watching TV and they just kinda go 'oh no, Carly's not here, so now I gotta die' or something like that, and then I'd be really really upset." And yes, that was ALL. ONE. BREATH.
Iris sort of tilted her head at the women as she took all that she said in and sort of digested it. "So, you do it both because you like it and you feel a responsibility toward it?" she asked, making sure that she understood.
Nodding, the young doctor smiled with a sigh. "I feel like I was given a gift. And isn't it my responsibility to do the best I can with it?"
Iris nodded. "Yeah, I suppose it is," she said to the other woman. "Better than just letting it go to waste, anyway."
"You know, this is the first time I've really sat around and chatted with another gal in AGES. I mean, one I don't work with. I don't really have many non-work friends. Probably because as I mentioned, I'm sort of a spaz." She smiled though, cutely at peace with her personal lameness.
"I really don't think you're a spaz, well, anymore than I probably am. I have a bit of a paranoid streak." It came from having died once, but she didn't mention that. "I worry that I'm going to go outside and a bus is going to hit me or a meteor is going to fall on my head. Everyone has there little things." She had figured she wouldn't have many friends because she worked so damn much.
"Oh, it's highly unlikely that a meteor would hit you. You're far more likely to have lightning strike you, really. Or possibly be hit in the head by a baseball or something like that. Meteors are THAT unlikely." She blinked then, her ears turning red. "Or it's possible that you were simply using hyperbole."
"Actually, I wasn't." She knew someone who got stuck by lightening a lot, but that was because she was a natural attractant of electricity. That was another story. "That's the sort of thing I get wrapped up in sometimes, though."
"Oh." Her mouth formed a little 'o' then, as she realized... this girl was one of the ones in the know. She could just feel it. She decided to test the waters... half-jokingly. "Ever get attacked by zombies? Or maybe vampires?"
"A vampire actually," Iris said bluntly, lifting her hair to show the faint scar that was still there from the attack. "Died and everything. My boyfriend brought me back, though. However, I have a sort of constant fear of death because I already died once. Probably a phobia with a name for it and everything."
"Wow." Maybe to Iris' surprise, Carly didn't even seem to be shocked there. Just... sympathetic. "I've treated SO many vampire victims. It gets... horrible. Having to make things up. Lie. Watch the victim's family walk away without the closure of knowing what happened."
Iris nodded. "I really don't know what they told my family. My husband, well, ex husband now, knew what happened, though. It was hard on him. Really hard." And messed up in so many ways, but that was personal drama.
"Ex-husband?" Dear lord. Alllllll that, and THAT was what she focused on? "Someone was goofy in the head enough to let you go?" Aw. Carly wasn't flirting or anything... Iris just seemed far too cool for that to happen.
Iris just shrugged. She was past it now. "Well, death sort of nulls things like marriages, but I'm not with him, either. That is...complicated to explain."
"I think I'm onto something now though." She lowered her voice to a cute, conspiratorial whisper." A co-worker had the idea of trying to put together a med-team that specializes in helping those victimized by the supernatural."
"Really?" Iris asked. Well, it wasn't like it wasn't needed. So many more lives would be saved in LA if they could be treated the way they really needed to be treated, instead of blindly groping in the dark in hopes of doing something right. "That's a good thing, actually."
"And I might be able to get us some government assistance. The 'branch' I used to work for kind of... owes me." She smiled sweetly, knowing that in a few ways, she had the people in charge of putting The Initiative together by the short hairs.
"Well, that should be a great help to all of you guys," Iris said. She happened to look at the clock on the wall and bit back a curse. "I hate to chat and run, but I'm running late getting home. My boyfriend is going to start getting worried about me soon."
"Lucky." She said wistfully, thinking briefly of a few of the people she personally crushed on. Right now, specifically one older, hunky doctor she worked with. "Nice meeting you, Iris."
"It was great meeting you, too." She grabbed a pen out of her purse and quickly scribbled down her number and name on a napkin. "Give me a call sometime, OK?"
"Alright..." The young doctor said with a shy smile. "Have a good day!"