Sebastian Handsel (thedoctorisodd) wrote in horror_story, @ 2013-06-28 10:38:00 |
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It had been smart to get off the ship. The Mare Crisium had no shortage of fresh air venues, but there wasn’t anything quite like wandering around a true Caribbean island. Sebastian hoped that his patients also took advantage of the opportunity to experience it, though he knew that the chances of doing that were slight for some of the women. Serena Stone seemed to be making progress, actually reconnecting with an old friend (and that couldn’t have been more perfect if Sebastian had mapped it out, himself -- reintroduction to the past within the safe confines of a structured setting, but with the added benefit of a relatively equal-footing environment!) but Adelaide Spinnet had yet to leave her cabin once, last he’d checked. The little blonde’s antisocial tendencies were frustrating, to say the least. In truth, she was his least favorite patient. Not that he was supposed to have favorites, of course, but she was simply unnerving to be around in a way the others weren’t. If he suffered from his father’s poetic tendencies, he might have said that she felt hollow. Like a statue, or a projected image of a girl.
Nonsense, of course, but he could forgive himself the dramatic imagery in light of his surroundings. The weather was beautiful, the water was beautiful, the people on the island... well, they were a mix of tourists and locals, but many of them were beautiful, too. Not that he counted himself among them. He was a pale, blond man in pale safari clothes (khaki shorts and a short-sleeved, button-up adventure shirt in a color that was - according to the website he’d ordered it from - called sandflower, which almost matched the hue of his straw hat). An obvious tourist, easily overlooked, but that was difficult to help. At least he had status quo on his side. Tourists were the bulk of the economy, and so to the locals, he was sure that he looked like money. So there wasn’t much that could be helped about his appearance, but he needn’t be self-conscious about it, either.
Sebastian was certainly enjoying himself when he stopped off for lunch. He wasn’t strictly venturing out onto the nude beach, per se, but it wasn’t a coincidence that he was choosing a bistro with a deck that overlooked one of the more famous ones. Eating out was something of an ordeal for him. Sebastian liked all manner of food, but Wilson’s kept him on a restricted diet. A laundry-list of foods to avoid that tended to be dietary staples (beans, lentils, wheat, fish, soy, tofu, pork, lamb, nuts, mushrooms, chocolate, alcohol...), and there were mental equations to be made. He didn’t enslave himself to those restrictions, but decisions had to be made based on what was available. Medication doses could be adjusted to compensate, but only so far. He very much wanted a proper drink, so he ordered the rosace de tomates au basilic et sa salade de mangues for lunch. Nothing high in copper there, and he did like mangoes. He smiled brightly as he stumbled over the pronunciation of his order, apologizing to the waitress for his pronunciation, and endeavoring to keep his slurring to a minimum. She was used to American tourists butchering the French, however, and didn’t seem at all impatient. He ordered a fruit-based cocktail, as well, sitting back to watch people down on the beach, sunning themselves.
Melanoma was an ugly thing, but Sebastian appreciated their lack of caution, and idly wondered if any of the bronzed young men down on the sand were also passengers on his ship. He’d seen several that wouldn’t have looked out of place, certainly. Not Mallory, of course. His assistant was very bright, and very enthusiastic about his work... there were a lot of good things to be said for the young Mr. Cunningham, and with his ridiculous hair and endearing smile it wasn’t like the boy was hard to look at. The man was chronically unhealthy, however, and Sebastian just couldn’t imagine him taking his shirt off outside of a doctor’s office. That he had imagined that more than once wasn’t something he cared to admit, and his already compromised liver wouldn’t allow him to drink enough to throw that particular caution to the wind.