Way More Interesting Things Are Going On Than Dentistry Who: Bryant and Sofia Where: Bryant’s lair (formerly the nurse’s office), Fox Grove HS What: Someone needs to pry the socially awkward would-be doc away from his precious books and catch him up on current events. Enter Sofia! When: backdated to afternoon of Saturday the 15th
The nurse’s office hadn’t become his territory all at once; there hadn’t been any bold declarations, no claim staked, no announcement that Bryant O’Neill, Jr. would be hanging up a shingle and treating the wounded of Fox Grove and that he’d be the brainiac rep when the council was formed and that anyone who didn’t like that he’d taken an office for himself could kindly bugger off. The very idea of him doing such ludicrous things would have been enough to make Bryant break into a cold sweat.
No, in the beginning, he’d simply sought to be helpful. With his parents MIA and his uncles the hands-off sort of guardians, Bryant chose to remain at the school because he could be of use there. Back then, he was simply another pair of hands adept at performing first aid when the wounded were brought forth, another set of arms and legs strong enough to haul around both barricade material and dead students, another brain capable of sorting out the windmill power system. When Persephone and the others formed the governing body of the sovereign nation that emerged from the ashes of the apocalypse, it was with a bit of surprise that Bryant found that his efforts had been noticed and appreciated to the point that he was put forth to represent the brainy subset of Fox Grovers, and he liked to think that he’s done his bit to the best of his ability, not only for the group he repped but for all of the Fox Grove denizens. When there was a need, Bryant sought to fulfill it; when there was a problem, it was important to him that some solutions were put forward and attempted, at the very least. It was in this way that in time they had water in addition to power, that they had wireless access to the freenet. He really couldn’t claim credit on many of the big advantages that had occurred over the last couple of years, as Bryant felt everyone contributed to discussions and everyone brought skills to the table to make a project come to fruition… and more often than not, especially in a high stress situation, he might have to explain the intricacies of an idea or plan to just one council member, who in turn would add their insight and explain it to the rest of the group, as his social anxiety would do more harm than good.
The one thing Bryant was exceptionally proud of, however, was attempting to improve their shelter’s medical care -- there were plenty of people here that never left the school and saw no reason to seek medical treatment from the hospital, not trusting it -- and that was how he eventually wound up taking over what used to be the nurse’s office and adjoining treatment bay. In the early days of the school deciding to close ranks in on itself, these had been rooms of utter chaos, spilling into the hallway outside and overflowing into the classroom next door as there were walking wounded, possible cases of infection, and general hysteria. The infected were moved elsewhere and the nurse’s office had been left a wreck, a reminder of the initial panic, occasionally used as a makeout room for the daring… largely because there wasn’t a space in Fox Grove that someone didn’t make out in, once the immune survived and the uninfected survived and it seemed like the world was going to keep revolving around the sun. As people partnered off and some of the female students became pregnant, as the woodworkers and metal shop people succumbed to accidents whilst in the midst of projects designed to better the school, as things like colds and influenza didn’t care a whit for the zombie apocalypse, Bryant went to work. He sterilized the treatment room and office as best he could, hauled out broken furniture for repair or replacement, rescued valuable items from the locked cupboards (one thing he had seen fit to do in the early days: steal the keys).
When all was said and done, Bryant wound up with a treatment room complete with an exam table and a cot, and while it wasn’t the most decorative little space to be found, it was a place where Bryant would dress wounds with clean bandages and splint any broken bones… and a room just large enough for a young mother in labor, the baby’s father or a friend to squeeze her hand in support, and the hulking Briton definitely-not-a-doctor worrying his way through the process and hoping to God that all will be well. It was space enough, then, to be as helpful as he could possibly be.
The outer part, the office, was thankfully larger than the treatment area, and it was this room where Bryant spent most of his time in Fox Grove. He kept most of his personal items secured in his lockers -- his academic one and his gym locker, which mostly had his pads and gear, included his modified hockey stick he’d use to decapitate zombies if he ever got trapped in a situation like that -- but he’d still quietly collected a number of things from around the school to decorate ‘his’ office. Most of what he had was books: titles scavenged from the library, teacher’s versions of textbooks, tomes taken from various sites by Fox Grove supply scouts in an effort to help Bryant study whatever he could when it came to medicine. Books and bookcases featured large in Bryant’s space, guarded jestingly by two CPR dummies and a skeleton he’d appropriated from a science classroom, each of them with names that his friends in Fox Grove knew. It was considered fair game to dress up the skeleton with funny hats, clothes, and/or props; it was understood Bryant would leave up whatever anyone put on until he needed to reference the skeleton for some reason.
The nurse’s desk had been a total loss that he’d had to scrap when he was cleaning the place up, but a terribly nice chap from the hockey team who’d been absolutely cracking at shop class had cobbled together a new one for him in payment for twelve stitches Bryant had to put into the meat of his palm (“Yah, jus’ forgot to use the guard with the circular saw an’ of course Tatsumi bumped my fucking shoulder. Is it real bad, doc-- I mean, Bry?”). Similarly, his teammate had examined the structural integrity of the large, comfortable-but-ratty-looking couch that had been in the nurse’s office, finding the furniture to be sound (“Though you better believe someone’s fucked on this thing since we all started livin’ here. Hah, man, you are bright red right now, Bryant. Seriously, though, the bones of the piece are good. Heh. Guess that’s right up your alley, doc: bones.”) enough that Bryant sought out a student good in home economics willing to help him recover it. The result was an odd patchwork of fabric samples scrounged from a craft store -- clothes and bedding and even cloth diapers being a little more important than his couch -- that was nevertheless clean and, though visibly crooked in spots, was unnoticeable when one sat on it. It was also the closest thing that Bryant had to a bed of his own, rather than the shared sleeping quarters throughout the school.
It wasn’t such a bad life, all things considered. He talked to folks on the freenet, left the school to visit Sebastian and his uncles and a couple of his ‘outside’ friends when there was a reason to leave Fox Grove. Otherwise, this was his life: Bryant studied and read, played the piano in the auditorium and kept it reasonably in tune, did his best to heal the sick, learned from the dead if he couldn’t heal or fix them, upheld the ways of the council and set an example for other residents, spent time with some of the only people he’d ever really loved in his life. He hadn’t exactly had a lot of friends as a boy and his parents had always been so distant. They didn’t seem like real people to him anymore and though he supposed he was sad that they were likely dead, the sadness didn’t pierce him like he felt it should have. Whereas here and now, he knew people that it would be a devastating blow to lose them. During the blob storm, while he cringed and huddled as far away from the rain and lightning and thunder as he could get, cursing his usual irrational fears… he’d also been overwhelmed by a perfectly rational fear: that people he cared for might be hurt by this. They could become infected and he was helpless. It made Bryant ashamed to think that he’d been relieved that some of those he loved were already immune, which meant they’d already been through that horror, so he was grateful they’d been through something so terrible. How bloody selfish of him.
He’d been thinking about that when he was in the locker room shower earlier (arguably testing out the water pressure from the tapped spring’s newest upgrades) and it was enough to make him turn off the taps with a shudder. Now Bryant purposely put such thoughts from his mind and was back at his desk which faced the open doorway. He’d been there for practically the last three days, broad shoulders hunched over, reading one thing or another, helping anyone that came by. Today he was in his favorite red t-shirt and jeans, white lab coat slung on the back of his chair, his damp russet hair mussed from him tugging at it distractedly as he attempted to familiarize himself with the basics of dentistry. Pausing now and again to make detailed notations on a pad, drumming his pen, Bryant frowned down at the book as he considered what he could possibly use as a sealant. About the only thing he’d done involving teeth was to, ah, extract precisely three rotten teeth for people in excruciating pain, but perhaps intervening earlier would prevent such measures in the long run… not to mention the fact that there were two or three Fox Grove residents currently experiencing mild to moderate tooth and jaw pain on a regular basis; Bryant wasn’t about to bring out the pliers for that. But just like he wasn’t a doctor, he was hardly qualified as a dentist.
Sometimes the studying was more for his benefit than anyone else’s.