M’fine
Who: Booker, balloon boobsClaudine, Neena, Lina and Elizabeth What: The girls come to pick up Booker and figure out what's happening with his brain Where: Claudine's clinic When: 8/2/2014 Rating: PG-13 for language
Memories of the night before were still a little fuzzy for Booker. He hadn’t said no to a date invitation from the attractive doctor, and dinner had been good, but by the time they’d gotten back to her place he’d been plagued with dizziness. The last thing he’d remembered was faceplanting into Claudine’s generous chest.
It was precisely what the woman wanted. Whatever these ‘vigors’ were, they were formidable, and she needed his blood to study them - and to incorporate his power into her own. She had so many of them now, including the people she’d only wished she could have gotten.
She thought that she even had a way to get a piece of the Phoenix.
The only one who might suspect anything would be Neena, so she affected a professional but concerned air before they arrived.
“Pretty sure this is the place,” Lina said once they drove up, unbuckling herself and climbing out from her van. Claudine had given her the address to the clinic not too long ago when she offered Lina her services. Not that she really needed them, since her recovery spell mostly did the trick, but it was good to know regardless.
She was ready to get this over with, preferably dragging him out of there by one ear, while Neena had another, and Elizabeth ripping into him verbally.
"This is the place," Elizabeth agreed, with a nod. She unbuckled herself and hopped down from the van, while adding in, "Booker took me here once when my own nosebleeds started. I remember it. And Doctor Renko, too."
She swung the door shut with her hip and started walking towards the door, trying not to fidget with her fingers or twitch at her hair. There wasn't as much hair to twitch at since she'd cut it, but she still caught herself tucking it behind her ears and trying to twist it into a ponytail, "Actually, I should have known this was coming. He couldn't keep his eyes of of her the entire time. She has a pretty impressive chest. Booker always did like a nice pair of boobs."
Her tone was already scolding, like she was preparing herself.
Despite Lina's claim that Neena would get there before her, a black car pulled up outside the clinic as they were walking in. Neena got out of it and waved her hand at both women with one hand. The other hand was around a coffee mug that probably was about half alcohol, "Fancy meeting you two here. We really need to stop congregating at medical facilities."
Booker would like to point out he had a variety of tastes. But he was still trying to come out of whatever fog he was in. He wasn’t sure who he was. He was looking in the mirror. He was him, but he wasn’t him and he wanted to forget, lord, he wanted to forget, and then Sally...
Claudine walked out into the waiting area as the women entered, and smiled at them. She was, indeed, buxom, and her shirt did little to hide that fact. “I finally got him to submit to a catscan. He blacked out again.”
Lina twitched. Elizabeth’s description of the woman already soured her mood, and then seeing those puppies barely even concealed made her scowl. It’s like she’s rubbing it in my face that her boobs are bigger than her face.
But enough about boobs. Scowling at boobs wasn’t the reason why they were here. Mostly. “At least he’s hospitalized for a blackout and not dismemberment,” Lina said, referring to the bombing. She crossed her arms and gave Claudine Dr. Balloon Tits a suspicious look over. “Is he gonna be okay?”
"Does he remember who he is?" Elizabeth asked, while trying not to glare at Dr. Renko. The two women nearby were doing enough of that, and she had less of a reason to be angry with her. Dream attraction aside.
Elizabeth's question was actually a pretty astute one, all things considered. Neena stopped glaring at Tits McGee long enough to look over at Elizabeth and nod at her approvingly, "Yeah, what she said. And what Lina said. He has some weird shit going on. He's gotten confused over who he was before. I found him like that in his apartment once."
Claudine found the whole thing amusing. Like there was some sort of territorial dispute. She already had Elizabeth’s genetic sample, and Neena’s, and was trying to think of a way to get Lina’s. Who knew what secrets her blood held? She gestured. “If you’ll come with me? He’s semi-conscious. Does the name Sally mean anything to any of you?”
Lina blinked and looked over at Neena, listening to her elaboration of Booker’s ‘episodes.’ She had a general gist of things, but she never knew it would get that bad.
“Unless it’s some other girl he boned?” Which was Lina’s way of saying she had no clue, and waited to see if it rung a bell for Neena or Elizabeth. In regards to Booker, she was sort of the weird one out; they knew him a lot longer and some a lot more intimately. There wasn’t much she knew that could help.
The youngest of them shook her head quietly. Elizabeth had never heard the name before, not even in the dreams. Booker got around a lot, but she was too worried about him at the moment to join in on discussing his finer points. Instead, she followed Claudine and fidgeted at her pinky finger.
And it was okay that Elizabeth wasn't willing to snark about her father, because Neena was more than willing to pick up her slack, "Lord knows he's fucked half of California already. If he sticks around her long enough he's going to beat Logan's record, and I didn't even think that was possible."
She shook her head and took a bracing swig of her alcohol-coffee before following Claudine. This place made every single part of her spine tingle, and that only made the chip in her head buzz more loudly than usual, "But no, Sally doesn't ring any bells to me."
“He seems worried about her,” Claudine said, tilting her head curiously. Booker was just coming out of the MRI machine. Though how a poor clinic like this had an MRI machine was another question. Booker thrashed his head. “S’my fault..Sally..m’sorry…you didn’t deserve that.”
“Could be a dream thing,” Lina frowned, brows furrowed in concern. Or it could be something completely not dream related. Apparently they were all at loss, and the only one who could answer that was Booker.
Who didn’t seem in the right kind of state to answer anything.
"Booker..." Elizabeth whispered, then shook her head. She wasn't really sure what to do or what to say. She'd never seen him like this. The anger she'd been feeling over him disappearing like that deflated, and it felt like the wind had been shot out of her sails.
Neena had seen him like this before, though, and she glanced off to one side. It pissed her off more than anything when the people she cared about were in states she couldn't do anything about. After another swig from her alcohol-coffee she turned her attention back to the busy doctor, "You get anything on those tests you did, or what?"
“Something I’ve never seen before. You said someone mentioned it was like looking at brains super imposing?” Claudine turned, and her tits she led them to look at the results. She leaned forward, not really caring what gravity would actually do to her, and brought the scans up on the screen. “It’s a blurred mess, but you can see there’s a lot of activity. Too much activity for a man in his state.”
She glanced at Elizabeth, thinking they should scan her, too.
“So, if this keeps on happening,” Lina began and stared at the screen. She wasn’t a doctor so it all looked like a giant mess to her anyway. “What’s going to eventually happen to him? Long term consequence-wise.”
Elizabeth raised both of her eyebrows at Claudine, wondering why the Doctor's glance made her spine shiver. She had a bad feeling, suddenly. About all of this.
"Is he going to be okay?" Her voice sounded small.
The kid wasn't the only one who had a bad feeling. Neena was going to run out of alcohol at this rate, and that wasn't good. No one wanted that. Instead of speaking, she gave the doctor a look that could only be interpreted as 'answer us already'.
“I don’t have enough information to tell you,” she said, honestly. “I can prescribe something that might prevent clots in his brain, but that will make his blood thinner, and the nosebleeds worse. I need to study these readouts and see if I can discover what the actual cause is. But if it is from his dreams, then you, Elizabeth, might start experiencing this too.” And for all they knew all the dreamers might go through it, eventually. There was no way to tell.
“M’fine,” Booker complained, managing to sit up. “No drugs. No surgery.”
That might prevent clots in his brain. The medication didn’t almost seem worth it, if that’s the case. But that wasn’t a lot of information for them to go by, either. Lina gave Claudine Dr. Balloon Tits another look, chewing her lip before her eyes went back to Booker. “We can get a second opinion, can’t we? How about Moira?”
"You aren't fine. You just blacked out a bunch of times and then had problems remembering which you you were. That isn't fine, Booker." Elizabeth's voice had taken on a more stern tone, and she tugged him down to try to make him sit again. She glanced over at Lina and Neena and gave them a pleading look.
The look was answered by Neena with a sigh. She regarded the two of them - Booker and Elizabeth - with a resolved expression on her face. "Get a second opinion from Moira, sure, but that means sweet fuck all if he still won't do anything about it. And it's not just YOUR problem, Booker, but Elizabeth's too. What if HER brain melts out of her ears because you didn't let them figure out what was wrong with yours?"
Booker glared at Neena, but it lasted all of two seconds, before his shoulders slumped. “I’d let ‘em carve my brain out if it would help her.” And that, really, was the truth. Just when he’d started feeling like he wasn’t entirely a fuck up, and he had a chance to raise Elizabeth right in the dreams, they’d thrown this other him. In a different place, in a city under the sea. He’d screwed up another little girl, gotten her killed. And for why? Gambling. And it was worse than even that but he couldn’t quite remember, except for in flashes.
If he never saw another casino again it would be too soon.
“A second opinion can be valuable, and do you mean Dr. MacTaggert? She’s an expert in the field of genetics, so I don’t know how much it will help. But I can refer you to her.” Claudine squeezed Booker’s shoulder, her chest pressing into his arm.
Lina raised an eyebrow. There is no way those jugs are natural.
But! To more important things.
“I’d ask if you were ready to go home,” Lina said, talking to Booker, and then sighed. “But I’m sure you heard it’s been bombed to Kingdom Come, so. You can stay with us if you want. Anything we need to do to make sure his brain doesn’t turn into pudding, doc?”
It was a nice thought, that he'd be willing to do something like that for her, and Elizabeth wrapped an arm around him. From the other side. The one that Dr. Renko wasn't rubbing her breasts all over.
"Don't take it personally. Moira's from my dream world and I trust her a bit more. She's not a neurologist but she's dealing with me and the chip in my head pretty well, so I'd like her opinion if we can get it." Neena added, so that the good boobied doctor knew there were no hard feelings. Mostly.
“I understand. This dream phenomona is fascinating and I can only hope we discover a way to stop it.” She helped Booker to his feet. “It’s not worth the casualties.” She nodded at them, not at all sinisterly. “I suggest you get him looked at as soon as possible.”
“No drugs,” Booker repeated. He wasn’t even sure he wanted a drink. He put an arm around Elizabeth, trusting her more than the doctor, even if her breasts were quite nice. “Thanks doc.”
Most men would feel emasculated, having so many women come to his rescue. Booker was just glad to see them. All three of them.