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13 (doctor13) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2015-09-12 23:59:00

Who: Thirteen doctor13 & Victor Frankenstein anewprometheus
What: Lunch in the morgue
When: Friday, Sept 11, lunch time
Where: Forensics Lab/Morgue at UC Irvine Hospital
Rating: Audience Discretion is Advised
Warnings: Thirteen can be cranky. Frankenstein is his own warning, right?
Status: Closed/Completed GDoc


~*~

Dead bodies didn't talk back.

Pop culture could glamorize zombies or other walking dead creatures all they liked. It didn't change the fact a dead body was just a slab of meat which used to be a person. Morgues didn't bother Thirteen. She liked them better than cafeterias. They had better air-conditioning for one thing and they were quieter for another. Chatting was not on her list of favorite pastimes. She was sick of having to deal with interns not to mention avoiding grateful families who felt it was their duty in life to touch her as much as possible to express their thanks for whatever she'd done for their person in the ER.

Her salad tasted fresher in the sterile air of the Forensics Department.

She wondered if it was because the air was better filtered down there or if it was because she could tell it was alive. It really didn't matter much as far as the why was concerned. Thirteen was happy enough the salad tasted edible. Her appetite came and went with the Huntington's drugs. The suppressants had their moments when they worked seamlessly with her body chemistry as well as the ones when they caused every possible negative side effect---often all at once which was delightful.

Thirteen hated to miss work.

Someone came in as she was taking a sip of water, she toasted them with her bottle, "I like to eat where it's quiet. Let me know if I'm in the way."

There were plenty of open exam tables. It didn't bother her to be sitting on one of them while eating. The blood troughs were a great anchor for her feet and the table was wide enough for her to feel comfortable sitting sideways on it. She appreciated it was cool to the touch, too. The sterile metal soothed some of the burning sensation she was experiencing as a result of her latest transfusion. Hot and cold, never just right in temperature, Thirteen felt a lot like Goldilocks from time to time since nothing was ever 'just right' for her.

It wouldn't bother her to move if she had to for the person to do their work. She was, after all, intruding on their work space for a peaceful lunch hour. The fact she'd came into the Forensics Department at all without a work related reason could be grounds for a hearing. Thirteen wasn't on anyone's favorites list except the Chief of the ER thanks to all the hours she volunteered there. The board hadn't stepped in to try to stop her from working only because they were terrified of the bad press which could potentially come their way if she made a fuss.

Firing the dying woman who only wanted to save lives wouldn't look great to potential investors or students.

~*~

Death had never bothered Victor. It seemed poignant now. Laughable, even, in a poetic or ironic sense. Here he was, building a career off the study of the dead, clinical autopsies the highlight of his day, and there he was in his dreams, slicing them open to bring them back to life. Maybe, too, he entertained the thought he could achieve those feats in the waking world. He had all the notes, the knowledge. Certainly, if nothing else, he had the means. What could a poor Victorian doctor do that a moderately well off, twenty-first century one couldn’t? It occupied all his free time - which wasn’t much. Ever the workaholic. Time to sleep when he was dead, time to relax once he’d finished the next four years of residency.

So it was that rather than join his peers for lunch, Victor often escaped to quiet rooms to pour over his journals. His own substance habits also caused waves in his appetite, and he still had to figure out how one would reattach and reanimate a hand, if needed. It was more intriguing than any meal. Usually, though, he didn’t have company. Or he was never intruding. The presence of someone else made him hesitate at the door.

“-- Sorry,” he said, at last, finding his words. He shook his head a bit. “I … Didn’t realize this room was occupied.” Just another day in Orange County. Walk into a morgue, find someone enjoying lunch. “If you’re certain I won’t be a disruption - I just have some extra studying to do, really.”

~*~

Strange for a man who belonged to the department to be apologizing to her for an intrusion. Thirteen shrugged one shoulder, her mouth tipping up in a smile as she ate her salad. It didn't bother her if he had to work or study. The smell of death wasn't common in a professional setting. Those who were maintained in the labs were literally maintained. She wasn't one squeamish about anything at all. It had been a laughing matter, joking even, for her compatriots in medical school when she'd be eating during lab practicals.

"It's your department. I'm squatting because it's the last place anyone will look for me. Study away. Nothing bothers me."

Thirteen didn't need small talk or chatter. She wouldn't bother him if he wanted to study quietly on his own. There was no reason for her to intrude on his work. They weren't in the same field of study though they did work in the same hospital. Department differences could be as vast as the space between continents sometimes. No one really realized how far away from another person's research they were until they began to go over it with them in depth.

In depth discussion was discouraged between departments for that very reason---the hospital administrators wanted everyone to feel as if they were all part of a team when there was no team to be a part of inside medicine.

Sometimes she imagined she had a team setting. Day dreams or real dreams. She couldn't decide. It was also possible it was her disease eating away at the fragile tissue of her brain, making her think she was remembering something which couldn't possibly have happened. People flitted in and out of her mind as if they were real when Thirteen knew her own history well enough to know if these people had existed in her life?


They would have been people she'd kept in touch with or she'd have remembered before now.

"I will warn you I might be going crazy. So far? No wild outbursts, but my brain is flirting with dementia every night more or less. Asking me for a consultation would probably not be a good career move in case you need help with your research."

~*~

All right, then. If she wasn’t going to be bothered, then neither was Victor. He found his own section of the lab and took out his notes, bound together in an old looking journal but well cared for. Another notebook joined it, much more modern looking. It helped to cross reference his dream findings with modern medicine. Victor was perfectly fine with settling in until she spoke.

Bright blue eyes looked up from his papers, focusing in on his happenstance lunch partner. Crazy. Crazy in a morgue. … Well, how could Victor judge, really? It wasn’t as if a morphine addict could say anything about anyone’s life. Or a corpse re-animater in training.

“That’s reassuring,” he commented smoothly, English accent untouched by his years in California. It explained her choice, then, in lunchroom. “But I had no intentions of asking. Unless you’ve got vast experience in organ and tissue reanimation, which I’m going to assume you do not.”

That was Victor being polite. He didn’t smile, but if he was a smiler, that’s where he would have done it.

~*~

"Your assumption is accurate. I have zero experience in organ and tissue reanimation. The only experience I have with organ and tissue is the kind from being an ER surgeon, a diagnostician -I think-, and feeling both dying slowly."

She shrugged, a jerk of a shoulder not as graceful as it should have been. Her salad was still good. Thirteen didn't really know what kind of work he was doing with reanimation, but it was likely more interesting than stitches. Most of her ER work had been sutures, general trauma care, triage until someone else could do more. Huntington's was slowly taking away her ability to continue to work in the same capacity she had before the disease started eating its way through her nervous system.

How much longer did she have to work? What would it feel like to retire? Would she have to deal with people knowing before she could get out the door with what was left of her dignity intact?

Thirteen loved her privacy more than anything else. She took a great deal of pride in being able to set up boundaries for herself and others. People could get so close and no closer. Their lives were their own; hers was all she had. People who weren't dying had the luxury of hobbies, interests, hopes and dreams. All Thirteen had were moments. She literally had the present to work with and no promise of more. The doctor across from her made her wonder what had happened to him to make him interested in organ and tissue regeneration.

Everyone had a story.

If she were anyone other than herself?

She would have asked.

As it stood, all Thirteen managed was, "Sounds like you're doing more interesting work than me. Good for you."

~*~

Victor snorted. Interesting? Yes. Remarkably interesting, infinitely fascinating. It bolstered his ego. It made him feel invincible, even despite the tragedy he’d seen that could be born from such pursuits. But that was the nature of science. You continued to do it until you got it right. Maybe with modern technology and findings, he could get it right.

It was a dark path to go down.

Beyond that, it wasn’t the sort of thing one could share with people. He could word it right, of course. Say he simply wanted to study how failed organs could regenerate or be brought back to some state of life, but that was a bit beyond his realm of pathology. Better to keep it his own secret, toy with it on his spare time, not allow anyone to steal his work from him.

“I’ve had someone inquire to me about the possibility of re-attaching a hand and having it still function. A strict hypothetical, of course.” It wasn’t a lie. Mostly. The task itself seemed a bit like a puzzle. He knew, in the general sense, how to use a whole body. Isolating one part was tricky. He’d get it eventually.

~*~

"Bullshit."

Thirteen smiled with her lips together. Her salad was dwindling to where it was mostly croutons -which she hated- and dressing -which she loved in excess- and she was getting bored. It happened when other people came around. There was some trigger inside her other people could press. They made her think in ways she wasn't used to or become disengaged from the world regardless of what the topic was they were discussing. Only specific individuals had ever been able to stir her interest for long.

She had a feeling this doctor was used to people dismissing him rather than asking anything about his work.

Stabbing one of the last leaves of lettuce, she pointed her fork at him, "I call bullshit. We've been able to do digit and even whole limb replantation for years. We've even done whole limb transplants successfully. You're literally working with dead tissue. Why? Bored with the easy stuff?"

It made sense to her. She stuffed the forkful of salad into her mouth, chewing while she waited on a response. It would either be an explanation or a demand to mind her own business. Either would tell her more than the doctor wanted her to know about him. Thirteen was good at reading people. She didn't like them, but she was better at working with them than she was accredited.

If he thought he could wait her out though?

The day could prove very interesting.

Thirteen was prepared to hole up for a stalemate until he made a choice. She was stubborn enough to need the closure.

~*~

Victor’s lips pressed into a line. There was a reason he didn’t have many colleagues, and that was because he couldn’t stand people in a general sense. He simply wanted to get on with his work - both hand related and reanimation related - undisturbed. It wasn’t on his agenda to humour other oddballs like himself.

“I am aware,” he said, tone clipped. It was nearly comical in his lingering British accent. “As it is, it’s not a particular surgery I’ve ever dealt with before, much less on my own, and I’ve a feeling that it won’t be quite as straightforward as it ought to be.” Not in Orange County, anyway. And not, even, that hand replacements are easy in the first place - just that Victor has a suspicion this will test all of his patience and his knowledge.

“As it is, I’ve always rather liked a challenge.”

~*~

Orange County was its own kind of freak show. Thirteen should know given how she was still functioning as a general surgeon with ever-advancing neurological disease. Her debilitation was constant. There were too many risks in letting her operate, yet here? No one batted an eye. The higher ups even patted her on the back for "soldiering on" for as long as she could stand.

"Challenge equals making it happen inside The Freak Show, huh? Yeah. I get that. I fit in here in the OC for a reason."

She shrugged as she finished her salad, sliding off the slab onto the floor with a click of her shoes as they hit the tiles. Thirteen stretched before heading over to toss the empty container. She threw away the whole container complete with silverware. None of it mattered. It was only things in a place where everyone had too many of them. This guy wouldn't care given he was likely not the one who had to take out the trash or count the forks in the cafeteria line.

"See you later, Doc. Keep good notes. I'll be interested to see what kind of progress you manage here, yeah?"

Thirteen winked at him before making her way out of the morgue and back to the chaos of the ER.

~*~

Even though his attention went back to his notebook, Victor kept a careful eye on her. He was certain, too, that she knew he was watching. What had struck him about the whole thing was that it was one of the easiest conversations he’d had with anyone. It was very seamless. Short, painless, an actual conversation. Victor thought maybe he ought to be proud about it.

He couldn’t mask his momentary surprise, though.

“Oh. I - Suppose, yes.” He always kept good notes. No one ever wanted to see them. To be fair, he never wanted to show them, but he got the distinct impression that if he wanted to find a medical confidant, it could be this woman. It was just a shame that he never got her name.