Who: Martha Jones & Leonard McCoy What: Two doctors walk into a bookstore. When: Backdated: Early April just after the dragon Where: A bookstore Rating: Family Friendly Status: Complete!
Martha had seen a lot of things since moving to Orange County, in both the dreams and in the waking world, but a dragon had been a new one. Out of all the bizarre and surprising things she’d seen over the last few years, seeing the dragon perched on top of Stark Industries had felt like something out of a movie.
During most events when people’s lives were put in danger, Martha would usually either go around with Clara, in her TARDIS, to help anyone in the field who needed medical attention of stay at the Clinic or The Agency, depending on the situation. This time she’d opted to stay at the clinic because she’d thought she could do more help there and there was very little she could do out in the field against a dragon. Thankfully, after Mercy’s post about volunteers they had gotten some much needed extra help so they didn’t get too swamped this time around.
Now that the dragon had been taken care of, it appeared that the doomsayers had had a direct link to it, because they had been nowhere to be seen since, which was a nice change after a week of continuously listening to people preach about the end of the world.
It also meant that Martha could actually enjoy her day off. She had initially thought about staying home and relaxing, but ultimately she’d decided to go out and enjoy the day and soon found herself doing a little shopping, which included a stop in at a nearby bookstore.
One of the said volunteers was still trying to come to terms with the fact a giant winged beast otherwise known as a dragon had been wreaking both chaos and havoc. It was surreal and had he not seen it with his very own eyes Leonard McCoy would have been leaning towards “everybody is crazy” but despite his own self imposed isolation it had felt good to be in the middle of something again, helping people and putting what he’d learned to good use.
Not that he was going to make a habit out of it because people, ugh, no thank you.
Today however was a day of chores with a side visit to a nearby bookstore as he’d practically eaten his way through every book he’d owned including a couple bought for him by Joanna so he was in desperate need of something new to read.
Upon entering the bookstore, Martha chose an aisle at random and starting scanning the various titles on the spines of the books as she passed. She wasn’t looking for anything in particular, but was waiting for a title to jump out at her. Stopping, she pulled one book off the shelf and turned it over to read the description on the back then replaced it before continuing down the aisle. It wasn’t that she was picky when it came to books, but if the description didn’t intrigue her right away then she didn’t think the book would either.
As she reached the end of the aisle, she glanced towards the next when she spotted a man who looked vaguely familiar. She watched him for a moment before realizing that he had been one of the volunteers at the clinic recently. They had had a good number of volunteers so she hadn’t caught everyone’s name, but regardless, she thought it was only right to thank him for his time so she approached him, “Hi. Excuse me, you volunteered at Mercy’s Clinic last week, right?”
Leonard was currently bent over perusing the nearby book titles when somebody was speaking to him and he straightened up slowly to take in the familiar face though immediately the connection wasn’t sparking until she mentioned Mercy’s clinic.
“Yeah, that’s right,” he said with a nod. “Craziest shift of my life, but I wasn’t bored.” So it definitely had that going for it and it felt nice to be doing good again even if he’d rather purposefully gone out of his way to have as little to do with people as possible.
Martha laughed and nodded, “Yeah, things tend to not be too boring around here.” Even when things were quiet, between crazy events, Martha didn’t consider it boring so much as a chance to catch up on things, which was what she was doing now, “But be careful with what you say cause you never know when something crazier is going to happen.”
“Hell, I don’t think I can handle crazier,” Leonard muttered with a shake of his head. He’d gone looking for a quiet life when he’d come back from war but apparently that was not to be, go figure. His own fault he supposed for settling in Orange County. He’d started dreaming as well, about time and events that were most definitely not his own and if that didn’t make him think he was losing the plot then he didn’t know what did.
“Then you definitely chose the wrong place to live,” Martha wanted to ask him if he was dreamer as well, but didn’t want him to think she was crazy if he hadn’t had any. After all, not everyone in Orange County had the dreams and she still didn’t know exactly what cause them, but it seemed pretty likely that it was The Network. “Sorry to break it to you.”
“Story of my life,” Leonard replied wryly. “Wrong place, wrong time, save of course when on the battlefield.” It was literally the only place he’d ever been where actually he was right where he needed to be at the exact moment he was needed. He hadn’t dreamt yet but didn’t mean that he wouldn’t and of course dreaming required sleep which wasn’t what he did a lot if he could avoid it. “But hey I suppose it keeps life interesting.”
Martha nodded, “Oh yeah. It definitely keeps things interesting.” Regardless of what got thrown at them, it had always been interesting, “So how long have you been a doctor?” Martha didn’t mean to pry, but she was always curious about why others had gone into the medical field and how long they’d been doing it.
“Longer than I should admit,” Leonard said with a small smirk. “Might give away my age if I told the truth.” He rubbed at his hair. “How long have you been working at the clinic?”
Martha laughed and nodded, “Completely understandable. I don’t like giving my age either.” Sure, Martha was still quite young, but that didn’t mean she liked telling people how old she was, “It’s been a couple of months. We just opened it not too long ago.”
People could be surprisingly ageist which Leonard had found out in recent years. “Gonna admit I don’t know its purpose outside of giving those in need a port in a storm.” It hadn’t felt like all the other hospitals he’d worked in so he was curious.
Besides, no harm ever came from asking a question.
“Well, I’m sure you’ve noticed the strange things that go on around here.” Obviously since he had seen the dragon, “Well, along with the strange things there are dreams.” Martha had no way of knowing if Leonard had started dreaming so she figured she might as well assume he hadn’t. “No one knows what causes them, but they’re like alternate lives and sometimes things like injuries crossover from them. Things that people might not be able to go to a regular doctor for cause they’re harder to explain.” She knew that to any normal, non dreamer, she probably sounded crazy.
Alternate universes? That sounded like some real… sci fi stuff, sorta stuff a guy in his old squad would have enjoyed and generally something he avoided because Leonard was a here and now kind of guy rather than anything else. Then again it was widespread and not everybody could be crazy or on some sort of drug so maybe there was merit to it. Plus there had been a dragon flying around the other day.
“That makes a whole lot of sense, pretty sure you told any regular doctor that you got hurt in a dream and they’d just look at you weird and wonder if you’re in need of some sorta psych eval.”
Martha nodded, “Exactly. So, we set up the clinic so that no one has to worry about sounding crazy.” Martha had heard about so many different dream worlds that almost nothing sounded crazy to her anymore, “Hey, speaking of the clinic, if you’re ever looking for a permanent place, we’re always looking for more doctors.” Martha was always looking for doctors who were also dreamers.
Huh, good to know. Leonard made a mental note because at some point he’d probably get the itch to help people. Giving Jim a check up had reminded him how much he actually loved being a doctor but people, well, those were the issue. “I’ll be sure to remember that.”
Right now his veterinary clinic was going well but what harm would it do to volunteer?
“You got any room for volunteers?”
“We are always looking for volunteers,” A smile spread across Martha’s lips and she nodded, “If you want to come in whenever you have some time, we can get everything set up to make you an official volunteer. Then you can decide when you want to work and we can go from there.” It was always nice to have new people at the clinic whether they were permanent doctors or volunteers.
Leonard nodded his head. “I’ll definitely do that.” Wouldn’t be full time and it wasn’t like he was throwing himself back into that world and he wouldn’t have to deal with people on a full time permanent basis.