Lensherr M.D. An Inconvenient Man
Episode 01: An Inconvenient Man
It was two in the morning and no one was asleep.
From the glossed expression Cassidy wasn’t awake - but technically his eyes were open and there was a textbook on top of his pot-noodles so he counted. Raven had lost the feeling in her left hand thanks to cramp mixed with too much caffeine; McCoy was muttering logarithms to himself and Summers … was somewhere. Else. Preferably not near anything explosive or expensive.
Emma Frost M.D. drawled her eyes over Xavier’s motley group of doctor-lings once again and ran her tongue against the back of her uncannily white teeth, irritated at their appearances.
Good God. The place stank of exhaustion.
She knew that McCoy and Summers were on back-to-back shifts but the others hadn’t bothered mentioning to Xavier that they weren’t formally on call. Yet still there was an air of tired willingness and good humour as Raven offered her hair tie to McCoy when his fringe caught in the rim of his glasses for the second time.
It was grinding.
The beatific, anti-professional attitude of one Charles Xavier was ruining her hospital. With his acceptance of the place of placebo, religious reassurance and psychology in modern medicine Xavier was brining in nothing short of miraculous results. Waking a near vegetative coma patient using plain song, the recorded sound of a crying child and what he referred to ‘electronic acupuncture’ had impressed MacTaggert so much that he had been allowed to import his group of misbegotten medics from the hospitals where he had stowed them while he nestled in. The ‘team’, once it arrived, had consisted of an ex-convict, a chemical physicist who dressed like a pensioner, his half-sister and an Irish cretin who had a habit of singing almost constantly under his breath. Unfortunately with them he was even more devastatingly effective and it had turned out that these ‘students’ of his were all specialists in their individual fields.
Dr Frost plucked a piece of lint off of her own, pristine lab coat, moving gracefully to the makeshift kitchen. Her own reflection stared back from the counter, more polished than the granite surface it was mirrored in, though her face frowned surreptitiously as the silence of the room yielded.
“Good morning, everyone.” A voice entered the room, followed by a smile, followed by a man with unsettlingly bright eyes. The interns sat up a little straighter. Cassidy blinking slowly in greeting and McCoy hurried to put on the kettle, brushing past her and haphazardly apologizing as he seized four mugs.
“’Good’ is just inappropriate Charles. It’s grossly early, have some respect for the dead-on-their-feet.” Raven threw back at him, curling her hand into a fist and then splaying the fingers, working out the resistance from the muscle. Charles joined her, taking her hand and massaging it gently.
Another thing that Frost disliked about Xavier was that he somehow had charmed the rest of the staff into thinking that it was perfectly acceptable that he should work with his sister. Apparently he was so outstandingly moral that little details like familial relations wouldn’t impair his judgment when it came to ethics tribunals. Her thoughts dripped with sarcasm and she returned to fixing a salad.
Normally she would never agree to work hours like this. She was an eminent reconstructive surgeon and did not need these unpractical hours thieving her beauty sleep. However Moira had informed her that the new consultant was to join the ranks today and, with a spiteful pleasure, she was looking forward to seeing Xavier pushed off of his pedestal.
Emma had worked with Erik Lensherr briefly during her spell at the Institute for Military Health, a placement she had taken to accumulate the charitable credentials that made it so much easier to shift into the lucrative world of cosmetic surgery. It always made the patients so trusting as she assured them that they were so physically abhorrent that they should go under the knife.
From what she had gleaned Lensherr had begun as a field surgeon at the age of fourteen, learning from his father how to cauterize a man with whatever you had at hand. Only acquiring a real medical license at twenty-four he had nearly lost it at twenty five when he replaced a dying man’s kidney with a pig’s in order to save his life. The fact that he hadn’t asked the permission of the ethics committee or the patient had caused a bit of a buzz.
Lensherr, in response to the criticisms, had said that he didn’t keep kosher anymore. Emma had almost laughed.
Rigidly scientific, unsympathetic towards patients and other doctors alike, and with the kind of personal magnetism that bent people and rules around him Lensherr was the diametric opposite of Xavier.
And would be getting off his flight at one am.
He should be in the hospital by five.
She had no intention of missing the firework display.
-
“Get her up to the ECU. She’s exhibiting a swinging fever, over 40 Celsius. Drill the boyfriend for any Malarial hot spots they might have visited and how long there have been signs of illness. Then double whatever he says.” Erik ran a hand over his eyes, appreciating the temporary shadow as his pupils adjusted to the sterile brilliance of the hospital lighting.
The two paramedics carting the girl in nodded, having been … educated into compliance over the course of the ambulance trip. Lensherr replied in kind and rolled his neck, working out the tension of the flight.
He should be grateful he supposed. It had certainly been faster than a cab.
An overweight nurse with androgenic (difficult to tell with the amount of estrogen those fat stores would be secreting) alopecia started to contradict him, strutting out from behind the reception. His headache protested. Damn - would all the nurses be dressed in purple?
“Hey! Hey, you - you can’t just come in here like that you know! This is a proper hospital, not some free clinic you flight medics can use as a disposal bin.” Erik had at least a meter’s head start towards the elevator well, but the indignant man hurried after him, shouting for security loud enough that Erik was obliged to slow down. Once in hearing distance Erik grimaced and turned his head over his shoulder, unwilling to completely break stride.
“ I'm not a flight medic, though I have been on a plane with a rapidly deteriorating twenty-two year old female since twenty-one hundred my time and my patience it suffering for it. And from this moment I am an attendant at this hospital. The name is Erik Lensherr.” He caught the elevator door before it closed, slipping inside and shrugging off his jacket in the same movement, the chrome panels sliding shut on the double chins of the nurse’s bewildered expression.
It was a satisfying look. Erik replayed it in his mind’s eye even as his brain relaxed into two parts, one sifting through the observations he had garnered from watching the girl during the flight, the other wishing the elevator music would give up rather than playing through its own static.
“Why multiply by two?”
Surprised, and then disconcerted by being caught unawares Erik snapped around to meet the source of the question. A pair of blue eyes stared curiously up at him -
- a child?
No.
He almost shook himself, catching the tremor in his shoulders before it could give him away.
No, it was a man. 5’7”, his age - maybe a little older - with smile lines ornamenting those uncannily, innocent eyes. He wasn’t dressed in a lab coat but he had a clipboard beneath his arm, and an air of self-possessed calm that no patient would wear. Patients, to Erik’s knowledge, oscillated between blind-fear and blind-relief.
He returned himself to the question, his mouth moving almost automatically, but eloquent in a way that he only managed when he was discussing medicine, “If she was travelling it meant that it wasn’t serious enough to keep her bedridden. The boyfriend isn’t the observant type; any symptoms he noticed will have been the more serious ones, late stage and with a fever this violent - it has to have been gathering force over a considerable time frame.” He calculated briefly, “Three weeks incubation. At least. I doubt he’ll give the orderlies more than ten days.”
There was a period of consideration, as the metal box floated between the floors, settling onto the third. The man was still looking at him, smiling thoughtfully and said, “I’d multiply by three. From what I saw the boyfriend looked Irish, they're naturally stoical.”
Erik’s face flinched towards a scowl, “I didn’t invite your opinion.”
“But you won’t disregard it.” The man stepped towards the doors as they began to open, “It was nice to meet you Dr Lensherr.”
It was two in the morning and no one was asleep.
From the glossed expression Cassidy wasn’t awake - but technically his eyes were open and there was a textbook on top of his pot-noodles so he counted. Raven had lost the feeling in her left hand thanks to cramp mixed with too much caffeine; McCoy was muttering logarithms to himself and Summers … was somewhere. Else. Preferably not near anything explosive or expensive.
Emma Frost M.D. drawled her eyes over Xavier’s motley group of doctor-lings once again and ran her tongue against the back of her uncannily white teeth, irritated at their appearances.
Good God. The place stank of exhaustion.
She knew that McCoy and Summers were on back-to-back shifts but the others hadn’t bothered mentioning to Xavier that they weren’t formally on call. Yet still there was an air of tired willingness and good humour as Raven offered her hair tie to McCoy when his fringe caught in the rim of his glasses for the second time.
It was grinding.
The beatific, anti-professional attitude of one Charles Xavier was ruining her hospital. With his acceptance of the place of placebo, religious reassurance and psychology in modern medicine Xavier was brining in nothing short of miraculous results. Waking a near vegetative coma patient using plain song, the recorded sound of a crying child and what he referred to ‘electronic acupuncture’ had impressed MacTaggert so much that he had been allowed to import his group of misbegotten medics from the hospitals where he had stowed them while he nestled in. The ‘team’, once it arrived, had consisted of an ex-convict, a chemical physicist who dressed like a pensioner, his half-sister and an Irish cretin who had a habit of singing almost constantly under his breath. Unfortunately with them he was even more devastatingly effective and it had turned out that these ‘students’ of his were all specialists in their individual fields.
Dr Frost plucked a piece of lint off of her own, pristine lab coat, moving gracefully to the makeshift kitchen. Her own reflection stared back from the counter, more polished than the granite surface it was mirrored in, though her face frowned surreptitiously as the silence of the room yielded.
“Good morning, everyone.” A voice entered the room, followed by a smile, followed by a man with unsettlingly bright eyes. The interns sat up a little straighter. Cassidy blinking slowly in greeting and McCoy hurried to put on the kettle, brushing past her and haphazardly apologizing as he seized four mugs.
“’Good’ is just inappropriate Charles. It’s grossly early, have some respect for the dead-on-their-feet.” Raven threw back at him, curling her hand into a fist and then splaying the fingers, working out the resistance from the muscle. Charles joined her, taking her hand and massaging it gently.
Another thing that Frost disliked about Xavier was that he somehow had charmed the rest of the staff into thinking that it was perfectly acceptable that he should work with his sister. Apparently he was so outstandingly moral that little details like familial relations wouldn’t impair his judgment when it came to ethics tribunals. Her thoughts dripped with sarcasm and she returned to fixing a salad.
Normally she would never agree to work hours like this. She was an eminent reconstructive surgeon and did not need these unpractical hours thieving her beauty sleep. However Moira had informed her that the new consultant was to join the ranks today and, with a spiteful pleasure, she was looking forward to seeing Xavier pushed off of his pedestal.
Emma had worked with Erik Lensherr briefly during her spell at the Institute for Military Health, a placement she had taken to accumulate the charitable credentials that made it so much easier to shift into the lucrative world of cosmetic surgery. It always made the patients so trusting as she assured them that they were so physically abhorrent that they should go under the knife.
From what she had gleaned Lensherr had begun as a field surgeon at the age of fourteen, learning from his father how to cauterize a man with whatever you had at hand. Only acquiring a real medical license at twenty-four he had nearly lost it at twenty five when he replaced a dying man’s kidney with a pig’s in order to save his life. The fact that he hadn’t asked the permission of the ethics committee or the patient had caused a bit of a buzz.
Lensherr, in response to the criticisms, had said that he didn’t keep kosher anymore. Emma had almost laughed.
Rigidly scientific, unsympathetic towards patients and other doctors alike, and with the kind of personal magnetism that bent people and rules around him Lensherr was the diametric opposite of Xavier.
And would be getting off his flight at one am.
He should be in the hospital by five.
She had no intention of missing the firework display.
-
“Get her up to the ECU. She’s exhibiting a swinging fever, over 40 Celsius. Drill the boyfriend for any Malarial hot spots they might have visited and how long there have been signs of illness. Then double whatever he says.” Erik ran a hand over his eyes, appreciating the temporary shadow as his pupils adjusted to the sterile brilliance of the hospital lighting.
The two paramedics carting the girl in nodded, having been … educated into compliance over the course of the ambulance trip. Lensherr replied in kind and rolled his neck, working out the tension of the flight.
He should be grateful he supposed. It had certainly been faster than a cab.
An overweight nurse with androgenic (difficult to tell with the amount of estrogen those fat stores would be secreting) alopecia started to contradict him, strutting out from behind the reception. His headache protested. Damn - would all the nurses be dressed in purple?
“Hey! Hey, you - you can’t just come in here like that you know! This is a proper hospital, not some free clinic you flight medics can use as a disposal bin.” Erik had at least a meter’s head start towards the elevator well, but the indignant man hurried after him, shouting for security loud enough that Erik was obliged to slow down. Once in hearing distance Erik grimaced and turned his head over his shoulder, unwilling to completely break stride.
“ I'm not a flight medic, though I have been on a plane with a rapidly deteriorating twenty-two year old female since twenty-one hundred my time and my patience it suffering for it. And from this moment I am an attendant at this hospital. The name is Erik Lensherr.” He caught the elevator door before it closed, slipping inside and shrugging off his jacket in the same movement, the chrome panels sliding shut on the double chins of the nurse’s bewildered expression.
It was a satisfying look. Erik replayed it in his mind’s eye even as his brain relaxed into two parts, one sifting through the observations he had garnered from watching the girl during the flight, the other wishing the elevator music would give up rather than playing through its own static.
“Why multiply by two?”
Surprised, and then disconcerted by being caught unawares Erik snapped around to meet the source of the question. A pair of blue eyes stared curiously up at him -
- a child?
No.
He almost shook himself, catching the tremor in his shoulders before it could give him away.
No, it was a man. 5’7”, his age - maybe a little older - with smile lines ornamenting those uncannily, innocent eyes. He wasn’t dressed in a lab coat but he had a clipboard beneath his arm, and an air of self-possessed calm that no patient would wear. Patients, to Erik’s knowledge, oscillated between blind-fear and blind-relief.
He returned himself to the question, his mouth moving almost automatically, but eloquent in a way that he only managed when he was discussing medicine, “If she was travelling it meant that it wasn’t serious enough to keep her bedridden. The boyfriend isn’t the observant type; any symptoms he noticed will have been the more serious ones, late stage and with a fever this violent - it has to have been gathering force over a considerable time frame.” He calculated briefly, “Three weeks incubation. At least. I doubt he’ll give the orderlies more than ten days.”
There was a period of consideration, as the metal box floated between the floors, settling onto the third. The man was still looking at him, smiling thoughtfully and said, “I’d multiply by three. From what I saw the boyfriend looked Irish, they're naturally stoical.”
Erik’s face flinched towards a scowl, “I didn’t invite your opinion.”
“But you won’t disregard it.” The man stepped towards the doors as they began to open, “It was nice to meet you Dr Lensherr.”