Examinations
I had my first appointment with Dr. Grey, held in her new lab downtown. It was all I expected: cool, calm, sleek, modern, and professional. So was Grey, for that matter. How smoothly and easily she asked about my mutation. Damn her.
Alyssa Carter was also there. Blasted girl. At least her teacher understood (I can only hope, before I find myself on the wrong side of a mental enema) what I tried to do. A peace offering, another bone thrown to the wolves, and before the girl herself gets tossed thataway.
Trust. It's so damnably hard to cultivate in honest soil that I have to wonder if I'm that out of practice, or if only the particular topic at hand is what's balking me from this game.
Or if it's that I don't, deep at the heart of things, want to play the game.
Dangerous. I'm not that desperate for a revitalizing thrill, am I? Or not that desperate, period?
7/19/2005
Logfile from Shaw.
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McClintock Center - Gradient Genetech
Not the grandest or largest of the suites available, Gradient Genetech shares a similar quality of 'shiny and new' all the same. A small conference/reception area with a front desk, two loveseats and a coffee table is visible from the hallway, with three doors leading off from it. One is to a small office on the left, the other to a storage and supply room of equal size. The door at the back leads to the main laboratory space, which takes up a full half of the suite's footprint. While it's not as well-equipped as Dr. Grey's lab back 'home', it nonetheless features PCR machines, microscopes, a robotic pipetter, and all the other tools of a geneticist's trade, along with a small exam room for human patients, curtained off with glass walls and sliding doors. Another area behind other temporary walls is alive with the sounds of squeaking and tussling, courtesy of cages full of well-kept lab mice.
--
Lunchtime's a good time for a lab appointment, or that must be what Sebastian Shaw is telling himself, for him to have settled such bland good humor on his face and, indeed, his whole manner, right down (up?) to the faintly vibrating rhythms of his mind. He shows up at Gradient Genetech in unremarkable mufti: sneakers, sweat pants, and a thin windbreaker half-zipped over a T-shirt. He even does the polite thing by hanging outside the door, peeking in curiously.
As Shaw peers curiously, so is he peered curiously at, by a few scientists lingering in the hallway and klatching over coffee and confusing biological problems. Jean herself greets him at the door to her own suite a bare moment or two after he arrives, comfortable in a longsleeved shirt and black denim jeans against the air conditioning, and with a crisp white lab coat on to make her look professional. Somewhat more casually, she's got a mouse sitting on her shoulder and trying to hide in her hair. "Sebastian," she greets with a smile and a handshake. "Do come in, and I'd like you to meet Dora." The mouse, apparently.
Alyssa is, it would seem, somewhat less than aware of what transpires near the door. While Dora is with Jean, the other experimental subjects are in their cages -- which Alyssa is in the process of cleaning, one by one. Take out mouse. Put it in temporary enclosure. Throw away dirty bedding. Replace with clean bedding. Put mouse back in cage. Except. Er. "Dr. Grey? I can't find Henry VII," is called out from the back of the lab.
"Jean. Thank you for seeing me." Shaw shifts his polite smile, with only a brief squint, at the mouse. "And little Dora, of course. Is she one of your creations or just a helpmeet around the lab?" And speaking of which: at the call, his mind spikes with cold surprise visible in gaze's flash. "That one of your students?"
"Slide the door guards in front of the entrance to keep him contained, and I'll be back in a minute, Alyssa." Jean calls back, allowing the much better behaved, if curious, little Dora to clamber experimentally across her lifted hand. Dora's a cute little mouse, we must say, all white and brown with brindle markings on the darker fur. "And yes, yes indeed. She's a mutant and mother of mutants, although I have to say her only power seems to be to make rodent pellets disappear at an alarming rate. Do you want coffee? Alyssa's a student of mine, working as my research assistant over the summer. Part of that job includes getting coffee, in addition to playing with mice."
The door guards close with a careful click, and Alyssa steps away from the door with a slight frown. "I must not have gotten the lid closed quite tight enough when I transferred him," is her explanation as she approaches, still eyeing the now-closed door with a disappointed expression. But, there are people. And so, smile prepped and ready, she turns toward Jean and Sebastian only to have the expression falter. "Mr. Shaw?"
Having had time to prepare, Shaw has his reaction entirely smoothed: another leak of warmer surprise, in twinkle of eye and slight, slightly aloof smile. "Miss Carter! Fancy seeing you here. I'm fine, no coffee, thanks," he then splits nicely between the two of them. "Thought I should show up without too many chemicals percolating inside me. This /is/ quite the setup, Jean. You'll have to give me a tour at some point; I'm itching to touch everything and figure out how it works."
"It's all right, Alyssa. I can't tell you what a mouse is thinking, but I -can- tell when there's the sort of electrical activity a brain puts out coming from inside of a cardboard box," Jean assures, turning to Alyssa and extending Dora towards her. "So, why don't you put Dora back, I'll round up Henry before he can emulate his namesake and chase after innocent young female mice, and why don't you take a lunch break for yourself." There's a slight hint of suggestion pressed along with that gentle offer, although she does add an "And if you could bring me back a sandwich from the lunch cart, that'd be great. There should be a twenty on my desk." Go on, Alyssa, leave the bad man alone for a bit 'lest you hug him. "Well, Sebastian, we can take a little tour now, since after all there's not much to see, and we can wind up in the examination room."
Alyssa flashes a smile at Sebastian, surprise and relief and a little bit of interest coloring her mental landscape. Leaky, leaky 'Lyssa. "I talked to Dr. Grey, and she wanted me to keep working for her. Just, here in the city." Cheerful, cheerful, no sullen flashes as she thinks of Joh-- oh, wait, there it is. Her smile fades slightly as she collects Dora, so it's a slower, more sullen nod that greets Jean's suggestion. "Lunch break? Okay, it's about.. would you like anything in particular?" is asked as she walks away to deal with Dora.
Shaw thoroughly ignores the girl at that point, for the brighter gleam of his expression and mental aspect turned on the good doctor. "A tour, then! If you wouldn't mind. I," he reports quietly, conspiratorial, "am still gearing myself up for the examination portion of the proceedings. A little walk first would help immensely."
"Anything but egg salad." Jean calls back to Alyssa, before taking Shaw's arm neatly and steering him awaaaaay from the lab and from Alyssa with the fine air of a proprietor showing off some five-star restaurant. "She's a wonderful girl, Sebastian. Bright, inquisitive... amazingly innocent for someone growing up in New York City. And I hope she stays that way." While her tone is light, a tip-chinned look gently but firmly states subtext: This girl is mine, and not meat for you. "But why don't I show you the office first, I have some capital statements that look interesting to me, but don't mean all that much to -my- eyes."
Smiling, Shaw tips his head back to her and her subtext, and they go off to do that for a little while, relying on unspoken understanding to keep the peace while they hash through financial data. Still, a medical researcher's day can never be entirely without disturbance, and when Jean has to take a call in the office, her visitor -- her patient -- politely removes himself to outside the door, leaning against the wall with slouched shoulders and hands fisted loosely in the windbreaker's pockets, sweeping shiny-eyed curiosity around the lab.
Alyssa returns from the room with the mice, casting a keen-eyed glance toward the floor to assure that our dear Henry doesn't make a break for it as she steps through the door. Turning toward Jean's office, she is confronted not only by a closed door, but by Sebastian's casual presence. Slowing to a halt, chin tipped upward and gaze mostly level, she offers a polite, "Mr. Shaw. Dr. Grey said that you might be stopping by the lab, to see how things are going." She takes in the pose, the lack of a suit, the unbusinesslike manner, and there's something slightly brittle in her tone as she says, "I would suppose that's why you're here?" Because it can't possibly be to torment her, can it?
Shaw, because he is a /nice/ Shaw (and because there is an omega-class telepath with a helluva protective streak in the office behind him), says pleasantly, "I'm here on my own business, Alyssa." He doesn't even linger on her name; if anything, the sibilant sound hisses soft warning. "So, this is the lab you were going to work in. Do you like the job so far?"
Alyssa is rattled, that much is obvious. Not by his words, not by his presence, but with the effort of holding herself together and not spilling her guts to the bad man in Jean's lab. "It's a job. It keeps me busy. Distracted. The mice are sweet, even if Henry /does/ try to bang," there's a hitch in her voice on the word, but she plunges onward, "anything he can if let out of his cage." Trembling, slightly, her voice is strained with the effort of clamping down on her emotions -- but then again, by now Jean is used to the flavor of Aly, when she thinks of John. "I should probably.. lunch."
Well, while he /is/ waiting . . . Shaw lowers his head and peers at her with avuncular concern. "Distracted from what? Is everything all right? I'd hate for any personal problems to be affecting work here," he tells her with a businessman's chill dispassion. "I might be investing in it, myself, after all."
"From the fact that my best friend, who I happened to be /completely/," Her voice is breaking, but the heat behind her words keeps her from breaking down, "/Stupidly/ in love with screwed my brains out, and has now apparently disappeared off the face of the earth." Hands clench into fists, and she refuses to drop her gaze, "But I'm /not/ letting it affect my work, /okay/?"
Shaw just blinks at her. "Temper, my girl," he murmurs. "Don't take it out on /me./ I don't think you'd like it." And his gaze drifts significantly down her face, her neck, the curve of her sweet young shoulder, to her biceps. Then flicks back to /her/ eyes, and he smiles, just a little cruel bit.
Alyssa wraps her arms around herself, though there's just the faintest hint of something.. of /want/ in her eyes once his meet hers again. "Don't presume to know anything about me," she states. "The mark he left is going to scar, Mr. Shaw. Yours," That expression turns defiant, briefly, "Have already faded."
Something whispers like far-off thunder through Shaw's expression at her revelation. Oh, not the bruises' fade, that's to be expected. But the rest? And that hint -- His lip curls. "Well, then get a hold of yourself," he tells her sternly. "A boy broke your heart and hurt you? Left a /mark/ on you? How dreadfully romantic. How stupidly adolescent. Are you /trying/ to live out a cheap paperback novel, or is it just coming to you naturally, Alyssa?"
Reeling herself in, Alyssa's gaze on Shaw is still white-hot. His words sting, break heart's resolve down just that little bit more. "Apparently it comes naturally to me, sir." is delivered in a voice that manages to keep from cracking. "Because believe me, this isn't the way I would have written it."
"No, I suppose you wanted fluffy puppies and rainbows and unicorns with darling sparkling horns and big blue eyes," drones Shaw out of utter boredom. He slouches further into the wall, pushing out his feet's brace for support, and stares down at her some more, like brooding Jove. "Instead you got a scar. I'll bet you have been secretly tracing your finger over and over it ever since he left you, remembering how it /felt/ and how much you wished you would feel it /again./"
"No," Alyssa admits with a short bark of pained laughter, "I don't think /anything/ involving John could possibly /be/ cheery and light. But I didn't expect him to disappear." His words, however, bring a swift shutting down of that expressive face, as well as a half-hearted, "No." There's a pause, as she slides out of her lab coat (because Jean said she could ahve one, damnit!) and reveals her shoulder, and the bandage there. "Burn's still healing." Dull, dull expression. Mustn't think of fire, of John's hands on her, of the white-hot searing pain as the fire touched her flesh.
Shaw eyes the bandage without much interest. Might as well be a fresh coat of primer on a wall for all he cares. Seems to care. "Did Dr. Grey take care of that for you? --Please cover yourself, by the way. I don't want her to think that I am seducing her lab assistants." His rolling black eye takes her in from feet to head, then flicks dismissal as he mutters, "As if I /would./"
"Yes," is answered just as dully. Alyssa pulls the 'coat back on without a wince, even as the material catches on the bandage. "Her assistants are very grateful, Mr. Shaw. Wouldn't want anything untoward to happen to sully their innocence." There's a vicious twist to the last word, as well as a tug on the edges of the lab coat to make sure it's firmly in place.
Shaw nods tight approval, and my, his fists hang like ballast in his pockets, dragging the dark-blue fabric straight as a board from his shoulders' span. "I wouldn't want it, no. You know how much she cares about you, I'm sure. And if anything ever happened to you?" He snorts. "I wouldn't want to be in that man's shoes. No wonder your boy ran away."
"She does," Alyssa admits, "But I can make decisions for myself." Chin up, gaze steady, hurt buried, buried beneath teenage stupidity, "It was my decision as much as his. /I/ could have said no if I had wanted to. He had no reason to run." There's a subtle shading to her words, challenge in the lines of her body, in her eyes.
"But he did," Shaw reminds her, not at all gleeful. He's somber, grave as a priest. Of course. "Maybe you just weren't very good. I'm sorry, my girl."
Breaking, broken, that softly muffled hitch would be the sound of Aly's little girl heart shattering. "It wouldn't surprise me," she finally says, "It was my first time."
Shaw makes a soft, thoughtful noise in his throat. "Are you oversharing with me? That's dangerous. Never know what a person might do with that information." His head rolls back against the wall, tips a little to the door. "Unless you're trying to get me in trouble with /her,/" he concludes coldly.
"I don't know what I'm doing, Mr. Shaw. I could be oversharing, if you call it that." Arms wrap around herself again, and her gaze is once more earnest, seeking something in his, and likely not finding anything in return. "I don't want you to get in trouble," Alyssa admits slowly, "But I'm tired of being innocent." There's nothing seductive in the last statement, just hurt and resignation.
"Well, you got that first part right." Shaw studies her with distinct disfavor. Get /that/ out of his heavy, flat gaze, like a brick to the forehead. "You /don't/ know what you're doing, and you should be glad of it. Be glad to be innocent. The alternative is much, much worse. I think I warned you of it. I'm sure I did -- but I suppose that faded along with the bruises. Christ, you must be one of Jean's remedial students."
Alyssa shrinks under that disfavor, something stretching and snapping inside of her at his words. "I'm not playing a /game/, Mr. Shaw. You won't hurt me, because of Dr. Grey. But you can help me." Twang!
"No." Flat, colder than cold: Shaw is entirely black ice now, and he trembles faintly with the intensity of controlling it. "I cannot, Alyssa Carter. You will stop /that/ foolishness right /now./"
"Why?" One word. One intense, foolish, /curious/ word, with what remains of Aly's sanity snapping behind it.
Out of deference to the still-quite-public location, and the office's occupant, Shaw tamps down hard on his temper under that thick, crackling ice. None but she can really see, anyway, the hard shine of his eyes and the malicious twist of his mouth. "Because I /don't/ want to get in trouble, thank you very much. And because you are a foolish young goose of a girl who is going to find herself plucked and popped straight into the oven if she doesn't wise the hell /up./ Life /is/ a game," he hisses roughly. "You're in over your head with it. Certainly with /me./ Knock it off. Just -- knock it off."
"Pity," is Alyssa's reply as reality shifts, perceptions skew farther and farther away from anything resembling sense. "It could have been interesting." Abruptly, her demeanor shifts, back to bright, bubby -- if not exactly happy, because something's missing from her expression -- Alyssa. perception is still altered, however. She extends a hand toward Sebastian, head tilted slightly to one side. "Knocking it off, sir."
Shaw looks wearily at her, not even deigning to notice the hand. "You /are/ insane. I'll be sure to tell Jean. She can peek inside you and fix it, I hope."
Alyssa retracts the hand, frowning slightly as it's ignored. "Am not, sir." Because what else is she supposed to say? 'Yes, sir. I just had my heart broken, and responded by trying to crawl into bed with the most evil man I have ever met.' Of course not.
Shaw rolls his eyes and tucks his head even further back on his neck: retreating from the mad girl, oh, yes. "Go get lunch or clean the cages, whatever you're supposed to do for Dr. Grey. I have nothing more to say to you," and there /is/ finality in his voice, like a guillotine's sweet silver swoop. Thunk.
"Lunch." Beat. "Yes." A smile spreads, the half-sibling of Aly's ordinary smile, and she darts forward to hug Sebastian. Retreating, sanity's mask slips back into place with a click and she dashes off. Jean can repay her for the sandwich later.
Perhaps it's Jean allowing her sense of humour to get the better of her while she's in the next room and therefore keeping watch. Perhaps it's just the paralysis borne of complete and utter horror. In any case, Jean does not return until Alyssa has scampered away in search of sandwiches, but then does so with alacrity, and a highly bemused expression. "On the other hand," she states, shaking her head somewhat painedly. "Perhaps there's a state of being -too- innocent. Did I really overhear you telling her she was probably bad in bed, and then see her hug you on her way out the door anyways, Sebastian?"
Shaw growls. His mind is all spiky offended on top and rolling deep anger beneath, even as he slews his gaze to her and tries to back down into smoother waters. "You warned me off her. Fine. I already tried that once. I tried it again. The girl needs counselling, Jean, or else a slap upside the head to knock some brains into her. Is it some kind of infatuation? Did her boyfriend really hurt her that much? She showed me the /bandage,/ for God's sake."
"Her boyfriend's a pyrotic." Jean explains, lifting one hand to pinch at the bridge of her nose and looking every single one of her twenty nine years and eight months of life for a moment, plus a few more on top of that. "From what I can figure out, she thought it would be -romantic- to have a scar from him and his flames, and he was just drunk enough to be suggestible to such madnesses of youth. I really don't see this ending well for either of them, but what can you do, besides give advice they don't listen to? But come on," she beckons. "Let's get you into the exam room before she gets back with the sandwiches."
"'Romantic.' Said the same thing myself. Please a merciful God," mutters Shaw, and it could apply to anything and everything about the situation. Including the exam room: even as he pushes out of his walled slouch, he switches her a cautious look. So swiftly calculation does slide a blank mask over him. "You mentioned tests and history as well . . . ?"
Jean treats Shaw to a brief look of frank communion over her shoulder, one older, wiser, unlistened-to adult to another, before she slides the glass door of the little examination room open and waves him in ahead of her, that they might have privacy. "I did. Although I'm sure a good history will let me cut down on the number of tests." she assures. "After all, if you can't be honest at the idea of getting to leave off a few unwanted needles..."
Shaw unzips his windbreaker the rest of the way once he's inside, and he turns back to her with a tired expression for his part of communion. Not much confession, though; never his style. "History, then," he grants and leans into the table. "Before or after the poking and prodding? Needles don't actually bother me." He glances down at his knee ruefully. "Figured you might want at least one into me today."
"Well," says Jean, drawing the curtains shut along the glass panel walls with a rattle of metal rings along metal track poles. "The poking and prodding will involve you changing into one of those wonderful patient gowns stacked over there, so you may want to get the history out of the way first." That said, she absents herself briefly to collect a tablet PC, returns, and takes a seat in a chair by the sliding door, leaving the exam bed for Shaw. "So," she wonders. "While Alyssa's out of the office and not around to overhear, how long have you known you were a mutant." She smiles slightly, helpfully, conversational equivalent of tying a pretty red bow on a grenade to make it look nicer.
"You do get to the point, don't you?" Shaw folds his arms, rests his chin heavily in a hand's cup. "Twenty-five years this November."
"It saves dancing around later on, I've found." Jean replies, opening up the file labeled S. Shaw in the electronic charting program on the aforementioned tablet PC. "Especially since I'm sure we'll be doing it plenty later on. I'll be coming up on my 20-year soon enough myself. So, I'll need to do at least one blood draw to get some proper modelling and analysis of your X-Factor. I'm assuming with such a long time period, you've gotten fairly familiar with what it's done to you...?" A cant of her head leaves the question for Shaw to answer how he wishes.
Because, oh, yes, this is all about what Shaw wishes, isn't it? He's keeping a dead-tight clamp on his emotions; only fading resentful sparks pop and fizz into mental space. "I'll look forward to it, since we both enjoy dancing so much. But I respect a professional, and her need to do her job." He sighs. "'Fairly familiar.' I suppose. The fact that it's in fact killing me infinitesimally day by day is rather new, though. How much do you want, Jean? This isn't very -- I had to work hard just to get down here today, let alone let myself answer you."
Jean is direct in her answers, letting one ankle cross the other and sitting forward in her chair, eyes intent upon her patient. "I can understand that," she assures. This doesn't mean she's going to back off any, because her next question is clearly one thought out in advance, delivered with green eyes steady on Shaw's face, watching body language even if it's the mind that's like to give more truth. "I need you to tell me enough about it so that I can at least guess at how it works. And, by extension, how it could be going wrong. That will give me enough to know what tests to run."
Clipped: "I understand. Data points for your hypotheses." Absently, irritably, Shaw moves his cupping hand to rub at the back of his neck and then stay there, draping his forearm across his chest and shoulder with rustling whispers of windbreaker vinyl. His mind's surface has quieted to a bleak and steady grey; his expression's not much better. The only sparks, now, are in his low voice. "It /is/ metabolic. I apologize for not being honest about that before, in your apartment. My body is burning itself out, I think, requiring me to draw more and more on the mutation just to maintain -- and that, of course, only speeds the process. The decline."
"Clues for finding out what's wrong with you and how to fix it." Jean corrects absently. "Diagnostics is a puzzle, not a PhD paper. Now, metabolic -how-?" she probes, stylus tapping and swooping away on the touchscreen of the tablet with practised motions. "What is your body doing, to be burning itself out?"
Shaw watches the stylus move. "The mutation, you mean?" he asks with admirable clinical distance. Might as well be discussing an amputated limb.
The stylus halts. Jean looks up. "Yes." she answers.
Dark focus doesn't shift a jot. "Absorption of kinetic energy," Shaw answers, flat as the bed he's leaning against, "and assimilation into heightened strength, speed, stamina." A twitch of his mouth. "Pure hell on my metabolism /and/ my skeletomuscular system, as you can imagine."
Jean's first response is a playful 'There, was that so hard?' She bites down on that phrase, and on her tongue, with exceeding firmness, choking and swallowing it down in favour of nothing more than a nod and a hum and a "No doubt. To every action an equal and opposite reaction. But that gives me a good place to start from. Let's go on to the symptoms, now. There's the knee... you've mentioned too much drinking leaves you wrecked?"
Slowly, glacially, Shaw eases away from the black, trembling precipice, and relaxes. Data. Yes. Thoughts prickle in sparkly waves. "Drinking? No, not that I had noticed, but I try to limit myself to just a few a week. Doctor's orders," he skims out morbidly, not elaborating. "It might, though, and I know that if I don't stay hydrated, well, everything's worse off. Tired. Aching. Sore. And--" he has to snort "--you think I'm grumpy /now./"
"Actually, I think you're sheer unadulterated unicorns and rainbows." Jean quips sardonically, but obediently records this information too. "But all right, one blood draw for analysis of your mutation. I'll take a couple more so I can take some proper blood gas and other biochemistry readings... and I think I'd like to tap some of the synovial fluid in your knee, if it's still hurting. I take it you're not in the middle of a full-out attack of whatever this is, or you'd not be here?"
Another snort, and Shaw accuses half-heartedly, "You /were/ listening to the girl and me." But there's a small smile, drawing a grace note's curve over his abyssal manner. The half-closed eyes. Tendons drawing long and tight up his wrist and hand around the back of his neck. ". . . No. I'm fine today. I could use a trip to the gym, but I've had enough exertions lately to keep my system running -- without the mutation, that is. I'm trying to wean myself off it. Not easy. So. Is it gown time?"
"I'm a protective boss, and you're a very bad man, what can I say?" Jean quips once more, giving Shaw a smile bright, innocent and unrepentant for his charge. "But yes, gown time. I'll try to restrain myself from swooning over your manly posterior." she assures, rising and handing Shaw a gown before turning her back to allow him privacy and readying a tray of various instruments and pokey things.
Shaw mutters, "Oh, /save/ me," with mentally rumbling humor, and he eyes that back of hers (and the pokey things, admittedly). He skins out of his loose clothing quickly enough, makes sure it's all nicely piled up for later, and shrugs into the gown. Then he hops up onto the bed like the very /good/ boy that he is and curls his hands around its edge to brace his slight lean forward. And, dryly: "Ready whenever you are."
"Given that we're on your lunch break, and given that I'm assuming you've had a full physical recently, I think I'll just stick to examining you for signs of what your powers are up to," Jean explains herelf, turning around with hands begloved and a tray of instruments in her hands. If knowledge is power, and control is power, then knowledge equals at least the perception of control over a situation? And if Shaw feels in control, her job will be easier? Jean ponders such things as she reaches for a reflex hammer and Shaw's knees. "So, when was your last bad spell with this?"
Keeping an eye on the hammer (small spike of nerves, somewhere around his cerebellum, with a reptilian coiling of anxious warning), Shaw replies, "With the knee, it was the days after the masquerade at the club. With the general -- syndrome? The same, I think. I did wear myself out with the dancing, politicking, drinking. . . ." His eyes scoot up to her face, briefly and wryly warm. "Scotch on the patio didn't help, but ah, well. The sacrifices I make to be a good host. Anyway, I slept and hydrated it off, and felt back to normal, such as it is, by mid-week."
Tap tap tap. One knee and then the other is checked, and rechecked, Jean crouched comfortably as she attempts to assess range of motion. "Scotch on the patio didn't do my already overburdened brain any favours," she admits herself, a touch of the wry about her own features. "Clearly, we should stick to smoothies. So rest and hydration... My initial theory is that your powers are probably causing a buildup of something that your body isn't flushing efficiently. I think I'll need to biopsy your liver, possibly a kidney, and that won't be pleasant."
Shaw twitches away, not at her touch but at her words. "Biopsy. My God. --Sorry, that's just . . ." He pushes out a breath, encourages his fingers not to dig /all/ the way into the bed's cushion (and framework beneath). "Loaded word, obviously. Well, the theory seems sound, from what I know. Which isn't nearly enough, also obviously," he finishes on a low glide, and peers down at her. "Do you want to do that today, too?"
"-Not- for cancer." Jean confirms, lips thinning out into a line as she realizes how the word must sound to one not a member of the medical brethren. Thank you -so- much, E.R. "Just a tissue sample to see what's going on. Not even anything that will scar." she assures, with a negative-nostalgia expression briefly on her features as one hand rubs at her own back. History, apparently. "And I'd prefer to do it today. In fact, I'd prefer to take a full set of samples today, when you're feeling good, and another set during the next attack you suffer, if that's possible. But this is up to you."
Shaw blinks slowly on her answer, her move, her expression, and then says, "No, let's just do it. Get it over with. 'If it 'twere done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done quickly.' I do want to know. Understand." 'Trust' floats diffuse and dissipating in the mental plane between them, lost in a clutching sea of calculation. He frowns into his thoughts. "I can let you know if the bad times come on again. I'd just as soon you made a house call for that, though."
Jean's own trust is measured in moment-to-moment increments, like the trust a keeper might express for a large male tiger. Shaw would no doubt be pleased at the choice of animal to personify him. She gives the dark-eyed man a measuring nod, and then states simply "I will. Now, would you like the blood from the left arm, or from the right?" A length of surgical tubing lifts from the tray and floats over to her outstretched hand.
"Thank you," Shaw returns and then shifts his weight with his left arm's offering. And he grins a bit. "Nothing special about my skin, by the way. It's quite easily pierced."
"Thanks for letting me know." Jean smiles dryly and quickly loops the tubing in place and ties it off. "Flex a few times for me? And you wouldn't believe the number of times I've bent needles because someone forgot to mention that, oh, yeah, by the way, their muscle fibres take on the durability of carbon fibre graphite when they're nervous." A little light conversation to provide something else to focus on, as the cool kiss of an alchohol swab laps at the inside of Shaw's elbow.
Shaw expands into a polite laugh as he obeys, pumping his fist until the veins writhe visibly up his arm in a dark-blue river map over sinew and bone. "That must be uncomfortable. Who'd want to turn into a walking pencil at the very announcement of a pop quiz?"
"Not I. I just had to worry about my barriers failing due to a lack of concentration, and ending up with everyone else's answers in my head. Not as blessed an occurance as you might think." And, continuing to chat lightly and amiably away, Jean slides a needle home, slips a vaccutainer into place and begins her collection. More vials follow at a rapid pace. "Let me know if you feel faint, Sebastian. I've found it's always the large and impressive-looking men that hit the floor first, in my experience."
Shaw smiles. "Well, only if you promise to catch me. I know I'm not too heavy for your powers, after all." He's watching her work with careful attention, but it strays now and then to the watch sitting pertly atop his pile of clothes. "What would you be looking for in the biopsy? Not cancer, you said . . ."
"Oh, you're light as a feather if I drag my telekinesis into it," Jean assures, although it's an absent one as she attempts to switch in a new container without causing undue leakage in the switchover. "And evidence of abnormality. Scarring. Signs that there is some chronic problem stressing the organ tissues. Foreign particles. Accretions of substances... lots of things."
"Lovely," says Shaw, dry as bone again, while his feet twitch and then rub one on the other in an arch's itch. "I can't wait."
"The needles are more painful than most because you have to use a fairly wide gauge in order to get any tissue worth sampling. Although I suppose it's not as bad as a full-out laparoscopic investication of things," she admits. "But I'll need to trot out my little ultrasound machine to make sure everything's in the right spot, so we'll leave that to last. Next, I want to tap your knee joint for some synovial fluid. There could be crystallized things that shouldn't be there." Technical terms, of course.
Shaw doesn't flinch at them. They sink into his busy brain and get lost in the background noise behind his watching, probing, narrowing eyes. "Well, let's just do it, as I said." He glances at the watch again. "I set my own schedule, but I do have a conference call coming up, and I can't miss it." Busy dynamos, spinning and churning behind those eyes.
Alyssa's return is heralded by nothing more than the quiet opening and closing of the front door. Moving off toward's Jean's deserted office, she deposits the good doctor's sandwich on the desk, then moves off to begin cleaning the cages again. There's a bit of sandwich that she leaves out on a counter in the room with the mice, to hopefully lure Henry out of hiding.
Dynamo, formerly DynaMight... Jean has her own little wheels spinning, and so therefore soon falls silent beyond the explanations of procedure and requests for repositioning and, at one point, pointing out an interesting sight on ultrasound. Eventually, there is a neat row of samples all ready for processing, and a neat collection of little round band-aids stuck to various parts of Sebastian Shaw. For his dignity, she's left the Mickey Mouse ones in her supply cabinet.
Shaw turns his narrowed study with long-suffering patience upon the stickies. Whee, his very being practically sighs. "That's it, then?" He stretches his back, winces at a particular catch, shakes his head slightly in pushing it out of perception. His fingers tip-tap restlessly on the exam bed. "I do hate to dine and dash, as it were, but . . ."
"But time marches ever onwards," Jean caps the ellipsis with a nod and an understanding smile. "Make sure to stop by the sandwich cart on your way out and get something sugary to drink -- it wouldn't do to be woozy in your conference call. And take a long hot bath tonight," she continues her after-care instructions. "And then call up one of your nubile young things to give you a massage. Your muscles will be complaining about having needles stuck deep through the middle of them..." She then trails off, escorting Shaw to the door and -away- from nubile and off-limits young lab assistants.
"Of course, Dr. Grey," carols darkly amused Shaw, and his mind flashes on a nubile young thing, indeed -- in full Sensurround, no less -- before busying itself with the busyness of getting dressed. When that's done, he moves out after her, pushing his hands into the windbreaker's pockets. "Thanks for the tour and the talk. You'll call me when it's all ready?"
Jean blinks once at that image, eyebrows jumping about a foot. Good lord, Sabitha Melcross has taken up -some- sort of flexibility-enhancing exercise regimen. Innocent Sunshine Girl? But nothing of this escapes past that silent eyebrow lift, to herself as she takes her tablet and her samples over to her workspace, and then turns to see Shaw out. "Of course, Sebastian. It will probably take a week or two to properly model and assess everything, assuming nothing else comes up and nobody kidnaps me, but I'll be in touch with preliminaries. You're welcome, and thanks for the advice on allocating those resources."
Alyssa has left off harassing poor Henry, and is now staring despondently at the (now clean) mouse cages. If one were to be paying attention (not that anyone is, really) it might be noted that every so often she breaks off the staring to glare sullenly at the boy-mices, and hrmph.
Shaw is certainly not paying attention. He's entirely focused on Jean, but for the stray thoughts already poking out the door and into his schedule's next steps. "Keep yourself safe, then," he encourages her calmly, "and I'll wait for the call. When I get back to my office, I'll fax over some records you probably need to see." He pauses -- sudden distraction -- then smiles again. "Good afternoon, then." And he's gone, swinging out through the door in only a slightly dampened roil of his usual bulling, bluff energy.
[Log ends.]
[OOC: see this entry for the fax in question, and for what wasn't included in it.]
Alyssa Carter was also there. Blasted girl. At least her teacher understood (I can only hope, before I find myself on the wrong side of a mental enema) what I tried to do. A peace offering, another bone thrown to the wolves, and before the girl herself gets tossed thataway.
Trust. It's so damnably hard to cultivate in honest soil that I have to wonder if I'm that out of practice, or if only the particular topic at hand is what's balking me from this game.
Or if it's that I don't, deep at the heart of things, want to play the game.
Dangerous. I'm not that desperate for a revitalizing thrill, am I? Or not that desperate, period?
7/19/2005
Logfile from Shaw.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
McClintock Center - Gradient Genetech
Not the grandest or largest of the suites available, Gradient Genetech shares a similar quality of 'shiny and new' all the same. A small conference/reception area with a front desk, two loveseats and a coffee table is visible from the hallway, with three doors leading off from it. One is to a small office on the left, the other to a storage and supply room of equal size. The door at the back leads to the main laboratory space, which takes up a full half of the suite's footprint. While it's not as well-equipped as Dr. Grey's lab back 'home', it nonetheless features PCR machines, microscopes, a robotic pipetter, and all the other tools of a geneticist's trade, along with a small exam room for human patients, curtained off with glass walls and sliding doors. Another area behind other temporary walls is alive with the sounds of squeaking and tussling, courtesy of cages full of well-kept lab mice.
--
Lunchtime's a good time for a lab appointment, or that must be what Sebastian Shaw is telling himself, for him to have settled such bland good humor on his face and, indeed, his whole manner, right down (up?) to the faintly vibrating rhythms of his mind. He shows up at Gradient Genetech in unremarkable mufti: sneakers, sweat pants, and a thin windbreaker half-zipped over a T-shirt. He even does the polite thing by hanging outside the door, peeking in curiously.
As Shaw peers curiously, so is he peered curiously at, by a few scientists lingering in the hallway and klatching over coffee and confusing biological problems. Jean herself greets him at the door to her own suite a bare moment or two after he arrives, comfortable in a longsleeved shirt and black denim jeans against the air conditioning, and with a crisp white lab coat on to make her look professional. Somewhat more casually, she's got a mouse sitting on her shoulder and trying to hide in her hair. "Sebastian," she greets with a smile and a handshake. "Do come in, and I'd like you to meet Dora." The mouse, apparently.
Alyssa is, it would seem, somewhat less than aware of what transpires near the door. While Dora is with Jean, the other experimental subjects are in their cages -- which Alyssa is in the process of cleaning, one by one. Take out mouse. Put it in temporary enclosure. Throw away dirty bedding. Replace with clean bedding. Put mouse back in cage. Except. Er. "Dr. Grey? I can't find Henry VII," is called out from the back of the lab.
"Jean. Thank you for seeing me." Shaw shifts his polite smile, with only a brief squint, at the mouse. "And little Dora, of course. Is she one of your creations or just a helpmeet around the lab?" And speaking of which: at the call, his mind spikes with cold surprise visible in gaze's flash. "That one of your students?"
"Slide the door guards in front of the entrance to keep him contained, and I'll be back in a minute, Alyssa." Jean calls back, allowing the much better behaved, if curious, little Dora to clamber experimentally across her lifted hand. Dora's a cute little mouse, we must say, all white and brown with brindle markings on the darker fur. "And yes, yes indeed. She's a mutant and mother of mutants, although I have to say her only power seems to be to make rodent pellets disappear at an alarming rate. Do you want coffee? Alyssa's a student of mine, working as my research assistant over the summer. Part of that job includes getting coffee, in addition to playing with mice."
The door guards close with a careful click, and Alyssa steps away from the door with a slight frown. "I must not have gotten the lid closed quite tight enough when I transferred him," is her explanation as she approaches, still eyeing the now-closed door with a disappointed expression. But, there are people. And so, smile prepped and ready, she turns toward Jean and Sebastian only to have the expression falter. "Mr. Shaw?"
Having had time to prepare, Shaw has his reaction entirely smoothed: another leak of warmer surprise, in twinkle of eye and slight, slightly aloof smile. "Miss Carter! Fancy seeing you here. I'm fine, no coffee, thanks," he then splits nicely between the two of them. "Thought I should show up without too many chemicals percolating inside me. This /is/ quite the setup, Jean. You'll have to give me a tour at some point; I'm itching to touch everything and figure out how it works."
"It's all right, Alyssa. I can't tell you what a mouse is thinking, but I -can- tell when there's the sort of electrical activity a brain puts out coming from inside of a cardboard box," Jean assures, turning to Alyssa and extending Dora towards her. "So, why don't you put Dora back, I'll round up Henry before he can emulate his namesake and chase after innocent young female mice, and why don't you take a lunch break for yourself." There's a slight hint of suggestion pressed along with that gentle offer, although she does add an "And if you could bring me back a sandwich from the lunch cart, that'd be great. There should be a twenty on my desk." Go on, Alyssa, leave the bad man alone for a bit 'lest you hug him. "Well, Sebastian, we can take a little tour now, since after all there's not much to see, and we can wind up in the examination room."
Alyssa flashes a smile at Sebastian, surprise and relief and a little bit of interest coloring her mental landscape. Leaky, leaky 'Lyssa. "I talked to Dr. Grey, and she wanted me to keep working for her. Just, here in the city." Cheerful, cheerful, no sullen flashes as she thinks of Joh-- oh, wait, there it is. Her smile fades slightly as she collects Dora, so it's a slower, more sullen nod that greets Jean's suggestion. "Lunch break? Okay, it's about.. would you like anything in particular?" is asked as she walks away to deal with Dora.
Shaw thoroughly ignores the girl at that point, for the brighter gleam of his expression and mental aspect turned on the good doctor. "A tour, then! If you wouldn't mind. I," he reports quietly, conspiratorial, "am still gearing myself up for the examination portion of the proceedings. A little walk first would help immensely."
"Anything but egg salad." Jean calls back to Alyssa, before taking Shaw's arm neatly and steering him awaaaaay from the lab and from Alyssa with the fine air of a proprietor showing off some five-star restaurant. "She's a wonderful girl, Sebastian. Bright, inquisitive... amazingly innocent for someone growing up in New York City. And I hope she stays that way." While her tone is light, a tip-chinned look gently but firmly states subtext: This girl is mine, and not meat for you. "But why don't I show you the office first, I have some capital statements that look interesting to me, but don't mean all that much to -my- eyes."
Smiling, Shaw tips his head back to her and her subtext, and they go off to do that for a little while, relying on unspoken understanding to keep the peace while they hash through financial data. Still, a medical researcher's day can never be entirely without disturbance, and when Jean has to take a call in the office, her visitor -- her patient -- politely removes himself to outside the door, leaning against the wall with slouched shoulders and hands fisted loosely in the windbreaker's pockets, sweeping shiny-eyed curiosity around the lab.
Alyssa returns from the room with the mice, casting a keen-eyed glance toward the floor to assure that our dear Henry doesn't make a break for it as she steps through the door. Turning toward Jean's office, she is confronted not only by a closed door, but by Sebastian's casual presence. Slowing to a halt, chin tipped upward and gaze mostly level, she offers a polite, "Mr. Shaw. Dr. Grey said that you might be stopping by the lab, to see how things are going." She takes in the pose, the lack of a suit, the unbusinesslike manner, and there's something slightly brittle in her tone as she says, "I would suppose that's why you're here?" Because it can't possibly be to torment her, can it?
Shaw, because he is a /nice/ Shaw (and because there is an omega-class telepath with a helluva protective streak in the office behind him), says pleasantly, "I'm here on my own business, Alyssa." He doesn't even linger on her name; if anything, the sibilant sound hisses soft warning. "So, this is the lab you were going to work in. Do you like the job so far?"
Alyssa is rattled, that much is obvious. Not by his words, not by his presence, but with the effort of holding herself together and not spilling her guts to the bad man in Jean's lab. "It's a job. It keeps me busy. Distracted. The mice are sweet, even if Henry /does/ try to bang," there's a hitch in her voice on the word, but she plunges onward, "anything he can if let out of his cage." Trembling, slightly, her voice is strained with the effort of clamping down on her emotions -- but then again, by now Jean is used to the flavor of Aly, when she thinks of John. "I should probably.. lunch."
Well, while he /is/ waiting . . . Shaw lowers his head and peers at her with avuncular concern. "Distracted from what? Is everything all right? I'd hate for any personal problems to be affecting work here," he tells her with a businessman's chill dispassion. "I might be investing in it, myself, after all."
"From the fact that my best friend, who I happened to be /completely/," Her voice is breaking, but the heat behind her words keeps her from breaking down, "/Stupidly/ in love with screwed my brains out, and has now apparently disappeared off the face of the earth." Hands clench into fists, and she refuses to drop her gaze, "But I'm /not/ letting it affect my work, /okay/?"
Shaw just blinks at her. "Temper, my girl," he murmurs. "Don't take it out on /me./ I don't think you'd like it." And his gaze drifts significantly down her face, her neck, the curve of her sweet young shoulder, to her biceps. Then flicks back to /her/ eyes, and he smiles, just a little cruel bit.
Alyssa wraps her arms around herself, though there's just the faintest hint of something.. of /want/ in her eyes once his meet hers again. "Don't presume to know anything about me," she states. "The mark he left is going to scar, Mr. Shaw. Yours," That expression turns defiant, briefly, "Have already faded."
Something whispers like far-off thunder through Shaw's expression at her revelation. Oh, not the bruises' fade, that's to be expected. But the rest? And that hint -- His lip curls. "Well, then get a hold of yourself," he tells her sternly. "A boy broke your heart and hurt you? Left a /mark/ on you? How dreadfully romantic. How stupidly adolescent. Are you /trying/ to live out a cheap paperback novel, or is it just coming to you naturally, Alyssa?"
Reeling herself in, Alyssa's gaze on Shaw is still white-hot. His words sting, break heart's resolve down just that little bit more. "Apparently it comes naturally to me, sir." is delivered in a voice that manages to keep from cracking. "Because believe me, this isn't the way I would have written it."
"No, I suppose you wanted fluffy puppies and rainbows and unicorns with darling sparkling horns and big blue eyes," drones Shaw out of utter boredom. He slouches further into the wall, pushing out his feet's brace for support, and stares down at her some more, like brooding Jove. "Instead you got a scar. I'll bet you have been secretly tracing your finger over and over it ever since he left you, remembering how it /felt/ and how much you wished you would feel it /again./"
"No," Alyssa admits with a short bark of pained laughter, "I don't think /anything/ involving John could possibly /be/ cheery and light. But I didn't expect him to disappear." His words, however, bring a swift shutting down of that expressive face, as well as a half-hearted, "No." There's a pause, as she slides out of her lab coat (because Jean said she could ahve one, damnit!) and reveals her shoulder, and the bandage there. "Burn's still healing." Dull, dull expression. Mustn't think of fire, of John's hands on her, of the white-hot searing pain as the fire touched her flesh.
Shaw eyes the bandage without much interest. Might as well be a fresh coat of primer on a wall for all he cares. Seems to care. "Did Dr. Grey take care of that for you? --Please cover yourself, by the way. I don't want her to think that I am seducing her lab assistants." His rolling black eye takes her in from feet to head, then flicks dismissal as he mutters, "As if I /would./"
"Yes," is answered just as dully. Alyssa pulls the 'coat back on without a wince, even as the material catches on the bandage. "Her assistants are very grateful, Mr. Shaw. Wouldn't want anything untoward to happen to sully their innocence." There's a vicious twist to the last word, as well as a tug on the edges of the lab coat to make sure it's firmly in place.
Shaw nods tight approval, and my, his fists hang like ballast in his pockets, dragging the dark-blue fabric straight as a board from his shoulders' span. "I wouldn't want it, no. You know how much she cares about you, I'm sure. And if anything ever happened to you?" He snorts. "I wouldn't want to be in that man's shoes. No wonder your boy ran away."
"She does," Alyssa admits, "But I can make decisions for myself." Chin up, gaze steady, hurt buried, buried beneath teenage stupidity, "It was my decision as much as his. /I/ could have said no if I had wanted to. He had no reason to run." There's a subtle shading to her words, challenge in the lines of her body, in her eyes.
"But he did," Shaw reminds her, not at all gleeful. He's somber, grave as a priest. Of course. "Maybe you just weren't very good. I'm sorry, my girl."
Breaking, broken, that softly muffled hitch would be the sound of Aly's little girl heart shattering. "It wouldn't surprise me," she finally says, "It was my first time."
Shaw makes a soft, thoughtful noise in his throat. "Are you oversharing with me? That's dangerous. Never know what a person might do with that information." His head rolls back against the wall, tips a little to the door. "Unless you're trying to get me in trouble with /her,/" he concludes coldly.
"I don't know what I'm doing, Mr. Shaw. I could be oversharing, if you call it that." Arms wrap around herself again, and her gaze is once more earnest, seeking something in his, and likely not finding anything in return. "I don't want you to get in trouble," Alyssa admits slowly, "But I'm tired of being innocent." There's nothing seductive in the last statement, just hurt and resignation.
"Well, you got that first part right." Shaw studies her with distinct disfavor. Get /that/ out of his heavy, flat gaze, like a brick to the forehead. "You /don't/ know what you're doing, and you should be glad of it. Be glad to be innocent. The alternative is much, much worse. I think I warned you of it. I'm sure I did -- but I suppose that faded along with the bruises. Christ, you must be one of Jean's remedial students."
Alyssa shrinks under that disfavor, something stretching and snapping inside of her at his words. "I'm not playing a /game/, Mr. Shaw. You won't hurt me, because of Dr. Grey. But you can help me." Twang!
"No." Flat, colder than cold: Shaw is entirely black ice now, and he trembles faintly with the intensity of controlling it. "I cannot, Alyssa Carter. You will stop /that/ foolishness right /now./"
"Why?" One word. One intense, foolish, /curious/ word, with what remains of Aly's sanity snapping behind it.
Out of deference to the still-quite-public location, and the office's occupant, Shaw tamps down hard on his temper under that thick, crackling ice. None but she can really see, anyway, the hard shine of his eyes and the malicious twist of his mouth. "Because I /don't/ want to get in trouble, thank you very much. And because you are a foolish young goose of a girl who is going to find herself plucked and popped straight into the oven if she doesn't wise the hell /up./ Life /is/ a game," he hisses roughly. "You're in over your head with it. Certainly with /me./ Knock it off. Just -- knock it off."
"Pity," is Alyssa's reply as reality shifts, perceptions skew farther and farther away from anything resembling sense. "It could have been interesting." Abruptly, her demeanor shifts, back to bright, bubby -- if not exactly happy, because something's missing from her expression -- Alyssa. perception is still altered, however. She extends a hand toward Sebastian, head tilted slightly to one side. "Knocking it off, sir."
Shaw looks wearily at her, not even deigning to notice the hand. "You /are/ insane. I'll be sure to tell Jean. She can peek inside you and fix it, I hope."
Alyssa retracts the hand, frowning slightly as it's ignored. "Am not, sir." Because what else is she supposed to say? 'Yes, sir. I just had my heart broken, and responded by trying to crawl into bed with the most evil man I have ever met.' Of course not.
Shaw rolls his eyes and tucks his head even further back on his neck: retreating from the mad girl, oh, yes. "Go get lunch or clean the cages, whatever you're supposed to do for Dr. Grey. I have nothing more to say to you," and there /is/ finality in his voice, like a guillotine's sweet silver swoop. Thunk.
"Lunch." Beat. "Yes." A smile spreads, the half-sibling of Aly's ordinary smile, and she darts forward to hug Sebastian. Retreating, sanity's mask slips back into place with a click and she dashes off. Jean can repay her for the sandwich later.
Perhaps it's Jean allowing her sense of humour to get the better of her while she's in the next room and therefore keeping watch. Perhaps it's just the paralysis borne of complete and utter horror. In any case, Jean does not return until Alyssa has scampered away in search of sandwiches, but then does so with alacrity, and a highly bemused expression. "On the other hand," she states, shaking her head somewhat painedly. "Perhaps there's a state of being -too- innocent. Did I really overhear you telling her she was probably bad in bed, and then see her hug you on her way out the door anyways, Sebastian?"
Shaw growls. His mind is all spiky offended on top and rolling deep anger beneath, even as he slews his gaze to her and tries to back down into smoother waters. "You warned me off her. Fine. I already tried that once. I tried it again. The girl needs counselling, Jean, or else a slap upside the head to knock some brains into her. Is it some kind of infatuation? Did her boyfriend really hurt her that much? She showed me the /bandage,/ for God's sake."
"Her boyfriend's a pyrotic." Jean explains, lifting one hand to pinch at the bridge of her nose and looking every single one of her twenty nine years and eight months of life for a moment, plus a few more on top of that. "From what I can figure out, she thought it would be -romantic- to have a scar from him and his flames, and he was just drunk enough to be suggestible to such madnesses of youth. I really don't see this ending well for either of them, but what can you do, besides give advice they don't listen to? But come on," she beckons. "Let's get you into the exam room before she gets back with the sandwiches."
"'Romantic.' Said the same thing myself. Please a merciful God," mutters Shaw, and it could apply to anything and everything about the situation. Including the exam room: even as he pushes out of his walled slouch, he switches her a cautious look. So swiftly calculation does slide a blank mask over him. "You mentioned tests and history as well . . . ?"
Jean treats Shaw to a brief look of frank communion over her shoulder, one older, wiser, unlistened-to adult to another, before she slides the glass door of the little examination room open and waves him in ahead of her, that they might have privacy. "I did. Although I'm sure a good history will let me cut down on the number of tests." she assures. "After all, if you can't be honest at the idea of getting to leave off a few unwanted needles..."
Shaw unzips his windbreaker the rest of the way once he's inside, and he turns back to her with a tired expression for his part of communion. Not much confession, though; never his style. "History, then," he grants and leans into the table. "Before or after the poking and prodding? Needles don't actually bother me." He glances down at his knee ruefully. "Figured you might want at least one into me today."
"Well," says Jean, drawing the curtains shut along the glass panel walls with a rattle of metal rings along metal track poles. "The poking and prodding will involve you changing into one of those wonderful patient gowns stacked over there, so you may want to get the history out of the way first." That said, she absents herself briefly to collect a tablet PC, returns, and takes a seat in a chair by the sliding door, leaving the exam bed for Shaw. "So," she wonders. "While Alyssa's out of the office and not around to overhear, how long have you known you were a mutant." She smiles slightly, helpfully, conversational equivalent of tying a pretty red bow on a grenade to make it look nicer.
"You do get to the point, don't you?" Shaw folds his arms, rests his chin heavily in a hand's cup. "Twenty-five years this November."
"It saves dancing around later on, I've found." Jean replies, opening up the file labeled S. Shaw in the electronic charting program on the aforementioned tablet PC. "Especially since I'm sure we'll be doing it plenty later on. I'll be coming up on my 20-year soon enough myself. So, I'll need to do at least one blood draw to get some proper modelling and analysis of your X-Factor. I'm assuming with such a long time period, you've gotten fairly familiar with what it's done to you...?" A cant of her head leaves the question for Shaw to answer how he wishes.
Because, oh, yes, this is all about what Shaw wishes, isn't it? He's keeping a dead-tight clamp on his emotions; only fading resentful sparks pop and fizz into mental space. "I'll look forward to it, since we both enjoy dancing so much. But I respect a professional, and her need to do her job." He sighs. "'Fairly familiar.' I suppose. The fact that it's in fact killing me infinitesimally day by day is rather new, though. How much do you want, Jean? This isn't very -- I had to work hard just to get down here today, let alone let myself answer you."
Jean is direct in her answers, letting one ankle cross the other and sitting forward in her chair, eyes intent upon her patient. "I can understand that," she assures. This doesn't mean she's going to back off any, because her next question is clearly one thought out in advance, delivered with green eyes steady on Shaw's face, watching body language even if it's the mind that's like to give more truth. "I need you to tell me enough about it so that I can at least guess at how it works. And, by extension, how it could be going wrong. That will give me enough to know what tests to run."
Clipped: "I understand. Data points for your hypotheses." Absently, irritably, Shaw moves his cupping hand to rub at the back of his neck and then stay there, draping his forearm across his chest and shoulder with rustling whispers of windbreaker vinyl. His mind's surface has quieted to a bleak and steady grey; his expression's not much better. The only sparks, now, are in his low voice. "It /is/ metabolic. I apologize for not being honest about that before, in your apartment. My body is burning itself out, I think, requiring me to draw more and more on the mutation just to maintain -- and that, of course, only speeds the process. The decline."
"Clues for finding out what's wrong with you and how to fix it." Jean corrects absently. "Diagnostics is a puzzle, not a PhD paper. Now, metabolic -how-?" she probes, stylus tapping and swooping away on the touchscreen of the tablet with practised motions. "What is your body doing, to be burning itself out?"
Shaw watches the stylus move. "The mutation, you mean?" he asks with admirable clinical distance. Might as well be discussing an amputated limb.
The stylus halts. Jean looks up. "Yes." she answers.
Dark focus doesn't shift a jot. "Absorption of kinetic energy," Shaw answers, flat as the bed he's leaning against, "and assimilation into heightened strength, speed, stamina." A twitch of his mouth. "Pure hell on my metabolism /and/ my skeletomuscular system, as you can imagine."
Jean's first response is a playful 'There, was that so hard?' She bites down on that phrase, and on her tongue, with exceeding firmness, choking and swallowing it down in favour of nothing more than a nod and a hum and a "No doubt. To every action an equal and opposite reaction. But that gives me a good place to start from. Let's go on to the symptoms, now. There's the knee... you've mentioned too much drinking leaves you wrecked?"
Slowly, glacially, Shaw eases away from the black, trembling precipice, and relaxes. Data. Yes. Thoughts prickle in sparkly waves. "Drinking? No, not that I had noticed, but I try to limit myself to just a few a week. Doctor's orders," he skims out morbidly, not elaborating. "It might, though, and I know that if I don't stay hydrated, well, everything's worse off. Tired. Aching. Sore. And--" he has to snort "--you think I'm grumpy /now./"
"Actually, I think you're sheer unadulterated unicorns and rainbows." Jean quips sardonically, but obediently records this information too. "But all right, one blood draw for analysis of your mutation. I'll take a couple more so I can take some proper blood gas and other biochemistry readings... and I think I'd like to tap some of the synovial fluid in your knee, if it's still hurting. I take it you're not in the middle of a full-out attack of whatever this is, or you'd not be here?"
Another snort, and Shaw accuses half-heartedly, "You /were/ listening to the girl and me." But there's a small smile, drawing a grace note's curve over his abyssal manner. The half-closed eyes. Tendons drawing long and tight up his wrist and hand around the back of his neck. ". . . No. I'm fine today. I could use a trip to the gym, but I've had enough exertions lately to keep my system running -- without the mutation, that is. I'm trying to wean myself off it. Not easy. So. Is it gown time?"
"I'm a protective boss, and you're a very bad man, what can I say?" Jean quips once more, giving Shaw a smile bright, innocent and unrepentant for his charge. "But yes, gown time. I'll try to restrain myself from swooning over your manly posterior." she assures, rising and handing Shaw a gown before turning her back to allow him privacy and readying a tray of various instruments and pokey things.
Shaw mutters, "Oh, /save/ me," with mentally rumbling humor, and he eyes that back of hers (and the pokey things, admittedly). He skins out of his loose clothing quickly enough, makes sure it's all nicely piled up for later, and shrugs into the gown. Then he hops up onto the bed like the very /good/ boy that he is and curls his hands around its edge to brace his slight lean forward. And, dryly: "Ready whenever you are."
"Given that we're on your lunch break, and given that I'm assuming you've had a full physical recently, I think I'll just stick to examining you for signs of what your powers are up to," Jean explains herelf, turning around with hands begloved and a tray of instruments in her hands. If knowledge is power, and control is power, then knowledge equals at least the perception of control over a situation? And if Shaw feels in control, her job will be easier? Jean ponders such things as she reaches for a reflex hammer and Shaw's knees. "So, when was your last bad spell with this?"
Keeping an eye on the hammer (small spike of nerves, somewhere around his cerebellum, with a reptilian coiling of anxious warning), Shaw replies, "With the knee, it was the days after the masquerade at the club. With the general -- syndrome? The same, I think. I did wear myself out with the dancing, politicking, drinking. . . ." His eyes scoot up to her face, briefly and wryly warm. "Scotch on the patio didn't help, but ah, well. The sacrifices I make to be a good host. Anyway, I slept and hydrated it off, and felt back to normal, such as it is, by mid-week."
Tap tap tap. One knee and then the other is checked, and rechecked, Jean crouched comfortably as she attempts to assess range of motion. "Scotch on the patio didn't do my already overburdened brain any favours," she admits herself, a touch of the wry about her own features. "Clearly, we should stick to smoothies. So rest and hydration... My initial theory is that your powers are probably causing a buildup of something that your body isn't flushing efficiently. I think I'll need to biopsy your liver, possibly a kidney, and that won't be pleasant."
Shaw twitches away, not at her touch but at her words. "Biopsy. My God. --Sorry, that's just . . ." He pushes out a breath, encourages his fingers not to dig /all/ the way into the bed's cushion (and framework beneath). "Loaded word, obviously. Well, the theory seems sound, from what I know. Which isn't nearly enough, also obviously," he finishes on a low glide, and peers down at her. "Do you want to do that today, too?"
"-Not- for cancer." Jean confirms, lips thinning out into a line as she realizes how the word must sound to one not a member of the medical brethren. Thank you -so- much, E.R. "Just a tissue sample to see what's going on. Not even anything that will scar." she assures, with a negative-nostalgia expression briefly on her features as one hand rubs at her own back. History, apparently. "And I'd prefer to do it today. In fact, I'd prefer to take a full set of samples today, when you're feeling good, and another set during the next attack you suffer, if that's possible. But this is up to you."
Shaw blinks slowly on her answer, her move, her expression, and then says, "No, let's just do it. Get it over with. 'If it 'twere done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done quickly.' I do want to know. Understand." 'Trust' floats diffuse and dissipating in the mental plane between them, lost in a clutching sea of calculation. He frowns into his thoughts. "I can let you know if the bad times come on again. I'd just as soon you made a house call for that, though."
Jean's own trust is measured in moment-to-moment increments, like the trust a keeper might express for a large male tiger. Shaw would no doubt be pleased at the choice of animal to personify him. She gives the dark-eyed man a measuring nod, and then states simply "I will. Now, would you like the blood from the left arm, or from the right?" A length of surgical tubing lifts from the tray and floats over to her outstretched hand.
"Thank you," Shaw returns and then shifts his weight with his left arm's offering. And he grins a bit. "Nothing special about my skin, by the way. It's quite easily pierced."
"Thanks for letting me know." Jean smiles dryly and quickly loops the tubing in place and ties it off. "Flex a few times for me? And you wouldn't believe the number of times I've bent needles because someone forgot to mention that, oh, yeah, by the way, their muscle fibres take on the durability of carbon fibre graphite when they're nervous." A little light conversation to provide something else to focus on, as the cool kiss of an alchohol swab laps at the inside of Shaw's elbow.
Shaw expands into a polite laugh as he obeys, pumping his fist until the veins writhe visibly up his arm in a dark-blue river map over sinew and bone. "That must be uncomfortable. Who'd want to turn into a walking pencil at the very announcement of a pop quiz?"
"Not I. I just had to worry about my barriers failing due to a lack of concentration, and ending up with everyone else's answers in my head. Not as blessed an occurance as you might think." And, continuing to chat lightly and amiably away, Jean slides a needle home, slips a vaccutainer into place and begins her collection. More vials follow at a rapid pace. "Let me know if you feel faint, Sebastian. I've found it's always the large and impressive-looking men that hit the floor first, in my experience."
Shaw smiles. "Well, only if you promise to catch me. I know I'm not too heavy for your powers, after all." He's watching her work with careful attention, but it strays now and then to the watch sitting pertly atop his pile of clothes. "What would you be looking for in the biopsy? Not cancer, you said . . ."
"Oh, you're light as a feather if I drag my telekinesis into it," Jean assures, although it's an absent one as she attempts to switch in a new container without causing undue leakage in the switchover. "And evidence of abnormality. Scarring. Signs that there is some chronic problem stressing the organ tissues. Foreign particles. Accretions of substances... lots of things."
"Lovely," says Shaw, dry as bone again, while his feet twitch and then rub one on the other in an arch's itch. "I can't wait."
"The needles are more painful than most because you have to use a fairly wide gauge in order to get any tissue worth sampling. Although I suppose it's not as bad as a full-out laparoscopic investication of things," she admits. "But I'll need to trot out my little ultrasound machine to make sure everything's in the right spot, so we'll leave that to last. Next, I want to tap your knee joint for some synovial fluid. There could be crystallized things that shouldn't be there." Technical terms, of course.
Shaw doesn't flinch at them. They sink into his busy brain and get lost in the background noise behind his watching, probing, narrowing eyes. "Well, let's just do it, as I said." He glances at the watch again. "I set my own schedule, but I do have a conference call coming up, and I can't miss it." Busy dynamos, spinning and churning behind those eyes.
Alyssa's return is heralded by nothing more than the quiet opening and closing of the front door. Moving off toward's Jean's deserted office, she deposits the good doctor's sandwich on the desk, then moves off to begin cleaning the cages again. There's a bit of sandwich that she leaves out on a counter in the room with the mice, to hopefully lure Henry out of hiding.
Dynamo, formerly DynaMight... Jean has her own little wheels spinning, and so therefore soon falls silent beyond the explanations of procedure and requests for repositioning and, at one point, pointing out an interesting sight on ultrasound. Eventually, there is a neat row of samples all ready for processing, and a neat collection of little round band-aids stuck to various parts of Sebastian Shaw. For his dignity, she's left the Mickey Mouse ones in her supply cabinet.
Shaw turns his narrowed study with long-suffering patience upon the stickies. Whee, his very being practically sighs. "That's it, then?" He stretches his back, winces at a particular catch, shakes his head slightly in pushing it out of perception. His fingers tip-tap restlessly on the exam bed. "I do hate to dine and dash, as it were, but . . ."
"But time marches ever onwards," Jean caps the ellipsis with a nod and an understanding smile. "Make sure to stop by the sandwich cart on your way out and get something sugary to drink -- it wouldn't do to be woozy in your conference call. And take a long hot bath tonight," she continues her after-care instructions. "And then call up one of your nubile young things to give you a massage. Your muscles will be complaining about having needles stuck deep through the middle of them..." She then trails off, escorting Shaw to the door and -away- from nubile and off-limits young lab assistants.
"Of course, Dr. Grey," carols darkly amused Shaw, and his mind flashes on a nubile young thing, indeed -- in full Sensurround, no less -- before busying itself with the busyness of getting dressed. When that's done, he moves out after her, pushing his hands into the windbreaker's pockets. "Thanks for the tour and the talk. You'll call me when it's all ready?"
Jean blinks once at that image, eyebrows jumping about a foot. Good lord, Sabitha Melcross has taken up -some- sort of flexibility-enhancing exercise regimen. Innocent Sunshine Girl? But nothing of this escapes past that silent eyebrow lift, to herself as she takes her tablet and her samples over to her workspace, and then turns to see Shaw out. "Of course, Sebastian. It will probably take a week or two to properly model and assess everything, assuming nothing else comes up and nobody kidnaps me, but I'll be in touch with preliminaries. You're welcome, and thanks for the advice on allocating those resources."
Alyssa has left off harassing poor Henry, and is now staring despondently at the (now clean) mouse cages. If one were to be paying attention (not that anyone is, really) it might be noted that every so often she breaks off the staring to glare sullenly at the boy-mices, and hrmph.
Shaw is certainly not paying attention. He's entirely focused on Jean, but for the stray thoughts already poking out the door and into his schedule's next steps. "Keep yourself safe, then," he encourages her calmly, "and I'll wait for the call. When I get back to my office, I'll fax over some records you probably need to see." He pauses -- sudden distraction -- then smiles again. "Good afternoon, then." And he's gone, swinging out through the door in only a slightly dampened roil of his usual bulling, bluff energy.
[Log ends.]
[OOC: see this entry for the fax in question, and for what wasn't included in it.]