Is this Anything? Dreaded Bonding AU Miscellanea: Kas and Angel in Med School

[alex51324]

Several people were kind enough to indicate in the comments to my last post that they wanted to read about Kas and Angel's minor adventures in med school. There's four of them. The second one's angsty/sweet, the third one's Angel being cute, the fourth one is funny (with a touch of angst).

The first one is me trying to work out how many bathrooms there are on the starship Enterprise, or in other words, to work out minor problems of in-universe logistics that chances are very few people care about. One was that Sentinel School ended in late February/early March, and it doesn't make even the tiniest bit of sense that a medical school program would begin at that time. That was the easier one. The second one was that perusal of the website for the real-life counterpart of Angel's school suggests that there's no way Kas could possibly have studied nursing there with the qualifications earlier stories have established he had. For some reason I was very concerned about this, even though Angel's program, an accelerated BS/MD-in-six-years deal, also does not exist at the real-life Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. (Such programs exist in the US, although these days are usually longer than six years, but the military does not have one.) Kas not having the necessary prerequisites for nursing school was a problem for me, psychologically. So I had to work through how it could happen, and along the way invent another program that the real place doesn't have, but that could reasonably exist in the real world, and now I can sleep at night. Readers who don't like having the pants bored off of them might want to just go straight to the second snippet.

These are all basically complete scenes, but don't make up an overall story.



One

“You’re late, Temas,” was the first thing the med school Commandant, Angel’s direct CO, said after he had entered his office and saluted.

Angel flinched, looked at his watch, and said, “Sir?”

“By six months,” the Commandant, a Captain Forbes of the Navy, clarified. “We expected yo for the class entering in late August. It is now March.”

“Yes, sir,” Angel agreed. “I was at Basic Training. They wouldn’t let me leave. They said somebody would tell you what happened.”

“They did,” Forbes said. “But that doesn’t change the fact that the year started and you weren’t here.”

Now Angel started to look worried, but, fortunately, managed not to cry. Kas had coached him that when you didn’t know what to say, “Yes, sir,” was usually a safe bet, and he remembered. “Yes, sir.”

“I’ve checked with the Sentinel Recruitment Board, and apparently we aren’t allowed to send you anywhere else. You’ll start with the June cohort in next year’s class.”

Angel, clearly not realizing how lucky he was, said “But--”

Kas, hoping Forbes wouldn’t be able to see over his desk, kicked him in the ankle. Angel looked over at him and said, “Yes, sir.”

“Until then, the Dean of Students will find you something to do.”

“Yes, sir. I was--”

Kas kicked him again.

“Report to him next. Dismissed.”

They checked in with Forbes’s secretary to find out where to locate the Dean of Students. Once they were out in the hall, Angel said, “I was only going to ask him about getting you into one of the nursing programs.”

“Trust me, this was not a good time to be asking for any more special favors,” Kas said.

Angel digested that. “Maybe not,” he admitted.

The Dean of Students proved to be a civilian, although Kas would have bet anything on him being retired military. Kas hadn’t realized that the school would have civilian administrators, and hadn’t briefed Angel on that eventuality.

Angel hesitated for a while, and eventually settled on not saluting, which was the right answer. “Hello, sir,” he said. “The, um…”

“Captain Forbes,” Kas supplied. He was going to have to teach Angel to read rank for all of the other branches, he realized.

“Yes, him. Said I should report to you. Angel Temas.”

“Right, our Sentinel!” The Dean extended his hand across the desk. Kas also hadn’t taught Angel to shake hands, but he must have picked that up somewhere else. “Harold Bowman. We were wondering when you’d show up.”

“Sorry, sir,” Angel said.

Bowman waved him off. “The timing was pretty tight to get you here for last year’s entering class anyway. We’d have had to send you to Sentinel School over the break; it’s probably better you got that out of the way first. Now you’ll get the real Army experience-hurry up and wait.”

“Captain Forbes seemed a little cross about it.”

“Eh. You’re the first Sentinel the University has had in over fifty years. He’s probably jealous we got you for the Army. Don’t tell him I said that.”

“I won’t, sir.”

“Good, good. Now, we do have to keep you busy until your class starts, so you’re going to be helping out behind the scenes in the anatomy and pathology labs. There’s always plenty to do to get things ready for the students, and if you keep your eyes open, you should be able to learn something while you’re waiting.”

“Okay,” Angel said. Before Kas even had to kick him, he added, “Yes, sir. That sounds nice.”

“You’ll report to Doctor Levine tomorrow; he’s in-well, his office is right next to the Path lab. All the details are in here.” He held up a folder. “Normally we take the new students around in a group to get checked in, housing assignments and so forth, but since it’s just you today, you’ll have to find your way around on your own. There’s a map and a list of where you’ll need to go in here; if you have any questions, you can always stop back here and talk to me or the secretary.”

“Thank you,” Angel said, accepting the folder.

“Is there anything else our office can help you with?”

Angel glanced back at Kas. Kas nodded. “Possibly,” Angel said. “My Guide, Kas.” He pointed, as if there might be some doubt as to who he was talking about. “We were thinking that it would be a good idea for him to have some kind of training. Uh, medical training. Nursing or something.”

“It would be a good idea, yes. The SRB has a few Guides with Licensed Practical Nursing certificates, mostly for Sentinel Medicine patients. They were going to arrange for you to have one of those when you start your clerkship in your fifth year here.”

“Yes, sir. Uh, we’re Bonded.”

“I heard. That does throw a monkey wrench into our plans. Four years would be enough time for Kas to earn an LPN, even if some remediation were required--”

“Yes, sir?”

“But that program is located in Texas.”

“Oh. That won’t work.”

“Our RN program here is substantially more challenging. And selective.” He leaned back in his chair, stroking his chin. “There are other universities in the area that may have an appropriate program. Funding would be an issue.” He sat up. “Well, I’ll talk to my counterpart in the School of Nursing, and see what she suggests. It would certainly be more convenient for everyone involved if we could make something work here.”

“Thank you, sir.”

As they got settled in over the next few days, Kas was surprised by how smoothly everything went. While Angel had hated every aspect of his military experience so far, he’d apparently assumed that once he got to medical school, everything would be fine. Kas had braced himself for the likelihood that he would take it poorly when reality didn’t match his expectations, but he was happy as a clam. He liked Doctor Levine, and his job, which so far mostly involved washing labware and preparing microscope slides. He even liked their dormitory room, and had no serious objections to the dining hall. Of course, it probably helped a great deal that all of the faculty and administrators they dealt with treated Angel as if he were extremely special, something that suited him right down to the ground.

About a week after their arrival, a memo turned up in Angel’s mail slot instructing Kas to report to Student Affairs in the School of Nursing for an admissions appointment. “Harold must have worked something out,” he said, looking pleased. “I thought he was nice.”

“Bowman,” Kas said.

“Yeah, him.”

“Doctor Bowman, or Captain Bowman,” which had been the man’s rank before retirement, “or just Bowman if you must, but don’t call one of the senior administrators of your college Harold.”

“That’s his name,” Angel complained, but conceded the point.

Angel assured him that he would be perfectly fine preparing slides of white blood cells on his own, and Kas went to his appointment. There, he found reason to doubt “Harold’s” niceness, because the “admissions appointment” was actually three hours of standardized tests in subjects Kas hadn’t thought about since high school, and hadn’t thought about very much even then. He thought he might have gotten some of the biology right, but the chemistry and calculus might as well have been written in a foreign language.

“What did they say?” Angel asked when they met up again in the room.

“Not much.” Kas explained what had happened.

“That could be a problem.”

“Yeah,” Kas said. “I think it could.”

When Kas was summoned to another appointment to discuss his scores, Angel arranged to leave the lab early to go with him. Kas, thinking that his special powers of being a Sentinel might help, didn’t argue.

This time, his appointment started with being shown into an office containing an actual human being, not a test blank, so at least it was an improvement over the last one.

“Hi, I’m Ms. Kirkland, an academic success counselor here at the university,” she said. “Have a seat.”

They sat. Ms. Kirkland was, as her name suggested, a civilian, wearing the largest earrings Kas had ever seen in a military facility.

“Let’s see. You’re Caz?” she asked Angel.

“Kas,” Angel said. “No, he is. I’m Angel.”

“Okay,” she said, looking puzzled for a moment. “Well, the program I work for is for students with academic disadvantages entering the nursing program here. It begins in June, and provides our students with intensive remedial courses over the summer to catch up to the students entering in the fall.”

“That’s exactly what you need,” Angel said, looking at Kas.

“Yes,” Kas agreed. Ms. Kirkland did not sound as thrilled about this as Angel did, and he suspected there was a problem, possibly beyond the fact that the six foot tall, blond and blue-eyed son of an investment banker was probably not the target demographic of the program, whether he had a Hispanic last name or not.

“Unfortunately your scores on the placement test don’t quite qualify you for the program.”

“I thought they might not, ma’am,” Kas said.

“I understand from your file that you did take high-school level calculus and chemistry, but you have been on active duty for the last eight years?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“So it’s been a while?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Eight years, in fact.

“What did you do to prepare for your placement tests?”

“I didn’t, ma’am. I didn’t know I was taking them until I got there.”

“You didn’t?”

“No, ma’am.”

“He didn’t,” Angel piped up. “The memo didn’t say anything about tests, and anyway, we only got it that day.”

“Well I’ll be darned. All right, here’s what we can do. I’ll give you some study materials, and we’ll re-test you closer to the beginning of the program, and see if we can’t bring those scores up. How does that sound?”

“I’d appreciate that, ma’am,” Kas agreed.

“Oh, yeah, that should work,” Angel said. “I’ll help you study.”

Angel quite enjoyed the reversal of being the one teaching Kas things-go figure. He was fairly good at explaining things, but Kas thought that the unholy glee with which he quizzed Kas on the periodic table at random moments may have been overdoing it. Sure, Kas had done the same thing with Angel’s basic training manual, but he hadn’t enjoyed it.

Since Kas’s only official duties in Dr. Levine’s lab were being in the room, he took to taking his workbooks along and studying in a quiet corner while Angel worked. It did, at least, make the time pass faster-Angel didn’t seem to mind spending four hours making identical slides, but spending four hours watching him do it-well, Kas had seen more interesting anthills. A less stable Sentinel might have struggled with the chemical scents in the lab, or with the sound of classes going on in nearby rooms, but Angel didn’t, and the job didn’t involve any sensory work. Angel occasionally liked to see how much detail he could make out on the slides without the microscope, but that wasn’t exactly part of his job, so he didn’t do it often.

Working steadily, Kas was able to learn enough to pass his re-test and join the remedial class in June. First obstacle down, how many to go?

Two

Kas leaned forward with his elbows on the desk and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. Just a little break, thirty seconds-maybe sixty; what the hell, it was Saturday night-where he didn’t have to look at any math problems.

When the summer program started, Kas discovered that his “academically disadvantaged” classmates were almost as scary-smart as Angel’s in the accelerated program. They had to be, to get into the military’s most competitive nursing program despite going to high schools that mostly didn’t offer much higher math or any kind of lab science. Many of them had had to teach themselves calculus. Everyone worked insanely hard and was very helpful; Kas carefully didn’t mention that he had had the opportunity to learn most of this stuff in high school but had chosen to dick around instead. Guide or not, he didn’t think any of his new classmates would appreciate it.

Despite his spring of intensive studying for the placement tests, he’d found himself drowning in pre-calculus, biology lab, and remedial chemistry. The only things he was doing half decently in were Military Theory-which was little more than drill and uniform inspections, so far-and English. He would have been doing all right in English, he thought, except that trying to keep his head above water in the other classes didn’t leave him much time to read a bunch of stupid essays and write a personal narrative. At least, he told himself, he now had an idea of what Basic had been like for Angel. He had started out miles behind his classmates-the ones who had actually earned their places here-and he was working his ass off just to stay at the very bottom of every class. It was beyond disheartening, being the absolute worst one at just about everything he did, all day, every day.

Angel, at least, was doing all right. In his accelerated MD program, he was studying the same subjects that Kas was, but faster and in more depth, plus a couple of extra things like history of military medicine. He even somehow managed to find the time to tutor Kas, claiming that he didn’t mind at all because it gave him a more solid grounding in the things that they were flying through in his own classes. He was even doing just fine in Military Theory-the only class they had together, because all of the Army students in their first year were in the same unit, regardless of what program they were in at the University. The other med school students-the ones who weren’t Sentinels-hadn’t been required to go to Basic before starting med school, so Angel was the only one who had already learned to read rank, stand up straight, and wear his uniform correctly. If he’d had to babysit Angel, in addition to keeping up with his own class work, Kas had no idea how he would have managed.

Reluctantly, Kas opened his eyes and picked up his pencil again.

“Are you stuck?” Angel asked, looking over from his own desk. Now that Kas was a student in the program, they’d been given two dorm rooms, and used one as a bedroom and the other as a study.

“No-this is the same kind of problem we worked on before; I just have to do it.” This one, and about ten more, and he might have a prayer of remembering how to do it on the test Monday.

“Backrub?” Angel asked, closing his textbook with a thump.

Maybe he had spoken-or thought, anyway-too soon about Angel not needing to be babied. He took a deep breath and said, “Yeah, okay. Just a minute.” Hopefully Angel wouldn’t need too much soothing and would accept being left after Kas got him settled down; he had chemistry and a lab report to finish after the calculus.

He only realized that he had misunderstood the question when Angel’s hands settled on his shoulders. Offer, not a request. Right. Angel could be a little self-centered, but he wasn’t completely selfish.

This was nice. He hadn’t realized how tense his neck and shoulders were. He dropped his head to give Angel better access to his neck.

“So,” Angel asked after a while, “do you hate it here?”

“Hm? No,” Kas said quickly. “I don’t hate it. It’s not easy, but I don’t hate it.”

“Okay,” Angel said. After rubbing Kas’s neck for a while more, he said, “I mean, because, I don’t even remember if it was your idea.”

“Neither do I.” He thought he’d thought of it on his own, but he wasn’t sure if he had mentioned it before Angel did. “But it makes sense.”

“I know it makes sense. But you don’t have to do it.”

“What’s the alternative? I mean, you are going to be a doctor.” He wasn’t going to hear of Angel giving that up just because Kas didn’t like calculus.

“Right. But that doesn’t mean you have to be a nurse.”

“You aren’t going to need that much help with your senses,” Kas pointed out. Angel’s senses had never really been the problem, and here at med school, he got through his days just fine without Kas’s help. “Being your Guide isn’t going to keep me busy.” It might be different if Angel were working in a combat setting, but Angel was already planning out his electives with an eye toward making sure that didn’t happen.

“No,” Angel agreed. “But you could….”

“Sit in your office and read all day?” Kas asked. Even if the Army would tolerate him having some completely unrelated career-and it wouldn’t-he did still need to be nearby to where Angel was. In the same building, at least.

“Yeah, okay, I can see why that wouldn’t work.”

“I’m pretty sure I would hate that,” Kas said. Even when he’d been assigned to Sentinels in combat units, he had tried to be a soldier first and a Guide second. Being a nurse wasn’t much like being a soldier, but it was an interesting, important job. “I think I’ll like it, once we’re out of school and working. Even when we get to clinicals, that seems like it’ll be all right.” They had gone to observe the advanced students doing clinical work a few times, and there was always a lot going on, something different every day. “These first couple of semesters of classes just…aren’t really my thing.”

“Uh-huh. I don’t think there’s much we can do about that.”

“No,” Kas agreed. “I just have to get through it. Most of the other people in my classes aren’t crazy about this part, either.” They had chosen it from a much wider set of options, sure, but it wasn’t like anyone, anywhere, got to do exactly what they wanted. He thought back to his last year of high school, when he, courtesy of a positive test for the Guide trait, had his future all planned out for him, while most of his classmates were busy trying to figure out what they wanted to do with their lives. But even they had been hemmed in by what schools they could get into, what majors their parents were willing to pay for. He’d managed to find just enough space to make a few choices for himself-combat duty, the Rangers-and then when things had changed, he’d chosen again. Angel. This.

Three

“I never thought you would settle down, Dillinger.”

“Nah, it’s all right. What’s yours like?” Kas asked, taking a pull from his beer. A few weeks ago, Ty Harriman, another Guide posted to the DC area, had suggested they try to get together, and after a couple of false starts, they had finally managed it. They had finished catching up on all the acquaintances they had in common, and now had to resort to talking about themselves.

“He’s a full-bird Colonel working at the Pentagon who isn’t Bonded. What do you think he’s like?”

“’Nuff said,” Kas agreed.

“A nurse, though, really?”

“It’s not a bad job. Being in school again after all this time sucks pretty hard, though.”

“I bet.”

“Yeah. There’s math.”

“Fuck,” Harriman said appreciatively.

“Calculus,” he added.

“Better you than me. You want another one?”

“Sure. I got it, though,” Kas said. Angel regularly handed him stacks of money, even though he was usually too busy studying to go anywhere to spend it. From the sound of things, Ty’s Sentinel was traditional enough to keep him on a pretty short leash, financially.

As he returned to the table with the bottles, he felt a familiar tug at the Bond. He barely had time to tell Harriman, “We have incoming,” before Angel slid into the booth beside him.

“Hey,” Kas said. “I thought you were studying.”

“I finished. Are you mad?”

“No.”

“Did you know I had to come to three different bars to find you?”

“Yes. The other two were too--”

“Crowded. I noticed,” Angel said, a bit petulantly.

“You want a Coke or something? Did you eat?” Kas asked, reaching for the menu.

“No, I didn’t.”

“The hamburgers are good here.”

“Hm.” Angel perused the menu.

“Do they have you babysitting already?” Ty asked, watching them with an amused half-smile.

Before Kas could formulate an answer, Angel stuck his head up and said crossly, “I’m not a baby.”

“We know,” Kas said. “He didn’t mean literally. Sometimes the Army has Bonded pairs look after Guides who are on their own at a training facility. We call it babysitting.” Most Sentinels would have found that explanation at least as insulting as the original misunderstanding, but Angel wasn’t most Sentinels. “Angel, this is Tyler Harriman, Ty, Sentinel Temas.”

Harriman stared at them for a moment-Angel was, at this point, in the process of wrapping Kas’s arm around his shoulders-and finally choked out, “Sorry, uh, sir.”

“De nada,” Angel said. “Um, Sergeant,” he said, glancing up at Kas for confirmation. He still sucked at reading rank. Kas nodded.

The cocktail waitress came over. “Do you need anything, hon?”

“Um…rum and Coke, and the buffalo shrimp.”

The waitress looked skeptical. “ID?”

“He’ll have a Coke-and-Coke,” Kas said.

“They let me drink at home,” Angel groused as the waitress left.

“Yeah, well, you’re not at home,” Kas told him.

“Huh.” Angel poked at the handful of French fries left on Kas’s plate, and nibbled experimentally at one. “These are cold.”

“I know. You could order some new ones if you wanted to.”

Harriman was watching them as if he thought Angel might, at any moment, explode. When Angel’s Buffalo shrimp arrived, he watched with increasing concern, and when it became evident Kas wasn’t going to stop him from eating them, said urgently, “Sir, those are very spicy!”

Angel, predictably, looked around to see who he was talking to.

“He knows,” Kas said.

“I like them,” Angel added, delicately cutting a shrimp in half and eating it with a fork. “I know, most Sentinels don’t…Kas, you should tell him the popcorn story.”

Kas told the popcorn story, and could see Ty changing his mental picture of Angel as he spoke. Kas told a few more Angel-stories, even bragging a little about Angel’s performance in the field exercise at the end of Sentinel School. It was a conversation Guides had all the time, but not usually with the Sentinel under discussion sitting right there. By the time they headed back to the dormitory, it seemed almost normal.

Four

“Wow, Angel, I could almost go lesbian for you,” said Jake Colter, host of the Halloween party they were attending, and unofficial social director of the Coalition of Lesbian and Gay Medical, Veterinary, and Dental Students. (Angel was the only member from USUHS, of course.) Colter was wearing a cocktail dress covered in multicolored sequins, a feather boa, and a headdress made out of artificial fruit.

Angel had on a dress with a corset-style bodice, black with red lacing, and a skirt made of many layers of black and red taffeta and tulle, and fishnet tights. After failing miserably at walking in high heels, he had chosen to complete his ensemble with combat boots. Kas had to admit that the look worked.

“Aw, Kas, it’s not that I don’t appreciate a man in uniform, but you’re supposed to wear a costume,” Jake added.

Kas and Angel had had one of those awkward, not-quite-fights that they occasionally had, over the issue of what he’d wear to the party. The invitation had specified dressing as the opposite sex. Kas was never really comfortable at CLGMVDS events anyway-he wasn’t the only non-medical student; plenty of other people brought their partners, but he was also not, strictly speaking, gay. Or lesbian. But he couldn’t exactly send Angel out to things like this on his own-even if there were no sensory problems, the boy had no common sense whatsoever, and would probably end up drunk and arrested.

Most of the guys were all right, really, once Angel made clear that he didn’t appreciate other people touching his Guide. But Kas had to draw the line at drag. Angel had been unhappy about it, and Kas could understand why. He didn’t like to draw attention to the Sentinel thing, and showing up at a costume party accompanied by a babysitter who was emphatically not in costume counted as drawing attention to it.

They couldn’t really fight about it, though, because Angel could, if he wanted to, make him do it, and they both knew it. When Kas had asked, “Are you ordering me to put on a dress and go to this party with you?” Angel had backed down so fast that Kas was mildly ashamed of himself.

Not ashamed of himself enough to actually do it, though.

Finally, Angel had suggested that he wear jeans and a flannel shirt and go as a butch lesbian, which Kas had agreed was a reasonable compromise-he’d have to explain the joke to everyone at the party, but at least he wouldn’t be making a spectacle of himself on the Metro getting there. (Angel, of course, had not cared who saw him in his party frock; Kas had had to badger him into covering it up with a coat until they were off military property.) Then Angel had had one of his exam-time panics, and they hadn’t had a chance to go shopping for new civvies, so he’d wound up wearing his fatigues-unlike the Class A’s and B’s, they were virtually identical for both sexes.

“Women wear this,” Kas answered. A lot more than wore anything like what Colter had on, he was sure.

“You’re no fun,” Colter said, but didn’t press the point. The lesbian contingent disagreed-when the prizes were awarded at the end of the evening, Kas won “most realistic.” Angel had to settle for the “Dropping my Kinsey” award.