trans_9 | If You Need a Doctor, I'll Examine Every Inch of You [Phys Evals; Open]

"She's here for your company, Howard, don't fool yourself." Sakura smiled, more for her own benefit than anyone else's. "He's good at these, in spite of what you may think. With a crew that cycles through awake Medical Bay officers like you wouldn't believe, Howard is one of the most accomplished self-starters we've ever had."

Considering they've not had tens of dozens, that might not be as saying as much as it could, but the compliment was genuine.

What?

Wide-eyed in confusion, Barbara watched Howard casually hand her forms. She accepted them of course, but while she had respect for Howard and the man he was growing into...he was still growing into a man! Even if he was greatly experienced for his age, he was still at an age which needed education and mothering and things.

Barbara kept her thoughts and ideas to herself. With their history, she'd offend him, he'd walk off, she wouldn't get the silly examination and she'd be punished. Besides, it wasn't surgery, it was just a check up. Nothing should be going into her body in anyway, except for the air she was breathing. All would be fine.

"I am, yes," she glanced at the form before casually adding: "how long have you been studying medicine, Howard?"

But look! Sakura walked in, too. Barbara tried not to make her sigh of relief obvious. "Is he?" she asked, looking over to see Howard's text book margin. She smiled warmly, "well, I'm sure that's not surprising, he's one of the most experienced people in almost everything I've met since waking up. I wonder if he cooks and cleans, too," Barbara grinned cheekily at Sakrua.

Howard's just going to do the awkward stare-at-the-floor shuffle. It's the new dance craze that's sweeping the nation. His cheeks burn a little.

"Thanks, Cherrybomb." He says it with the gratefulness of someone who still believes getting a compliment on a job well done is a rare and special thing to be treasured. And while he and Sakura are comrades in the Workaholic Teenagers club on the ship, he wasn't expecting unsolicited props.

He clears his throat and looks back up at Barbara, avoiding the cooking and cleaning question entirely because he's not really sure how to respond to such teasing. A while ago it may have made him defensive, but now he's mellowed out some. ~~So think of how high-strung he was when he started.~~

"Since I been on Stacy. Figured I needed to actually get a job, so I did." He figures Barbara's concerned about his age and temper, even though she's doing a remarkably good job of hiding it. It would just be weird if she weren't, so he explains. "We're just medics here, but we have authorization to run the physical evals. If we find anything we're not trained to deal with I'll go get one of the official docs for you."

"You're welcome." She let her attention shift from her coworker to their patient of the moment, having a little idea of what it meant to be sincerely handing out a compliment perhaps long overdue.

If not over their intense Simon Says sessions.

"If you're more comfortable with a traditional Earth doctor, we understand. People as a rule seem more suspicious of what I do, since it's not standard practice on your world."

Not that Faiza's alternate means of taking people apart to put them back together properly was either, but she also had the sort of classical training and appearance people expected.

"Otherwise we can run you through this pretty fast. Have you seen the medical form before?" Sakura handed over her datapad, a blank med-form displayed on the screen.

Howard's explanation made Barbara smile. There was a lot more to the teenager than he let on. She'd have to be more careful.

Sakura had said that on her home planet she was a trained medical professional, and she was surprisingly mature for her age, so not only did Barbara politely decline the offer for a medic from Earth, she also trusted Sakura's evaluation of Howard.

Barbara held up the form Howard had given her previously, "I haven't had a check-up in a while but I'm fairly alright with forms such as these," she talked as she scribbled her details. "But unless I've contracted some kind of alien disease, I should be alright - should I talk about poisoning here?" she pointed to a section on past illnesses. "It's a long story but I believe I'm fine now, though I'm not sure if you'd need to know that or not."

Secretly, Howard's relieved that Barbara's going to go with them. It's a gesture of trust in their abilities that is very welcome, especially since Howard feels self-conscious as one of the youngest staff members of the department. A little vote of confidence. Especially from Barbara, whom Howard finds himself wanting to impress these days.

"We run you through a scanner for any diseases that Stacy might not have picked up. There's a bacteria and virus filter on the ship that keeps us from getting sick too often, but personally I don't think that's a good idea. It's just begging for us to contract some superflu on our next shore leave." He nods. "Probably best to put everything you think might someday be relevant. We're game for long stories."

"And history can have more of an impact on you here than you might suspect." She didn't clarify what she was referencing in particular, if Howard might recall some of the situations that came up around the time people were de-aging at accelerated rates.

"Even if there was a point where I stopped listing how many hairline fractures of ribs I'd ended up with at thirteen." Sakura smiled. "Anything about yourself that we need to keep in mind should we be working on you when you're injured is good to bring up. We'll type your blood if you don't mind, but anything like a clotting disorder is important we know."

Barbara scribbled 'temporarily poisoned' in the appropriate box. "I suppose it's not that long a story. Remember when I was telling you about how we were shrunk to two inches high?" she asked Howard, "well, we found out way into a laboratory and, though we didn't know it at the time, it was full of a poison that was being developed. I got some of it on my hands and...I don't remember much more. I just became very tired and I felt so nauseous, but we got back to the TARDIS and the Doctor returned us to our regular size, which meant that the poison infected a smaller amount of my body. I was fine after that.

"Nothing else has really happened. I've only suffered one broken leg and the obligatory colds each year when the weather turns. I had chicken pox as a child," she took a moment to scribble that down, too, "but that's it. And I don't really have much family medical history to speak of." She shrugged and handed back the filled out form.

"And you recovered full mobility with the broken leg?" Howard takes the form back and skims through it. Somehow that seems to matter more than the fact that she was shrunk, which, honestly, gets filed away into the 'useful to know the context of but since all shrink rays are different, not very helpful' box. "When was the last time you saw a doctor for a checkup, anyway?"

He gets his little flashlight tool out. "Mind if I check your eyes, ears and mouth?" Unlike the healers in the staff, Howard's limited to the old-school way of doing checkups. That means stethoscope, flashlight and 'that little triangle thing you bonk the knee with'.

"I recovered fine," Barbara extended her leg a couple of times to demonstrate. Though how much Howard and Sakura could actually tell with trousers covering the actual break, she didn't know.

Barbara sat up a little straighter and nodded at Howard's request, continuing talking as he looked at her ears. "The last time I saw a general practitioner," because it was just less confusing to use that term once she'd traveled with the Doctor, "would have been about 4 or 5 months before I left with the Doctor, and I traveled with him for roughly a year." She opened her mouth now that she'd finished using it, so that her examiner might see inside.

"Wow, so you've seen one more recently than I did. And probably way more more recently than Cherrybomb has." It's a joke - Howard's finally become accustomed to the idea that Ninjaland doesn't seem to have doctors so much as field-medic/asskicker combo packs in a single person. "Okay, everything looks good up here."

He waves a hand at Barbara's torso. "Do you mind taking your shirt off?" He says that and his cheeks flush in a way that suggests that he will never find this part of the process not awkward, even if he can otherwise be totally professional about it. "I mean, Sakura will be the one checking your lungs and stomach and all, obviously, I'll just look at the wall or something."

A small smirk was swallowed at Howard's blushing, only because Barbara felt a little awkward herself. However, the idea of Sakura doing it, made her feel a little better then if it were a teenage boy.

She undid the buttons quickly and pushed the shirt off her shoulders so it wouldn't get in the way of Sakura. Despite feeling a little more comfortable with the more female of the two, she still wanted to put her shirt back on as quickly as possible.

"Years before," Sakura agreed mildly. Doctors -- general practitioners -- weren't the sort of medic around town, if they did have them. In some capacity.

The sort of technogear Stacy made available to them meant Barbara got to skip out on the cold stethoscope to the chest. Sakura held up something that looked vaguely like a stethoscope, only with a sort of matte finish on the end. "Comes already warm," she said with a smile. "Nicer than what I'm used to. Go ahead and take a deep breath in for me -- then breathe out, slowly."

She was listening for any rattle in the lungs, or anything else she didn't expect. She repeated her request several times, moving the not-searingly-cold stethoscope each time.

"You can get your shirt back on properly again. Can I have you lay down afterward? I'll finish up with your stomach and such, then most of the invasive parts of this are done." More or less.

Howard, true to his word, stares at the wall with admirable intent. Sakura may or may not be reminded of the time he walked out on a shift because the patient was both no longer in need of medical care and naked. He can stay completely calm and professional when there's something pressing to be done, but as soon as things become more laidback he gets awkward and freezes up around nudity. Which, he guesses, is better than being a creep.

"Do you want us to do blood draws so Stacy can vaccinate you for space malaria? She'll need to run through what vacs you've had or not, and I think like, MMR vaccines and all didn't exist when you were a kid."

The blessed lack of a stone cold stethoscope was most welcomed, it even made the experience somewhat berable. Her shirt was quickly buttoned up once more, and her position switched to something more horizontal. After 'sleeping' in the quarters, lying down felt extremely good, and it was taking effort not to close her eyes.

Barbara wanted to ask Howard just how good he was at drawing blood but nodded instead. She had convinced herself that he was worth trusting with her body, and she should really go through with it. "I can't imagine that any of these vaccines were around when I last went to the general practitioner as an adult."

"I don't know if the ones Sta'c has were around for anyone before here. Something like them, yes, but that's not quite the same," Sakura commented, pressing gently down on her stomach. Her chakra was giving her a better idea than her hands alone, if the gentle prodding was likely familiar.

"Everything looks good," she said after a moment, stepping off to the side. "Normal gastric function, nothing out of place. Have all your systems been working well?"

Sakura's head jerked up and to the side, and she frowned. "If you can tell Howard, I'll ask him for a review of your report afterward. Looks like there's something I need to go take care of."

With an apologetic smile to Barbara (and a look to Howard to say sorry), Sakura excused herself from the immediate examination.

Howard gives Sakura a little mock salute and turns back around. He more than trusts her deductions on Barbara's health, especially when chakra's involved; he places total faith in it. There are few things he absolutely trusts, and while Sakura herself doesn't rank on that short list yet, her powers do.

He tilts his head over at Barbara, reading her facial expressions as she sits back up. "Wow, you about to take a nap over there?"

He makes some notes on his pad and sets it aside before getting the syringe out, handling it like the delicate piece of medical equipment that it is (little will Barbara know that sometimes he and Sakura play darts with the defective ones during long shifts) and waiting for Barbara's response to Sakura's question.

"Hold your arm out, this'll just hurt as much as a needle usually does." He draws Barbara's blood with the expertise that comes from having practiced over and over and over again, including on Sakura and on himself, while trying to bring himself to and beyond the level of the medical staff.

"I'm still adjusting to the sleeping quarters," Barbara replied casually to Howard's statement and groaned slightly as she sat up again, her aging bones protesting against the sudden resistance to gravity.

"Everything has been fine," she shrugged, "I've not had a problem."

The needle was another thing entirely. Though she didn't like them, she knew that making things difficult for the doctor - man or teenager - would only prolong the experience. So she kept her protests to herself, only her brow wrinkled as the needle went in. The effects of the drained blood were almost immediate. She wasn't going to passout, but she was certainly lighter headed and somewhat woozy.

"How many people's blood have you taken?" she asked by way of distraction. Anything to not be thinking about the needle inside her.

"Why don't you live in the City? That's what I did. There's hotels and empty houses and I mean, if you wanted to you could ask Zou if you wanted to move in with us at the Inn. Even I think everyone there's pretty nice, and I don't like people." He'd shrug but he's busy cordoning off the blood he's collected. "I think Ian moved into the City too if you want to ask him where he's staying."

He slides the needle out, wipes a drop of blood away and affixes a band-aid to Barbara's arm. "On the job, between all the phys evals maybe forty. Including practice, probably closer to four hundred. Sakura and me get a lot of the dead shifts so we spend a lot of time studying and practicing." It's not that Howard doesn't understand why they relegate the teenagers to the quietest shift, but it still rankles him.

"I didn't take much more than half a pint," he explains. "Stacy needs different batches to run her tests, so that's as little as I can get away with taking for a full evaluation from her."

"I'm getting there," Barbara was still sorting things out and trying to figure her way around. She'd ask to move in with Ian if he didn't live with another bachelor. In fact, the thought of living with a man turned her stomach just a little ~~even if she sort of did it during university, and then again on the TARDIS~~. "I was thinking of asking Ian to help me find somewhere. Not that I think Stacey has questionable places in her city but it would be good to have a second opinion," and Ian had moved out before they left. Barbara hadn't.

"I never picked you for a studious person, Howard," she smiled, putting pressure on the plaster. "you've surprised me."

"Stacy totally has questionable places. Me and Zou found a house with space ghost mold, and there's at least one house out there with a mouth underneath it." And this will all be going in the book he'll someday write, tentatively titled Life Sucks So Get Over It. "Personally I think it's kind of creepy to live alone, but whatever floats your boat."

He shrugs. "I'm real bad at school. Classrooms give me hives. No offense." Or at least, as little offense as he can manage when it's clear from his voice that he hates everything about the school systems Barbara's a part of. Structured learning has never been his thing. It's not that he's dumb, he's a very bright kid, but just that he and traditional learning go together like onions and hot cocoa.

"...a mouth?" that was, well, it was certainly surprising but probably shouldn't be because Stacey seemed to be filled with all kinds of things that Barbara couldn't even have imagined if she tried.

"I haven't ever really lived alone. I lived with my mother until we were swept up by the Doctor and now I'm here. I wouldn't say that I'm living alone. I've a small shelf in a large room of beds a I share with other people." On her first day, before she had even thought about where she was going to sleep, Ian had told her it was like sleeping in a giant nose. She should have believed him and found somewhere else right then and there. "Maybe if I asked nicely, the Doctors might let me live on the TARDIS again."

She smiled and shook her head, "no offense taken. School isn't for everyone, just like medicine isn't for everyone, or needles." Cue another wary glance at all the needles.

"It almost ate us." Howard gives an exaggerated shudder and shakes his head. "But that seems to be a running theme in my life. Everything wants to eat me."

He says it as a joke, but he's deadly serious. He has a very bad history with almost ending up someone else's snack food.

"I never lived alone either. I tried it for like...two weeks, here, and I think I got maybe two straight hours of sleep the whole time. Empty houses freak me out." He tilts his head and blinks. "What's a TARDIS? And do you mean the Doctor like that weird guy who wears stupid bowties?"

He follows her glance over to the needles, then gets a cloth out of one of the drawers and covers them. He doesn't know how far her discomfort with them goes, but out of sight, out of mind. "That's all the needles I'm going to use on you today, don't worry."

Barbara smiled in maternal sympathy. "Living alone isn't for everyone. Some people really enjoy it and others do not like it at all, but you won't know until you try."

She was still used to a life where everyone in her close circle of friends knew what a TARDIS was. It was taking some adjusting to remember that not everyone is like her. "One of the Doctors wears a bowtie," there was a tone in her voice suggesting that the Doctor was a complicated thing to explain. "And the TARDIS is his spaceship. Time and Relative Dimension in Space."

Of course, at the thought of not having any more needles, Barbara smiled in relief. "Thank you. What would you like me to do next?"

Howard would like to live alone someday, because that would mean he's one step closer to no longer needing other people. That's the hard thing, for him - he feels so disconnected from and wary of others but can't seem to do without them. It's a constant tug of war.

"'One of the Doctors'? Does he have like, alternate reality versions of him wandering around? Because I knew we had two Spider-Mans but..." He tilts his head over a little further, wrapping his mind around that. "Why would you want to live in a spaceship when we already live in one?"

He's not quite sure when his relationship with Barbara crossed from the disdain to the somewhat-friendly zone. "I'm just going to take a look at your hands for circulation and use the triangle thingy for your reflexes, then it's just whatever's on your mind. Any concerns you have or anything."

Edited 2012-03-03 18:11 (UTC)

Re: Fine with anyone

*just* noticed Sakura replied too *head!desk*

We swarm you because we like you!

It's adoration and a slow pacific us coaster!

I love swarms! And coasters! :D

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just noticed Sakura replied too head!desk