shylarah
Qia
Hound55
Festive
mickilennial
Half Pint
Melissa
webboysurf
Supermaxx
The humvee rumbled to a dramatic stop on the street outside the clinic. The few scattered citizens and the awake (not necessarily sober) members of the nearby houseless encampment - the clinic was not set up in what was known to be a 'good' neighbourhood - jerked their necks in the vehicle's direction. Even in a more affluant locale they'd still stand out; around here, they may as well driven up with sirens and a neon sign. Jasper sighed as he watched, through the tinted windows, all the people noticing their presence, all the people who could say 'yeah, someone was here today'.
Marty noticed Jasper noticing, as well as his sigh, and Jasper looked around to him as he heard the intake of breath that prefixed an apology. He gave Marty a very specific look that cut that off before it began. Instead, they just got out, trying to look as non-descript as possible - best not to tie any one particular organisation into their activities, if it could be helped, as it saved on phonecalls from self-important men who wanted their moment to chew out a division that otherwise superseded them in every way - and entered the clinic.
It was sparsely populated; no one in the waiting room, and a subsequently-bored nurse on reception. Linoleum floors, plastic chairs, and flyers for rehabs of various directions made the space closer to a methodone centre than a mutant clinic, but Jasper supposed that was by design. In a run-down neighbourhood on a quiet side of town, where mutants wouldn't have to walk through crowds of potentially-hostile civilians, and the greater area didn't need to know what the clinic was truly for. A halfway house for junkies? Well, you just didn't think about it. It hid right in front of you, because you didn't want to see it. Which was just perfect for the people going there, because they didn't want to be seen either.
The nurse looked up from her crossword. Jasper pulled out his ID, pushing it against the plastic screen that separated him and Marty from the woman. She peered at it through bottle-cap glasses, which only served to emphasise the widening of her eyes.
"Sitwell! As in Colin and Justin Sitwell?"
Jasper pocketed the ID and smoothed an eyebrow.
"Indeed."
The nurse looked past him to Marty, who was pulling out his own ID. She waved it away.
"No need, Agent Reyna. I could pick you out of a line up at 50 paces even without my glasses, we see you so much."
"Is that so?" Jasper said, turning to raise an eyebrow at Marty. Marty just blushed.
"Ahem. We're here to follow up on the girl who came in yesterday. Is she still being kept for observation?" Marty said, his tone sheepish.
"The seizure girl? Certainly is. Last room on the left. Here, I'll let you into the ward."
The nurse stood up from her station and disappeared through a door behind her; Jasper and Marty stood patiently for a few minutes, Jasper distinctly not addressing why Marty was hanging around a clinic outside his usual assignment enough to be recognised by on-site staff, until a subtle electronic 'whooshing' sound came from a door to their left that indicated the release of magnetic locks, and then the rattling of some more traditional locks being opened, until finally the door swang open with the nurse on the other side. She beckoned them forth and pointed them down the corridor.
"As I said, last room on the left. She's been quiet today - sleeping, mostly, when I've checked on her. We took more bloods and a...well, a stool sample. Just for something else to check...but still all clear. As it stands, we were probably going to release her tomorrow morning."
"Thank you, ma'am." Jasper said. "We just want a quick chat. We'll let you know when we're done."
The nurse nodded, and disappeared back to her station, leaving Jasper and Marty alone in the corridor as the door closed and sealed behind them, and they walked the short distance to the girl's room in further silence.
The girl was awake when they stepped in; Jasper first, Marty second, closing the door behind them. She watched them carefully, with eyes far more alert than the bags beneath them would indicate. There was a strange ferocity and animal cunning to her gaze that Jasper, though quite unprepared to admit it, found himself nonetheless unnerved by. He smiled, polite but wan, and moved across the room, collecting the chart hooked onto the end of the bed as he went, casting an eye over it while flipping the scant few pages attached.
"I know who he is." The girl said, breaking the silence and pointing a well-manicured nail in Marty's direction. "He's the one who's been in charge of all the poking and prodding done to me over the last 24 hours, including the bedpan, which was highly undignified, thank you very much."
Jasper raised that quizzical eyebrow again, and Marty coughed awkwardly but, cleverly, decided not to dispute.
"But I don't know you." She continued, that pointed finger rounding on Jasper now. "And you don't look like a nurse. So who are you, and what do you want with me?"
Jasper considered her tone. Irritation was layered across every word, the kind of bored frustration a healthy person stuck in hospital might harbour, tempered only a little by the conscious rationality reasoning that the myriad healthcare professionals attending to them had but only good intentions. But there was something more there, an edge that crept in on her final question; whatever else this girl was dealing with, Jasper realized, it was important to remember she was a mutant, and considered herself as such, and was probably subject to the aspersions afforded to mutants in the modern era. Anti-mutant sentiment was not uncommon or even particularly suppressed; some of the highest echelons of military and governmental institutions were outspoken about mutant suppression, and billionaire playboys around the world spun entire PR campaigns on hating 'muties'.
Jasper had no specific love for the demographic, but no specific hatred either, just the same mildly-jaded ambivalence he held toward most aspects of society, his job, and life in general. Probably best to tread careful.
"Miss..." he returned his eyes to the clipboard chart in his hands, scanning the top of the first page for patient details, quickly finding her name. "...Jubilation?"
His tone and eyebrows raised in matched surprise. Kids' names were getting more and more unusual these days.
"My friends call me Jubilee." Jubilee said, clarifying with the kind of audible measured patience only someone used to clarifying could carry.
"Well, Jubilee-"
"We're not friends."
Jasper sighed and shot a look to Marty, trying to put across how utterly not-worth-his-time this impulsive jaunt was currently shaping up to be, and how severely it needed to improve in that aspect if Marty didn't want to be picking up Jasper's admin scutwork for the next 6 months.
"Well, Miss Lee, my name is Jasper Sitwell, and I'm from the W.H.O." He lied, evenly and without hint of deception. Jubilee frowned.
"Sorry, who?"
"Yes." He replied. "Martin here contacted us about your unusual case, and I thought I'd come take a look. But it looks like..."
He flicked through the chart again, taking some mental notes but otherwise not seeing anything beyond a healthy late-teens girl with one completely-unexplained seizure.
"It looks like you're healthy." He finally said, anticlimactic and aware of it. "Apart from your...unusual pallor."
She was pale, too, noticeably so; her skin was closer to eggshell-white than the slight-pink of flesh, and a long ways away from Jasper's aged-leather pelt or Marty's healthy, ethnically-ambiguous tan.
Marty cleared his throat, and Jubilee and Jasper both turned their heads to him.
"Actually, Miss Lee came in like that. It's not uncommon among patients of similar..." he paused, unsure exactly how much he should say, despite everyone in the room being quite aware of Jubilee's genetic status. "...nature, on the same treatment plan." He finally settled on, and Jasper furrowed his brow.
"Hmm."
"So can I go?" Jubilee chimed in, and Jasper turned back to her.
"We're waiting on the results of the final samples taken today, but I can't imagine they're going to reveal anything new." Jasper said, conceding to the girl. Her face lit up, and she sat forward. The eagerness to be let out was so apparent, Jasper nearly didn't carry on.
But he did carry on.
"Still, it's probably not a good idea to try and re-treat you, and withdrawal has proven to be...challenging, for some patients. If you'd consent to it, we'd like to take you to our advanced facility."
Jubilee's face fell, and she flumped back into the bed. Jasper tried to smile as sympathetically as he could.
"You'd have more freedom than you have here - access back to your devices - better food - some more privacy. We'd just want to make sure the 'purge' wasn't too difficult on your body."
Jubilee looked from Jasper to Marty and back to Jasper, before sighing and throwing her hands up in exasperation.
"Fine. Fine! I'll come with you. Change of environment, at least. Maybe my next room will have a TV."
Jasper looked at the corner of the room. The wall was discolored in the shape suggesting a television set had once been hung there, but the hole and some loose wiring suggested it had more recently been torn out. Some neighborhood.
"Wonderful. We'll have the clinic fax us your sample results. The car's just outside."
"The Humvee?" Jubilee asked, and Jasper shot Marty the third look of the morning. Jubilee caught it too, but only grinned, amused to ruffle feathers. "I heard it pull up. Not very inconspicuous."
"We're hiding in plain sight?" Marty offered, and Jasper just pinched the bridge of his nose.
Marty noticed Jasper noticing, as well as his sigh, and Jasper looked around to him as he heard the intake of breath that prefixed an apology. He gave Marty a very specific look that cut that off before it began. Instead, they just got out, trying to look as non-descript as possible - best not to tie any one particular organisation into their activities, if it could be helped, as it saved on phonecalls from self-important men who wanted their moment to chew out a division that otherwise superseded them in every way - and entered the clinic.
It was sparsely populated; no one in the waiting room, and a subsequently-bored nurse on reception. Linoleum floors, plastic chairs, and flyers for rehabs of various directions made the space closer to a methodone centre than a mutant clinic, but Jasper supposed that was by design. In a run-down neighbourhood on a quiet side of town, where mutants wouldn't have to walk through crowds of potentially-hostile civilians, and the greater area didn't need to know what the clinic was truly for. A halfway house for junkies? Well, you just didn't think about it. It hid right in front of you, because you didn't want to see it. Which was just perfect for the people going there, because they didn't want to be seen either.
The nurse looked up from her crossword. Jasper pulled out his ID, pushing it against the plastic screen that separated him and Marty from the woman. She peered at it through bottle-cap glasses, which only served to emphasise the widening of her eyes.
"Sitwell! As in Colin and Justin Sitwell?"
Jasper pocketed the ID and smoothed an eyebrow.
"Indeed."
The nurse looked past him to Marty, who was pulling out his own ID. She waved it away.
"No need, Agent Reyna. I could pick you out of a line up at 50 paces even without my glasses, we see you so much."
"Is that so?" Jasper said, turning to raise an eyebrow at Marty. Marty just blushed.
"Ahem. We're here to follow up on the girl who came in yesterday. Is she still being kept for observation?" Marty said, his tone sheepish.
"The seizure girl? Certainly is. Last room on the left. Here, I'll let you into the ward."
The nurse stood up from her station and disappeared through a door behind her; Jasper and Marty stood patiently for a few minutes, Jasper distinctly not addressing why Marty was hanging around a clinic outside his usual assignment enough to be recognised by on-site staff, until a subtle electronic 'whooshing' sound came from a door to their left that indicated the release of magnetic locks, and then the rattling of some more traditional locks being opened, until finally the door swang open with the nurse on the other side. She beckoned them forth and pointed them down the corridor.
"As I said, last room on the left. She's been quiet today - sleeping, mostly, when I've checked on her. We took more bloods and a...well, a stool sample. Just for something else to check...but still all clear. As it stands, we were probably going to release her tomorrow morning."
"Thank you, ma'am." Jasper said. "We just want a quick chat. We'll let you know when we're done."
The nurse nodded, and disappeared back to her station, leaving Jasper and Marty alone in the corridor as the door closed and sealed behind them, and they walked the short distance to the girl's room in further silence.
- - -
The girl was awake when they stepped in; Jasper first, Marty second, closing the door behind them. She watched them carefully, with eyes far more alert than the bags beneath them would indicate. There was a strange ferocity and animal cunning to her gaze that Jasper, though quite unprepared to admit it, found himself nonetheless unnerved by. He smiled, polite but wan, and moved across the room, collecting the chart hooked onto the end of the bed as he went, casting an eye over it while flipping the scant few pages attached.
"I know who he is." The girl said, breaking the silence and pointing a well-manicured nail in Marty's direction. "He's the one who's been in charge of all the poking and prodding done to me over the last 24 hours, including the bedpan, which was highly undignified, thank you very much."
Jasper raised that quizzical eyebrow again, and Marty coughed awkwardly but, cleverly, decided not to dispute.
"But I don't know you." She continued, that pointed finger rounding on Jasper now. "And you don't look like a nurse. So who are you, and what do you want with me?"
Jasper considered her tone. Irritation was layered across every word, the kind of bored frustration a healthy person stuck in hospital might harbour, tempered only a little by the conscious rationality reasoning that the myriad healthcare professionals attending to them had but only good intentions. But there was something more there, an edge that crept in on her final question; whatever else this girl was dealing with, Jasper realized, it was important to remember she was a mutant, and considered herself as such, and was probably subject to the aspersions afforded to mutants in the modern era. Anti-mutant sentiment was not uncommon or even particularly suppressed; some of the highest echelons of military and governmental institutions were outspoken about mutant suppression, and billionaire playboys around the world spun entire PR campaigns on hating 'muties'.
Jasper had no specific love for the demographic, but no specific hatred either, just the same mildly-jaded ambivalence he held toward most aspects of society, his job, and life in general. Probably best to tread careful.
"Miss..." he returned his eyes to the clipboard chart in his hands, scanning the top of the first page for patient details, quickly finding her name. "...Jubilation?"
His tone and eyebrows raised in matched surprise. Kids' names were getting more and more unusual these days.
"My friends call me Jubilee." Jubilee said, clarifying with the kind of audible measured patience only someone used to clarifying could carry.
"Well, Jubilee-"
"We're not friends."
Jasper sighed and shot a look to Marty, trying to put across how utterly not-worth-his-time this impulsive jaunt was currently shaping up to be, and how severely it needed to improve in that aspect if Marty didn't want to be picking up Jasper's admin scutwork for the next 6 months.
"Well, Miss Lee, my name is Jasper Sitwell, and I'm from the W.H.O." He lied, evenly and without hint of deception. Jubilee frowned.
"Sorry, who?"
"Yes." He replied. "Martin here contacted us about your unusual case, and I thought I'd come take a look. But it looks like..."
He flicked through the chart again, taking some mental notes but otherwise not seeing anything beyond a healthy late-teens girl with one completely-unexplained seizure.
"It looks like you're healthy." He finally said, anticlimactic and aware of it. "Apart from your...unusual pallor."
She was pale, too, noticeably so; her skin was closer to eggshell-white than the slight-pink of flesh, and a long ways away from Jasper's aged-leather pelt or Marty's healthy, ethnically-ambiguous tan.
Marty cleared his throat, and Jubilee and Jasper both turned their heads to him.
"Actually, Miss Lee came in like that. It's not uncommon among patients of similar..." he paused, unsure exactly how much he should say, despite everyone in the room being quite aware of Jubilee's genetic status. "...nature, on the same treatment plan." He finally settled on, and Jasper furrowed his brow.
"Hmm."
"So can I go?" Jubilee chimed in, and Jasper turned back to her.
"We're waiting on the results of the final samples taken today, but I can't imagine they're going to reveal anything new." Jasper said, conceding to the girl. Her face lit up, and she sat forward. The eagerness to be let out was so apparent, Jasper nearly didn't carry on.
But he did carry on.
"Still, it's probably not a good idea to try and re-treat you, and withdrawal has proven to be...challenging, for some patients. If you'd consent to it, we'd like to take you to our advanced facility."
Jubilee's face fell, and she flumped back into the bed. Jasper tried to smile as sympathetically as he could.
"You'd have more freedom than you have here - access back to your devices - better food - some more privacy. We'd just want to make sure the 'purge' wasn't too difficult on your body."
Jubilee looked from Jasper to Marty and back to Jasper, before sighing and throwing her hands up in exasperation.
"Fine. Fine! I'll come with you. Change of environment, at least. Maybe my next room will have a TV."
Jasper looked at the corner of the room. The wall was discolored in the shape suggesting a television set had once been hung there, but the hole and some loose wiring suggested it had more recently been torn out. Some neighborhood.
"Wonderful. We'll have the clinic fax us your sample results. The car's just outside."
"The Humvee?" Jubilee asked, and Jasper shot Marty the third look of the morning. Jubilee caught it too, but only grinned, amused to ruffle feathers. "I heard it pull up. Not very inconspicuous."
"We're hiding in plain sight?" Marty offered, and Jasper just pinched the bridge of his nose.
