fandom_clinic | Clinic Hours - Friday December 2nd

All ye who enter here shall hail the mighty coffee bean!

Grissom takes a seat.

He'd been back in the exam room getting it prepped for Grissom. Wilson had managed to ferret out a small treasure trove of 'Ranger Rick' magazines and he was just quirky enough to have put them into the room for Grissom to read while the chemo ran.

"Dr. Grissom!" Wilson greeted him with a chipper smile, walking over to sit next to him. "How are you doing?"

Grissom stood up and gave Wilson a warm handshake. After getting his treatment last week off-island, it was in some strange way a relief to be back at the Clinic.

"I've been well, a bit of a cold, although it doesn't seem to be serious," he admitted right up front. "How was your holiday?"

Giving his hand a shake, Wilson began to lead Grissom back towards his exam room.

"A bit of a cold?" He said, dark eyes sharp on the other man. "Dr. Grissom I know you don't need me to remind you that you need to be extra cautious. Please, keep me informed of any lingering symptoms. We need to be on top of this all the way."

Really, he didn't mean to lecture, just wanted Grissom to know that they were going to keep on top of it.

Waving the man towards the exam bed where the Ranger Rick magazines sat, Wilson headed for the cabinets where the supplies were kept.

"My holiday was good, quiet you could say."

Grissom sat quietly, and picked up a magazine with an amused grin on his face.

"I've been monitoring my temperature, nothing over 100°, but I will keep you informed. Other than the fatigue and bouts of nausea, I've been quite lucky, although it is just the end of the first month."

Flipping the magazine open, he thought to himself that Nick back home probably collected these as a kid, and the thought made him smile.

"It was quiet in town. Did you get the chance to leave the island?" Grissom inquired as he shrugged his jacket off.

Coming back to where Grissom would recieve the treatment, Wilson began to hang the bags.

"Ah...in a manner of speaking." He answered, thinking about the trip to MCV. Probably not what Grissom had in mind but it was a sort of half truth.

Smiling to his patient, Wilson began to set up the lines. He moved gently, knowing that Grissom had to be getting sore in the arms at this point.

"How was your treatment last week?"

"Let's just say the maids at the hotel probably thought I was a drunk," he says, mildly chagrined. "Usually it takes a good amount of time between a treatment and when I feel ill, if I've been taking care of myself. I almost got sick in the cab in DC."

He winces a little, but says nothing, appreciative of Wilson's attempts at being gentle.

"But I still have all my hair, so I can't complain yet," he says a bit ruefully, quickly switching topics. "So, aren't these collectibles?" he asks, pointing to a magazine. "Did you win them on EBay?"

[ooc: La la Post-treatment thread (http://www.livejournal.com/community/fandomhighdorms/293543.html) la la.]

Angel came in at a time when he was free from class and when no other patients were around. He waited for Wilson to notice him.

Wilson ~~whos mun is fighting with the baby who shall not sleep~~ surfaced from the supply room juggling a few boxes of rubber gloves.

"Oh! Hello there, Angel." He smiled warmly towards the vampire. "Come to let me check on that hand? Or do you need something else?"

"Just the hand," Angel said. "Amazingly enough. Need help with those?"

"Mmm, if you don't mind." Wilson tilted his arms forward, hoping Angel would grab the top two boxes that were about to hit the ground.

"Come on back, I'll take a look."

Angel snagged the two boxes in his right hand and followed Wilson.

To Exam 1 they go! (http://www.livejournal.com/community/fandom_clinic/51349.html?thread=2531477#t2531477)

Nudging the door open with his shoulder, he held it for Angel, waiting until the vampire was through the threshold before closing the door behind him with a deft kick of his foot.

"Has there been any improvement?"

"A bit, yeah," Angel said. "I've been trying to rest it, and using that stuff you gave me."

Setting the boxes on the counter, Wilson waved Angel towards the exam bed.

"You haven't been stoically trying to fight through the pain?" Wilson turned and eyed Angel with that you don't want to lie to the nice doctor now do you? expression.

"When am I ever stoic?" Angel deadpanned.

Walking back over towards the vampire Wilson actually smiled, his bright warm grin that had a hint of mischief in it.

"Goood...you're getting your sense of humor back. This is a positive thing, Angel...up on the bed please."

"Didn't know it was going to be one of those visits," Angel said, but sat on the examining table anyway.

"If it was going to be one of those visits, I'd have told you to bend over the table." Wilson said with a deliberate misunderstanding of what Angel was saying.

Reaching for the injured hand, the young doctor began to undo the bandage and despite his words, he let a comfortable sort of quiet fall between them, giving Angel a little bit of breathing room or perhaps just a bit of time.

"It's been feeling better," Angel said. Sure enough when the bandage was removed it revealed skin that was not as horribly burnt as it had been earlier in the week. Not fully healed yet, but something that more closely approximated accidentally holding a hot pot with bare hands than the post-volcano like damage he'd had previously. "More flexible too."

Wilson nodded in agreement as he turned Angel's hand towards the light to study the burn.

"It looks good, Angel. I think that if you keep up with the treatment and being just a little careful with it, you'll be good to go in the next week."

Carefully, Wilson tested the ROM of each finger, obviously pleased with the results each time.

"So...if this was one of those visits...how would you be doing?"

Angel stared at him for a long time. "Um... if it was one of those visits I'd probably have gone to that brothel in town. Not that I'm into that kind of thing. Paying for it, I mean."

Sitting there for a moment, Wilson realized that they'd managed to totally split off in two different directions and he chuckled softly, reaching for the supplies to re bandaged the vampire's hand.

"Well, that'll teach me to pretend to be crafty around you." Wilson accepted with good grace. "I meant...how are you doing?"

"Oh," Angel deflated as he got where Wilson was going. "Fine, I guess. Highs and lows, as always. Not like I can complain about it. Which I realize is me complaining about it."

"Balance is a good thing." Wilson said, striking for the neutral since at least Angel wasn't focusing on all bad.

"How do you deal with it?" Angel asked. "That thing you told me about, how you know they're going to hate you but that doesn't stop it from - you know. How do you deal?"

Wilson was quiet for a few minutes as he worked on cleaning the wound and redressing it, considering Angel's question carefully.

"I could really give you a whole bucket full of answers." He said with a calm sobriety that said he was taking this seriously. "Everything from the cliche sometimes people surprise you to...it's just the job but in the end? It's just something I can't not do."

Taking a deep breath, he leaned his hands on his knees. "I can't not be a doctor and I'll be honest Angel...sometimes I hate it. It hurts and I hurt people I care about for the good of a complete stranger who might not even say 'thank you' when I'm done but in the end of the day...it's what I believe in. I believe that what I'm doing is important and I have faith that what's I've done has meaning. And I hold on to those ideas until something comes along to help fill the little bits of myself I leave behind."

"See and here I thought you were going to say alcohol," Angel said, valiently trying, but not succeeding, to make a joke.

Laughing softly, Wilson lifted a finger and waggled it at Angel.

"No. You were hoping I was going to say alcohol." And in an effort to allow the conversation to lighten, he didn't point out that he actually tried not to drink when things were bad.

Didn't always succeed mind you but he did try.

"I was like that when I was a mortal," Angel said. "Drank all the time. Gambled. Enjoyed the finer pleasures of life if you get my meaning. As you can see that worked out real well for me."

[ooc: Going to bed. Can slowplay tomorrow if you like]

Sitting back on the stool, Wilson eyed Angel for a long minute then seemed to come to a conclusion.

"I...have been married three times. We won't discuss my last wife because I probably would have tied her up in a bow, handed her to Angelus and asked to watch." There was a flash of something in Wilson's eyes, gone so very fast it was hard to pick up but it spoke to the sort of pain a mortal never recovers from.

"But the other two...they were -are- good women. Sweet, amusing, beautiful, smart...kind." He sighed softly. "And I slept around on each of them."

Standing up he walked to the counter to grab Angel's chart, making a few notes to himself as he came back.

"There was no good reason for it. I'd just...see myself through someone elses eyes and like the view and want to hold on to it and then..." he gave a little shrug. "Usually it was other women but...there were times when it was...men and some...games. I always told my wives and looking back on it now I don't know that I did that for their benefit or my own."

Shifting his feet, obviously not used to talking like this, with anyone he exhaled softly.

"I was weak, it happens Angel...non of us are perfect, we all have our flaws and those flaws hurt people. Sometimes total strangers, sometimes the ones we love, often both. Will that lays untested is worthless. It's the testing that makes us, Angel because...guess what...no one is perfectly good or perfectly evil. It all comes down to the choices you make."

"Angelus was," Angel said. "He was perfectly evil. There was no good to him. As for me - " he gave a rueful smile " - let's just say there's a clause to this curse that means I'm really fond of imperfect."

Wilson blinked.

"Wait...having a soul is a curse?"

He looked genuinely confused and tilted his head towards Angel, hoping for an explination.

"Is if you're a vampire," Angel said. "You go from not a care in the world to all the pain you can imagine. Literally."

Sitting there, Wilson was forced to remember going from the joy of thinking he would be a father to the pain of ...

"Yeah, I think I have an understanding of what you mean, Angel."

Straightening, he gave the vampire's knee a squeeze.

"So...a condition of the curse is...what? Imperfection?"

"Kinda," Angel said. "Perfect happiness. If I experience it, I lose the soul."

[ooc: going to dinner, back in a few hours]

Wilson couldn't help it, he had to give a crack of laughter and it wasn't necessarily a happy thing.

"In this day and age? I'd think you were doomed to be souled for the rest of your existance."

"It can happen," Angel said, with a look that said he could appreciate the irony of the situatation. "I fell in love."

After a minutes thought, Wilson winced and peered up at Angel.

"That...must have been a little, awkward...wait you've...you've had your soul before?"

"For about a hundred years," Angel confirmed. "I was cursed by gypsies before the turn of the - um - last century."

Dark eyes regarded Angel and after a moment they softened. Not with pity, because he knew the vampire would never stand for that but perhaps with sadness on behalf of the young -old- man sitting in front of him.

"You really are getting jerked around. Aren't you?"

Angel nodded solemnly. "Never know who I'm going to be from one moment to the next. Hell, greatest irony of it all is that no matter who I am my worst nightmare is that I'll turn back into the other guy."

Clinic Hours - Friday December 2nd

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