hfm_logs | Medical Consultation [Closed]

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Medical Consultation [Closed]

Warnings: There will be swearing.
Location: In the apartment.
Characters: Leonard McCoy, Casey Jones
When: Morning after running out with Rose.
Summary: Dr Bones has a bone to pick with Casey.

Now there was a moment to sit back and look at the full scan of Casey. No real medical history to work off but the tricorder told a morbid and frightening story of a kid that got knocked around more than a little and had some severe damage. Whatever injury prompted the metal plate was horrifying enough- but the real issue he wanted, needed to discuss was the frontal lobe damage.

That wasn't something you walked away from easily. Casey was young, he was reckless, he meant well. But that can't have been something he got from one of his fights.

Wary and needing to know more than he was probably owed, he cornered the kid in his room, arms crossed, tricorder humming at his hip.

"We need t'talk, Kid."

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Casey was already getting tired of this. Bones was nosy. Really nosy. Like he had a machine that told him everything about you, enabling him to be as nosy as possible, that was how nosy he was. And Casey really didn't feel like getting his business nosed into this morning, not when he still felt like he'd been through an avalanche where each rock yelled at him as he fell.

"Don' worry, I'm not sneakin' out tonight. Promise." Were those the magic words that would banish Bones back to the kitchen...or wherever?

"It's not about sneak'n out, kid." If only it was that simple. "As your primary physician I'd like t'ask ya a few questions about your medical history. Coupla things I wanna check out and discuss if you're comfortable with it."

Casey can kind of guess what this is about. Bones had mentioned the plate last night, hadn't he?

"Ah...OK. Sure. Thought your little scanner device woulda told you everything already."

"Told me what's in your head, didn't tell me how it got there." He drummed his fingers against his arm, brow furrowed. "How'd the plate in your head come about?"

"'Cause my head got busted."

Casey knows that's not the answer Bones is looking for. He'd probably be more eager to tell the story if it didn't come with all the baggage it did. People got weird when you talked about your brain damage with them, who knew?

"It's not someth'n that's done anymore when I'm from, Casey. It's- we don't cut and stitch people up like fabric. It's barbaric." He was more than a little horrified that it happened at all, that THIS was the appropriate solution. But that was just- how things were. "But it's what worked where you're from and I don't have a lot of context aside from horror stories I heard in 'history of earth medicine' in med school. I'm gonna need ya to elaborate. So I can work around it if anything happens in the future."

"Yeah, well, it's what they had to do to keep my brains in," Casey shrugged, uneasy. "I mean...I'll tell ya, if you really wanna know. But you gotta promise you won't talk about it with the guys!" That was still a thing in the future, right? Doctors not blabbing stuff about their patients.

"Doctor patient confidentiality. I promise. Shouldn'ta said anything last night but I was tired and you were bruised and it's the first full scan I've made 'a you." It was a slip- like a lot of other things that night.

"Alright...I don't really remember a lot of what happened. Got told a lot of it later, but..."

He takes a deep breath. "I was 14, walking home from school, right, when I see this gang of kids I kinda know standin' in a group around the door to my building. I live in kind of a tough neighborhood, and these guys were punks. Like they'd, slash tires, break shop windows, stop kids on the street and take their lunch money...you know, that kinda stuff. They wanted me to join them for awhile, been bugging me for months about it. I kept turnin' 'em down, wasn't my thing, and they were gettin' mean."

Casey leaned on the wall. "Anyway, one've 'em sees me and they all turn around, and I start gettin' ready for somethin' to go down. And then I see they've got my little sister pined with her arms behind her back. She was only 10, she's got nothin to do with it, so I know they're just trying to get to me. Their leader, the big one...I don't remember his name, but he told me somethin' like...it was my last chance, if I didn't run with them, they couldn't guarantee her safety anymore.

...And that's about where it all goes blank. I know I called him a coward, and it must've escalated from there 'cause he and I got into it. I said somethin' to piss him off 'cause he grabbed the back of my head and WHAM! Slammed it into the wall over and over until my skull broke open. Think they ran 'cause they thought I was dead.

I woke up in the hospital like...4 days later or somethin' with the plate in my head and...that's the story."

Edited 2015-09-04 04:16 (UTC)

"...is-" Jesus christ. The casual cruelty of children, of people, will always surprise him. There's nothing he hadn't heard of in the context of war, in the context of intergalactic conflict- but people hurt'n people. That felt wrong to him on so many levels but- it was a product of where and when he was from. Just like Casey was a product of where and when he was from. Catching his composure again from where it'd been rattled took a moment. Gangs and fight'n kids and threat'ning kids to make kids fight with 'em-

It hammered home a lot about Casey that he'd only wondered after. Why he felt and thought the way he did, why he did what he did.

"...Is that where the frontal lobe damage is from as well?"

"Yeah, most of it," Casey smiled, a little weaker than he would've liked, "but you probably gotta give hockey a little bit of credit."

Casey watched Bones's face through the story and didn't like what he saw. He'd never really considered any this too far out of the ordinary. He'd just...grown up in a rough city, in a rough neighborhood. Yeah, the injury had been pretty awful, but Casey also didn't really remember what he was like before it.

But Bones looked stricken for a moment, and Casey had to wonder if maybe this stuff just...didn't happen in the future. If there just weren't gangs or bad neighborhoods or street fights. But he didn't know how to ask.

"Somewhere there's some hospital document that's got more on what's messed up, I dunno what it says. But I guess you'd be able to tell that with your scanner, huh?"

"I don't think hockey does this when you're wear'n a helmet." A beat. "Please tell me you wear a helmet when you play hockey."

When he fought? Probably a lost cause, honestly, but when he's playing a sport? God above please let the kid wear the right equipment. He'd seen collision injuries in medschool before. Didn't happen all that often, but they did, and the way a brain rattled around a skull was downright disconcert'n. Everything that made a person a person shouldn't be so damn fragile. And yet, it was.

"Yeah it- it got the gist of it." Now the harder question, because honestly? He couldn't tell. This wasn't a recent injury, it's not something he could just reach in and fix- all his neurological advances were done to the base of the spine, the brain stem, the back end of the skull. There was fuck and all he could do for Casey. "Have you found it to adversely effect the quality of your life? I mean- has shit gotten harder for you since the injury?"

"Course I wear a helmet durin' hockey!" During games definitely.

During practice...not so much. But Casey wasn't about to give Bones an aneurysm by admitting that.

"I knew what you meant the first time," he said, with a little bit of a huff. "Grades went down, but they weren't ever great anyway...I don't really remember how it was before my head was cracked so I couldn't really tell ya."

He thinks he might have been more patient, less reckless, more able to keep his head in order...less wild. But whatever he was doesn't matter now, because he's not that any more. He's saved the lives of his friends and his own life more than once by being his current crazy self. How could that be all bad?

"Standardized education hasn't always been a solid measure of intelligence, even in my time." A beat. "You ain't dumb, kid. You come at things as they get thrown at you and that's worth a lot more when you're in the business of fight'n crime with a goddamn hockey stick."

It did explain some of the poor impulse control and impatience- but then Casey IS a teenager. one that's used to being self reliant. Gauging how much is him and how much is legitimate brain damage would be difficult. And it wasn't something Leonard really wanted to get into. "Might be a reason why you jump into things with both feet, though. Impulse control can be an issue. Same with impatience. Then again impulse control and impatience are also a standards symptom of puberty."

"Heh, wish you could tell that to my hockey coach. Maybe he'd quit tellin' me to get tutors." His grin got a bit more genuine at the compliment. That meant a lot coming from a future-doctor. "Hey, a true warrior's gotta be ready for anything...so...thanks."

It didn't matter, did it? It was all still Casey, no matter where it came from.

"Hey, jumpin' in with both feet saved my bacon more than once, whatever it is." Scares the crap out of everyone around him, sure, but he always comes through in the end.

"Could work on your risk assessment, though. Seriously Casey- going out to fight is fine if you have backup. Point is you have backup. If we're all too banged up to help? You got access to the network, you know. You can ask around there. Buddy up, make patrol rounds. Plan." He reaches over to flick the kid's forehead gently. "You know better. I'd recommend not partnering up with Rose till she's got a better idea of what she's doing, though. Maybe help her learn how to get a handle on it. Run drills like you do for practic'n hockey."

Oh, good. Lecture time. This was pretty much just what he said last night, anyway, so he'd better make sure Bones knew he got it.

"Yeah, well, I ain't going out again until my body feels less like a punching bag. Sure didn't expect to find the biggest Nox in the city the first time I went on patrol." He hadn't expected a lot of stuff that night, had he? "I'll talk to Rose about it and put out some feelers. I ain't the only masked vigilante runnin' around at night."

Normally that was a "lone hero of the night" kind of thing, but that was apparently not gonna fly around here. He let Bones flick his head, and then roughly but playfully pushed his hand away. He'd hit about where the plate was, but Casey barely noticed the extra pressure anymore. Barely.

"So...if they don't hafta stitch guys up where you come from, what do they do?"

"No you are not. There's that bat look'n fella with the sparkly powers but I dunno how he is about be'n a team player." He settles back in his chair with a half smile. Casey ain't dumb, he put it together. He'll have to trust the kid to handle himself after this and honestly?

He's pretty sure it won't be trust misplaced.

"Dermal regeneration. It coaxes your cells to mend themselves at an accelerated rate. Speeds up the healing process by stimulat'n what makes 'em work in precise bursts." Sure beats needle and thread.

"Seemed kinda grouchy when I met him, but nothin' that can't be fixed with a dose of the ol' Jones charm!" And not falling off a building and smacking his head, that helps too.

...If Bones doesn't already know about that, then it probably wasn't bad enough to show up on his scanner. Either way, he's not going to tell him.

"Man...the future sounds so awesome." His life would be WAY easier if he didn't have to wait so long for everything to heal. Plus the whole "going into space" thing.

"Took a long while to get there." Some not so awesome stuff had to happen but- Casey would do well there, he thinks. "Another thing 'fore I head out. When you use your fire magic- the fire you make, does it burn you? Needt' sort out if I should start stock'n up on aloe vera or someth'n."

"Nah. I mean, I feel th' heat but it doesn't affect me after I put it out. Even tried to set my hair on fire and got nothin'." A beat. "And before you say anythin', that wasn't my idea!"

"...Who's idea was it, then?" Cuz that is- that is some stupid shit and Casey needs new friends if the company he keeps is suggest'n that kinda bullshit.

"The princess of Horseland." Or whatever it was called. Did Bones even know about the unicorn princesses running around? Point was, they were princesses and those never had bad ideas.

"...Celestia?" He knew that one, hav'n run into her at the Carinval. "Didn't rightly seem the type."

"Wha-? Nah, the other one. Luna." Though Celestia may have suggested it too if she'd been there.

"Oh good, there's two of them. While I appreciate know'n that- try not to test it without, I dunno, a medic on hand?"

"Eh, she had water magic, that's good enough."

"...Did you know that before you attempted to light yourself on fire?"

"Well...no, but s'not like I knew I had firepower before I really needed it either."

"...Try to be more careful in the future when you're test'n shit?" He patted Casey on the shoulder and headed for the door. "Awright?"

"Yeah, I'll try."

Casey isn't great at that, but..."try" seems about the level he can reach.

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Medical Consultation [Closed]

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