[Sickbay]: Round 21 Scans and Vaccines

[ten_fwd_npcs]

If this is your first trip to Sickbay, you may be surprised to see that it's a fairly ordinary-looking hospital. There are no terrifying devices or humming machines you might see in a sci-fi thriller. The biobeds along the walls are equipped with biofunction monitors, but look fairly standard. Instead of silver trays filled with metal tools and sawblades, there are an array of small devices that look as harmless as cell phones. As for the staff, they're all well-groomed and friendly — even the more unusual aliens.

If you're new to the ship, no doubt you've been escorted here by the security team. Nothing to worry about, the doctors just want to make sure you aren't carrying any viruses or are vulnerable to terrible space disease. Once you've been checked over — a quick scan from a tricorder and any necessary vaccines — you'll be free to go. Lollipops are optional.

"All right, step on in," one of them calls out as you enter. "Don't be afraid. It's just a scan and a hypospray, nothing to worry about."


[ooc: Sickbay is, as always, OTA and open until the next one goes up for latecomers! For new characters: tagging isn't mandatory but IC going to sickbay is. If you'd prefer to skip threading with one of our doctors, you can handwave that your character got a clean bill of health and a shot and were sent on their merry way. There will be a post up in the OOC comm shortly with more details about Sickbay and which doctors are on deck this month, if you have any questions.]

Comments

[anexquisitecreature]

Maybe not inappropriate. Slightly awkward would be closer. Either way, probably better he doesn't.

"Testing and costumes and space, oh my," she toasts him in return, then inhales the rest of her slice. One to go, and she'll ask the thing for dessert in an hour or so.

"So. Other than meeting your future maybe daughters, did you come across anyone useful? I met a vet. Super handy. Serendipitous, even."

[prefers_magneto]

"No, not really. A vet? What are the odds of that?" he muses.

[anexquisitecreature]

"Pretty damn slim," she points out, then shrugs, whatever might-have-been moment passing. "Can't hurt for the muttlet to have a once over, since he's been created by some godling."

[prefers_magneto]

Erik shrugged and looked at the dog. "For all we know, he can't get sick," he pointed out.

[anexquisitecreature]

And he hasn't, so far.

She has to lean out a little to see Mojo fully, the pup sprawled quite happily on the floor. His tail thumps when he realises he has both their attention.

"Doesn't mean he won't. I'd rather be safe than sorry about it."

[prefers_magneto]

"Sensible," Erik conceded. He looked at her. "I think I'll try the future space shower when we're done here. See if they've managed to improve the technology."

[anexquisitecreature]

A shower is a shower and should not have conjured up the image it just did what is wrong with her brain, here?

Too long a gap between his words and hers.

Bad.

"--sounds good."

Eh, she's probably tired. This is her sixth meal since she woke up. She eats a lot, but that number means she's been awake a really long time.

"I'd tell you not to use all the hot water but I feel like that's not going to be a problem, here."

[prefers_magneto]

He was tired, too. They could probably both use a nap. He glanced to the window. Blackness and starfield streaked by.

"Do you think it's night?" he asked.

[anexquisitecreature]

"I think it's always night, here."

A shrug. They're in space. They have all the suns, and none of them.

"But if you're talking relatively, I feel like it's about four in the morning."

[prefers_magneto]

"Then I suppose, at some point, we ought to get some sleep."

In their... considerately supplied separate bedrooms.

"Start looking into things fresh tomorrow morning. Or afternoon. Or whenever it is that we wake up to their relative time," he concedes with a bit of a laugh.

[anexquisitecreature]

They could have had bunks. This isn't so bad.

She shakes her head, the overhead light glinting on her scales.

"I haven't eaten enough," she admits. "I'm probably going to ask for something else in an hour once this has settled, and then I'll shower and get some shut-eye."

A glance up, before she carefully offers, "You can go first if you want? If it won't bother you that I go later, I mean."

Separate bedrooms, but shared quarters, so there'll be noise.

[prefers_magneto]

"It won't bother me," he says. And it won't; noise means she's around. He pushes his plate away and gets up. "I'll go now, then. I've had enough."

[anexquisitecreature]

She snags her beer and drains the last of it.

"If you somehow manage to use all the hot water, I'll be impressed," she replies, and wonders why she keeps watching him walk away as she forcibly drags her gaze back to the remnants of her dinner. Second dinner will be less greasy.

[prefers_magneto]

"Don't set me challenges or I'll be in there all night," he teases over his shoulder.

He isn't, though. He's out in ten minutes. Bone dry.

"It's not water. In the shower. It's some weird... vibrating," he reports. Which he didn't assume was the shower function at first - magic fingers in the shower? - but there were no other functions.

He'll choose her second dinner for her if she's feeling adventurous, though. That's kind of like cooking for her, isn't it?

[anexquisitecreature]

Cue a look that's both puzzled and annoyed.

"What do you mean, it's not water? How can it not be water? What good is vibrating when I want to soak my damn muscles?"

She abandons her meal - there are two bites left, and if he's still up when she's ready for second dinner, he can choose it - to stalk over to the bathroom and view this travesty of a shower.

[prefers_magneto]

"I don't know." A beat. "I wonder if it even matters whether you're naked, if there's no water. Maybe your laundry gets done at the same time," he mused more to himself and his own curiosity.

[anexquisitecreature]

"I'm almost always naked like this," she says in absent response, examining the shower with dubious irritation.

She pushes a button, and another one... definitely no water.

"So, how do we get off this ship?"

[prefers_magneto]

"You aren't today," he points out helpfully.

He shrugs at her question. "It has to stop at some point. I suppose we could make our own way once it does that but...where?"

[anexquisitecreature]

"So nice of you to notice," she replies, then steps in experimentally to see if it cleans her clothes, too.

She's not all that dirty, so she supposes smell will be the only way to tell.

"No idea. None of these places have ever been our choice. Maybe if it docks somewhere where we can breathe and eat without worry, we should just stay." She frowns at the shower and her clothes. "Do you feel clean?"

[prefers_magneto]

"I did until I put the same clothes back on," he tells her. He steps into the stall, too. It's decidedly less intimate, he reasons, when they're dressed. "I wonder if that food machine makes clothes, too."

[anexquisitecreature]

There is no chance of any intimacy in this situation at all, now. Wherever her brain went before he had his shower, it's not there now, because this - no matter what they call it - is not a shower.

She plucks at his shirt. Sniffing him would be a weird thing to do right now.

"It probably does." Make clothes. "How about now, while it's allegedly cleaning us with vibrations?"

[prefers_magneto]

He hesitates, then reaches past her to push another button on the wall. At that point, he could feel the buzzing, but maybe he felt it in the metal parts of the fixtures rather than in his body. It was hard to tell sometimes.

"You'd think they'd only be using it if it were better technology," he points out. He plucks up the front of his shirt and brings it to his own nose to sniff it. "It doesn't smell like I've been wearing it for two days anymore."

Doesn't exactly smell like flowers, either. Smells like nothing at all.

[anexquisitecreature]

"I guess..."

She doesn't move as he reaches past, and curls her lip slightly as the buzzing increases. It's a bizarre sensation, clinical and impersonal.

She can't help it; he sniffed his shirt, so now she has to. She could sniff her own, but he's already holding his, so.

"If by better, you mean more efficient. We're definitely clean, but the joy of hot water on a tired body can't be denied."

[prefers_magneto]

"No. Well." The joy of many things on a tired body couldn't be denied, but none of them would be on his any time soon. It's getting hot and close in the shower. He steps out. "Maybe the next planet will have a spa."

[anexquisitecreature]

"A spa? I hate you, don't tease."

The absence of said warmth as he steps out is weirdly noticeable - to the point that when she steps out after him, she leaves the bathroom altogether. It's not like she's going to soak anywhere.

"Maybe the next planet will have a masseuse."